Ghostly Reception and Translation ad spiritum: The Case of Nicholas Grimald’s Archipropheta (1548)

Abstract

When considering the landscape of drama and theatre performance in the sixteenth century in terms of classical reception, original plays written in Latin have not been accorded full attention. The many hundreds of Latin plays written and performed in England alone in this century were potentially vital locations for experimentation and for the reception not only of obvious Roman models but also of ancient Greek plays. In this article, one example, the biblical Latin drama Archipropheta by the scholar, poet, and playwright Nicholas Grimald (1519–1562), is examined to show how it is haunted by ancient Greek tragedy. This haunting speaks to the anti-chronological way in which reception of this kind might have worked, with audiences’ first encounters with Greek tragedy as such being shaped by the receptions of Greek tragedy they had already witnessed in original Latin plays such as this.