State-Inflicted Violence and the Ethics of Suffering

This chapter investigates two ways in which playwrights adapt violent historical subjects for the stage in Gabriel Bounin’s Soltane (1561) and Jean de Beaubreuil’s tragedy Regulus (1582). The loyal heroes from both are victims of state violence, though their stories unfold quite differently. In La Soltane, Moustapha obeys his father’s orders to visit him despite being warned his father will have him killed. In Regulus, Atilie remains loyal to his homeland (Rome) despite knowing the Carthaginians will punish his betrayal. However, whereas Bounin depicts Moustapha as an innocent victim of filicide, Beaubreuil paints Atilie as an arrogant warrior whose hubris causes his defeat in battle. Nonetheless, Atilie accepts his change in fortune and his violent death in Carthage. Thus, despite his flaws, he is a stoic exemplar who might inspire spectators to take virtuous action themselves. Further, while the stories take place in the Ottoman Empire and the Mediterranean Basin, they mirror the religious and civil wars of sixteenth-century France.