Hannibal and Scipio - Literary Connections

Literary Connections

As its title indicates, the play relates the historical rivalry between Hannibal and Scipio Africanus. Out of the vast array of historical source material on the subject, Nabbes relied primarily upon the account of the Second Punic War given by Livy in his history of Rome, Ab Urbe condita, and upon Plutarch's Lives of Hannibal and Scipio.

Earlier English plays on the subject had been written and acted. A Scipio Africanus, author unknown, was staged at the English Court on 3 January 1580; a Hannibal and Hermes by Thomas Dekker, Michael Drayton, and Robert Wilson dated from 1598; it was followed by a Hannibal and Scipio by Richard Hathwaye and William Rankins in 1601. (None of these works is extant.) John Marston's The Wonder of Women (1606) deals with the related figure of Sophonisba.

In the Prologue to his play, Nabbes writes of "borrowing from a former play" (line 190), but scholars have not agreed on any specific play to which he refers. Nabbes apparently intended to deny any debt to any previously-produced drama.

Beyond the range of English literature, a large body of Continental plays, poems, and prose stories dealt with the subject matter; the last category includes versions of the story by Bandello, Boccaccio, and Petrarch.

Read more about this topic:  Hannibal And Scipio

Famous quotes containing the words literary and/or connections:

    In the middle of the next century, when the literary establishment will reflect the multicultural makeup of this country and not be dominated by assimiliationists with similar tastes, from similar backgrounds, and of similar pretensions, Langston Hughes will be to the twentieth century what Walt Whitman was to the nineteenth.
    Ishmael Reed (b. 1938)

    The quickness with which all the “stuff” from childhood can reduce adult siblings to kids again underscores the strong and complex connections between brothers and sisters.... It doesn’t seem to matter how much time has elapsed or how far we’ve traveled. Our brothers and sisters bring us face to face with our former selves and remind us how intricately bound up we are in each other’s lives.
    Jane Mersky Leder (20th century)