Sources and Influences
For the subject of his play, the author of Locrine drew upon a legendary pseudo-history of the founding of Britain. Just as Virgil, in the Aeneid, credited the founding of Ancient Rome to exiles from a defeated Troy, so later English writers such as William Caxton and Raphael Holinshed, adapting the medieval pseudo-history of the Welsh-Norman author Geoffrey of Monmouth, credited another band of Trojan exiles for the foundation of a British realm. It was this fanciful origin myth, applied to the English rather than the Brythons, that provided the foundation for Locrine (Locrinus in Geoffrey's Historia Regum Britanniae). The author also drew material from the Mirror for Magistrates.
The revenge tragedies of Seneca were a major influence on Locrine. In addition to the poetry of Spenser and Lodge noted above, critics have pointed to links with the contemporary dramas of Christopher Marlowe, Thomas Kyd, Robert Greene and George Peele. Links with contemporary plays and playwrights can be, and have been, variously interpreted as evidence of influence or evidence of common authorship.
Read more about this topic: Locrine
Famous quotes containing the words sources and/or influences:
“My profession brought me in contact with various minds. Earnest, serious discussion on the condition of woman enlivened my business room; failures of banks, no dividends from railroads, defalcations of all kinds, public and private, widows and orphans and unmarried women beggared by the dishonesty, or the mismanagement of men, were fruitful sources of conversation; confidence in man as a protector was evidently losing ground, and women were beginning to see that they must protect themselves.”
—Harriot K. Hunt (18051875)
“However diligent she may be, however dedicated, no mother can escape the larger influences of culture, biology, fate . . . until we can actually live in a society where mothers and children genuinely matter, ours is an essentially powerless responsibility. Mothers carry out most of the work orders, but most of the rules governing our lives are shaped by outside influences.”
—Mary Kay Blakely (20th century)