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As Cunliffe says in presenting Hippolytus 723-726, and Hercules Furens 1330-1336, this
is a parallel which has attracted the attention of many readers of Seneca and Shakspere, and was apparently first placed on record by Lessing in the
Theatralisehe Bibliothek (1754). It may be, too, that in this passage of Seneca
Shakspere found the suggestion of that blood-stained little hand which forms so impressive a feature in the famous sleep-walking scene."
But this hyperbolical figure is so inevitable, and so widely spread both in the classics and among Shakspere's contemporaries, that it can hardly be considered significant for our present purpose.
Nor can a favorite phrase of Seneca be so considered. Richard orders that Stanley bring up his regiment
lest his son George fall Into the blind cave of eternal night."
Thompson" refers to II, 2, 46 in his edition, where he reads,
follow him
To his new kingdom of ne'er-changing night
and says,
Both passages recall similar phrases in the Senecan plays-e.g. Medea, 740: Et Chaos caecum, atque opaca.m Ditis umbrosi damum [precor]; ibid. 9: Noctis aeternae chaos Adversa superis regna; Here. Fur. 61o: noctis aeternae chaos.
Seneca uses the phrase "noctis aeternae" twice, both times de-pendent upon chaos, which in another connection he calls chaos caecurtr. Shakspere's "of eternal night," "of ne'er-changing night" is an excellent translation of "noctis aeternae"; but where in such an age might he not have picked up such a phrase? For Seneca had no monopoly on it. Cooper gives it from Virgil under aeternus, who also has "caecas cavernas," as does Ovid too. Shakspere has used two stock phrases, "blind cave," and "eternal night," but where he had them who can say?
We have fair indication, then, that Shakspere is close to two passages of Seneca in the original-closer than was the English translation. But in the case of the first passage we know that he had it from the source of his play. The second passage occurs in the Flores, where a schoolboy should have found it for himself or through
a Cunlife, Seneca, pp. 84-85. "Richard III, V, 3, 61-62. " Thompson, A. H., Richard III (Arden ed.), p. 190.
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