The Ancient “Constant Prince” in the Turn-of-the-Century Theatre

Abstract

The Polish theatre of the early years of the 19th century was familiar with two dramatic elaborations of the story of Marcus Atilius Regulus, the Roman general and hero of the First Punic War, who, sacrificing his own life, prevented the conclusion of a truce with Carthage that was disadvantageous to the Romans. The “French” Regulus – a tragedy by Claude Dorat – was staged in Poland by the theatre directed by the classicist Ludwik Osiński, while the romantically oriented theatre of Jan Nepomucen Kamiński promoted the Austrian drama Regulus by Heinrich von Collin. In Collin’s drama, an aura of Romantic visionariness surrounds a Shakespearean arrangement of analogous plots, framed by two different codes: a tragic one (linked to Regulus’s heroic deed) and an ironic one (set at a fairground show organised by the Consul Metellus). At the intersection of the two storylines, there is a clash of attitudes on the question of rights and duties linked to notions of humanity and citizenship – an issue that was topical not so much in ancient Rome, as in post-revolutionary Europe at the turn of the 18th and 19th centuries.