The curiosities of Senecan dramaturgy are many and well known. But while the half-century since Zwierlein's Die Rezitationsdramen Senecas has focused scholarship particularly on the tragedies' mode of production, the question of performability has so dominated debate that it risks unduly suffocating related questions. Z.'s monograph is a much needed breath of fresh air, and should reinvigorate the study of Seneca's dramaturgy and reception. Building upon the commonly acknowledged influence of epic and declamation, Z. argues that aspects of the plays' structure and poetic verse reflect compositional techniques borrowed from pantomime. It argues, in other words, that Senecan tragedy is influenced by the genre of pantomime.

The monograph begins by outlining the characteristics of pantomime following its introduction to Augustan Rome, an ideal starting point given the unfamiliarity of the genre (and piecemeal nature of the evidence). Z. establishes that it was dance-based theatre in mask, highly imaginative, and that performance relied upon the command of a fixed corpus of choreographical schemata to represent not only a range of actions and emotions, but fantastic environments as well. Emotionally charged myths involving eros or furor (including lust, dismemberment and tecnophagy) were evidently popular subject matter, providing the dancer with a diverse range of emotions. These, crucially, were not limited by pragmatic considerations of a dramatic theatrical production.

The compact first chapter goes beyond historical questions in setting the stage for the study as a whole: Z. also surveys the pantomimic repertoire and the features of its myths and libretti before analysing the genre's relationship to Roman literature and culture more widely. This last part of the chapter, in particular, provokes and fascinates. It traces the slippery boundary between oratorical and theatrical delivery (p. 19), but also considers late-republican and imperial literature more broadly, diagnosing mimic and pantomimic elements in Catullus' super alta vectus Atthis, the Pro Caelio, elegy and Ovid (especially the Fasti), the Apocolocyntosis, the Satyricon, Apuleius and (in general) the prevalence of generic boundary crossing in Roman literature. It is a compelling survey spanning an impressive range of prose and poetical works and, by establishing how widespread pantomimic elements were, animates the study as a whole.

Subsequent chapters employ case studies from across the dramas to highlight pantomimic tropes and influence on Seneca. The second chapter considers structure, and concludes that the plays' emotional intensity (at a peak already at the onset of the dramatic action), their separation into episodic tableaux, their non-integration of the chorus and their tendency to manipulate dramatic time all reveal a twofold tendency towards fluidity of setting on the one hand and imaginative (but self-contained) set-piece on the other. From here, the study considers the extensive descriptions of dramatic action (the so-called ‘running commentaries’ – Chapter 3), characters' monologues of self-analysis (Chapter 4) and the plays' ecphrastic set-pieces (Chapter 5). Similar conclusions are reached throughout. Running commentary emphasises the body parts, but does so in a standardised, schematic way that produces ‘types’ (suitable for dancing) rather than psychologically recognisable characters. Commentary is also capable of bringing onstage actions that would ordinarily be dramatised offstage or in the imagination: the analysis of the unique incantation-scene in Medea (pp. 123–5) is an excellent example of how the flexibility afforded to pantomimic production overcomes the conventional limits of tragic dramaturgy. Monologues of self-analysis turn characters into external narrators describing their internal emotional turmoil in undramatic terms more suitable for choreographic representation. They employ epic tropes (i.e. extended similes) but also fixate on body parts and externalise the emotions into abstract entities – all of which Z. argues are germane to the poetics of pantomime. The final chapter's discussion of ecphrastic set-pieces reiterates previous findings regarding the fluid handling of landscape and emotion, as well as Seneca's manipulation of space and time. Plot and character development, Z. argues, are insignificant next to the paradoxical attempt to make the imaginative and supernatural immediate and evident.

This is an intriguing book. The argument is engaging and novel, and particularly striking for the honesty of its critical attitude. For, instead of lamenting or impugning the plays' non-dramatic qualities, Z. assumes that they stem from deliberate dramaturgical choices on Seneca's part (p. 80). The argument to this end displays dexterity and nuance in addition to sensitivity: although individual points inevitably circle back to the idea that such-and-such a feature was spun off from pantomimic practice, Z. varies her procedure, ranging from considerations of metre (e.g. pp. 97–100, 106–9, 139–42), sound-play (pp. 174–5) and intertextuality to support the argument. The synkrisis of Theseus' ecphrasis of the underworld and Aeneid 6 (pp. 157–62), for example, juxtaposes the poetics of pantomimic and epic narrative, and demonstrates how Seneca is indebted to both.

So intriguing is the study that it will be hard in the future to read Seneca without imagining a particular scene as it might have been danced. The success of the study's path-breaking thesis, however, is not absolute: Z. shirks the obvious questions raised by her findings – were the plays danced, or meant to be danced? – and limits her purview to demonstrating the ‘influence’ of pantomime. Here the study trips clumsily, as it becomes increasingly unclear of what exactly ‘influence’ consists: sometimes it is a vague resemblance,Footnote ¹ sometimes it is specifically technicalFootnote ² and sometimes pertains to aesthetics or performance.Footnote ³ The conclusion, consequently, is somewhat anticlimactic for its caution: when Z. pleads that ‘I am not suggesting that the influence of pantomime … necessarily bears the implication that Seneca intended his tragedies to be performed as pantomime or with pantomimic sequences’ (p. 203), the litotes frustrates by deviating from the trajectory of the argument while leaving the door open to the possibility that such an argument might none the less be made. I suspect that, with the foundation laid, there is more to come on the topic of Seneca-as-dance.

Other minor shortcomings take the form of missed opportunities or odd editorial choices. Revisions to the dissertation on which the monograph is based, for one, appear (on the basis of my cursory survey) limited to the most minor of adjustments at the level of paragraph structure. The opportunity to move beyond the strictures and limitations of that genre ought to have been seized. I am surprised as well that Greek and Latin remain untranslated throughout: non-specialists will feel themselves hard done by and adrift, particularly amongst the primary sources for pantomime. But such quibbles ought not to detract from the study's success: Z. treats pantomime confidently and convincingly, and even if serious questions remain about the pantomimic quality of Senecan tragedy, she has gone some way to elucidating many oddities of his dramaturgy.