Colloquia Maruliana, Vol. 22 No. 22, 2013.
Original scientific paper
Marin Držić’s Hecuba between Performance and the Book
Irena Bratičević
orcid.org/0000-0002-3098-4165
; Filozofski fakultet Sveučilišta u Zagrebu, Zagreb, Hrvatska
Ivan Lupić
; Columbia University, New York
Abstract
The subject of our article is the so-called Šibenik manuscript of Marin Držić’s Hecuba, today held in the Archives of the Croatian Academy of Sciences and Arts in Zagreb (shelf-mark VII. 33). This is the only surviving manuscript of this work that mentions on its title leaf the name of Marin Držić and not Mavro Vetranović as the play’s author. Insufficiently studied and as yet unused in the editions of Držić’s Hecuba, this manuscript is additionally interesting on account of the numerous quotation marks found in its margins. Although noted, these marks have not so far been adequately or correctly interpreted. Our aim is to discover what exactly is going on in the margins of this codex and what consequences our inquiry might have for the readings of Držić, both in Renaissance Dubrovnik and in our time. We show that the markings in the Šibenik manuscript are an example of gnomic pointing, found everywhere in Renaissance manuscript and print cultures and linked, on the one hand, to Renaissance reading and writing practices, and, on the other, to the reception of Greek and Roman classics as well as to the formation of literary canons in the vernacular in accordance with classicalmodels. By considering the Šibenik manuscript in the context of the manuscript culture of Renaissance Dubrovnik and in the light of the reception of Euripides in sixteenth-century Europe, we show the problematic nature of the still dominant political interpretations of Držić’s dramatic adaptation. Such interpretations fail to find support even in the archival documents relating to the performances of earlyRagusan drama, which are here subjected to fresh analysis and supplemented by some new archival findings.
Keywords
Držić; Euripides; Hecuba; manuscript; politics; gnomic pointing; Renaissance; Dubrovnik
Hrčak ID:
101009
URI
Publication date:
22.4.2013.
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