Sons and Mothers: Agrippina, Semiramis, and the Philological Construction of Gender Roles in Early Modern Germany (Lohenstein's Agrippina, 1665)
ACT THREE OF DANIEL CASPER VON LOHENSTEIN'S 1665 Germanlanguage play about Nero's assassination of his mother and erstwhile co-regent Agrippina in A.D. 59 contains what could arguably be deemed one of the most salacious scenes produced on the early modern stage in central Europe. The astoundingly explicit rendering of the incident of incestuous seduction is based on suggestions by Suetonius and Tacitus of improper sexual relations between mother and son.1 Although barely noted in the criticism, the material realities of the play's production might well have made the erotically-charged scene all the more outrageous. Lohenstein's Agrippina belonged to the genre of early modern schooldrama; produced under the aegis of one of the humanistic Gymnasien in Breslau (now Wroclaw) in the year following its publication in 1665, the play including all female roles was acted by schoolboys whose lessons in history and rhetoric and familiarity with the classical tradition were driven home by their participation