Kyd was certainly capable of emphasis, both in the good and the bad sense, which stands him in good stead when he has to reproduce the passages adapted from Lucan. These he generally presents in something of their native pomp, and indeed throughout he shows a praiseworthy effort to keep on the level of his author. The result is a grave and decorous performance, which, if necessarily lacking in distinctive colour, since the original had so little, is almost equally free from modern incongruities. It can hardly be reckoned as such that Scipio grasps his “cutlass,” or that in similar cases the equivalent for a technical Latin term should have a homely sound. Perhaps the most serious anachronism occurs when Cicero, talking of “this great town” of Rome, exclaims:
Neither could the flaxen-haird high Dutch,
(A martiall people, madding after Armes),
Nor yet the fierce and fiery humord French....
Once dare t’assault it.
Garnier is not responsible: he writes quite correctly:
Ny les blons Germains, peuple enragé de guerre,
Ny le Gaulois ardent.
This, however, is a very innocent slip. It was different when another scholar of the group to which Kyd belonged treated a Roman theme in a more popular way.
But before turning to him it may be well to say a word concerning the influence which these Senecan pieces are sometimes supposed to have had on Shakespeare’s Roman plays that dealt with kindred themes.