Four Tragedies And Octavia (2010) - Plot & Excerpts
62 and extends over two days, during which the emperor Nero brings to a head his quarrel with his wife Octavia, condemns her to exile and death, and marries his mistress Poppaea. The play contains much retrospective reference to the misfortunes of Octavia’s family – she was the daughter of the emperor Claudius and his third wife Messalina – and to the previous crimes of Nero. In A.D. 48 Messalina, divorced, was put to death by the orders of Claudius; in A.D. 54 Claudius was poisoned, reputedly with the complicity of his fourth wife Agrippina, mother of Nero. In A.D. 55 Nero contrived the murder of Britannicus, the brother of Octavia and supplanted heir of Claudius; and in A.D. 59 he devised a plan to murder his mother, the principal obstacle to his divorce, by a prearranged shipwreck; this failing, she was dispatched by the sword of an assassin. Seneca, who had been recalled from exile to be tutor to the young Nero and was now one of his principal advisers, appears as an ineffective counsellor of moderation; and the Ghost of Agrippina rises to threaten calamity upon the new marriage.
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