The Translator’s Invisibility

The one place name Denham includes in his version of Priam’s death, “Asia,” may be taken as an allusion to the Orientalism in Caroline court culture. Denham had himself contributed to this trend with The Sophy (1642), a play intended for court production and set in Persia. But the allusiveness of the translation is more specific. “The Scepters of all Asia bow’d” to Charles in court masques where the king and queen enacted a moral conquest of foreign rulers by converting their nations to Platonic love. In Aurelian Townshend’s Tempe Restor’d (1632), the royal couple preside over the reformation of Circe’s sensual reign, figured in “all the Antimasques, consisting of Indians and Barbarians, who naturally are bestiall, and others which are voluntaries, but halfe transformed into beastes” (Townshend 1983:97).

Yet more striking is Denham’s curious addition to the Latin text: “Thus fell the King, who yet survived the State, / With such a signal and peculiar Fate.” Virgil’s omission of any reference to the dead king’s afterlife reveals Denham’s own belief in the continuing vitality of the Stuart monarchy after the regicide. Although Charles I was executed, the monarchy “survived the State” instituted by Parliament, initially a Commonwealth governed by a Council of State, which was later redefined to function as an advisor to a Lord Protector; this was a “signal and peculiar” survival for the king because it took the form of a court in exile and royalist conspiracy at home, because, in other words, the king lived on but not in his kingdom. In the political climate of the 1650s, with the Protectorate resorting to oppressive measures to quell royalist insurgency, it would be difficult for a Caroline sympathizer not to see any parallel between the decapitations of Priam and Charles. But in this climate it would also be necessary for a royalist writer like Denham to use such an oblique mode of reference as an allusion in an anonymous translation. Translation was particularly useful in royalist cultural politics, Lois Potter suggests, because it was viewed as “transcendence, the healing wholeness that removes controversy and contradiction” (Potter 1989:52–53). In Denham’s translation, the monarchy “survived” its destruction.

The fact that Denham intended his translation to serve a royalist function is borne out by a comparison with his predecessors, which highlights the subtle changes he introduced to bring the Latin text closer to his political concerns:

{55} Of Priamus this was the fatal fine,
The wofull end that was alotted him.
When he had seen his palace all on flame,
With the ruine of his Troyan turrets eke,
That royal prince of Asie, which of late
Reignd over so many peoples and realmes,
Like a great stock now lieth on the shore:
His hed and shoulders parted ben in twaine:
A body now without renome, and fame.

(Howard 1557:cii^v)

See here King Priams end of all the troubles he had knowne,
Behold the period of his days, which fortune did impone.
When he had seene his Citie raz’d, his Pallace, Temples fir’d,
And he who to th’Imperiall rule of Asia had aspir’d,
Proud of his Territories, and his people heeretofore,
Was then vnto the sea side brought, and headlesse in his gore:
Without respect his body lay in publike view of all.

(Wroth 1620:E3^r)

This was king Priams end, this his hard fate,
To live to see Troy fir’d, quite ruinate:
Even he, who once was Asia’s Keisar great,
Mightiest in men, and spacious regall seat:
A despicable trunk (now) dead on ground,
His head cut off, his carcasse no name found.

(Vicars 1632:48)