# Most Influential Play In History? **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [June 11, 2010, 10:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-influential-play-in-history/542781 "2010-06-11T10:59:43Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 4\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![BMalion](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/e274bd/32.png) [@BMalion](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BMalion)\ **Post date:** [June 11, 2010, 10:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-influential-play-in-history/542781/1 "2010-06-11T10:59:43Z")
So I’m reading an alternate-hitory thriller where the hero, Shakespeare, is secretly hired to write a play to spur the English to oust the hated Spanish invaders nine years after the Armada wins. So it got me thinking. I’m aware of the influence of literature, radio, movies and television, however… What play has had the most influence on our, or anyone else’s culture? Politically, moral, economic or otherwise. ---
**Author:** ![vdgg81](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/3d9bf3/32.png) [@vdgg81](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/vdgg81)\ **Post date:** [June 11, 2010, 11:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-influential-play-in-history/542781/2 "2010-06-11T11:31:20Z")
I’d go with either _Oedipus Rex_ or _Hamlet_. Aristotle chose _Oedipus_ as a model tragedy in his _Poetics_ so it’s influence was felt for millennia. As for _Hamlet_, it’s been seen as the pinnacle of drama since the 17th century and Harold Bloom argues that it, along with the rest of Shakespeare’s plays, was responsible for the development of a distinct kind of conscience that has since become the norm in the west. ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [June 11, 2010, 11:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-influential-play-in-history/542781/3 "2010-06-11T11:44:45Z")
I don’t know about world history, but arguably the most influentisal play in _American_ history is one that I haven’t even read, and I’ll bet hardly anyone else here has – Joseph Addison’s 1712 tragedy **Cato**. It was very well known to the leaders of the American Revolution, and seems to have inspired them. Certainly they quoted it, or were influenced in their own speeches and writing by it. George Washington had it performed during the encampment at Valley Forge. > [@](#): > > Based on the last days of Marcus Porcius Cato Uticensis, it deals with, inter alia, such themes as individual liberty versus government tyranny, Republicanism versus Monarchism, logic versus emotion and Cato’s personal struggle to cleave to his beliefs in the face of death. > [@](#): > > Some scholars [who?] believe that the source of several famous quotations from the American Revolution came from, or were inspired by, Cato. These include: > > ``` > * Patrick Henry's famous ultimatum: "Give me Liberty or give me death!" > > (Supposed reference to Act II, Scene 4: "It is not now time to talk of aught/But chains or conquest, liberty or death."). > > * Nathan Hale's valediction: "I regret that I have but one life to lose for my country." > > (Supposed reference to Act IV, Scene 4: "What a pity it is/That we can die but once to serve our country."). > > * Washington's praise for Benedict Arnold in a letter to him: "It is not in the power of any man to command success; but you have done more — you have deserved it." > > (Clear reference to Act I, Scene 2: "'Tis not in mortals to command success; but we'll do more, Sempronius, we'll deserve it."). > > ``` > > Not long after the American Revolution, Edmund Burke quotes the play as well in his Letter to Charles-Jean-Francois Depont (1789) in Further Reflections on the Revolution in France: “The French may be yet to go through more transmigrations. They may pass, as one of our poets says, ‘through many varieties of untried being,’ before their state obtains its final form.” The poet in reference is of course Addison and the passage Burke quoted is from Cato (V.i. II): “Through what variety of untried being,/Through what new scenes and changes must we pass!” > **[Cato, a Tragedy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cato,_a_Tragedy)** > > Cato, a Tragedy is a play written by Joseph Addison in 1712 and first performed on 14 April 1713. It is based on the events of the last days of Marcus Porcius Cato Uticensis (better known as Cato the Younger) (95–46 BC), a Stoic whose deeds, rhetoric and resistance to the tyranny of Julius Caesar made him an icon of republicanism, virtue, and liberty. Addison's play deals with many themes such as individual liberty versus government tyranny, republicanism versus monarchism, logic versus emotio... > [@](#): > > “George Washington was so taken with the character of Cato the younger in Joseph Addison’s 1713 play Cato that he made the Roman republican his role model. He went to see Cato numerous times from early manhood into maturity and even had it performed for his troops at Valley Forge despite a congressional resolution that plays were inimical to republican virtue. Washington included lines from the play in his private correspondence and even in his farewell address.” (Thoughts of a Philosophical Fighter Pilot, Hoover Press, 1995, p.75.) > **[Joseph Addison: CATO (A Tragedy in Five Acts)](https://constitution.org/2-Authors/addison/cato_play.htm)** The above site has the complete play > [@](#): > > That most of the founding generation read it or saw it or both is unquestionable, and that it stuck in their memories is abundantly evident. Benjamin Franklin, as a young and aspiring writer, committed long passages from it to memory and then attempted to write them out, in hopes that Addison’s writing style would rub off on him. Mercy Otis Warren based her own play, “The Sack of Rome,” directly on Cato. Patrick Henry adapted his famous “Give me liberty or give me death” speech directly from lines in Cato. Nathan Hale’s celebrated last words, “I only regret that I have but one life to lose for my country,” echoes a remark by Cato, “What a pity it is that we can die but once to save our country.” > > Cato was the favorite play of George Washington, who saw it many times and quoted or paraphrased lines from it in his correspondence over the course of four decades. The first known occasion when he cited it was when he identified himself with one of its characters in a letter to Mrs. George William Fairfax in 1758. In 1775 he wrote to Benedict Arnold to commend his heroism in the ill-fated Quebec expedition: “It is not in the power of any man to command success; but you have done more—you have deserved it.” In Act 1, scene 2, Cato’s son says, “’Tis not in mortals to command success. But we’ll do more, Sempronius, we’ll deserve it.” One of Cato’s most quoted sentiments was “‘When vice prevails, and impious men bear sway,’ the post of honor is a private station.” Washington expressed that thought on numerous occasions, including the letter he wrote to Alexander Hamilton in 1796 opening the correspondence through which the two wrote the renowned Farewell Address. > > The impact of the play upon Washington and others is illustrated by the fact that, during the dreadful winter at Valley Forge, he had it performed for his troops to inspire them with determination, despite a congressional resolution condemning stage performances as contrary to republican principles. Moreover, in 1783, when his officers encamped at Newburgh, New York, threatened to mutiny—as Cato’s troops had done in the play—Washington appeared before them and quite self-consciously shamed them into abandoning the enterprise essentially by rehashing Cato’s speech. > > At first blush, Cato would scarcely seem to offer much consolation to Americans in their efforts to establish a durable republic. The story recounts Cato’s noble but vain efforts to save the remnants of the Roman republican Senate from the usurping arms of the all-conquering Caesar, “who owes his greatness to his country’s ruin.” In the end, Cato commits suicide, and the republic perishes as well. > > Yet one of the subplots of the drama offered a ray of hope, at least for the more sanguine of the founders, for it provided a means of escaping a dilemma. Both classical and modern theorists of republics held that their actuating principle was public virtue—virtue in the sense of selfless, full-time, manly devotion to the public weal. Many Americans had been governed by such public spiritedness during the war and made great sacrifices for the cause of independence, but in normal times people were too individualistic and too avaricious to sustain that level of commitment. Besides, Americans believed in original sin, which in eighteenth-century terms meant that they believed men were driven by their “passions”—drives for self-gratification—and that the “ruling” passions of most public men were ambition and avarice, the love of power and the love of money. [http://oll.libertyfund.org/index.php?option=com\_content&task=view&id=650&Itemid=285](http://oll.libertyfund.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=650&Itemid=285) ---
**Author:** ![Don\_t\_Call\_Me\_Shirley](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/f4b2a3/32.png) [@Don\_t\_Call\_Me\_Shirley](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Don_t_Call_Me_Shirley)\ **Post date:** [June 11, 2010, 11:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-influential-play-in-history/542781/4 "2010-06-11T11:49:03Z")
On American culture- _Our American Cousin._