Pompey
Historical Records
Court Records
Accounts of the Office of the Revels
| The children of Pawles | { | A storie of Pompey enacted in the hall on twelf nighte wheron was ymploied newe one great citty, A senate howse and eight ells of dobble sarcenet for curtens and .xviij. paire of gloves. |
| * The duble Sarcenett maid into Curtyns and Implowid aboute Storie of pompay plaid by the Childring of powles/ |
*Thomas Skiner Orendge taffeta sarcenet at the xs the ell viij. ells |
} | iiijli. |
Theatrical Provenance
Performed at Whitehall Palace by the Children of Paul's on Friday 6 January 1581. Wiggins (entry 692) reports that
The audience included Queen Elizabeth I. The performance took place in the evening. Three small lights supplied by the Revels Office were stolen on the day of the performance. Sebastian Wescott was later paid £10 (comprising £6.13s.4d fee and £3.6s.8d reward), by a Privy Council warrant dated Wednesday 18 January.
Probable Genre(s)
Classical history (Harbage).
Possible Narrative and Dramatic Sources or Analogues
The play must have depicted some portion of the life of Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus, usually known in English as Pompey or Pompey the Great. His life and exploits were handed down to the Renaissance by a variety of sources, especially Plutarch, Appian and Dio Cassius.
Pompey (106–48BCE) was a military and political leader of the late Roman republic. Still in his early twenties, he obtained a number of resounding military successes in Sicily and Africa during the civil war between Sulla and Gaius Marius the younger. Because of those victories, Sulla was forced to allow him to enter Rome with the army and celebrate a triumph. He also officially granted him the title magnus (“great”). After Sulla’s abdication (79) and death (78), Pompey was sent to Spain by the Senate to defeat the army led by Sertorius, who had reorganised the Marian movement. Pompey subdued Spain and returned to Italy (71), where he joined the very last phase of the war against Spartacus and managed to share the honour of victory with Marcus Licinius Crassus. Consequentently, he celebrated his second triumph. The relentless series of his military successes, together with the menacing presence of his troops outside the city, enabled Pompey to advance directly to his first consulship in 70 without having to follow the proper cursus honorum (he had not even been quaestor when he became consul for the first time).
In order to gain further popular support, he proceeded to dismantle Sulla’s constitution. Subsequently, he took advantage of another opportunity to increase his power, namely the fight against the pirates, whose raids were arousing concerns for maritime communications and Rome’s grain supply. Through the lex Gabinia of 67, Pompey gained control over the Mediterranean Sea and its coasts for 50 miles inland. With 500 ships, 20 legions and 5,000 cavalry, he defeated the pirates in a mere forty days; this umpteenth success enabled him to be entrusted with the command of the war against Mithridates VI of Pontus, whom he brilliantly defeated, thereby annexing as many as four new provinces to the republic: Bithynia et Pontus, Syria, Cilicia and Crete. He returned to Italy in 62, celebrated his third and last triumph and dismissed his armies.
However, as he was not satisfied with the Senate’s hesitations to meet some of his requests, he decided to form an unofficial political alliance with Crassus and Julius Caesar, later known as the First Triumvirate. Caesar secured the consulship for 59 and the proconsulship in Gaul for the ensuing five years, while Pompey obtained the ratification of the measures he had taken in Asia and the distribution of public lands to his veterans. He also married Caesar’s daughter, Julia. Caesar’s appointment in Gaul was renewed for five more years in 55, when Pompey and Crassus became consuls; one year later, Crassus secured the governorship of Syria and Pompey that of Spain, which he ruled through legates while remaining in Rome. Crassus’s untimely death in Parthia in 53 upset the political balance, leaving Pompey alone against Caesar, who was now very popular and powerful in the wake of his conquest of Gaul.
Pompey disputed Caesar’s right to hold Gaul until the end of 49 and to stand for the consulship in absentia for 48. More importantly, he would not allow Caesar to run for consul unless he relinquished his armies. When Caesar crossed the Rubicon and marched on Rome with his troops in 49, Pompey fled to Macedonia, followed by the Senate. There, he levied a considerable army and obtained some successes against Caesar’s troops after their landing in Dyrrachium. Yet, by failing to pursue at such a critical moment for Caesar’s much smaller army, Pompey threw away the opportunity to crush them. Eventually, he let himself be led into a pitched battle at Pharsalus, where he was defeated (48). He then sought refuge in Egypt, whose independence he had always championed, but was killed by Achillas, Septimius and Salvius by order of King Ptolemy XIII, who hoped to gain favour with Caesar by murdering his rival.
References to the Play
None known.
Critical Commentary
Gair (81) suggests that the "orange double silk curtains, costing over £4 and 10 yards long, may conceivably have been used either to enclose the Senate house or perhaps the tents of Caesar and Pompey before the battle of Pharsal[us], which is likely to have figured largely in any account of Pompeius Magnus."
Cox Jensen (134) deems it "inconceivable that this drama, now lost, did not include Caesar, although it is remarkable for the focus of its title."
For What It's Worth
Pompey was a very well-known historical personality in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century England, and appeared in several dramatic writings of the period, such as the anonymous Caesar's Revenge (c. 1595) and George Chapman's Caesar and Pompey (c. 1604), as well as the lost "Caesar and Pompey", "Caesar and Pompey, Part 1" and "Caesar and Pompey, Part 2".
However, with very few exceptions, in the culture of "the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, Pompey represented little more than an anti-Caesar, a figure who served as a paragon on occasions when Caesar was a model of iniquity, and a providentially necessary antagonist in he conflict which brought the republic to an end" (Cox Jensen, 94).
To be sure, in all the extant early modern English plays featuring him as a character, Pompey mainly serves as a foil for Caesar, and whenever his name appears in the title of a play, Caesar's also does.
This particular play may have therefore constituted an intriguingly unique exception to the dominant trend by making Pompey the focal point of attention, or even granting him individual treatment, although it seems quite improbable that Caesar did not make an appearance.
It is also tantalising to wonder what kind of Pompey the audience may have encountered here, whether the glorious leader the republicans lamentably miss in Thomas Kyd's Cornelia (1594) – whose alternative title on the 1595 reprint interestingly was Pompey the Great His Fair Cornelia's Tragedy, a further demonstration of Pompey's popularity in the period – or the much more hesitant, defeatist and weaker figure appearing in both Caesar's Revenge (Lovascio, 63–64) and Chapman's Caesar and Pompey (Lovascio, 92–95). Given that he is, unusually, the titular character, one might expect him to have been portrayed more positively, perhaps against a hostile depiction of his nemesis Caesar, especially if the play encompassed Pompey's defeat at Pharsalus and his subsequent death.
Works Cited
Site created and maintained by Domenico Lovascio, University of Genoa; updated 16 July 2015.