Ptolemy
Historical Records
Stephen Gosson, The School of Abuse (1579), 23 (EEBO-TCP, open access):
And as some of the players are farre from abuse: so some of their playes are without rebuke... Ptolome, showne at the Bull, ... very liuely discrybing howe seditious estates with their owne deuises, false friendes with their owne swoordes, and rebellious cōmons in their owne snares are ouerthrowne: neither with amorous gesture wounding the eye, nor with slouenly talke hurting the eares of the chast hearers.
Theatrical Provenance
At the Bull Inn (Gosson)
Probable Genre(s)
Pseudo-history (?) (Harbage).
Possible Narrative and Dramatic Sources or Analogues
None known.
References to the Play
Only Gosson, above.
Critical Commentary
Harbage suggests this play might the same as "Telomo", performed by Leicester's Men at Court on 10 February 1583.
On the basis of Gosson's description, Wiggins 648 speculates that
There were many Ptolemies in antiquity who might have been the title character, including the fifteen belonging to the Ptolemaic dynasty which ruled Egypt from Alexander the Great's general Ptolemy Soter in the fourth century BC to Cleopatra's son Caesarion in the first. Probably the best known in the sixteenth century were Ptolemy VI Philometor (reigned 180—145 BC), whose story is told in 1 Maccabees 10—11 (and was retold by Anthony Munday in The Mirror of Mutability in 1579) and Ptolemy XIII (reigned 51—47 BC), the brother of Cleopatra and murderer of Pompey. However, Gosson's summary better fits Ptolemy V Epiphanes (reigned 204—181 BC), Ptolemy VIII Euergetes (182—116 BC) or Ptolemy XII Auletes (80—51 BC).
For What It's Worth
To be sure, there cannot be any conclusive proof of this, but it seems overwhelmingly likely that, if any playwright had to choose one among the various historical Ptolemies as the subject of a play, this would have to have been Cleopatra's father.
...
These events are mainly handed down to us by Dio Cassius, whose Historiae Romanae had not been translated into English yet but had been available for quite some time in Latin, French and Italian.
Not only does the account above fit well with Gosson's description quoted above, it also gives the opportunity to divide the setting between Egypt and Rome and bring on stage well-known characters like Pompey, Caesar, Cicero and Cleopatra as a little girl. The audience would have easily placed this Ptolemy in his broader historical context as a contemporary of much better known historical personalities.
Not much can be inferred on the story itself, but Gosson's account seems to suggest that the play had a strong moralistic bent.
Works Cited
Site created and maintained by Domenico Lovascio, University of Genoa; updated 09 July 2015.