Caesar and Pompey, Parts 1 and 2

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Historical Records

Performance Records (Henslowes Diary)

F.10^v (Greg I.20):	y^e 8 of novemb[er] 1594	ne . .	R[d] at seser & pompie	iij^ll ij^s
	y^e 14 of novembe[er] 1594		R[d] at sesor & pompie	xxxv^s
	y^e 25 of novemb[er] 1594		R[d] at seser and pompey	xxxij^s
	y^e 10 of desemb[er] 1594		R[d] at seser	xij^s

F.11 (Greg I.21):	y^e 18 of Jenewary 1594		R[d] at seaser	xxv^s
	y^e j of febreary 1594		R[d] at seaser	xxiiij^s

F.11^v (Greg I.22):	y^e 6 of marche 1595		R[d] at seaser	xx^s

F.12^v (Greg I.24):	y^e 25 of June 1595		R[d] at the j pte of seaser	xxij^s

Theatrical Provenance

It was first performed by the Admiral's Men at the Rose on Friday 8 November 1594. It was performed three more times in 1594 and four more times in 1595.

Probable Genre(s)

Classical history (Harbage).

Possible Narrative and Dramatic Sources or Analogues

References to the Play

None known.

Critical Commentary

Parrott (440) seems to have a point when he conjectures as follows:

The Admiral's Company in 1594 stood under the leadership of Alleyn, and were, in their choice of tragedies, dominated by the tradition of Marlowe. A glance through the pages of Henslowe's Diary for 1594 shows us what sort of tragedies they preferred; from June 3, 1594, to March 14, 1595 we have an unbroken series of plays. . . . Seser and pompie stands well up among other plays, with a record of seven performances between Nov. 8, 1594, and March 14, 1595, and was revived once more in connection with a less successful
second part on Jime 25, 1595. . . . Now, if we may argue from the known to the unknown, have we not reason to suppose that the Admiral's play was a vigorous chronicle of the wars of Caesar and Pompey with plenty of action to tickle the groundlings, and, I fancy, a
fine mouth-filling part for Alleyne as Caesar?

For Gentili (18), the presence of the two-part "Caesar and Pompey" in the Admiral's Men's repertory in the mid-1590s suggests that the company wanted to go back on the themes already developed in Thomas Lodge's The Wounds of Civil Wars, though bringing on stage character far more popular than either Gaius Marius or Lucius Cornelius Sulla.

For What It's Worth

There is asbolutely no reason to assume that this play or its sequel may have been revised either by George Chapman as Caesar and Pompey (c. 1604, publ. 1631) or by William Shakespeare as Julius Caesar (1599, publ. 1623), or that it is identical with the anonymous Caesar's Revenge (c. 1595, publ. 1606), as often proposed by critics at the beginning of the twentieth century, a mere consequence of that era's tendency to lumping title plays together.

Works Cited

Parrott, Thomas Marc. "The 'Academic Tragedy' of Caesar and Pompey." Modern Language Review 5 (1910), 435-44. Print.

Feldmann, Doris and Kurt Tetzeli von Rosador. "Lost Plays: A Brief Account." Thomas Middleton: The Collected Works. Ed. Gary Taylor and John Lavagnino. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2007. 328-333. Print.

Site created and maintained by Domenico Lovascio, University of Genoa; updated 24 July 2015.