Caesar and Pompey, Parts 1 and 2

Anon. (1594)

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Historical Records

Performance Records (Henslowe’s Diary)

F.10v (Greg I.20):	ye 8 of novemb[er] 1594	ne . .	R[d] at seser & pompie	iijll ijs
	ye 14 of novembe[er] 1594		R[d] at sesor & pompie	xxxvs
	ye 25 of novemb[er] 1594		R[d] at seser and pompey	xxxijs
	ye 10 of desemb[er] 1594		R[d] at seser	xijs
F.11 (Greg I.21):	ye 18 of Jenewary 1594		R[d] at seaser	xxvs
	ye j of febreary 1594		R[d] at seaser	xxiiijs
F.11v (Greg I.22):	ye 6 of marche 1595		R[d] at seaser	xxs
F.12v (Greg I.24):	ye 25 of June 1595		R[d] at the j pte of seaser	xxijs

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).

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 absolutely no reason to assume that this play and/or its sequel may have been an enlarged version of the lost "Caesar and Pompey" (1580), that they may have been revised by George Chapman as Caesar and Pompey (c. 1604, publ. 1631) or by William Shakespeare as Julius Caesar (1599, publ. 1623), nor that they may have had any kind of relation with the anonymous Caesar's Revenge (c. 1595, publ. 1606), as critics variously speculated at the beginning of the twentieth century -- a consequence of the tendency of that period to lump title of plays together with no objective grounds.

Works Cited

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

Gentili, Vanna. La Roma antica degli elisabettiani. Bologna: il Mulino, 1991.

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.

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