Caesar and Pompey, Parts 1 and 2
This page is under construction.
Historical Records
Performance Records (Henslowes 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).
Possible Narrative and Dramatic Sources or Analogues
The civil conflict between Caesar and Pompey was available to early modern playwrights through a plethora of sources, especially Appian's Civil Wars, Plutarch's Lives, Lucan's Civil War, Suetonius's Lives of the Twelve Caesars, Cassius Dio's Roman History and Caesar's own Civil War. It is utterly impossible to imagine which source (or sources) may have been chosen for this play and its sequel.
For a summary of the main events of the conflict between Caesar and Pompey, see "Caesar and Pompey".
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 Feldmann and Tetzeli von Rosador's intriguing discussion of the Admiral's Men's "Caesar and Pompey, Part 1", "Caesar and Pompey, Part 2", "Catiline's Conspiracy (Catiline)" (by Robert Wilson and Henry Chettle) and "Caesar's Fall" (by Michael Drayton, Thomas Middleton, Anthony Munday and John Webster) as multi-Caesarean project, see "Caesar's Fall".
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
Site created and maintained by Domenico Lovascio, University of Genoa; updated 24 July 2015.