8 November, 1594 - Caesar and Pompey

Here's what the Admiral's Men performed at the Rose playhouse on this day, 424 years ago...

Henslowe writes: y^e 8 of novembȝ 1594 ... ne ... R at seser & pompie ... iij^ll ij^s 

In modern English: 8^th November, 1594 ... New ... Received at Caesar and Pompey ... £3 and 2 shillings.

Today, the Admiral's Men performed a new play! Caesar and Pompey is lost, but it would have told of the civil war that erupted in Ancient Rome between Julius Caesar and Pompey the Great. There would have been battle scenes, and no doubt Edward Alleyn played Caesar with gusto. Today's premiere was a great success that played to a full theatre.

The story of Caesar and Pompey

Roman bust of
Pompey

Elizabethan writers knew a great deal about the history of Ancient Rome, thanks to the fulsome narratives in works by Roman historians such as Plutarch, Suetonius, and Caesar himself.

In the middle of the first century BC, Rome was ruled by a triumvirate of three powerful men: Crassus, Julius Caesar and Pompey. Caesar and Pompey had always been rivals, but Crassus had managed to keep the peace.

When Crassus was unexpectedly killed in Parthia while Caesar was away fighting in Gaul, Pompey took the opportunity to seize power. The Roman Senate took his side and ordered Caesar to disband his army and return home.

Caesar's army crossing the
Rubicon, by Jean Fouquet
(15th century)

But Caesar did not obey. He maintained control of his army and marched upon Rome. With his famous crossing of the Rubicon river, which marked the boundary of Roman power, he signified his decision to make war on Pompey.

A civil war thus broke out, culminating in Caesar's defeat of Pompey's forces at Pharsalus in Greece. Pompey fled to Egypt, but its king sided with Caesar and ordered him killed. This left Caesar as sole ruler of the Roman Empire. And so Pompey's tragedy was Caesar's triumph.

Detail from Caesar Contemplating
the Head of Pompey
by Tiepolo (1746)

This, then is the story that most likely played out on the Rose stage today. Of course, we don't know exactly where the playwright chose to end the play, but, as Martin Wiggins points out in his catalogue of British drama, next year a sequel will appear, called The Second Part of Caesar; this title implies that Pompey was not in the sequel, and that today's play thus climaxed with his death.

Other Caesars and Pompeys

In addition to the sequel that will appear next year, Caesar and Pompey may have been the start of something bigger. In their study of Thomas Middleton's lost plays, Doris Feldmen and Kurt Tetzeli von Rosador propose that two later lost plays, Catiline's Conspiracy and Caesar's Fall, could together have been a tetralogy (four-play sequence) staging the entire life of Caesar. But we will talk more of such things later.

The war between Caesar and Pompey was a popular subject for Renaissance dramatists: an earlier lost play of the same title was performed in London in 1580, and George Chapman would later write an unperformed tragedy on the subject. The story has been less popular in the modern age, but the HBO series Rome is a major exception, casting Kenneth Cranham as Pompey and Ciaran Hinds as Caesar over a full season's arc; here's their version of Pompey's final moments (warning: gruesome):

FURTHER READING

Caesar and Pompey information

• Doris Feldman and Kurt Tetzeli von Rosador, "Lost Plays: A Brief Account", in Thomas Middleton: The Collected Works, edited by Gary Taylor and John Lavagnino (Clarendon Press, 2007), 328-333
• Martin Wiggins, British Drama, 1533-1642: A Catalogue, vol. 3 (Oxford University Press, 2013), entry 972.
• Domenico Lovascio, "Caesar and Pompey, Parts 1 and 2", Lost Plays Database (2015). 

Henslowe links

• Transcript of this page of the Diary (from W.W. Greg's 1904 edition)
• Facsimile of this page of the Diary (from the Henslowe-Alleyn Digitisation Project)

Comments?

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