Here's what the Admiral's Men performed at the Rose playhouse on this day, 424 years ago...
Henslowe writes: ye 8 of novembȝ 1594 ... ne ... R at seser & pompie ... iijll ijs
In modern English: 8th 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
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| Roman bust of Pompey |
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.
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| Caesar's army crossing the Rubicon, by Jean Fouquet (15th century) |
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.
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| Detail from Caesar Contemplating the Head of Pompey by Tiepolo (1746) |
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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