Caesar and Pompey
Encyclopedia
Caesar and Pompey is a Jacobean era stage play, a classical tragedy
written by George Chapman
. Arguably Chapman's most obscure play, it is also one of the more problematic works of English Renaissance drama
.
postulated a date of authorship c. 1612-13; E. K. Chambers
judged that Parrott's date "will do as well as another." Chapman's earliest works are comedies, actable and effective on the stage; his later tragedies move away from stageworthiness toward closet drama
. If Bussy D'Ambois
(printed 1607
) is compared with its sequel, The Revenge of Bussy D'Ambois
(printed 1613
), the move away from stage action and toward talkiness is readily apparent. For Parrott and like-minded critics, Caesar and Pompey falls toward the end of this trajectory. Others, however, have placed Caesar and Pompey in the 1599–1607 period, partly on perceived contemporary allusions, and partly on a view that the play's limitations indicate an early work.
(Some scholars argue that in Northward Ho
, by Thomas Dekker and John Webster
— a play performed in 1605 and printed in 1607 — the character Bellamont is intended to represent Chapman. In IV,i of that play, Bellamont talks of writing about Caesar and Pompey.)
on 18 May 1631
, and was published later that year, in a quarto
printed by Thomas Harper for the booksellers Godfrey Edmondson and Thomas Alchorne. This first quarto, printed in two states, contains an Epistle to the Earl of Middlesex
, signed "Geo. Chapman." The play was reprinted in 1653
; the title page of Q2 states that the play was performed at the Blackfriars Theatre
, necessarily by the King's Men
— though there is no confirmation of this from another source. It has been argued that the work was never staged — and conversely that it was, "possibly with Shakespeare in the cast," and perhaps influenced Julius Caesar
and Antony and Cleopatra
.
and Pompey the Great
that ended the First Triumvirate
of ancient Rome
in the 1st century BC. In the play, Chapman depicts the antagonism between the two title characters, but also the pupil/master relationship between Pompey and Cato the Younger
in Stoic philosophy
. Chapman's sources were Thomas North
's translation of the Parallel Lives
of Plutarch
, and the Pharsalia
of Lucan
, and, among more abstruse works, the Contra Celsum
of Origen
.
s to the Middle Ages
; it even includes a devil
.
Tragedy
Tragedy is a form of art based on human suffering that offers its audience pleasure. While most cultures have developed forms that provoke this paradoxical response, tragedy refers to a specific tradition of drama that has played a unique and important role historically in the self-definition of...
written by George Chapman
George Chapman
George Chapman was an English dramatist, translator, and poet. He was a classical scholar, and his work shows the influence of Stoicism. Chapman has been identified as the Rival Poet of Shakespeare's Sonnets by William Minto, and as an anticipator of the Metaphysical Poets...
. Arguably Chapman's most obscure play, it is also one of the more problematic works of English Renaissance drama
English Renaissance theatre
English Renaissance theatre, also known as early modern English theatre, refers to the theatre of England, largely based in London, which occurred between the Reformation and the closure of the theatres in 1642...
.
Date
Nothing is known with certainty about the play's origin or its early stage history (if it had one). Relying on general considerations of style and artistic development, Chapman scholar T. M. ParrottThomas Marc Parrott
Thomas Marc Parrott was a prominent twentieth-century American literary scholar, long a member of the faculty of Princeton University in New Jersey....
postulated a date of authorship c. 1612-13; E. K. Chambers
Edmund Kerchever Chambers
Sir Edmund Kerchever Chambers was an English literary critic and Shakespearean scholar. His four-volume history of Elizabethan theater, published in 1923, remains a standard resource for scholars of the period's drama....
judged that Parrott's date "will do as well as another." Chapman's earliest works are comedies, actable and effective on the stage; his later tragedies move away from stageworthiness toward closet drama
Closet drama
A closet drama is a play that is not intended to be performed onstage, but read by a solitary reader or, sometimes, out loud in a small group. A related form, the "closet screenplay," developed during the 20th century.-Form:...
. If Bussy D'Ambois
Bussy D'Ambois
The Tragedy of Bussy D'Ambois is a Jacobean stage play written by George Chapman. Classified as either a tragedy or "contemporary history," Bussy D'Ambois is widely considered Chapman's greatest play, and is the earliest in a series of plays that Chapman wrote about the French political scene in...
(printed 1607
1607 in literature
The year 1607 in literature involved some significant events.-Events:*February 2 - The King's Men perform Barnes's The Devil's Charter at Court.*June 5 - John Hall marries Susanna, daughter of William Shakespeare....
) is compared with its sequel, The Revenge of Bussy D'Ambois
The Revenge of Bussy D'Ambois
The Revenge of Bussy D'Ambois is a Jacobean revenge tragedy written by George Chapman. The Revenge is a sequel to his earlier Bussy D'Ambois, and was first published in 1613.-Genre and source:...
(printed 1613
1613 in literature
The year 1613 in literature involved some significant events.-Events:*English poet Francis Quarles becomes cupbearer to Princess Elizabeth....
), the move away from stage action and toward talkiness is readily apparent. For Parrott and like-minded critics, Caesar and Pompey falls toward the end of this trajectory. Others, however, have placed Caesar and Pompey in the 1599–1607 period, partly on perceived contemporary allusions, and partly on a view that the play's limitations indicate an early work.
(Some scholars argue that in Northward Ho
Northward Ho
Northward Ho is an early Jacobean era stage play, a satire and city comedy written by Thomas Dekker and John Webster, and first published in 1607. Northward Ho was a response to Eastward Ho by Ben Jonson, George Chapman, and John Marston, which in its turn was a response to Westward Ho Northward...
, by Thomas Dekker and John Webster
John Webster
John Webster was an English Jacobean dramatist best known for his tragedies The White Devil and The Duchess of Malfi, which are often regarded as masterpieces of the early 17th-century English stage. He was a contemporary of William Shakespeare.- Biography :Webster's life is obscure, and the dates...
— a play performed in 1605 and printed in 1607 — the character Bellamont is intended to represent Chapman. In IV,i of that play, Bellamont talks of writing about Caesar and Pompey.)
Publication
The play was entered into the Stationers' RegisterStationers' Register
The Stationers' Register was a record book maintained by the Stationers' Company of London. The company is a trade guild given a royal charter in 1557 to regulate the various professions associated with the publishing industry, including printers, bookbinders, booksellers, and publishers in England...
on 18 May 1631
1631 in literature
The year 1631 in literature involved some significant events.-Events:*January 9 - Love's Triumph Through Callipolis, a masque written by Ben Jonson and designed by Inigo Jones, is staged at Whitehall Palace....
, and was published later that year, in a quarto
Book size
The size of a book is generally measured by the height against the width of a leaf, or sometimes the height and width of its cover. A series of terms is commonly used by libraries and publishers for the general sizes of modern books, ranging from "folio" , to "quarto" and "octavo"...
printed by Thomas Harper for the booksellers Godfrey Edmondson and Thomas Alchorne. This first quarto, printed in two states, contains an Epistle to the Earl of Middlesex
Lionel Cranfield, 1st Earl of Middlesex
Lionel Cranfield, 1st Earl of Middlesex was a successful merchant in London, England.-Life:He was the second son of Thomas Cranfield, a mercer at London, and his wife Martha Randill, the daughter and heiress of Vincent Randill of Sutton-at-Hone, Kent. He was apprenticed in to Richard Sheppard, a...
, signed "Geo. Chapman." The play was reprinted in 1653
1653 in literature
The year 1653 in literature involved some significant events.-Events:* James Shirley's masque Cupid and Death is performed on March 26.* Pierre Corneille retires from the theatre for six years.* John Evelyn buys Sayes Court, Deptford....
; the title page of Q2 states that the play was performed at the Blackfriars Theatre
Blackfriars Theatre
Blackfriars Theatre was the name of a theatre in the Blackfriars district of the City of London during the Renaissance. The theatre began as a venue for child actors associated with the Queen's chapel choirs; in this function, the theatre hosted some of the most innovative drama of Elizabeth and...
, necessarily by the King's Men
King's Men (playing company)
The King's Men was the company of actors to which William Shakespeare belonged through most of his career. Formerly known as The Lord Chamberlain's Men during the reign of Queen Elizabeth, it became The King's Men in 1603 when King James ascended the throne and became the company's patron.The...
— though there is no confirmation of this from another source. It has been argued that the work was never staged — and conversely that it was, "possibly with Shakespeare in the cast," and perhaps influenced Julius Caesar
Julius Caesar
Gaius Julius Caesar was a Roman general and statesman and a distinguished writer of Latin prose. He played a critical role in the gradual transformation of the Roman Republic into the Roman Empire....
and Antony and Cleopatra
Antony and Cleopatra
Antony and Cleopatra is a tragedy by William Shakespeare, believed to have been written sometime between 1603 and 1607. It was first printed in the First Folio of 1623. The plot is based on Thomas North's translation of Plutarch's Lives and follows the relationship between Cleopatra and Mark Antony...
.
Sources
As the title indicates, Chapman's play deals with the conflict between Julius CaesarJulius Caesar
Gaius Julius Caesar was a Roman general and statesman and a distinguished writer of Latin prose. He played a critical role in the gradual transformation of the Roman Republic into the Roman Empire....
and Pompey the Great
Pompey
Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus, also known as Pompey or Pompey the Great , was a military and political leader of the late Roman Republic...
that ended the First Triumvirate
First Triumvirate
The First Triumvirate was the political alliance of Gaius Julius Caesar, Marcus Licinius Crassus, and Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus. Unlike the Second Triumvirate, the First Triumvirate had no official status whatsoever; its overwhelming power in the Roman Republic was strictly unofficial influence, and...
of ancient Rome
Ancient Rome
Ancient Rome was a thriving civilization that grew on the Italian Peninsula as early as the 8th century BC. Located along the Mediterranean Sea and centered on the city of Rome, it expanded to one of the largest empires in the ancient world....
in the 1st century BC. In the play, Chapman depicts the antagonism between the two title characters, but also the pupil/master relationship between Pompey and Cato the Younger
Cato the Younger
Marcus Porcius Cato Uticensis , commonly known as Cato the Younger to distinguish him from his great-grandfather , was a politician and statesman in the late Roman Republic, and a follower of the Stoic philosophy...
in Stoic philosophy
Stoicism
Stoicism is a school of Hellenistic philosophy founded in Athens by Zeno of Citium in the early . The Stoics taught that destructive emotions resulted from errors in judgment, and that a sage, or person of "moral and intellectual perfection," would not suffer such emotions.Stoics were concerned...
. Chapman's sources were Thomas North
Thomas North
Sir Thomas North was an English translator of Plutarch, second son of the 1st Baron North.-Life:He is supposed to have been a student of Peterhouse, Cambridge, and was entered at Lincoln's Inn in 1557. In 1574 he accompanied his brother, Lord North, on a visit to the French court. He served as...
's translation of the Parallel Lives
Parallel Lives
Plutarch's Lives of the Noble Greeks and Romans, commonly called Parallel Lives or Plutarch's Lives, is a series of biographies of famous men, arranged in tandem to illuminate their common moral virtues or failings, written in the late 1st century...
of Plutarch
Plutarch
Plutarch then named, on his becoming a Roman citizen, Lucius Mestrius Plutarchus , c. 46 – 120 AD, was a Greek historian, biographer, essayist, and Middle Platonist known primarily for his Parallel Lives and Moralia...
, and the Pharsalia
Pharsalia
The Pharsalia is a Roman epic poem by the poet Lucan, telling of the civil war between Julius Caesar and the forces of the Roman Senate led by Pompey the Great...
of Lucan
Marcus Annaeus Lucanus
Marcus Annaeus Lucanus , better known in English as Lucan, was a Roman poet, born in Corduba , in the Hispania Baetica. Despite his short life, he is regarded as one of the outstanding figures of the Imperial Latin period...
, and, among more abstruse works, the Contra Celsum
Contra Celsus
Against Celsus, Greek Kata Kelsou, Latin Contra Celsum, is the title of a major work by the Church Father Origen of Alexandria, countering the writings of Celsus the Platonist. It was written in 248 CE.-External links:...
of Origen
Origen
Origen , or Origen Adamantius, 184/5–253/4, was an early Christian Alexandrian scholar and theologian, and one of the most distinguished writers of the early Church. As early as the fourth century, his orthodoxy was suspect, in part because he believed in the pre-existence of souls...
.
Critical responses
According to one critic, Caesar and Pompey "could have been the most interesting" of Chapman's late plays, given the author's deep and long-standing interest in Stoicism; yet the play never gels as a dramatic work. "Its historical hurly-burly never achieves full form or meaning; it is ill-related to the three major characters and allows them little room and not much life." Other critics have also been harsh, calling the play "a series of dull moralistic speeches" and "a dull piece of work." A minority view is that the play is "an introspective play with integrity and clarity of meaning." Commentators have also noted that the play has a relationship with the traditional morality playMorality play
The morality play is a genre of Medieval and early Tudor theatrical entertainment. In their own time, these plays were known as "interludes", a broader term given to dramas with or without a moral theme. Morality plays are a type of allegory in which the protagonist is met by personifications of...
s to the Middle Ages
Middle Ages
The Middle Ages is a periodization of European history from the 5th century to the 15th century. The Middle Ages follows the fall of the Western Roman Empire in 476 and precedes the Early Modern Era. It is the middle period of a three-period division of Western history: Classic, Medieval and Modern...
; it even includes a devil
Devil
The Devil is believed in many religions and cultures to be a powerful, supernatural entity that is the personification of evil and the enemy of God and humankind. The nature of the role varies greatly...
.