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Though three reprints of the anonymous Cæsar and Pompey, together with the discussion devoted to it by Parrott, Mühlfeld, and Boas, seem to represent doubtless quite as much attention as the play really deserves, I venture to add, out of materials long on hand, another note by way of summary and, in one or two places, of addition and correction. Such a review, showing the author's literary method to be one of the closest dependence on his models, may serve to raise a presumption that in his treatment of Cæsar, who resembles Marlowe's Tamburlaine without being a literal copy, he was familiar with plays about Cæsar which are now lost to us; or conscious, at least, of a dramatic tradition which made of Csasar a boastful conqueror.
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- Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1915
References
1 The Tragedy of Cæsar's Revenge, Malone Society Reprints (prepared by P. S. Boas and W. W. Greg), Oxford, 1911. W. Mühlfeld, in Jahrbuch der deutschen Shakespeare-Gesellschaft, xlvii, pp. 132 ff.; xlviii, pp. 37 ff. M. Mühlfeld, The Tragedie of Cæsar and Pompey or Cæsar's Revenge. Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der englischen Cæsardramen zur Zeit Shakespeares (Münster diss.). Weimar, 1912.
2 Modern Language Review, Oct., 1910, pp. 435–44.
3 In his dissertation cited above.
4 University Drama in the Tudor Age, Oxford, 1914, pp. 267–78; and the Malone Society Collections, i, pp. 290–94, where Mr. Charles Crawford is also quoted.
5 Parrott, p. 444.
6 Boas, p. 277.
7 Arber's Transcript, iii, p. 140.
8 In the British Museum and Bodleian copies (a). The Dyce copy and that of the Duke of Devonshire (b) have no date and lack the statement on the title-page, “Priuately acted by the Studentes of Trinity Colledge in Oxford.” The undated form is “ Imprinted by G. E. for Iohn Wright, and are to bee sould at his shop at Christ-church Gate;” the dated copy is “Imprinted for Nathaniel Fosbrooke and Iohn Wright, and are to be sould in Paules Churchyard at the signe of the Helmet.” Since the entry in the Stationers' Register is to Wright and Fosbrooke jointly, Mühlfeld concludes that the title-page on which both names appear is the earlier form; the Malone Society editors, on the other hand, state that the verso of the a title-page, containing the dramatis personœ, has been reset, showing it to be a reprint. There is no material difference in the text of the several copies.
A possible imitation noted by Crawford, Collections, p. 290, of Daniel's Rosamond (1592),
Out from the horror of infernall deepes
My poore afflicted ghost comes here to plain it;
and
Out of the horror of those shady vaultes,.…
My restles soule comes heere to tell his wronges (ll. 1974–7)
provides a terminus a quo, though this is the universal whine of the ghost. A rather elastic ad quern is suggested by the apparent fact that though the imitations of the first three books of the Faerie Queene are numerous, there is no clear case of borrowing from the last three, published in 1596. Presumably if the author had known these books he would have used them tod. The nearest agreement I have noted is between Spenser's description of Ate (F. Q., iv, i, xix-xxii) and that of Discord in our play, particularly II. 635–9. See further p. 776, note 11.
9 In other sources Septimius. Does Fortunius in 1. 798 mean that he used the English version (1578) which has Photinus? Usually the eunuch is called Πoθεινóς (Appian) or Pothinus (Lucan). But the Latin quotation in II. 1380–2 suggests a Latin translation as the source.
10 See Dictionaries, s. v.
11 The figure of the storm-tossed ship in 11. 1234 ff. is almost certainly from Amoretti, xxxiv. If so, the play was not written before 1595.
12 The Countess of Pembroke's Arcadia (1590) ed. by H. Oscar Sommer, London, 1891, Bk. iii, ch. 7, p. 268.
13 Printed in 1595. C. F. Tucker Brooke, The Shakespeare Apocrypha, Oxford, 1898.
14 Cf. Battle of Alcazar, v, 1, 75 f.
15 Hazlitt, Shakespeare's Library, vi, p. 342. Cf. also Arden of Fevershame, ii, i.
16 This is, of course, based on the well-known story of Diomedes, the pirate, and Alexander; cf. Grower, Confessio Armantis, iii, 2363 ff., and Gesta Romanorum, cxlvi.
17 Hazlitt, Shakespeare's Library, vi, p. 55.
18 A parallel between
Caron that vsed but an old rotten boate
Must nowe a nauie rigg for to transport,
The howling soules, vnto the Stigian stronde,
(ll. 2538 ff.)
and Jonson's Catiline, Act I (Everyman's Library ed., p. 98)
The rugged Charon fainted
And ask'd a navy, rather than a boat,
To ferry over the sad world that came:
is due to the fact that they both rest on some common source. In Lucan, the ghost of Julia announces to Pompey
Præparat innumeras puppis Acherontis adusti Portitor.
(Phars., iii, 16 f.)
19 Compare also Gorboduc, ii, 1, 18; Tancred and Gismunda, iv, 1; The Cuck-Queanes and Cuckolds Erraints, ed. Roxburghe Club, 1824, p. 9.
20 Christopher Marlowe, ed. Havelock Ellis, Marmaid Series, vol. i.
21 Cf. Greene's Menaphon, ed. Grosart, xii, 37.
22 I am indebted to Mühlfeld for this passage from Spenser.
23 Cf. also 1 Tomb., iii, ii, p. 43.
24 Pub. Mod. Lang. Assn., xxv, 2 (1910), pp. 223–5.
25 He cannot suppress the allusion; a reader of Lucan would know the story of Phaëton: cf. Phars., ii, 409 ff.
26 Ll. 1202 ff. In citing the first line of this speech of Cæsar's (l. 1197) Boas (p. 274) prints “likes” instead of “linkes.”
27 Cf. for example, 1 Tamb. ii, iii (p. 26), iv, ii (p. 67), v, i (p. 83); 2 Tamb., iv, iv (p. 149).