Caesar and Pompey
Caesar and Pompey is a
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
(Some scholars argue that in
Publication
The play was entered into the
Sources
As the title indicates, Chapman's play deals with the conflict between
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."[5] Other critics have also been harsh, calling the play "a series of dull moralistic speeches" and "a dull piece of work."[6] A minority view is that the play is "an introspective play with integrity and clarity of meaning."[7] Commentators have also noted that the play has a relationship with the traditional morality plays of the Middle Ages; it even includes a devil.[8]
References
- ^ Chambers, E. K. The Elizabethan Stage. Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1923; Vol. 3, p. 259.
- ^ Logan, Terence P., and Denzell S. Smith, eds. The New Intellectuals: A Survey and Bibliography of Recent Studies in English Renaissance Drama. Lincoln, NE, University of Nebraska Press, 1977; pp. 140. 152.
- ^ Hardin Craig; see Logan and Smith, p. 141.
- ^ Logan and Smith, p. 141.
- ^ Ure, Peter. "Chapman's Tragedies." In: Jacobean Theatre. Edited by John Russell Brown and Bernard Harris. London, Edward Arnold, 1960; pp. 242–3.
- ^ Logan and Smith, p. 140.
- ^ Charlotte Spivack; quoted in Logan and Smith, p. 141.
- ^ Cox, John D. The Devil and the Sacred in English Drama, 1350–1642. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2000; p. 192.