Caesar and Pompey - Date

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. Parrott 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.)

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