Introduction

already clear that Caesar is heading for a fall. This then is the subject of the running title, The Tragedy of Julius Caesar.

Yet, unlike Pompey, Caesar's part in the story does not end with his death, and neither does the play. Instead Caesar returns in ghostly form to ensure and oversee the deaths of his murderers. In this, perhaps the title of Caesar's Revenge is more apt. One might imagine a mirror of Caesar's ghost in the earlier parts of the play, with Pompey's spirit urging on the faltering conspirators. Yet Caesar himself has already revenged Pompey's very convenient death by killing his murderers, including Ptolomey: for the Elizabethans, "The accessory who gives the command is as guilty as the principal who commits the murder." (Bowers, 1966: 9).[4] The spiral of revenge seems to end with Brutus killing himself at the end of the play, allowing Caesar to rest in peace in the Elysian Fields.

The use the words "revenge" and "tragedy" in the titles suggests that this play belongs in the category of Revenge Tragedy. With its gruesome body count (two murders, five suicides and one death from wounds on stage, numerous battlefield deaths and the execution of Ptolomey, Sempronius and Achillas off stage) this play lives up to the expectations of the genre. The speeches are frequently tediously long and the characters barely seem to converse with each other or develop any distinct personality of their own. Yet there is a sense of the ridiculous, a macarbre humour in the death scenes which lends an almost pantomime atmosphere to the proceedings. This is particularly visible in moments such as Sempronius' ironic asides shared with the audience prior to the murder of Pompey:

Pompey:

Trusting upon King Ptolomey's promised faith

And hoping succour, I am come to shore

In Egypt here awhile to make abode.

Sempronius:

[Aside] Faith, longer, Pompey, than thou dost expect!

(Act 2, Scene 1, Lines 41-44)

or Cassius speech leading up to his suicide, where he sits moaning about his state (Act 5, Scene 1, Lines 278-315), and Titinius frankly comic return with good news just too late:

Titinius:

Brutus doth live, and like a second Mars

Rageth in heat of fury 'mongst his foes.

Then cheer thee Cassius. Lo, I bring relief,

And news of power to ease thy stormy grief -

But see where Cassius weltereth in his blood,

Doth beat the earth - and yet not fully dead.

(Act 5, Scene 1, Lines 316-321)

By the time Titinius has decided to revenge himself upon the knife by staining it with his "baser blood" (Act 5, Scene 1, Line 344), one is left with the feeling that Rome is better off without the whole pack of them. Surely they should have been commanding the army or fighting, rather than soliloquising in the dark. Brutus appears to have been the best of them, for despite his visit from Caesar's ghost (or perhaps because of it), he is at least still fighting like "a second Mars" (Line 316).

Moving on to the title of the "Academic Tragedy", highlighted by Parrott (Parrott 1910: pp 435-444) seems to relate to its provenance and as well as its content. The title page of the 1607 printing states that it was "Privately acted by the students of Trinity College in Oxford", locating it firmly in the university town. Although there are no records of its actual performance, the British Museum copy has a list of years (1608 to 1615) handwritten under the year "1607", which Parrott suggests "may ... refer to performances of the play at Trinity in those years" (Parrott, 1910: p 435). The play contains two direct references which may strengthen its academic ties to Oxford and university life. Cleopatra asks if Caesar would like to visit Egypt's "academic schools,/Or hear our priests to reason of the stars?/Hence Plato fetched his deep philosophy,/ And here in heavenly knowledge they excel." (Act 2, Scene 3, Lines 58-61) in her attempts to cheer him up after Pompey's death; frightfully jolly if one is an academic, but hardly the sort of entertainment designed to distract a man of action from melancholy thoughts. Later, as Caesar boasts of his bloody conquests, he includes the lines "And Isis wept to see her daughter Thames/Change her clear crystal to vermilion sad" (Act 3, Scene 2, Lines 82-83); this latter is a clear reference to Oxford, for the River Thames is known as the Isis further upstream.

The content of the play is renowned for its "copious draughts from classical sources" (Ayres, 1915: p 771).[5] "It is" says Parrott, "crowded to a most unusual degree with classical allusions such as would appeal to an academic audience" (Parrott, 1910: p 444), and cites the fact of two printed editions as a sign of its popularity. (It is worth noting here that Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra was first performed between 1606 and 1607. It may be that this gave rise to popularity for these characters, and may have created a demand for other plays containing them.) It is also filled to the brim with rhetorical devices, some examples of which are given in Appendix 1. This may be in part due to the author's heavy debt to the Latin texts he used as sources. However, it speaks loudly of someone extremely well-versed in the university education of the time.

Finally, although all variations of the name of the play focus on Caesar, it is hard to view him as the hero or central actor of the piece. The only character who is provided with any kind of development appears to be Anthony. Initially his speeches are interchangeable with those of the rest of Caesar's entourage. However, he is later shown at odds with his fellows, mooning over Cleopatra, and then gets a warning visit from his Bonus Genius, allowing his true Roman character to show through. The Bonus Genius device allows the author to foreshadow Anthony's own up-coming tragedy, perhaps signalling that this is the play the author is really interested in writing.

Authorship and Dating of the Play

There has been considerable disagreement regarding the dating of this play. In 1910 T M Parrott attempted at some length to clear up some misconceptions relating to the play which he calls the “’Academic Tragedy’ of Caesar and Pompey” (Parrott, 1910: p 435), and suggests that the date it was entered into the Stationers List (1606) is roughly analogous to the date of writing. Parrott accounts for its “curiously archaic” (Parrott, 1910: p 444) style and format by suggesting that it was written by an elderly don presumably wallowing in the plays of his younger days. However, this is refuted by Harry Morgan Ayres in 1915. He disputes Parrott’s somewhat romantic notion, instead reiterating the claims of Boas and Muhlfeld who considered the play more likely to be written in the early to mid-1590s “[b]y reason of the archaic character of the verse and the author’s knowledge of Marlowe and Kyd and of anonymous plays contemporary with theirs” (Ayres, 1915: pp 772-3). To temporally locate it within its genre is by far the simplest explanation. Ayres also points out that the anonymous playwright stole extensively from the first three books of Spenser’s Faerie Queene, published in 1593, but not from the later three which were not published until 1596. However, he points out but does not account for the similarity of Arte in Book IV of the Faerie Queene to Discord.

The anonymity of the author is a veil that cannot be pierced. There is simply insufficient information. The lack of stage directions (not simply missing entrances and exits, but locations and props) implies that whoever wrote Caesar's Revenge was also on hand for or in charge of its production. The extensive classical allusions, use of contemporary works such as Spenser's Faerie Queene, Marlowe's Tamburlaine, and Kyd's Spanish Tragedy amongst others, and intense use of rhetorical devices can lead to idle speculation. It might be the the work of a student demonstrating his grasp of the curriculum; or could it have resulted from the gathering together of a number of rhetorical exercises on a theme which then metamorphosed into a performance; or perhaps a study aid developed by one of the Fellows (who was well-versed in current stage productions) as a way of putting some fun into learning.

No-one has made a serious claim to this being a lost Shakespearean artefact, although a few points of similarity have been found in fragments of the text. These are usually pinned down to being commonly used phrases. It has however been suggested that Shakespeare might have seen Caesar's Revenge during a time when he was thought to be part of a travelling company. Certainly, there are many points in the play which drew my mind towards the "tedious brief scene of young Pyramus and his love Thisby" (Act 5, Scene 1, Lines 56-57) from A Midsummer Night's Dream:[6] Titinius' melodramatic opening cries of "lost...lost...lost...lost" (Act 1, Scene 1, Lines 1-3) is reminiscent of the "night [...] night [...] night [...] night" (Act V, Scene i, Lines 169-171) of Pyramus' opening speech; Calphurnia's listing of Caesar's state in her dream " Torn, wounded, maimed, blood-slaughtered, slain," (Act 3, Scene 6, Line 9) is echoed by Pyramus' "O Fates, come come,/Cut thread and thrum,/Quail, crush, conclude, and quell." (Act V, Scene i, Lines 283-285). The comparison of classical figures to loving couples is equally unfortunate: Pompey compares Cornelia to the suicidal Lucretia, and to Queen Artemisia of Caria whose misery at outliving her husband caused her to imbibe his ashes mixed into a drink (Act 1, Scene 5 Lines 71-74), whilst Pyramus and Thisbe invoke the doomed Hero and Leander, and the incompetent faithfulness of Cephalus and Procris (Act V, Scene i, Lines 195-199). Perhaps this unknown author's greatest legacy was to inspire others to write better.

Spectacle

Marion Lomax defines “spectacle” as “being any form of display, ceremony, show or pageant (however short) used in the course of the drama – encompassing silent, static tableaux as well as singing, dancing, movement, and sound effects” (Lomax, 1987: p 10).[7] Although at times it has been suggested that the Elizabethan stage was a bare place, with locations and time of day being created solely by the words uttered by the actors, she points to the wealth of information available which contradicts this and comments that:

there are many examples of properties and emblematic devices used on the Elizabethan and early Jacobean stage, eg, throne, crown, hell-mouth, tomb, chariot, arbour. These would hold significant positions in particular scenes and might – like the chariot in Tamburlaine or the bower in The Spanish Tragedy – be unifying elements in the play as a whole (Lomax, 1987: p 10).

Additionally, R A Foakes points out that "Henslowe's 1598 inventory includes tombs, a chariot, a bedstead, and other properties fairly often used, but also two steeples, several trees, two moss-banks, a hell-mouth, and the city of Rome. This last item may have been a painted hanging" (Foakes, 1997: p 19).[8] This use of painted backdrops as well as "house-like" structures manufactured from "lath, pasteboard, and coarse cloth or canvas" (Nelson, 2007: p 108)[9] may lead one to speculate on how Rome and Alexandria would have been represented in Caesar's Revenge. As stated above, there is no proof of this play being performed, and therefore no lists of props, costumes and scenery to give an idea of how it may have appeared to an audience. However, by examining traces of other plays from the era and paying close attention to the text, it is possible to gain some ideas of what might have been achieved by the students of Trinity College, Oxford.

There is no detailed study of Oxford university Renaissance plays, but we may infer that their circumstances and production would have been similar to those in Cambridge of which Nelson’s detailed study, Early Cambridge Theatres: College, university, and town stages, 1464-1720, provides thorough descriptions. He covers the building, breakdown and storage of stages in Cambridge college halls, lists of carpenters and painters and goods for the creation of scenery, props and special effects, and the storage of costumes. These university plays were performed indoors usually during the evening requiring considerable expenditure on lighting; in 1547-8, for example, Queen's College (in addition to paying three men to work on the stage, a smith for two hooks on which to hang costumes, and the purchase and transportation of "a large chest for comic clothes" (Nelson, 2007: p 34)) "also purchased two lamps, candles, and six bushels of coal" (Nelson, 2007, p 34) for lighting and heating the hall for a play.

Indoor staging allowed for sophisticated effects. Nelson mentions that in 1594-5 those "who attended an early afternoon performance of Laelia, [experienced] 'the day being turned into nyght' " (Nelson, 2007: p 35). Without the clarity of daylight, people can appear from the darkness as if by magic, move around unnoticed at the dim rear of the stage, and the machinery of pulleys and ropes for special effects can be invisible to the audience deceiving their senses. A famous incident in an undergraduate theatrical (requiring a beetle large enough to carry a man) suggesting the level of sophistication of such effects is here described by Deborah E Harkness:

In 1545 a young Londoner, John Dee, was studying Greek and mathematics [in Cambridge] when he agreed to put his mathematical knowledge to work by constructing a mechanical prop for a student production of a classical play that was meant to divert students during the spring vacation. Aristophanes' Pax is an earthy Greek comedy about a farmer's audience with Zeus, king of the gods, and the plot calls for a dung beetle that flies toward the sun. The beetle, Dee later claimed, was so realistic that the learned audience fled in terror. Few put any faith in Dee's regular protestations that the gizmo was a simple mechanical device whose inner workings could be understood mathematically and explained to the most uneducated person (Harkness, 2007: p 103).[10]

Plays at colleges were a serious business, worthy of considerable expenditure. So taking this knowledge and applying it to Caesar's Revenge, what elements of spectacle may be held within it?

The story itself would have been well-known to the spectators, and so holds no surprises. However, the tradition of Revenge Tragedy and the treatment of Roman stories during this era meant that death, previously an off-stage event reported by characters or a chorus to the audience, is likely to be graphically represented. This play contains two murders, one death from wounds and five suicides on-stage, with numerous reported battlefield deaths and executions taking place off-stage. Gory effects using bladders full of liquid to simulate bleeding had been in use for some time; indeed, it is noted in Thomas Preston's Cambises (possibly written in 1560/1) that one character has his skin pulled off on stage (a false skin is mentioned in the stage directions) whilst another has a bladder full of vinegar punctured to simulate "the violent realism of bloodshed" (Fishman, 1976: p 203).[11] The simulation of bloodshed and death would need to be reasonably accurate for an audience who are familiar with slaughtering their own beasts for consumption and for whom public execution provides another form of entertainment, complete with speeches, ceremony and audience reactions (for more detail on this see Molly Easo Smith's paper "The Theatre and the Scaffold: Death as Spectacle in The Spanish Tragedy").

Turning to the text of the play, one is struck by the initial entrance of Discord. She is immediately preceded by "Sound alarum then flames of fire" (Act 1, Prologue, stage direction). Then, out from the darkness steps a winged figure, gleefully summoning up a series of gory images in the minds of the spectators and setting the scene before leaving the stage to mere mortals. The "flames" might have been torches. However, there is substantial evidence that firearms and fireworks were also in regular use as special effects in plays and pageants: Lomax mentions that "In Elizabeth I's 1572 progress to Warwick, 'A Dragon flieing casting out huge flames and squibes lighted upon the fort and so set fyere thereon'" (Lomax, 1987: pp 27-28). Nelson also mentions many instances of glass being repaired in halls after plays, perhaps suggesting that these special effects were not just limited to outdoor use. In Act 2 her entrance is immediately followed by the words "Flashes of fire." (Act 2, Prologue) which seems more indicative of fireworks than torches, but none of her other entrances mention flames. I would suggest that the flames are part of her otherworldly character and that they are there each time she appears; their absence from the stage directions seems likely to be an omission by the author, whose stage directions are sketchy to non-existent.

The stage directions fail to inform the reader where each scene is set. I have inserted some locations whilst editing where this seems obvious from the text. However I would like to highlight a number of scenes that seem totally unnecessary but which may point to items of spectacle about to hove into view. The first of these scenes is Act 1, Scene 4. In this scene Cato Senior rails at the death of the Roman liberty for thirty-three lines. There is no information given as to his location, and nothing he says adds anything to the action. However, the next scene may hold a clue as to why this scene exists. Pompey and Cornelia are arguing. He wishes to leave her in safety whilst she wishes to go with him and share his fate whatever it may be. It is only when we reach line 59 that their location is provided when Pompey says "But in this ship remain" (Act 1, Scene 5, Line 59). Suddenly, it becomes possible to view the scene with Cato not as a pointless exercise, but as a stalling mechanism. Cato is perhaps standing in front of a curtain whilst behind it frantic efforts are made to wrestle appropriate props and scenery into place to denote the location as being on a ship, or possibly there is an actually ship prop being put together or manhandled into position. Those thirty-three lines can be declaimed slowly if necessary until someone prods Cato, and the curtain is pulled back to reveal the exciting new location and props. There are a number of uses of ship imagery in the play, always connected with loss or confusion: Titinius in Act 1 Scene 1 refers to Rome as a "gallant ship" (Line 7) about to be wrecked; Anthony refers to himself as a "crazèd bark[12] [...] tossed in troubled seas,/Uncertain to arrive in wishèd port" (Act 1, Scene 6, Lines 125-126) after his first meeting with Cleopatra; and Cassius, feeling sorry for himself during the final battle declaims the following extended simile:

Cassius:

As those that lost in boisterous troublous seas

Beaten with rage of billows stormy strife,

And without stars do sail 'gainst stars and wind

In dreary darkness and in cheerless night,

Without or hope or comfort endless are,

So are my thoughts dejected with dismay,

(Act 5, Scene 1, Lines 259-264)

The gleeful Discord also points out that "Charon, that used but an old rotten boat,/Must now a navy rig for to transport/380The howling souls unto the stygian strand." (Act 5, Scene 1, Lines 379-381). There are also mentions of tritons and references to both Pompey and Caesar as Neptune-like rulers the waves. For a play where almost all the action takes place on land, there is a lot of nautical imagery. Perhaps this points to excitement and pride in a new prop or piece of staging or perhaps the prop grew out of the play; either way it seems to underline the presence of a ship.

This use of a stalling scene appears to again after Pompey's murder when Cornelia has a scene to herself in which she bewails his fate and commits suicide. Although it would be much more dramatic for Cornelia to rail at his murderers in person and throw herself onto her husband's corpse to commit suicide, or in the interests of historical accuracy, not to have this scene at all, there it is - all twenty-seven lines of it. However the following scene is set in Alexandria, as announced by Caesar in Act 1, Scene 6. Is Cornelia's scene simply filling time, whilst behind the curtain people remove the beach scene of Pompey's murder (perhaps mopping up the blood) and replace it with a grandiose set of Alexandria? It seems quite a likely possibility. Something similar appears to be going on in Act 3, Scene 6, where Caesar has three separate conversations with three separate characters (Calphurnia, the Augur and the Praecentor) en route to the Senate-house before he meets Cassius who persuades him to enter. Although the magical number of three warnings with the supernatural nature of two of them (a dream and augury) is good story-telling, there is an inexplicable suddenness with which Caesar goes from the streets of Rome to inside the Sentate-house, and the Senators have no stage directions to enter. Perhaps this is another scene being built behind a curtain whilst Caesar travels to the location. Trebonius' comment " And Pompey, he who caused thy tragedy/ Here breathless lies before thy noble statue" (Act 3, Scene 6, Lines 143-144).

Another instance implying a stalling scene appears to be happening with Caesar's funeral procession in Act 4, Scene 1. Octavian appears bewailing his and his country's loss for eighteen lines. Then he apparently exits and re-enters with the funeral procession, complete with a hearse. "The procession", according to Lomax, "was one of the most popular forms of spectacle in Elizabethan drama" (Lomax, 1987: p 11). This procession of mourners and grandiose funeral bier must have brought to mind Tamburlaine's chariot, particularly with its close proximity to Octavian's vow that " these black and sable weeds,/The outward signs of inward heaviness,/Shall changèd be ere long to crimson hue" (Act 4, Scene 1, Lines 10-12). This echoes Tamburlaine's colour-changing countdown to ultimate destruction of a city, as Caesar's bombastic self-praise and over-the-top wooing of Cleopatra echoed the Scythian's rhetoric. Time would be needed to clear away the traces of Caesar's death and the Senate-house, and then to create the procession. This stalling device does not need to be so long as previous ones because between Caesar's death and his funeral is the Prologue for Act 4, providing twenty-two lines. Added together this gives the longest potential stalling time of forty lines. Therefore it seems that the two longest stalling times are for the two bulkiest items: the ship and the hearse.

The text of this play seems to provide tantalising glimpses spectacle which we cannot prove as nothing is written in its stage directions. The relative tedium of its speeches perhaps is irrelevant in a performance which contains all the inventiveness of the Elizabethan university stage, as the dramatic effects of words seem to have been sacrificed to the wonders of the spectacle.

Trinity College and Education

Trinity College in Oxford was founded by in 1555 by Thomas Pope, a Catholic who had made a great deal of money out of the confiscation of lands during the Reformation. It officially opened its doors on 30 May 1556. "In most colleges, the majority but not all of the fellows were expected to study theology [...] but under the Trinity Statutes it was theology or nothing (Hopkins, 2005: p55).[13] This would seem to make this the ideal location for poor sponsored candidates who "had forfeited their place in the artisan class, but stood a good chance of gaining a livelihood in the Church" (Riggs, 2005:, p67). The undergraduate timetable (Hopkins, 2005: p 62) began with a daily mass before 6 am, Philosophy (being arithmetic, geometry, logic and philosophy) from 6 till 8 am, two hours of disputations working in pairs before dinner which involved listening to a Narrare (make an argument on a theme given by the President or the Rhetoric Lecturer). After dinner there were two hours of Classical Texts with the Humanities Lecturer either on Rhetoric or Poetry and Drama. The Undergraduate Reading List covered the Roman and Greek writers Cicero, Valerius Maximus, Suetonius Tranquillus, Florus, Pliny, Livy, Quintillian, Virgil, Horace, Lucan, Juvenal, Terence, Plautus, Euclid, Porphyry, Aristotle, and Plato, and the Renaissance writers Frisius Gemma, Tunstall of Durham, Rodolph Agricola and John Caesar (Hopkins, 2005: p 64).

Considering that these young men were all supposedly destined for the Church, their Humanist degree studies were based for the most part on pre-Christian thinkers. The ideas they were being exposed to involved societies that believed in a polytheistic universe, accepted pederasty as a natural part of the teacher-pupil relationship, and held up democracy as superior to monarchy. The study of rhetoric and logic encouraged scepticism and questioning in the brightest and best, for it swiftly becomes apparent that "moral goodness was superfluous to the orator's vocation. Persuasion was simply a means to an end - any end" (Riggs, 2005: p 84).[14]

The impact of this education can be seen in Caesar's Revenge. The classical references are extant to the text, and I have included a selection of examples of rhetorical devices in Appendix 1. Perhaps the best example in this play of the scepticism and questioning of the "natural" order of society prompted by the Tudor university education is given at the end of Act 2, Scene 1. Having killed Pompey, Sempronius (reminiscent of the Vice character from medieval mystery plays) makes a speech which can be addressed only to the audience, beginning as it does "Lo you my masters" (Line 110). He points out the irony that the slaughter of thousands through proxies by great men to satisfy their own ambition wins them titles such as "brave champions and stout warriors" (Line 114), whilst a man who "kills but one/Is straight a villain and a murderer called" (Lines 110-111); the use of the word "straight" implies an honesty relating to the simple man that is not present in the actions of the great. This implication is continued in the following simile that shows an honest thief being hung for stealing something which is worthless to its owner, whilst "kings and mighty princes of the world,/By letters patent rob both sea and land" (Lines 118-119): the thief risks his body and pays the price the law demands, whilst kings and princes twist the law to their own ends and risk only pieces of paper for great gain. The word "rob" can here be taken in two senses; either metonymically, in that the sea and the land stand for the people upon them, or in the sense of "to carry off as plunder; to steal" (OED: v 5.a.), in which case the "letters patent" are granting the kings and princes dominion over new territories without honest conquest or treaties. Having established his point, Sempronius finally applies it to Pompey whose "ambition half the world hath slain".

For those that did not complete their degrees, or despite finishing still failed to find a respectable position, this education was seen as potentially dangerous. Men educated above their station are seen as potential revolutionaries, thinking themselves to be above their menial roots, but having insufficient position for their ambition. Riggs views Baldock in Marlowe's Edward II as "the first in a long line of displaced scholars who become the villains of Elizabethan and Jacobean tragedies" (Riggs, 2005: p 71). Although Sempronius describes himself as a soldier, and is shown to be a heartless mercenary and a classical stage villain, his arguments in his final speech described above show him to have a scholarly grasp of logic and rhetoric.

The Romans and National Identity

One of the origin myths of Britain in common usage during the Renaissance concerned the Trojan/Roman prince, Brutus, grandson or great-grandson to Aeneas. After accidentally killing his father with an arrow, Brutus was banished from Italy. In his wanderings he located two groups of Trojans living in exile and recruited them. They spent some time fighting in Europe and eventually settled in Albion, currently an empty land, home only to a few giants. Brutus and the Trojans destroyed the giants and took the land for their own, renaming it Britain. This myth links the British monarchy to a heroic past rooted in the classical tradition, and provides them with a line of descent from the gods themselves. Taking this tradition, enables the British to view themselves as the direct inheritors of the Roman Empire (for Virgil in his Aeneid has usefully traced Octavian's blood line through Julius Caesar back to Aeneas).

This belief that the British and the Romans are both Trojans permeates English Renaissance society, and Roman plays raised many of these issues, particularly as a form of criticism for the Stuart monarchy in the later Seventeenth Century. Playwrights used the Roman era to tackle "political debate [...] about the best system of rule" (Hopkins, 2008: p7);[15] this seems logical as the Romans moved from a monarchy to a republic and finally to an empire, encompassing different systems. However, in a society that considered themselves to be the Romans, this took careful handling, as plays about replacing the monarchy do not usually go down well with reigning monarchs.

The figure of Julius Caesar was immensely popular. He "was the paradigmatic Roman [...]. He paradoxically expressed both the height of Roman achievement and the depths of its vulnerability to female temptation in the shape of Cleopatra, a figure who regularly casts a shadow over the image of Rome as home of heroism and manliness" (Hopkins, 2008: p 9). However, in Caesar's Revenge, despite flattering her outrageously and granting her largesse, his proclaimed love lacks any feeling of reality. It is couched in the language of the sonnet; Caesar desires to adorn her "adorn [her] golden yellow locks,/Which in their curlèd knots my thoughts do hold,/Thoughts captive to thy beauty's conquering power " (Act 1, Scene 6, Lines 39-41), and grants her "[n]ot only Egypt but all Africa" (Act 1, Scene 6, Line 29) from Zanzibar to the pillars of Hercules, similar to the language used by Tamburlaine, Marlowe's Caesar-inspired dramatic creation to woo Zenocrate. Yet the scene ends with an extremely business-like Caesar instructing his followers of their next actions. His words, focussed on the action of the present compare with Anthony who is distracted making it clear that although Caesar is involved in a pleasant dalliance, he is still in command of himself and the world: Anthony, by contrast, has lost control of himself and his grasp of the world around him. When Anthony's Bonus Genius approaches him in Act 3, however, and lists his previous 'manly' joys, one can quite see why he might prefer to be "captive, bound in beauty’s bonds" (Act 3, Scene 2, Line 107).

Assuming that the dating of the play to the mid-1590s is correct, Caesar's Revenge, with its strong focus on a period of Roman civil war with the powerful statesmen of Rome destroying their Empire instead of expanding it, killing one-another rather than external enemies, highlights a very real Elizabethan fear. Just over one hundred years previously the country had been torn apart by the Wars of the Roses, ended by Elizabeth's grandfather Henry VII; Queen Mary's attempts to re-convert England to Catholicism had been grim; and Elizabeth was getting older. If she were to die without naming a successor, England could be plunged into internecine warfare by the power struggle for the throne. Caesar speaks of the horror of civil war: "Here lieth one that's butchered by his sire/And here the son was his old father's death:/Both slew unknowing, both unknown are slain" (Act 1, Scene 2, Lines 40-42). Civil war means families torn apart and lost in the anonymity of the battlefield, the blindness of blood-lust and fear in the thick of the fight. Elizabeth's perspective is also summed up succinctly in Brutus words: "But O, who doth remember good turns past:/The rising sun, not setting, doth men please" (Act 2, Scene 4, Lines 35-36). Elizabeth's fear that her court would abandon her to win favour with the monarch-in-waiting was probably justified, but left her people feeling very insecure.

It is worthy of note that although this play frequently denies royalty, with its constant references by the conspirators to the expulsion of the Tarquins from Rome, with Caesar's firm rejection of a crown, the use of the word "prince" is excessive. Anyone who is described as being noble or worthy is described as a "prince". The word could be being used in the context of 3. a. "a person who has the chief authority in any society or group; a ruler, commander, governor" (OED: n 3.a.). However, the constant use of the word, particularly in relation to Caesar underlines the fact that he is absolute monarch in all but name.

Editing Methodology

My intention in editing Caesar's Revenge has been to make it as accessible to the reader as possible without losing the content. To this end I have:

1. De-italicised all proper nouns and nouns in italics;

2. De-capitalised all non-proper nouns which had initial capital letters;

3. De-Romanised all words which had 'v' for 'u', 'u' for 'v', 'i' for 'j' and 'vv' for 'w';

4. Regularised variant spellings of proper nouns, and where possible used the modern/usual spelling (- this is sometimes impossible as it would remove or add extra syllables to a line, eg, "Affrick" to "Africa" and damage the metre, and these instances have been annotated);

5. Modernised the spelling of words;

6. Adopted the modern spelling of Caesar replacing the Greek "æ" with "ae";

7. Corrected the following apparent printer errors:

Act 1, Prologue

Line 103: "bilse" replaced with "bliss"

Line 109: "Wihch" replaced with "Which".

Line 126: "remououe replaced with "remoue" or "remove".

Act 1 - Scene 2

Line 5: "woundring" - replaced with "wounding" (as "wondering" and "wandering" both seem incongruous in this position).

Act 1 - Scene 4

Line 11: "freedon" replaced with "freedom".

Act 2, Scene 3

Line 38: "perlexed" replaced with "perplexed".

Act 3, Scene 2

Line 9: "witner" replaced with "winter".

Act 3, Scene 3

Line 22: "persumption" replaced with "presumption".

Act 3, Scene 4

Line 63: “pincely” replaced with “princely”.

Act 3, Scene 5

Line 62: “ountries” replaced with “countries”.

Line 74: "ilde" replaced with "idle".

Act 4, Scene 3

Line 41: "dissentions" replaced with "dissentious" (I believe the second "n" is an inverted "u" -"dissentious brawls" rather than "dissentions brawls").

Line 64: "Stike" - replaced with "Strike".

Line 93: "unquenced" replaced with "unquenched".

Act 5, Scene 1

Line 70 "Strenghen" replaced with "Strengthen";

8. Replaced "'d" endings of verbs with "ed";

9. Placed an accent over a final vowel where the metre calls for a syllable/letter to be sounded when it is usually silent, eg, "raisèd", "compassìon";

10. Replaced the original punctuation as necessary to make sense to the modern reader, as there were often full stops, colons and semi-colons in the middle of sentences, commas in the middle of phrases and many speeches ended with a comma. Also in Act 1, Prologue, Line 17 replaced three "&" with "and";

11. Replaced words which were interchangeable in Elizabethan times with the variant that fits the apparent meaning currently, eg, "then" is often replaced with "than";

12. Rationalised the Act and Scene headings. I have used arabic numbering. Act headings are now emboldened, centralised and capitalised (eg, ACT 1. I have removed the Act end markers (eg, ACT.I.FINIS). Prologue and Scene headings are now all left justified, emboldened and lower case, preceded by the Act detail in lower case (eg, Act 1, Scene 1);

13. Placed all Discord's Prologues separate from the first scene of each act, as originally those in Acts 1 and 5 were included in Scene 1, but those in Acts 2, 3 and 4 were separate;

14. Renumbered incorrectly numbered scenes:

The first scene of Act 2 is numbered '4' which I have changed to '1' as all the other scenes in the act are correctly numbered for their position.

The third scene of Act 4 is numbered ‘1’ – changed to ‘3’ as must come after Scene 1 showing the funeral, and presumably Scene 2 showing the anti-Caesarians allows the other actors to catch their breath, change into armour from funeral garb, etc;

15. Numbered the lines from 1 in every scene individually (NB - there are two split lines in the play, Act 2 Scene 4 Line 41 and Act 3 Scene6 Line 108);

16. Italicised all stage directions;

17. Left justified all stage directions except those which directly relate to performing an action in the middle of a speech, in which case I have placed the direction alongside the related piece of dialogue;

18. Inserted appropriate stage directions which appeared necessary or helpful from the dialogue in the scenes and including missing stage entrance/exit instructions. My insertions, replacements and additions are enclosed in square brackets, eg, Act 3, Scene 6 after Caesar's Line 69 his speech is interrupted by the stage direction "One gives him a paper". The character then speaks and is marked as "Pre." (see last note in point 19). I have therefore removed "One" and replaced it with "[Praecentor enters and]";

19. Rationalised the names in the speech directions. I have chosen to put all names in full. I have corrected seven instances where the name seemed incorrect:

Act 1, Scene 6 gives 2 lines (61-62) to "But.". There is no such character, and as the words involve mooning over Cleopatra I have assigned them to Anthony.

Act 2, Prologue has Discord entering, but the speech direction says "Antho." - I have changed this to Discord as she is the only character on stage.

Act 2, Scene 1 gives lines 13-19 to "Caes." - however, he is in Alexandria and this scene is set in Rome amongst his enemies, so I have re-assigned them to Casca as the closest name of those in this scene.

Act 2, Scene 1 gives lines 44-48 to "Cum." - as there is no such person in the play I have presumed it should be "Cam." and re-assigned those lines to Camber.

Act 2, Scene 1 gives lines 51-57 to "Ter." - as there is no such person in the play I have presumed it should be "Tre." and re-assigned those lines to Trebonius.

Act 2, Scene 1 gives lines 78-87 to "Gic." - as there is no such person in the play I have presumed it should be "Cic." and re-assigned those lines to Cicero.

Act 3, Scene 6 gives lines 71-76 to "Pre." - the only unused and similar name in the List of Actors is "Praecentor", so have expanded it to this;

20. Replaced a missing word in Act 5, Scene 1. On one version of the original text there is a gap followed by what looks like two letters on top of each other almost resembling a "£", then an "s" and a full stop. On the other version there is a gap and then a clearly defined "rigs". The line "And looke on him that hope and comfort" is definitely missing half a foot. I have inserted the word "brings" as this fits in well with the context. (NB: Boas suggests "rings" which seems unlikely to me.);

21. Made two miscellaneous changes:

Act 1, Prologue, Line 5: "It's" - the word "It" is unnecessary - doubling the subject of the sentence which is "The earth". However, the verb "'s" is necessary; so I replaced "It's" with "Is".

Act 1, Scene 6, Line 86: "fized" - this refers to a pole in relation to stars and constancy, therefore I have changed it to "fixed"; and

22. Whilst annotating the play, I have, where possible, included the alternative Greek or Roman name in brackets after the names of Roman and Greek deities on their first appearance in the text.

[1] Caesar's Revenge: All quotations from this play in the introduction are taken from this current version unless stated otherwise. I have put details of the two online versions available from Early English Books Online in the Bibliography. These are photographic images of the original printed texts from the British Library and the Folger Shakespeare Library respectively.

[2] Parrott, T M (1910), "The 'Academic Tragedy' of 'Caesar and Pompey' " published in The Modern Language Review, 5/4.

[3] Anonymous (2006/1911Malone Society reprint), The Tragedy of Caesar's Revenge, Edited by Boas, F S.

[4] Bowers, Fredson (1966), Elizabethan Revenge Tragedy 1587-1642.

[5] Ayres, Harry Morgan (1915), "Caesar's Revenge", published in PMLA, 30/4.

[6] Shakespeare, William (1968), A Midsummer-Night's Dream, Edited by Quiller-Couch, Sir Arthur and Dover Wilson

[7] Lomax, Marion (1987), Stage Images and Traditions: Shakespeare to Ford.

[8] Foakes, R A (1997), "Playhouses and Players" published in The Cambridge Companion to English Renaissance Drama.

[9] Nelson, Alan H (2007), Early Cambridge Theatres: College, university, and town stages, 1464-1720.

[10] Harkness, Deborah E (2007), The Jewel House: Elizabethan London and the Scientific Revolution.

[11] Fishman, Burton J (1976), "Pride and Ire: Theatrical Iconography in Preston's Cambises" published in Studies in English Literature, 1500-1900, 16/2 Elizabethan and Jacobean Drama.

[12] Line 124: bark - a small ship (OED: n² 1.).

[13] Hopkins, Clare (2005), Trinity: 450 Years of an Oxford College Community.

[14] Riggs, David (2005), The World of Christopher Marlowe.

[15] Hopkins, Lisa (2008), The Cultural Uses of the Caesars on the English Renaissance Stage.