''Caesar in Egypt'' is a 1724
tragedy by the British writer
Colley Cibber. It is inspired by
Pierre Corneille
Pierre Corneille (; 6 June 1606 – 1 October 1684) was a French tragedian. He is generally considered one of the three great seventeenth-century French dramatists, along with Molière and Racine.
As a young man, he earned the valuable patronag ...
's 1642 French play ''
The Death of Pompey'' about
Julius Caesar
Gaius Julius Caesar (; ; 12 July 100 BC – 15 March 44 BC), was a Roman general and statesman. A member of the First Triumvirate, Caesar led the Roman armies in the Gallic Wars before defeating his political rival Pompey in a civil war, and ...
's intervention in the Egyptian Civil War between
Cleopatra
Cleopatra VII Philopator ( grc-gre, Κλεοπάτρα Φιλοπάτωρ}, "Cleopatra the father-beloved"; 69 BC10 August 30 BC) was Queen of the Ptolemaic Kingdom of Egypt from 51 to 30 BC, and its last active ruler.She was also a ...
and her brother. Cibber also incorporated elements of
Plutarch and
John Fletcher's ''
The False One
''The False One'' is a late Jacobean stage play by John Fletcher and Philip Massinger, though formerly placed in the Beaumont and Fletcher canon. It was first published in the first Beaumont and Fletcher folio of 1647.
This classical history ...
''. The Drury Lane company invested lots of resources to make it a particularly extravagant production in the traditional style of a
Restoration
Restoration is the act of restoring something to its original state and may refer to:
* Conservation and restoration of cultural heritage
** Audio restoration
** Film restoration
** Image restoration
** Textile restoration
* Restoration ecology
...
heroic drama.
The cast included
Barton Booth as Julius Caesar,
Robert Wilks as
Antony Antony may refer to:
* Antony (name), a masculine given name and a surname
* Antony, Belarus, a village in the Hrodna Voblast of Belarus
* Antony, Cornwall, a village in Cornwall, United Kingdom
** Antony House, Cornwall, United Kingdom
* Antony, ...
,
Theophilus Cibber as
Ptolemy,
Charles Williams as Decius,
John Mills as Photinus, Colley Cibber as Achoreus,
John Roberts as First Centurion,
John Thurmond
John Thurmond (died 1727) was a British stage actor. To distinguish him from his son, also an actor named John, he is sometimes called John Thurmond the Elder.
His earliest known stage performance was in 1695, when he played in '' Cyrus the Grea ...
as Second Centurion,
Mary Porter as
Cornelia and
Anne Oldfield
Anne Oldfield (168323 October 1730) was an English actress and one of the highest paid actresses of her time.
Early life and discovery
She was born in London in 1683. Her father was a soldier, James Oldfield. Her mother was either Anne or Eliz ...
as Cleopatra.
The play was not well-received, its style increasingly regarded by audiences as old-fashioned. This effectively ended Cibber's career as a playwright.
[Koon p.108]
References
Bibliography
* Burling, William J. ''A Checklist of New Plays and Entertainments on the London Stage, 1700-1737''. Fairleigh Dickinson Univ Press, 1992.
* Koon, Helene. ''Colley Cibber: A Biography''. University Press of Kentucky, 2014.
* Nicoll, Allardyce. ''History of English Drama, 1660-1900, Volume 2''. Cambridge University Press, 2009.
1724 plays
West End plays
Plays by Colley Cibber
Tragedy plays
Plays set in ancient Egypt
Depictions of Julius Caesar in plays
Adaptations of works by Pierre Corneille
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