The Roman Actor
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The Roman Actor is a Caroline era stage play, a tragedy written by Philip Massinger; it was first performed in 1626, and first published in 1629. A number of critics have agreed with its author, and judged it one of Massinger's best plays.[1]
The play was entered in the Register of the Stationers Company on Oct. 11, 1626, and performed later that year by the King's Men at the Blackfriars Theatre. Joseph Taylor, then the company's leading man, played the role of Paris, the title character. There is no record of another production of the play till 1692, when Thomas Betterton played Paris in a production by the United Company. The play was performed again in 1722 at Lincoln's Inn Fields. After that date the complete play fell out of fashion, though many actors performed Paris's defense of the acting profession in I,iii "as a short dramatic show-piece."[2]
The play was first published in quarto by the bookseller Robert Allot. Massinger dedicated the volume to three friends and supporters, Sir Philip Knyvett, "Knight and Baronet," Sir Thomas Jay, and Thomas Bellingham "of Newtimber in Essex."[3] Jay wrote one of the commendatory poems that prefaced the play in the quarto, as did Joseph Taylor, John Ford, and Thomas Goffe.
The 1629 quarto also provides a list of the principal cast of the 1626 production:
| Role | Actor |
|---|---|
| Domitian | John Lowin |
| Paris | Joseph Taylor |
| Parthenius | Richard Sharpe |
| Junius Rusticus | Robert Benfield |
| Aretinus Clemens | Elliard Swanston |
| Aesopus | Richard Robinson |
| Philargus | Anthony Smith |
| Palphurius Sura | William Patrick |
| Latinus | Curtis Greville |
| Domitia | John Thompson |
| Domitilla | John Honeyman |
| Julia | William Trigge |
| Caenis | Alexander Gough |
In addition, Thomas Pollard doubled the roles of Aelius Lamia and Stephanos, and James Horne and George Vernon played the two lictors. The 13-year-old John Honeyman made his acting debut in this production; he would play female roles for the King's Men for the next three years, through their production of Massinger's The Picture (1629); at the age of 17 he would switch to young male roles.
[edit] Sources
Massinger based his portrait of the Roman Emperor Domitian on the work of Suetonius (most likely in Philemon Holland's 1606 translation), supplemented by works of Tacitus and Dio Cassius, plus the second Satire of Horace and Book XIV of Ovid's Metamorphoses, among other ancient sources. Ben Jonson's first Roman tragedy, Sejanus, was Massinger's model "in style and in structure" and for "scene outlines;" "the trial of Paris (I,iii)...is written in close imitation of the trial of Cordus in Sejanus, Act III."[4]
[edit] Notes
- ^ Logan and Smith, pp. 97-8; Gibson, p. xi.
- ^ Gibson, p. 98.
- ^ Knyvett (1583-1655) was created baronet in 1611; his daughter Dorothy Knyvett was the dedicatee of Massinger's poem The Virgin's Character. Jay (1585-1636) was a magistrate and member of Parliament, and also Keeper of the King's Armoury at Greenwich and the Tower of London. Bellingham (1599-1649) was the son of a Sussex knight. Gibson, p. 386.
- ^ Gibson, p. 97.
[edit] References
- Gibson, Colin, ed. The Selected Plays of Philip Massinger. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1978.
- Logan, Terence P., and Denzell S. Smith, eds. The Later Jacobean and Caroline Dramatists: A Survey and Bibliography of Recent Studies in English Renaissance Drama. Lincoln, NE, University of Nebraska Press, 1978.
