Campaspe (play)

[1] Campaspe was initially acted in the autumn of 1583 at the first Blackfriars Theatre, before being performed at Court at Whitehall Palace before Queen Elizabeth I, most likely on 1 January 1584 (new style).

Lyly was in Oxford's service at the time, and was paid £20 for this and for the subsequent Shrove Tuesday Court performance of his Sapho and Phao by a warrant issued on 12 March, although he would have to wait until 25 November to actually receive his money.

Editors and scholars of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries generally referred to the play as Alexander and Campaspe while their modern counterparts tend to prefer the shorter title.

Cupid paid: He stakes his quiver, bow and arrows, His mother's doves and team of sparrows, Loses them too; then down he throws The coral of his lips, the rose Growing on's cheek (but none knows how), With these the crystal of his brow, And then the dimple of his chin; All these did my Campaspe win.

Some scholars have questioned whether these songs are authentically Lylian in authorship, although according to the play's most recent editor, G. K. Hunter, this "is a hypothesis impossible to disprove; but the evidence that has been adduced to support it is equally without force.

He also drew upon the work of Diogenes Laërtius (the historical biographer) and upon Thomas North's 1580 translation of the Parallel Lives of Plutarch for information about the philosophers of ancient Greece.

Alexander also spends his time in Athens with his close friend and advisor Hephestion (who disapproves of his infatuation with Campaspe), and in conversing and consorting with the philosophers of the era – most notably with Diogenes the Cynic, whose famous tub is prominently featured onstage.

[9] Plato and Aristotle share a conversation, and four other philosophers from various classical Greek schools, Cleanthes, Crates, Chrysippus, and Anaxarchus (anachronistically drawn from several different centuries) appear as well,[10] all invited into Alexander's presence by his messenger Melippus for debate.

Two Macedonian officers, Clitus and Permenio, both begin the play in bringing on Campaspe and her fellow captive Timoclea, and also appear later to express their concern as Alexander's distracted state leads to a breakdown in military discipline, personified in a further scene where the courtesan Laïs sings (the lyrics remain missing) to entertain two unruly soldiers, Milectus and Phyrgius, as they forget their martial calling ("Down with arms, and up with legs!").

[11] Campaspe's prose style is heavily "euphuistic," sharing significant commonalities with Lyly's famous novel Euphues (1578) in using antitheses, alliterations, repetitions, balanced clauses, and matching parts of speech.

Lyly expanded his use of dialogue for the play, using short, sharp exchanges for innovative comic and dramatic effect, as shown by this extract from Act 3 Scene 1, where Alexander the Great visits Apelles' studio to check on his progress in painting Campaspe's portrait, and begins to question him about the art of painting: Later on, Alexander borrows Apelles charcoal to try his own hand at drawing: Campaspe marked a significant turning point in English drama.

The play seems to have been revived in an adapted and cut down version retitled The Cynic or the Force of Virtue, performed twice, 22–3 February 1732, at Odell's Theatre in Aycliffe Street in Goodman's Fields.

[18] The first modern performance by professional actors of the uncut play took place on 27 October 2000 at The Bear Gardens theatre, London, for Shakespeare's Globe's Read Not Dead project, with Eve Best and Will Keen as Campaspe and Apelles, Tom Espiner as Alexander, and Dominic Rowan as Diogenes.