[1] The play's full title is A new interlude of Vice containing the history of Horestes with the cruel revengement of his father's death upon his one natural mother.

[6] Along with Thomas Preston's Cambises (c.1561), the play has been identified as a "hybrid morality", due to its articulation of classical themes, stories and characters with the medieval allegorical tradition.

[8] The play has an episodic structure, which alternates comic, slapstick scenes with serious, tragic ones, all unified by the theme of revenge.

[9] It is one of the earliest examples of an English revenge play, a genre that includes Kyd's The Spanish Tragedy (1587), Marston's The Malcontent (1603) and Shakespeare's Hamlet (1601).

[11] As with other experimental moralities from Elizabeth's reign, Horestes is longer than most of the older examples of the genre, running to 1,205 lines.