Sejanus His Fall

The proud Silius, whose confrontation with Tiberius occupies the core of the first three acts and whose suicide is a traditionally noble Roman death, most likely would have gone to Heminges, with the more military Condell as the Guards Captain Macro.

[5] Grote further suggests that the unnamed other members of the company, Samuel Crosse, William Sly, and Robert Armin, played the roles of Lepidus, Terentius, and Sabinius.

[8] Later, as part of the many staged readings and livestream productions that took place during the COVID-19 pandemic, New York City's Red Bull Theatre produced a "livestream presentation" via YouTube on 17 May 2021 directed and adapted by Nathan Winkelstein, featuring notable Broadway and US television actors including Tamara Tunie (Sabinus), Laila Robins (Tiberius Caesar), Denis O'Hare (Sejanus), Keith David (Silius), Manoel Felciano (Natta), Matthew Rauch (Drusus), Stephen Spinella (Eudemus), and Emily Swallow (Livia), among others.

[10] On 6 August 1605 Blount transferred his copyright to Thomas Thorpe, who published it in quarto that year (STC 14782), printed by George Eld.

[11] The printed text is accompanied by "copious marginal notes" citing the play's historical sources, which Jonson informs his readers were "all in the learned tongues, save one, with whose English side I have little to do".

[14] A 1616 edition in folio features Jonson's Epistle to Lord Aubigny, in which the dramatist again indicates that Sejanus was a flop when staged at the Globe Theatre.

Another writer, Samuel Daniel was brought before the Privy Council in 1604 because his play Philotas was thought "to be a reflection of the dangerous matter of the dead Earl of Essex".

[17] However Philip Ayres has argued that Sejanus was thought to parallel the 1603 trial of Walter Raleigh, who had been found guilty of conspiring with Spanish Catholics to murder James I in the Main Plot.

[19] Jonson's epistle "To the Readers" in the 1605 quarto states that an unnamed author had "good share" in the version of the play which was performed on the public stage: Lastly I would inform you that this book, in all numbers, is not the same with that which was acted on the public stage, wherein a second pen had good share; in place of which, I have rather chosen to put weaker (and no doubt less pleasing) of mine own, than to defraud so happy a genius of his right by my loathed usurpation.

John-Mark Philo has suggested that Shakespeare's experience with acting in Sejanus and its unfavourable reception may have influenced him in writing his Othello, also written in 1603 and performed by the same theatre company, the King's Men.