Hughes wrote The Misfortunes of Arthur, Uther Pendragon's son reduced into tragical notes, which was performed at Greenwich in Queen Elizabeth I's presence on the 28 February 1588.
The ghost of Gorlois, who was slain by Uther Pendragon, opens the play with a speech that reproduces passages spoken by the ghost of Tantalus in Seneca's play Thyestes; the tragic events are announced by a messenger, and the chorus comments on the course of the action.
Dr W. J. Cunliffe has proved that Hughes's memory was saturated with Seneca, and that the play may be resolved into a patchwork of translations, with occasional original lines.
Appendix II to his exhaustive essay On the Influence of Seneca on Elizabethan Tragedy (1893) gives a long list of parallel passages.
The Misfortunes of Arthur was reprinted in J. P. Collier's supplement to Dodsley's Old Plays; and by Harvey Carson Grumline (Berlin, 1900), who points out that Hughes's source was Geoffrey of Monmouth's Historia Britonum, not the Morte D'Arthur.