Event Comment: This play was presumably acted by
the Duke's Company. In
the preface to
Heraclius, Emperour of the East, published in 1664,
the author,
Lodowick Carlell, complains that he had submitted his translation of
Corneille, only to have it returned
the very day that this version appeared on
the stage. See also
the letter by
Katherine Philips, under
Pompey the Great, Jan. 1663@4.
Pepys, Diary: We made no long stay at dinner; for
Heraclius being acted, which my wife and I have a mighty mind to see, we do resolve, though not exactly agreeing with
the letter of my vowe, yet altoge
ther with
the sense, to see ano
ther this month, by coming hi
ther instead of that
at court,
there having ueen none conveniently since I made my vowe for us to see
there, nor like to be this Lent, and besides we did walk home on purpose to make this going as cheap as that would have been, to have seen one at Court, and my conscience knows that it is only
the saving of money and
the time also that I intend by my oaths....
The play hath one very good passage well managed in it, about two persons pretending, and yet denying
themselves, to be son to
the tyrant
Phocas, and yet heire of
Mauricius to
the crowne.
The garments like
Romans very well.
The little girle is come to act very prettily, and spoke
the epilogue most admirably. But at
the beginning, at
the drawing up of
the curtaine,
there was
the finest scene of
the Emperor and his people about him, standing in
their fixed and different postures in
their Roman habitts, above all that ever I yet saw at any of
the theatres