Catiline was ‘Acted in the yeere 1611. By the Kings M aiesties Seruants’ (folio title-page, 1616) . We cannot tell with any certainty whether it was first staged at the Globe or at the Blackfriars. By 1611 the King’s Men’s use of the two playhouses, an open-air amphitheatre on the south bank and an indoor playhouse in central London, was well established, with much the same repertory, whether new plays or revivals, being played at both (see Gurr, 1996 , 367; Knutson, 1991 , 136). It is tempting to suggest that, because Jonson makes so little concession to popular taste, and because the Blackfriars would have a larger proportion of better-educated audience members, that theatre would be a better venue for the play than the Globe. Indeed, Jonson had written The Alchemist specifically for the Blackfriars in 1610. Yet as Gurr importantly maintains, ‘there is no sign of any sense that the different audiences [at the two theatres] expected different kinds of play’ (1996, 367), so internal evidence is likely to be inconclusive.

The quite modest demands which Catiline makes on staging could be met equally well at either theatre. A discovery space is needed for the first appearance of Catiline (see note at 1.1.15 SD), an upper level for Cicero to address his would-be assassins (3.5.10-44), and most probably a trap-door for the ascent and descent of Sulla’s Ghost and for the Executioners in 5.5 to take their victims down to be strangled (see note at 5.5.166 SD). For the ominous effects during the meeting of the conspirators in act 1, the ‘fiery light’ could have been a torch waved by a ‘bloody arm’ from the ‘heavens’ of either theatre; and in both the ‘darkness’ would have been suggested by the dialogue rather than realized (see notes at 1.1.318 SD and 312 SD). The means of producing the thunder and lightning which connect the end of act 3 with the beginning of act 4 were common in all the playhouses of the period. Properties and costumes through which the Roman scene would be evoked were not excessively demanding and were surely, after a number of earlier Roman plays (not least Sejanus), mostly in the company’s possession already. These include paraphernalia for formal entries into the Senate, such as lictors’ rods and axes, and some form of seating for the senators (see note at 4.2.0 SD); senatorial robes and togas; and daggers for individuals and arms for soldiers. Galla gives an exhibition of Roman hair-dressing – ‘i’the globe or spire’ (2.1.15) – but Fulvia’s boudoir in act 2, with its cosmetic equipment, could use standard properties. It had been adumbrated, if not put on stage, in the scene between Livia and Eudemus in Sejanus, 2.1-138. Two scenes depend on dialogue interacting with properties for an effect that amounts to emblematic ritual: the ‘solemn sacrament’ of the conspirators drinking wine mixed with blood at 1.1.483-504, and their silent vows to the ‘silver eagle / Was Marius’ standard in the Cimbrian war, / Fatal to Rome’, at 3.3.74-82.

The major demand the play makes is on actors. The list of ‘The names of the Actors’ in Q has 33 speaking parts, four of which are women. To these must be added Senators, of whom four speak briefly; at least one speaking Lictor; a Porter with a few lines; a Page and at least one Servant who have lines; and Soldiers who have just one collective line at the end of Petreius’s speech in 5.1. There are also the non-speaking parts of Guards and Executioners. Casting would have meant, according to usual practice, that the principal male roles (defined by T.J. King, 1992 , 1, as those who speak twenty-five or more lines) were taken by ten or twelve sharers (the men who owned the assets of the company and shared the profits) and hired men (who worked for weekly wages); that as many as four boys might be available for women’s roles; and that roles with few or no lines were played by as many hired men as could be spared from other playhouse duties. The King’s Men would have been busy in putting on Catiline, but not prohibitively so.

The prefatory material to the first quarto suggests that the play was not well received when first performed. Jonson’s epistle ‘To the Reader in Ordinary’ states that the first two acts were applauded but Cicero’s long oration was disliked (4-6). In his commendatory verses addressed to Jonson, Francis Beaumont sets up the typical dichotomy between understanding and success that was applied to unpopular plays of the period:

If thou hadst itched after the wild applause

Of common people, and hadst made thy laws

In writing such as catched at present voice,

I should commend the thing, but not thy choice.

But thou hast squared thy rules by what is good,

And art three ages yet from understood.

And (I dare say) in it there lies much wit

Lost, till thy readers can grow up to it.

(‘To my friend, Master Ben Jonson’, 1-8)

Similarly, if more succinctly, Nathan Field argues:

But in this age, where jigs and dances move,

How few there are that this pure work approve!

(‘To his worthy beloved friend’, lines 13-14)

In the folio dedication, Jonson similarly complains about the ‘jig-given times’ and the ‘noise of opinion’ (4-5). Notwithstanding this mixed reaction, in its first century of stage life, Catiline proved significantly more enduring than Jonson’s other tragedy, Sejanus. It was revived in the 1630s, for the title-page to the 1635 quarto states that it is ‘now acted by His Majesty’s Servants with great applause’, and was acted repeatedly on the Restoration stage. We know comparatively little about these revivals, but brief mentions highlight some acclaim, and some disappointment. The title pages to the third (1669) and fourth (1674) quartos tell us that the play ‘is now Acted by His MAJESTIE’S Servants; at the Theatre ROYAL’. The very presence of those reprintings points to audience interest.

Although John Downes mentions Catiline as one of the plays performed ‘now and then’ at the Theatre Royal after 1663 (Roscius Anglicanus, 1708, 8-9) , the first documented revival was staged on 18 December 1668 before Charles II. Charles gave the actors £500 for costumes, and Pepys attended a performance on the following night, when he called it ‘a play of much good sense and words to read, but that do appear the worst upon the stage, I mean, the least diverting, that ever I saw any…. the play is only to be read’ (Diary, eds. Latham and Matthews, 9.395) . The play was repeated several times in January 1669, and became a vehicle for factional conflict between the King’s mistress, Lady Castlemaine, and Lady Harvey, an ally of the Duke of Buckingham. Castlemaine arranged for Katherine Corey to play Sempronia as a parody of Lady Harvey. Mrs Corey was arrested, released at Castlemaine’s entreaty, then her performance on 13 January was barracked by Lady Harvey’s supporters, who pelted her with oranges (Pepys, 9.415; Noyes, 1935, 306-7) . The other players included Charles Hart as Catiline, Michael Mohun as Cethegus, and Nicholas Burt as Cicero.

Despite Pepys’s lack of enthusiasm, the play was performed repeatedly in the coming years. An anecdote survives of the comedian Joseph Haines, who played in the King’s Company in 1672-80, upsetting Hart’s performance by coming on stage behind him, supposedly as one of the senators but dressed as Scaramouche, taking out a pipe and stool, and jeering at him (Noyes, 308). The last documented revival was before the King on 8 March 1675, but a newspaper of 1689 refers admiringly to the ‘grand scene of prodigies in Catiline’ (Noyes, 310), and in 1691 Gerard Langbaine noted that ‘This Play is still in Vogue on the Stage, and always presented with success’ (An Account of the English Dramatic Poets, 1691, 288) . Catiline is one of the plays discussed in Dryden’s Essay of Dramatic Poesy (1668), Rymer’s Tragedies of the Last Age (1678) and Short View of Tragedy (1693). Although it was issued in reprints of 1710, 1729, and 1739, it fell out of vogue in the early eighteenth century and no performances are recorded after Langbaine.

Nell Gwyn’s playful epilogue to the 1668 revival, as printed in the 1669 quarto, tells us something of how the age viewed the play:

No Dance, no Song, no Farce? His lofty Pen,

How e’re we like it, doubtless Wrote to Men.

Height may be his, as it was Babel’s fall;

There Bricklayers turn’d to Linguists, ruin’d all.

I’de ne’re spoke this, had I not heard by many,

He lik’t one silent Woman, above any:

And against us had such strange prejudice;

For our Applause, he scorn’d to Write amiss.

For all this, he did us, like Wonders, prize;

Not for our Sex, but when he found us Wise.

A Poet runs the Gauntlet, and his slips,

Are bare expos’d to regiments of Whips:

Among those, he to Poetick Champions Writ;

As we to gain the Infancy of Wit.

Which if they prove the greatest number, then

The House has cause to thank Nell, more than Ben.

Our Author might prefer your praise, perhaps,

Wee’d rather have your Money, than your Claps.

This playful summary cannot be taken at face value, but there is some truth to Gwyn’s accusation of Jonson that ‘Height may be his, as it was Babel’s fall’. Catiline seemed to offer little to an age in which comedy, wit, and character were so highly esteemed, and Jonson was soon to be censured for the coldness and pedantry of his tragic writing. In the satirical play The Female Wits (1704) , the blue-stocking Marsilia comically devotes her creative energies to revising and ‘improving’ Catiline. Nonetheless, even if the applause was not unanimous, Restoration audiences found something to admire in this tragedy.

There have been no traceable revivals in the past 300 years, and with its rigorous historicization and lofty speeches, Catiline has long been considered unrevivable on the modern stage. Robert Gale Noyes, who has written the most comprehensive stage history (tellingly unsurpassed since it appeared in 1935), baldly asserts that ‘Catiline could not now be acted’ (316). History has proven his assertion true to an extent, though it could be tested only through attempts at performance. Sejanus had, until recently, suffered the same fate, but revivals, particularly the Royal Shakespeare Company production of 2005, have now revealed that play’s stage-worthiness. Perhaps the time is ready to attempt the same for Catiline.