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 altogether with the sense, to see another this month, by coming hither 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