Talk:Sejanus His Fall

Fair use rationale for Image:Sejanus.jpg
Image:Sejanus.jpg is being used on this article. I notice the image page specifies that the image is being used under fair use but there is no explanation or rationale as to why its use in this Wikipedia article constitutes fair use. In addition to the boilerplate fair use template, you must also write out on the image description page a specific explanation or rationale for why using this image in each article is consistent with fair use.

Please go to the image description page and edit it to include a fair use rationale. Using one of the templates at Fair use rationale guideline is an easy way to insure that your image is in compliance with Wikipedia policy, but remember that you must complete the template. Do not simply insert a blank template on an image page.

If there is other fair use media, consider checking that you have specified the fair use rationale on the other images used on this page. Note that any fair use images lacking such an explanation can be deleted one week after being tagged, as described on criteria for speedy deletion. If you have any questions please ask them at the Media copyright questions page. Thank you.

BetacommandBot (talk) 06:01, 24 January 2008 (UTC)

Location
Can anyone explain why this shouldn't be at Sejanus (play)? john k (talk) 03:56, 2 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Because the play's title is Sejanus His Fall. Wareh (talk) 19:30, 2 September 2008 (UTC)
 * But it's generally known as Sejanus. There's plenty of times when we shorten original titles.  The Pickwick Papers, for instance, and Robinson Crusoe, and Twelfth Night.  Looking on Amazon, there seem to be no editions of the book published with the title in the precise form of this title.  I see some published as just Sejanus, others as Sejanus: His Fall, and others as Sejanus, His Fall, but none as Sejanus His Fall.  john k (talk) 02:26, 4 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Some publishers probably get covers designed by people who just don't understand the titles of the works they print, but that shouldn't really affect our practice here. In Early Modern English, the possessive suffix (or genitive case ending) in "Chris's apartment" was misunderstood as an abbreviation of "Chris his apartment."  Therefore, Sejanus His Fall means Sejanus' Fall, i.e. The Fall of Sejanus.  That said, I wouldn't want to oversimplify.  Once the usage arose, the "his fall" etc. did seem appended, and any tendency to see it that way was probably reinforced by such titles as Sallust's Bellum Jugurthae/Catilinae a.k.a. Jugurtha/Catilina.  Anyway, I dispute the "generally known."  It's not really comparable to The Lamentable Tragedy of X vs. X.  You could easily produce a credible source (which Amazon is not) to show that the play is referred to by the abbreviated title Sejanus, which is utterly natural.  But the title is Sejanus His Fall.  Note that the 1692 folio pictured at Catiline His Conspiracy doesn't intrude any punctuation.  The colon in the RSC edition pictured in this page is simply illiterate.  Wareh (talk) 03:28, 5 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Surely Amazon is a reliable source for the titles given to in-print and recently out of print published editions of this play? john k (talk) 04:43, 5 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Yes, it is. But then the question is whether, "Currently in-print and recently out of print published editions of this play have generally..." is worth including as encyclopedic information.  On the other hand, if the issue is the article's title, surely the early title pages (e.g. 1616, pretty easily findable in Google Books), together with the frequent fuller form of reference in scholarly literature, have more bearing?  Anyway, the play is routinely referred to as Sejanus, and I certainly have no objection to noting that in the article.  Moreover, I've tried to avoid any overstatement, and I've even given support to the view that such titles were often & early construed as subtitles (though the modern tendency is not to understand that they can be construed any other way), and, to provide more evidence for that, I can point to our article The Poetaster, which points out the interesting fact, "in the quarto, the title is Poetaster or The Arraignment, and in the folio, Poetaster, Or His Arraignment."  But at the end of the day, my belief without excellent evidence to the contrary is that Jonson intended the title of this play to mean The Fall of Sejanus, expressed plainly in typical titling language of the time, and that this title is quite compact and to-the-point, and thus, again, should not be confused with anything of the form e.g. A lamentable tragedy mixed full of pleasant mirth, containing the life of....  But if you like the Amazon standard (which I'm still not accepting), please note the recently out-of-print edition in the Revels Plays series, which is a much more reputable series of up-to-date scholarly editions than the rest of what's coming up in an Amazon search.  (It's even, though I utterly reject the significance of this, the first Amazon search result for "Jonson Sejanus.")  One final note: for literature as little read as Jonson's Sejanus (see, I happily refer to it this way myself) you have to be careful with Amazon results.  For example, a title like this shouldn't even be counted in a census - it's an execrable public-domain reprint from Gutenberg Project to generate a few pennies from the unwary, not the current edition it vaguely masquerades as on Amazon.  Oxford World Classics has printed the play in Five Plays recently, and at the start of the play (p. 99), it is duly titled Sejanus his Fall.  Wareh (talk) 15:27, 5 September 2008 (UTC)
 * My understanding of "most commonly used name" for the title is that we are to use the name used most at the present time. Scholarly reference is obviously significant here, but publication ought to be taken into account, too. john k (talk) 14:05, 6 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Agreed, which is why I called attention to the usage in the two most significant recent publications of the play (Revels and Oxford). Wareh (talk) 15:38, 8 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Indeed you did - I didn't read as closely as I should have. I do think that "Sejanus" is actually the most common title, but obviously that's ambiguous.  I suppose in such situations, the full title is preferable to an artificial disambiguator.  I'll withdraw the objection. john k (talk) 23:39, 8 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Well I can forgive you for not reading closely; I do feel I was a bit more long-winded than strictly necessary! Wareh (talk) 14:33, 9 September 2008 (UTC)

Actor William Sly
According to the article, William Sly is both in the "published cast list" and an "unnamed" member of the company. So which is it? 99.237.143.219 (talk) 19:56, 25 April 2013 (UTC)

Sejanus
There needs to be at least some discussion in the article about who Sejanus was and what the play was based on historically. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 172.243.148.28 (talk) 15:15, 13 February 2015 (UTC)


 * Anybody who is curious about the matter can simply look up the "Sejanus" page on Wikipedia.  I think the worse omission here is a plot summary, since Jonson's treatment may not match the historical record. 2601:C2:201:4612:FDCF:F01:E11:56C9 (talk) 02:19, 17 August 2019 (UTC)

Which year?
The "Stage history" section claims that the audience reaction to the 1603 performance is unknown, and that it was the 1604 performance which was heckled: however, the recently-published book by John-Mark Philo (discussed in The Observer) claims that the 1603 performance was heckled, influencing Shakespeare's Othello, written the same year. Is Philo mistaken? ~dom Kaos~ (talk) 08:18, 28 August 2022 (UTC)


 * It doesn't now! He says he found several witnesses - I haven't checked the sources thoroughly. Best wishes, Pol098 (talk) 18:58, 28 August 2022 (UTC)
 * Great stuff: problem solved! All the best, ~dom Kaos~ (talk) 19:43, 1 September 2022 (UTC)