Cultural depictions of Herod the Great

This page lists cultural depictions of Herod the Great, grouped by order and arranged by date.

Art and literature

Herod appears in some cycles of the Mystery Plays, such as the pageant Herod the Great in the Towneley Cycle, played as an over-the-top villain. Such portrayals were still in folk memory in William Shakespeare's time, for Hamlet instructs the players not to "out-Herod Herod" (Act 3, Scene 2).^[1] This line is in turn quoted in regard to Prince Prospero in Edgar Allan Poe's "The Mask of the Red Death." Medieval dramatic portrayals of Herod may also have influenced Shakespeare's portrayal of Macbeth, King of Scotland in Macbeth.^[2]
Herod the Great is a central character in Elizabeth Cary's The Tragedy of Mariam, the Fair Queen of Jewry (1613). The play is a work of historical fiction, set in 29 B.C., revolving around Herod's second wife, Mariam, and their families, when Herod is believed to have been killed by Octavian (later Caesar Augustus).

He appears in the first play of Dorothy L. Sayers' radio play cycle The Man Born to Be King.

^ David Staines, 'To Out-Herod Herod: The Development of a Dramatic Character', Comparative Drama, 10.1 (spring 1976), 29-53, doi:10.1353/cdr.1976.0015.
^ R. Chris Hassel, Jr., '"No Boasting like a Fool?" Macbeth and Herod', Studies in Philology, 98.2 (Spring, 2001), 205-24.