 Yet Septimius is portrayed as lacking any redeeming or sympathetic quality, making him a weak prop on which to mount a drama.The authors' choice in this matter may have been dictated by their desire to comment on contemporaneous political events; in this interpretation, the Pompey of the play represents Sir Walter Raleigh, executed in 1618, while the loathsome reprobate Septimius stands for Raleigh's primary accuser, Sir Lewis Stukeley.Critics have seen the influence of Shakespeare's "Antony and Cleopatra" in "The False One," and have suggested that the portrayal of Septimius was partially modelled on Shakespeare's Enobarbus.