JULIUS CÆSAR INTRODUCTION Julius Caesar, the first of that great series of tragedies which continued to occupy Shakespeare during the opening years of the seventeenth century, was first published in the folio of 1623, where it is printed with unusual accuracy. The play is short, and it has been conjectured that, like some other plays in the folio, it may have reached us in a form reduced in length for the purpose of theatrical representation. Though we cannot precisely determine the date at which it was written, we can with confidence name 1599 as the earliest year, and 1601 as the latest, to which it can be assigned. Some lines in Weever's Mirror of Martyrs, published in 1601, seem clearly to refer to Shakespeare's tragedy: The many headed multitude were drawne By Brutus speech, that Cæsar was ambitious, The charge of ambition against Cæsar in Brutus's speech is not derived from Plutarch. It has been pointed out that Weever declares that his work 'some two years ago was made fit for the print'. We cannot, however, say that these lines may not have been an addition inserted as late as 1601. In Jonson's Every Man out of his Humour, 1599, occur the words, Reason long since is fled to animals, you know,' and in the same play are found the words, Et tu, Brute,' which are not derived from Plutarch, but had entered traditionally into the account of Cæsar's death before either 6 We can Jonson or Shakespeare used the phrase. suppose that Shakespeare's line (Act III, Scene ii, line 112), 'O judgment! thou art fled to brutish beasts was suggested by Jonson; but, on the other hand, it is possible that Jonson was indulging in a fling at Shakespeare. With such evidence as Weever's allusion affords, it seems unnecessary to point out Drayton's probable reminiscence from the play in his Barons' Wars of 1603, or to dwell on the ingenious argument of Dr. Aldis Wright, derived from Shakespeare's use of 'eternal ' for 'infernal' in Act I, Scene ii, line 159. More to the point is the occurrence in A Warning for Fair Women (printed 1599) of the lines: I have given him fifteen wounds, Which will be fifteen mouths that do accuse me ; which may be compared with Shakespeare's (Act III, Scene ii, II. 229-33) Show you sweet Cæsar's wounds, poor poor dumb mouths, and put a tongue In every wound of Cæsar; but the comparison of wounds to mouths is not, I believe, peculiar to Shakespeare and the author of A Warning for Fair Women. The application of the verse-tests to Julius Cæsar does not forbid either the date 1599 or 1601. The style is certainly that of Shakespeare's middle period; language and thought preserve an equality; the stress of imagination does not here, as in later plays, trouble the utterance, and make it attempt to achieve more than can be lucidly expressed. The points of resemblance between this play and Hamlet, 1602, each a tragedy of thought, each telling of the infirmities of an idealist when compelled to public action, have been noticed by many writers. We cannot greatly err if we date Julius Cæsar 1600 or 1601, while we may admit that possibly it followed King Henry V in the year 1599. , The subject had been treated by English dramatists before the appearance of Shakespeare's play. As early as 1562 a Julius Caesar was acted at Whitehall. But Shakespeare seems to have derived all the material for his play from North's Plutarch's Lives (with perhaps a passing hint from Appian) and from his own creative imagination. Shakespeare's debt to North's translation has been summed up by Archbishop Trench in his little book on Plutarch in a passage which may be quoted at length; so much cannot be told more briefly : The play opens with the jealousy on the part of the tribunes at the marks of favour shown by the populace to Cæsar; this down to the smallest details is from Plutarch, so too in that which follows: the repeated offering by Antony of a crown to Cæsar at the Lupercalia, with his reluctant refusal of it; this blended indeed into one with an earlier tendering to him of special honours on the part of the senate; Cæsar's early suspicions in regard of "the lean and wrinkled Cassius with his desire to have about him men fat and well-liking; the goading on of Brutus by Cassius, and the gradual drawing of him into the conspiracy, with the devices to this end; the deliberation whether Antony shall share in Cæsar's doom, and the false estimate of him which Brutus makes; so too whether Cicero shall be admitted to the plot, with the reasons for excluding him; the remonstrance of Portia that she is shut out from her husband's counsels, and the proof of courage which she gives; then, too, all the prodigies which precede the murder,-as the beast without a heart; fires in the element; men walking about clothed as in flame, and unscorched by it; the illomened birds sitting at noonday in the market-place; Calphurnia's warning dream, and Cæsar's consequent resolution not to go to the senate-house; the talking of him over by Decius Brutus; the vain attempt of Artemidorus to warn him of his danger; the ides of March; the apprehension at the last moment that all has been discovered, with the hasty purpose of Cassius, only hindered by Brutus, to kill himself thereupon; the luring away of Antony from the senate-house by Trebonius; the importunate pleading of Metellus Cimber for his brother, taken up by the other conspirators; the striking of the first blow from behind by Casca; Cæsar's ceasing to defend himself when he recognizes Brutus among his murderers; his falling down at the base of Pompey's statue, which ran blood; the deceitful reconciliation of Antony with the conspirators; nothing of this is absent. All, too, which follows is from Plutarch: the funeral oration of Brutus over Cæsar's body, and then that which Antony has obtained leave to deliver; the displaying of the rent and bloody mantle; the reading of the will; the rousing of the fury of the populace; the tearing in pieces of Cinna the poet, mistaken for the conspirator of the same name; the precipitate flight of the conspirators from the city; their re-appearance in arms in the East; the meeting of Brutus and Cassius; their quarrel, and Lucius Pella the cause of it; the reconciliation; the division of opinion as to military operations; the giving way of Cassius, with his subsequent protest to Messala that he had only unwillingly done this; the apparition of Cæsar's ghost to Brutus, with the announcement that he should see him again at Philippi; the leave-taking of Brutus and Cassius, with the conversation on the Stoic doctrine of suicide between them; the double issue of the battle; the disastrous mistakes; the death of Cassius by the sword which had slain Cæsar; the ineffectual appeal of Brutus to three of his followers to kill him, a fourth at length consenting: all this, with minor details innumerable, has been borrowed by Shakespeare from the Lives of Cæsar, of Brutus, and of Mark Antony.' And yet, as Archbishop Trench went on to say, Shakespeare does not abdicate his royal pre-eminence. The only character that he invents is the boy Lucius, who becomes the occasion for exhibiting the tenderness of his master, Brutus; but the material is re-arranged, the narrative is recast for dramatic purposes, the sequence of events is concentrated, and each of the leading dramatic personages is in some degree recreated. |