HARVARD COLLEGE LIBRARY Mrs. fromb King" Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1879, by HENRY N. HUDSON, in the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington. 813.8 The Athenæum Press INTRODUCTION. JULIUS History of the Play. CÆSAR was first printed in the folio of 1623. None of the plays in that inestimable volume have reached us with the text in a sounder and clearer state; there being few passages that give an editor any trouble, none that are very troublesome. The Rev. Mr. Fleay, in his Shakespeare Manual, 1876, argues somewhat strenuously to the point that "this play, as we have it, is an abridgment of Shakespeare's play, made by Ben Jonson." In support of his theory he alleges, and truly, that Jonson did in fact exercise his hand more or less in altering and refitting other men's plays. He also points out the fact, for such it is, — that the number of short lines or broken verses in Julius Cæsar is uncommonly large. And he cites several words and phrases, such as "quality and kind," ‚""bear me hard," "chew upon this," &c., which do not occur elsewhere in Shakespeare; while the same words and phrases, or something very like them, are met with in Jonson's plays. Still more to the purpose, he adduces a passage in Act iii., scene 1, which is evidently referred to in Jonson's Discoveries, 1637, and which, in all probability, as I think, has been altered, perhaps by Jonson's hand, from what Shakespeare wrote. As the question is discussed 3 |