Bru. But here comes Antony.- Welcome, Mark Antony.
Ant. O, mighty Cæsar! dost thou lie so low?

Are all thy conquests, glories, triumphs, spoils,
Shrunk to this little measure? Fare thee well.

ACT iii. Sc. 1.

INTRODUCTION

ΤΟ

THE TRAGEDY OF JULIUS CÆSAR.

THE TRAGEDY OF JULIUS CESAR was printed with remarkable clearness and accuracy, the acts being regularly marked, but not the scenes, in the folio of 1623, where it stands the sixth in the division of Tragedies. Perhaps no play in the volume has fewer troublesome readings, or presents less occasion for editorial ingenuity in ascertaining the text; for which cause it has suffered comparatively little from the mendings and tamperings of modern editors. Notwithstanding, some accidental omissions and some needless changes have been made, which will be found duly noticed as they occur, in our foot-notes.

the

We have no clear authority towards fixing the date of the composition. External evidence there is none whatever, on which any great reliance can be placed for this purpose. Malone assigned year 1607 as the probable time of the writing; his only ground for doing so being the supposition that it was written after the appearance of a tragedy on the same subject by Lord Sterline; which tragedy he supposed to have been first published in 1607. But, in the first place, there is no reason for inferring the date of either of these tragedies from that of the other; they have nothing in common but what would naturally result from using a common authority; while at the same time the subject had been too often treated dramatically to warrant the argument of either play having been suggested by the other in the second place, Lord Sterline's tragedy is now known to have been published as early as 1604.

Mr. Collier thinks there is good ground for believing that the play in hand was acted before 1603. We shall set forth his argument as succinctly as possible. In the last speech but one of the play, Antony speaks of Brutus thus:

"His life was gentle; and the elements

So mix'd in him, that Nature might stand up,
And say to all the world, This was a man!'

In Drayton's Barons' Wars, as published in 1603, occurs the following stanza, speaking of Mortimer :

"Such one he was, of him we boldly say,

In whose rich soul all sovereign powers did suit,

In whom in peace the elements all lay

So mix'd, as none could sovereignty impute;

As all did govern, yet all did obey:

His lively temper was so absolute,

That 't seem'd, when Heaven his model first began,

In him it show'd perfection in a man."

Mr. Collier thinks Italic type is hardly wanted to prove that one poet borrowed not only the thought but the very words of the other. The question is, who was the borrower? The Barons' Wars first

appeared in 1596; but what is said of Mortimer in that edition bears no likeness whatsoever to the speech of Antony. Drayton afterwards recast the whole poem, and put forth an edition in 1603, containing the stanza quoted above. Mr. Collier's argument is, that Drayton, having before that date seen the play in manuscript or heard it at the theatre, caught and copied the idea and words of Shakespeare, without being conscious of it; and hence the resemblance in question. And he thinks this conclusion is further strengthened by the fact, that in the later editions of the poem, in 1605, 1608, 1610, and 1613, the stanza remained the same as in that of 1603; while in that of 1619, after Shakespeare's death and before the tragedy was published, the resemblance was made still closer, thus:

"He was a man, then, boldly dare to say,

In whose rich soul the virtues well did suit,
In whom so mix'd the elements did lay,
That none to one could sovereignty impute;
As all did govern, so did all obey:
He of a temper was so absolute,

As that it seem'd, when Nature him began,
She meant to show all that might be in man."

We give this argument for what it is worth, and hope it has lost none of its proper force in our statement. Nevertheless, we have to own that we can make nothing out of it for the purpose. Nay, of the two, we should rather conclude from the premises here furnished, that the indebtedness, if there be any, lies the other way. For we believe, not only that Shakespeare was in fact the greatest thief of mental treasure in his time, but that he could therefore all the better afford to borrow from others, forasmuch as he had so much more of his own than any body else, and forasmuch as his own was so much better than anybody's else. And indeed we hold it to be one of his highest merits, that his genius sucked in whatever of good there was in the intellectual atmosphere where it moved, and then reproduced it in just the right