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Julius CaesarJohn Dover Wilsons New Shakespeare, published between 1921 and 1966, became the classic Cambridge edition of Shakespeares plays and poems until the 1980s. The series, long since out-of-print, is now reissued. Each work is available both individually and as part of a set, and each contains a lengthy and lively introduction, main text, and substantial notes and glossary printed at the back. The edition, which began with The Tempest and ended with The Sonnets, put into practice the techniques and theories that had evolved under the New Bibliography. Remarkably by todays standards, although it took the best part of half a century to produce, the New Shakespeare involved only a small band of editors besides Dover Wilson himself. As the volumes took shape, many of Dover Wilsons textual methods acquired general acceptance and became an established part of later editorial practice, for example in the Arden and New Cambridge Shakespeares. The reissue of this series in the Cambridge Library Collection complements the other historic editions also now made available.

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Julius CaesarThe Cambridge Dover Wilson Shakespeare

Volume 15

William Shakespeare Edited by John D over Wilson

CAmBRiD gE UNiVERSiT y PRESS

Cambridge New york melbourne madrid Cape Town Singapore So Paolo Delhi

Published in the United States of America by Cambridge University Press, New york

www.cambridge.orginformation on this title: www.cambridge.org/9781108005876

in this compilation Cambridge University Press 2009

This edition first published 1949This digitally printed version 2009

iSBN 978-1-108-00587-6

This book reproduces the text of the original edition. The content and language reflect the beliefs, practices and terminology of their time, and have not been updated.

THE WORKS OF SHAKESPEAREEDITED FOR THE SYNDICS OF THECAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS

BY

JOHN DOVER WILSON

JULIUS CJESAR

JULIUS CAESAR

CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS

CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESSCambridge, New York, Melbourne, Madrid, Cape Town, Singapore,

Sao Paulo, Delhi

Cambridge University PressThe Edinburgh Building, Cambridge CB2 8RU, UK

Published in the United States of America byCambridge University Press, New York

www.cambridge.orgInformation on this title: www.cambridge.org/9780521094825

Cambridge University Press 1949, 2008

This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exceptionand to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements,no reproduction of any part may take place without the written

permission of Cambridge University Press.

First published 1949Reprinted 1956, 1964

First paperback edition 1968Reprinted 1970, 1971, 1974

Re-issued in this digitally printed version 2009

A catalogue record for this publication is available from the British Library

ISBN 978-0-521-07539-8 hardbackISBN 978-0-521-09482-5 paperback

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION FAGE vii

THE STAGE-HISTORY OF JULIUS CJESAR xxxiv

TO THE READER xlvii

THE TEXT OF JULIUS CJESAR iTHE COPY FOR JULIUS CJESAR, 1623 92NOTES 98GLOSSARY 203

Places where slight editorial changes or additionsintroduce variants Jrom the Jirst edition are, whenpossible, marked by a date [1955] in square brackets.

ToPERCY SIMPSON

vii

INTRODUCTIONPopular in English schools and colleges on account

of its simple style and classical theme, Julius Ccesarhasprobably appeared in a larger number of editions thanany other of Shakespeare's plays, though, as it happens,the most interesting edition of all was prepared forIndian university students and is little known in thiscountry.1 The name of Sir Mark Hunter, a distin-guished Indian Civil Servant who was also a goodElizabethan student, stands on the title-page, while heconfesses in a preface that he is much indebted toDr Percy Simpson 'for many scholarly notes, not allof which, are expressly acknowledged'. In fact, DrSimpson, who a year earlier had succeeded, as willpresently appear, in establishing the true date of theplay for the first time, virtually acted as his assistanteditor; and I have frequently found myself treading inhis steps, as I traced my own path through the play.For which reason, and also because there is specialfitness in associating this most Roman of Shakespeare'sRoman plays with the veteran scholar who has devotedhalf a lifetime to the most Roman of Shakespeare'sfriends and rivals, admiration has combined withfriendship to inspire the dedication on the oppositepage.

1 The Tragedy of Julius Casar, ed. by Mark Hunter,

1900 ('College Classics', Madras: Srinivasa, Varadachariand Co.). It contains, for example, a valuable essay on'Double Time' in Julius Casar (Introduction, pp. cviii-cxxi), a matter which pressure of space has obliged me toignore below.

viii JULIUS CMSAK

I . Date and Contemporary AllusionShakespeare's Julius Cessar was first produced in

the autumn of 1599. The evidence is twofold. In 1601John Weever, who had already in 1599 addressed arespectful epigram to 'Honie-tong'd Shakespeare',published a poem called The Mirror of Martyrs, con-taining the following lines which clearly refer to theForum scene:1

The manie-headed multitude were drawneBy Brutus speach, that Cassar was ambitious,When eloquent Mark Antonie had showneHis vertues, who but Brutus then was vicious?

First detected by Halliwell-Phillipps,8 the allusion wastaken as dating the play 1600 or 1601 until Dr PercySimpson pointed to a passage in the Dedication whichstates that the poem 'some two yeares agoe was madefit for the Print', and implies therefore that Weevermust have seen a performance in 1599. Dr Simpsonpublished his discovery in 189953 and in the same yeara second piece of evidence came to light, confirming thedate 1599 and narrowing it down to the autumn. Thetravel-book of a Swiss gentleman, Thomas Platter,covering the years 1595 to 1600, and including a visitto England in 1599, was found at Basle and printedin Angliat1 Platter witnessed two plays in London, one

x For the two references v. Chambers, William Shake'

speare: Facts and Problems, II, 199.* V. Halliwell-Phillipps, Introduction to Julius Casar in

Works of Shakespeare (1853-65). The date 1600-1 was stillaccepted by MacCallum in 1910, Furness in 1913, andSidney Lee in 1916 {Life of Shakespeare, new and enlargededition, pp. 333-4).

3 Notes and Queries, 11 Feb. 1899 (9th series, III, 105).4 G. Binz, Anglia, xxir, 456-64.

I N T R O D U C T I O N ixof them evidently Shakespeare's Julius Ceesar, whichhe refers to as follows:

After lunch on 21 September, round about 2 o'clock, Iwent with my companions across the water, and in thestraw-thatched house saw the tragedy of the first emperor,Julius Caesar, excellently performed by some fifteen persons.At the end of the play, according to custom, they dancedwith much grace and in wonderful combination, two cladin men's clothes and two in women's.1

Like Polonius the worthy Switzer seems to have foundthe jig more interesting than the tragedy, perhapsbecause he could not follow English very easily. Buta play on Julius Caesar in 1599 can only have beenShakespeare's,2 while thec straw-thatched' Globe, whichhis company began building in January or February1599 and took some seven months to complete, cannothave been ready for regular performances much beforethe autumn, so that 'Julius Ceesar will have been oneof the first plays to be seen there. It is even possiblethat Shakespeare wrote it expressly for the opening.His references in the Prologue of Henry V to thecramped conditions of'this cockpit' and 'this woodenO' , often taken as pointing to the Globe, would havebeen an oddly inauspicious welcome to patrons attendingthe fine new house, of which he was no doubt asproud as his fellows. Besides, Henry V, as I have

1 I translate from the German text as printed in Chambers,

Elizabethan Stage, II, 364-5. The words 'in the straw-thatched house* ('in dem streiiwinen Dachhaus', whichChambers strangely renders 'in the strewn roof house')evidently refer to the shining straw of the new Globe roof,easily picked out across the river from the older thatchedroofs of other buildings on Bankside.

* For further evidence see Chambers, William ShahspearetFacts and Problems, I, 397.

x J U L I U S CffiSAR

shown,1 was probably several months too early for theGlobe. In any case, Julius C

I N T R O D U C T I O N xi

have been undertaken by his unlearned friend, and havescored a success, was a standing offence in Jonson's eyes.He was still girding at it in 1626, and his animosity haseven left traces in the Folio text.1

II. Style and CharactersYet, whether Jonson liked it or not, Shakespeare's

first dramatic essay on a classical theme has all the pro-portion, simplicity and restraint which are characteristicof classical art. Not that there is anything of neo-classicrigidity about it; still less does its success depend onsheer virtuosity, as does the intricate mechanism ofBen Jonson's plots. Indeed, mechanism is the last thingit suggests. 'The action moves forward with a variedrhythm, upon an ebb and flow of minor event that ismost lifelike. The whole play is alive.. .in every line.'*Neither sub-plot nor digression distracts the mind fromthe central theme.3 The lack of a clown may be due toKempe's defection from the company early in 1599;but in any case the absence of all comic matteritcontains not a single note of bawdy, a rare thing inShakespeareis entirely in keeping with the tone ofthis sober, streamlined drama.

As for style, a sparing use of metaphor and word-play,coupled with a remarkable economy and directness ofspeech by all the characters, secures the 'dignified andunadorned simplicitya Roman simplicity, perhaps',which, as Bradley says, and Sir Edmund Chambers

1 V.note on 3.1.47-8,' Note on the Copy', pp. 93-4, and

an article on 'Ben Jonson and Julius Casar* in ShakespeareSurvey, II (1949).

* Granville-Barker, Prefaces to Shakespeare, 1st series,p. 90.

3 On the alleged irrelevance of the quarrel-scene v. below, rv, pp. xix-xx.

xii J U L I U S CJESAR

agrees, is the distinguishing feature of the play.1 Some,indeed, detect a certain lack of ease. Dr Johnsonremarks that Shakespeare's 'adherence to the real story,and to Roman manners, seems to have impeded thenatural vigour of his genius'. And Mr Van Doren,who is always worth hearing on questions of style, afternoting the 'perfection of form', adds:

But...the perfection is of that sort that limits ratherthan releases poetry. . . . I ts persons all have something ofthe statue in them, for they express their author's idea ofantiquity rather than his knowledge of life. They have the.clarity and simplicity of worked marble, and are the easiestof Shakespeare's people to understand, if one.. .is innocentof the distinction between men and public men. Thecharacters of Julius Casar are public men... .But Shake-speare's deepest interest is in the private man.*He also notes that all the characters 'tend to talk alike*,'in speeches that have tangible outlines like plasticobjects', with phrasing 'invariably flawless from theoral point of view* and full 'of the- music of mono-syllables', of 'which no play of Shakespeare has somany, so superbly used'. Suggestive and true enoughup to a point, it is after all true in some degree of everyplay by the mature Shakespeare, since each has its ownspecial atmosphere, creating a distinctive style to whichthe characters must conform.3

And the critic quite misses the mark when he passesfrom style to character. Public affairs are, of course,

1 Shakespearean Tragedy, by A. C. Bradley, p. 85 n.,

and William Shakespearet Facts and Problems, by E. K.Chambers, 1, 399.

* Mark Van Doren, Shakespeare, pp. 180-1.3 This similarity of speech is not to be confused with the

monotony of the speeches by the Greeks in Troths, whichis designed to convey an impression of commonplacestupidity.

I N T R O D U C T I O N xiiithe chief preoccupation of all the persons in the play;what is at stake is the future of Rome (and of the world),not as in later tragedies, the hero's soul (and our own).But that they are still 'private' men is the secret of theplay's success. Julius Casar is the greatest of politicalplays, not by reason of its political theme, nor even ofits shapely form and transparent style, but because, bymaking its public men convincingly private persons also,it brought the affairs and men of Rome in 44 B.C. hometo the business and bosoms of the Elizabethans ofLondon in A.D. I 599and of men in all countries andgenerations since. This is in fact the main reason whythe unscholarly Julius C

xiv J U L I U S CiESAR

North's always workmanlike and often vivid translationof Jacques Amyot's French translation of the Greek, he'acquired more essential history.. .than most menwould from the whole British Museum'.1 Plutarchand Seneca were the predominant stars in the classicalsky of late sixteenth century Europe. Montaigne con-fesses he had not seriously studied anything solid exceptthe writings of these two,3 and almost every page ofthe Essaies bears witness to the pre-eminent influenceof Plutarch. Of Amyot's version he speaks in the lan-guage of religious devotion: 'it is our breviary', withoutwhich, he says, unlearned folk like himself would havebeen lost souls.3 Precisely similar tribute is paid byHenri Quatre, who confesses that Plutarch (again readonly in Amyot) 'has been like my conscience, whisperingin my ear good deeds and admirable principles both formy private life, and for the conduct of affairs'.* Thelast words stress a point then taken for granted, thoughnow easily overlooked: the book's political significance,its value for rulers. Amyot in his Preface declares,'history is the schoolmistress of princes', while North'stitle emphasizes the fact that Plutarch's Lives are, notof ordinary, but of 'noble Grecians and Romans'. Ina word the book was 'a mirror for magistrates'.

Yet this was really subsidiary to a larger aim, that ofdisplaying 'the virtues and vices' of the makers ofhistory in the past for the instruction of makers of historyin the present. And this surely was the primary purposeof Shakespeare also; or if not, at any rate what heachieved. The history of England is reflected in hisEnglish history plays from a quite definite point of

1 T. S. Eliot, Selected Essays, p. 17.

* V. Essaies, I, 25. 3 Essaies, II, 4.4 Letter to his wife, quoted by MacCallum (S&akespeare's

Roman Plays, p . 127)} translation mine.

I N T R O D U C T I O N xrview.1 And when he turned from English, to Romanhistory he did not lay aside his own mirror. On thecontrary, equipped with an understanding and aware-ness learnt from ten years' brooding on the provincialscene of England before the rise of the Tudor monarchy,and surveying, as he now did from the shoulders ofPlutarch, a scene wider, more central, and of moreabiding interest, that of Rome on the eve of becomingan empire, he produced in Julius Casar what is per-haps the most brilliant and most penetrating artisticreflection of political realities in the literature of theworld.

Yet art is not life; still less can the moralist be ex-pected to preserve a true historical perspective. MoralPlutarch was often compelled to pass lightly overmatters of great historical importance; for example,Caesar's nine years' campaigns in Gaul. And his six-teenth-century translators, anxious to attract as manyreaders as possible to this great storehouse of humanwisdom, carried on the process; they set vigour andpoint above verbal accuracy, and the illusion of actualitybefore a strict adherence to the facts as they receivedthem. Thus, to a large extent without realizing it, theytransposed the whole into the key of their own time.Before they swam into Shakespeare's ken in the pagesof North, 'the noble Grecians and Romans' had puton the doublet and hose of French and English gentle-men,3 and Rome had become a neo-classic 'common-wealth'. Finally, under pressure of contemporary

1 Explained in my Introduction to Richard II. This does

not mean that he was a political propagandist, as recentwriters on the history plays seem to imply. Separate Burke'swisdom from Burke's party politics, and you find Shake-speare with the former, though he is, of course, more ofa poet.

a See note on i . z. 266,

xvi JULIUS CiESAR

political assumptions unconsciously held, and subjectto the necessity of appealing to prentice-boy and Inns-of-Court student alike, Shakespeare was himself driven,to assign motives impossible to ancient Romans,1 and tocreate characters Plutarch would hardly have recognized.

What then did Shakespeare take from Plutarch,and how did he remould it? Archbishop Trench re-presented the relation as one of absolute dependence,and found in the incidents of Julius Ceesar 'almostnothing which he does not owe to Plutarch'.* Sub-sequent writers (e.g. Aldis Wright, Gollancz, and evenHerford)3 modified this verdict but slightly, if at all,till we come to MacCallum,4 who gives a wholechapter to 'Shakespeare's transmutation of his material'without, however, carrying us very far. Yet thetruth is quite simple. Shakespeare used Plutarchexactly as he had used Holinshed. Apart, that is, fromtwo compelling desiresthe dramatist's to make as gooda stage-play as possible, and the poet's to present historyin a form judged at once to be substantially accurate*and ideally true6 by the judicious in his audiencehefelt free to manipulate his source at pleasure, altering

1 Cf. Gustave Lanson, Histoire de la Literature Franfaise

(ed. 1909), p . 273.* Plutarch, by R. C. Trench (1873), p . 66.3 v. Introd. Clarendon ed., pp. xliii-xlv; Temple Shake-

speare. Preface to Julius Casar; Eversley Shakespeare^vol. viii, Introd., p. 9.

4 Shakespeare's Roman Plays, by M . W. MacCallum(1910), pp. 187-211.

5 I.e. in general accord with what they remembered ofSuetonius and Plutarch.

6 Cf. Sidney's Apology for Poetry on the relation between

History and Poetry, e.g. 'The Poet nameth Cyrus orAeneas no other way than to show what men of theirfames, fortunes and estates should do.'

INTRODUCTION xvii

or adding as his purposes required. He does, indeed,seem to follow Plutarch more closely; but only becausePlutarch's material was already rough-hewn to his hand,while that of the English compiler resembles nothing somuch as haphazard heaps of rude boulders accumulatedat the confluence of glaciers. North's prose, too, was atonce more vivid and of finer quality than Holinshed's.Thus from time to time in Julius Casar we come uponpatches of almost direct transference, like this oft-quoted parallel in the speech of Lucilius to Antony:

Plutarch's Life of Brutus1I dare assure thee that no enemy hath taken nor shall

take Marcus Brutus alive, and I beseech-God keep him fromthat fortune: for wheresoever he be found, alive or dead,he will be found like himself.

Julius Ceesar, 5.4. 21-5I dare assure thee that no enemyShall ever take alive the noble Brutus:The gods defend him from so great a shame!When you do find him, or alive or dead,He will be found like Brutus, like himself.

Yet that such occasional lifting in no way proves absolutedependence a rapid survey of the first two scenes willshow. Shakespeare's 1. 1 is a brilliant overture intro-ducing the fundamental fact of the situation: the ficklepopulace, with its love of a strong man, be he Pompeyor Caesar. It combines a couple of hints taken fromseparate incidents in Plutarch, and uses them to conveya totally new impression. In detail, too, the differencesare many. In Plutarch the clash of tribunes and crowdtakes place after, not before, the Lupercalia; the tribunesare adherents of Brutus, not Pompey; the crowds cometo rejoice at the insult to Cssar's images, not at his

1 Shakespeare's Plutarch, ed. by W. W. Skeat, p. 149.

xviii JULIUS CiESAR

triumph; while finally the images are adorned withdiadems for the proposed coronation, not, as in Shake-speare, with trophies for the triumph. In i . aShakespeare seems to take fewer liberties than in 1.1.The 'facts' of the Soothsayer, the Lupercalia, andAntony's offer of the crown are much the same inboth accounts; Cassius's conversation with Brutus isclosely related to a paragraph in Plutarch's Brutusheaded 'Cassius incenseth Brutus against Cassar'; andCaesar's comments upon the two men are similarlyinspired by a passage in the Life of Ceesar} Yet howdifferent is the presentation! Shakespeare merely re-ports the 'holy chase' and the offer of the crown. Itwas impracticable to represent the former in the theatre,and to show the latter would have blunted the edge ofAntony's Forum speech. But the reporting serves toilluminate characterthat of Caesar, Brutus and Cassiusin the main, but giving glimpses also of Antony,Calphurnia, Cicero, and above all Casca. The procession,gay with music on the way to the ceremony, but return-ing 'like a chidden train', is Shakespeare's invention;Plutarch mentions none. So, too, is the fine stroke bywhich the offer of the crown is synchronized with the talkbetween Brutus and Cassius, so that Cassius's hints ofdeath to the tyrant are punctuated by the crowd's shoutssymbolizing death to liberty. Thus, while the material forthe framework of the scene comes in the main fromPlutarch, the frame itself is planned and fitted togetherby Shakespeare, after first picking and shaping his stoneswith the trained eye of a master-builder.

So with the rest of the play. Everywhere we findthe stage craftsman and dramatic poet at work, selectingand rejecting, sometimes splicing together incidents noteven remotely connected in the original, sometimes

* V. head-note (iv) to i. a.

I N T R O D U C T I O N xix

pouncing on a chance phrase, or mistranslation by Northwhich, transfigured in imagination, takes life andblossoms out as something rich and strange.1 And allthis is made subject to the larger design of the totalcomposition. Perhaps the best single illustration ofShakespeare's attitude towards his source is the speechesin the Forum. 'He read in Plutarch', writes a modernclassical scholar in a book just to hand,*that Antony was a distinguished orator in the Asiatic, andBrutus in the Attic, style. These remarks are made quiteby the way, except that Plutarch does dwell a little uponthe style of Brutus and makes a few quotations from hisletters which exhibit his bare, thin, excessively antitheticmanner. Now in Julius Casar we have the great funeraloration of Antony, entirely the work of Shakespeare, for itis not in Plutarch:3 and if it is hardly so florid as a speech inthe Asiatic style might be expected to be, it sufficientlydevelops all the resources of rhetoric. Contrast the speechof Brutus, which is also entirely the work of Shakespeare.It is in prose, and the imitation of the Attic style as Romanorators practised it is so perfect that unless we knew it wasShakespeare's, we might suppose it was a translation.

To say with Trench4 that Shakespeare 'resigns him-self into the hands' of Plutarch is to talk of the claycontrolling the potter.

IV. Ccesar and CcesarismTwo criticisms have been directed against the struc-

ture of the play. First, the Quarrel scene is alleged byBradley to be a mere 'episode, the removal of whichwould not affect the actual sequence of events', and

1 See notes 2.1.173-4; 3* i 106-115 3.2.19055.1.100-7.

8 J. A. K. Thomson, The Classical Background of English

Literature (1948), p . 185.3 But v. p. 159 for hints.* Op. cit. p . 66.

xx JULIUS CMSAR

therefore dramatically indefensible.1 It might be re-plied, and Bradley would hardly deny, that it increasesour knowledge of and love for both Brutus and Cassius,and so by incalculably deepening our pity for themraises the play to the heights of tragedy. Yet the realanswer is different, viz. that the main issue of the play isnot the conspirators' fate but the future of Rome, ofliberty, of the human race, to which their fate isincidental. Though Brutus is a tragic hero whom wepity as a man, the heart of his tragedy is the defeat ofhis cause. His death is but a symbol of a greaterdisaster, the death of liberty. And the defeat is broughtabout, not at Philippi, but through the corruption andinstability of human nature.

Viewed in this wider perspective, the Quarrel sceneis discovered to possess a more than personal meaning.The cause of the quarrel is a fellow, 'condemned andnoted' by Brutus, for whom Cassius had interceded.Pella's taking of bribes, to Cassius a trivial offence, is toBrutus a sin against Justice itself, the very sin for whichCaesar had been slain; and here was his friend, andchief comrade as 'purger' of the state, countenancingcorruption, and even, it was commonly reported, sellingand marring offices himself! In the end anger is drownedin pledges of reconciliation, and its occasion is blottedfrom the mind of Brutus by thoughts and talk of Portia.But toe do not, or should not, forget. For the attitudeof Cassius means that the cause is utterly lost; nobodyexcept Brutus believes in it or truly understands it. AndShakespeare makes his point by a studied rearrangementof the 'facts' in Plutarch.* The Quarrel scene thereforeis one of the pillars of the dramatic structure, since itreinforces our growing sense of the inevitability ofCsesarism.

1 Op. cit. p. 60. a See pp. 171-2.

I N T R O D U C T I O N xxi

We shall grasp this more fully by examining thesecond point of criticismthe play's supposed lack ofunity, a criticism which has actually given rise to theoriesof two earlier separate dramas, culminating respectivelyin the death of Caesar, and in the defeat and death ofBrutus.1 But more wrong-headed than any such theoryis the impression of a break in continuity, expressed, forexample, by Chambers* even as he rebuts the notion ofa double origin:

Julius Casar has two peaks, one in the Capitol and theother at Philippi, and the psychological interest is at leastas much in Brutus as in Caesar. The effect of a double themeis thereby given.

Taken as it stands this ignores the 'idea' of the play,misses the point of the title, and suggests a certainbalance of interest in the characters of Caesar andBrutus which is, I think, entirely misleading. And thesemisunderstandings are in fact all one: a misunder-standing of the impression which Shakespeare intendedthe figure of his Julius to convey, an impression which itindubitably did convey to the spectators of his theatre.

Written in our day the play might have been calledCasar and Casarism\ but abstract words were notthen in vogue, and this particular one was not inventedtill 18 5 7.3 Yet Shakespeare's title was adequate enoughin view of what the name of Julius stood for in 150.9.4For the play's theme is the single one, Liberty versus

x See The Shakespeare Canon, vol. I (1922), by J. M.

Robertson, who supposes that two plays by Marlowe, sue- cessively revised first by Drayton and others, and then byShakespeare, were made into our single play by Jonson!

a William Shakespeare, I, 399.

3 V. O.E.D. 'Cassarism', which attributes it to the Ameri-

can writer, Orestes A. Brownson [1955].* See MacCallum, op. cit. p. 232.

J.C.-2

xxii J U L I U S CffiSAR

Tyranny, which implies on the one hand a diagnosis ofthe situation confirmed by modern historians, viz. thenecessity of absolutism for the Rome of Cicero; andon the other a sense of the greatness of Rome and theEmpire, never more powerfully realized than inShakespeare's day. That greatness is symbolized byone aspect of the character of Shakespeare's Caesar, whostands not only for the man who died in March 44 B.C.,but also for the semi-mythical Colossus who 'dothbestride the narrow world' both of Cassius and of Shakes-peare, and whose spirit still, from time to time, as weknow to our cost, 'walks abroad' and 'turns our swordsIn our own proper entrails'.1 When Brutus exclaims

We all stand up against the spirit of Caesar,he sums up the play in one line. For the spirit of Caesar,which was the destiny of Rome, is the fate against whichBrutus struggles in vain. And his failure to do so is histragedy (and ours), inasmuch as Caesarism is a secularthreat to the human spirit, and the living 'Julius', asShakespeare shows him, is the mouthpiece of thatthreat. Some2 think Shakespeare's Caesar adumbratesMommsen's, a being 'of mighty creative power a n d . . .most penetrating judgment',3 a historical superman;Shaw, on the other hand, complains that Shakespearewas incapable of rising to Mommsen's conception.4 ButShakespeare, who had read neither Mommsen norNietzsche, had before him a different kind of mythaltogether, the classico-medieval image, seen through

1 Cf. the 'double plane of vision' in Richard II; see my

Introduction to that play, p. xxxvii.* E.g. E. K. Chambers in Shakespeare; a Survey, pp. 146-

54-3 History of Rome, by T. Mommsen (Engl. trans. 1901)

v, 3*3-4 Three Plays for Puritans (1901), p . xxix. Cf. Dramatic

Opinions (1898), n , 398.

I N T R O D U C T I O N xxiii

renaissance eyes, of an almost supernatural conquerorwho out of lust for power ruined the Roman republic.In other words the paradox of Shakespeare's Caesar isa paradox of renaissance thought, which combined awell-nigh religious awe for Rome and Csesar withsympathy for Brutus and his fellows as Rome's liberatorsfrom a tyrant. Dante in thrusting the liberators into hislowest hell1 is a Ghibelline and imperialist exception;all republicans and most literary and artistic circles inItaly honoured Brutus as a saint.* As for French andEnglish opinion, let Montaigne speak. Having praisedCaesar's greatness, 'the wonderful parts wherewith hewas indued', his sobriety, his gentleness, his clemency,and 'the incomparable grandeur' of his soul, he con-tinues in this wise:

But all those noble characteristics were stifled in thisfurious passion of ambition by which he allowed himselfso far to be controlled that it might be called the very helmand rudder of all his actions....He was so drunk withvanity that in the presence of his fellow-citizens he dared... tosay that his decisions should thenceforth serve as laws and. . .suffered himself to be worshipped as a god in person.To conclude, it was this vice alone, in my opinion, thatdestroyed the finest and richest character that ever was, andhas rendered his memory abhorrent to all men of good will,inasmuch as he sought his own glory in the ruin of hiscountry and in the destruction of the mightiest and mostflourishing commonwealth that the world will ever see.3

Behind this judgement lie Suetonius's Lives^ of theCasars and Lucan's PAarsalia, two favourite books in

1 Inferno, xxxiv, 61-7.

3 Burckhardt, Renaissance in Italy (Engl. trans. 1904),

pp. 59-60. MacCallum's dictum (pp. cit. p. 27)'At theRenaissance the characteristic feeling was enthusiasm forCaesar and his assassin alike'seems to me entirelywrong.

3 Florio's Montaigne, n, ch. 33 (my own translation).

xxiv J U L I U S CiESARthe medieval world and after.1 Lucan burns with hatredfor tyranny in general, and for Caesar, destroyer of theRepublic, in particular.* Shakespeare pretty certainlyknew Pharsalia, Book i, from Marlowe's verse transla-tion,3 if not in the original, and may have knownSuetonius too. At any rate, he adoptsas one wouldexpectthe traditional renaissance view derived fromthem. I do not in fact know any sixteenth- or seventeenth-century play which did not.4 Caesar is generally shownas mighty, awe-inspiring, semi-divine; but never heldup for admiration. This is true both of popular dramaand learned. Chapman's Ccesar and Pompey andJonson's Sejanus alike embody this view. Perhaps,indeed, contemporary opinion on the matter is bestexpressed in the speech of Arruntius, a character in thelatter play, whom Herford describes as 'the voice andexponent of the irrepressible critic and censor in Jonsonhimself'.5 Contrasting the immunity of Tiberius withthe fate of the tyrant Julius Csesar, Arruntius asks:

Where is now the soulOf god-like Cato? he that durst be goodWhen Caesar durst be evil: and had powerAs not to live his slave, to die his master?Or where the constant Brutus that (being proofAgainst all charm of benefits) did strikeSo brave a blow into the monster's heart,That sought unkindly to captive his country?

and concludes:Brave Cassius was the last of all that race.6

1 Sa.ndys,Hist.of Class. Scholarship, 1903, pp. 196 and 617.

* See esp. Pharsalia, I, 146-57. 'Acer et indomitus' itbegins.

3 See note on 2. 2. 17-2$.4 Addison's Cato shows it still very much alive in 1713.5 Ben Jonson, ed. Herford and Simpson, IX, 13.6 Ibid. IV, p . 358} Sejanus, Act 1,11. 89-104.

I N T R O D U C T I O N xxv

Jonson might laugh at this or that point in Shakespeare'splay; he had, and could have, nothing to urge againsthis friend's delineation of the principal characters.

A Roman Tamburlaine of illimitable ambition andruthless irresistible genius; a monstrous tyrant whodestroyed his country and ruined 'the mightiest and mostflourishing commonwealth that the world will ever see'one feature remained to add before the sixteenthcentury stage-figure of the great dictator was complete,that of a braggart, of the 'thrasonical Cassar', to whomShakespeare refers more than once.1 This, as Ayres hasshown, was mainly due to the subjection of renaissancetragedy to Seneca. The first known European play onCsesar is a Latin play by Muretus (Muret) in 1544,which, following lie lines of Seneca's Hercules Oefaeus,presents (as Seneca does) the apotheosis of a worldconqueror, who boasts of his mighty deeds in the styleof Hercules.3 Next, in 1559, Muret's disciple GreVinproduced a vernacular Cisar, and the hero of thisis likewise a braggart. Still more clearly related toShakespeare was Gamier's Cornilie in 1574. Hostilethroughout to the tyrant Csesar,3 and claiming sympathyfor Pompey, it provides a Cassius who is an 'exactprototype', as Dr Boas claims,* of the Cassius of ourplay, and in its dialogue between Cassius and Brutusa close parallel with that in the second scene of Julius

1 See Cymb. 3. 1. 23; As You Like It, 5. 2. 30$ and also

2 Henry IF, 4. 3. 41.* See H. M. Ayres, P.M.L.A. (1910), xxy, 183-227. A

valuable article to which all subsequent critics of JuliusCtssar are much indebted.

3 It was actually used as a republican manifesto whenHenri Qyatre was assassinated j see; MacCallum, op. cit.p. 27, n. 1.

Works ofKyd, ed. F. S. Boas, p. lxxxiii. Cf. below,note on 1. 3. 90.

xxvi J U L I U S CiESAR

Casar} Shakespeare must have known Cornilie fromKyd's translation (1595), and his debt to it seems in-dubitable. Gamier gives Caesar a long bombastic speechin the vein of Seneca's Hercules, and constantly makeshim speak of himself pompously in the third person.On the other hand, following Plutarch closely as itdoes, his portrait of the man is the most sympatheticof this period.

Only one pre-Shakespearian English play on theCaesar theme has survived, though performances of whatseem to have been four or five others are recorded.*The anonymous Ceesar's Revenge, a poor play, writtenin imitation of Marlowe and Kyd at some date, it wouldseem, between 1592 and 1596, has one striking linkwith Shakespeare's play: the 'evil spirit', as Plutarchmerely calls it, which appears to Brutus before Philippiis identified as Caesar's ghost, and like Andrea's in theSpanish Tragedy, becomes the symbol and mouthpieceof the revenge.3 We may be sure then that the ghostreached Shakespeare from an earlier English tradition.Again the cry which this unknown dramatist gives hisdying Caesar

What, Brutus too! Nay, nay, then let me die;Nothing wounds deeper than ingratitude,

comes very close both to 'Et tu, Brute',4 and to Antony'sIngratitude, more strong than traitor's arms,Quite vanquished him.

1 V. Bernage, tudesur Gamier, 1880 (cited MacCallum,

p. 60).* See Chambers, Elizabethan Stage, ir, i

I N T R O D U C T I O N

On the whole, however, his Caesar, modelled on.Tamburlaine and 'the conquering Hercules'1 of tradi-tion, is less like Shakespeare's than is Garnier's.

In short, Shakespeare was following both establisheddramatic tradition and the historical scholarship of hisage when he gave his Caesar that 'strut', that habit ofself-deification which annoys many modern readers.We may also agree with Kittredge that at the end ofhis career Caesar 'has become the victim of infatuation'and 'lost that sense of values which alone could main-tain him in equilibrium', and that Shakespeare legi-timately made the most of this to produce the effect ofnemesis. Never was art] more insensate or moremagnificently expressed than in this mortal aspiring todivine honours, and boasting, as he stalks blindly tohis doom,

Caesar shall forth; the things that threatened meNe'er looked but on my back; when they shall seeThe face of Csesar, they are vanished.*

Yet when all is said, Shakespeare's Caesar is his ownportrait and more 'caustic' than any other of the age.The word is Herford's, who has well brought out theexhibition of Caesar's physical and moral weaknesses,his superstition, his 'vacillation' on the fatal morning,and 'above all' the profession of immovable constancywhich that vacillation so ironically refutes.3 Shakespeare

x Casar's Revenge (Malone's Society reprint), 1. 253.

9 That Shakespeare knew, and is here consciously ap-

plying, the doctrine of arq seems clear from Antony andCleopatra, 3. 13. 111-15. Cf. also Sir Thomas Elyot'sapplication of the notion to Csesar in The Book of theGo'vernour (1531)} bk. ir, cap. 5 ('Of affabilitee'.) ForShakespeare's familiarity with this book, cf. my note onHenry F, 1. 2. i8off.

3 V. Eversley Shakespeare, vnr, 14.

xxviii J U L I U S CiESAR

adds to the infirmities in Plutarch a deafness in one ear;and makes 'the falling sickness', which Plutarch doesmention, seize him at the most awkward and humiliatingmomentwhen being offered a crown. Worse still, hesubstitutes for the pluck, resolution, and endurance oftenpraised by Plutarch, a 'feeble temper';1 and derives thethree examples of this from passages in North which,show the exact opposite. Cassius is here, indeed, thespeaker, and the points illustrate his malice; but Brutusdoes not reply to the charge, and it is fully borne out bystroke after stroke later. Cassius begins by hinting at thegreat man's sensitiveness to 'the winter's cold', whereasPlutarch, while admitting a delicate constitution, givesinstances of his hardiness in ignoring it.a Cassius tellsa story of a swimming match, in which Cassar has to cryto him for help; Plutarch on the contrary stresses hisstrength and skill in swimming and tells of a wonderfulaquatic feat.3 Lastly, of Caesar's 'fever in Spain', whenaccording to Cassius his 'coward lips' cried out forwater 'as a sick girl', Plutarch, writes:

Yet therefore [he] yielded not to the disease of his body,to make it a cloak to cherish him withal, but contrarilytook the pains of war as a medicine to cure his sick body,fighting always with his disease, travelling continually,living soberly, and commonly lying abroad in the field/*

Or take our impressions as Shakespeare brings himfirst on to the stage. Even John Palmer, who sees thedictator clearer than any other modern critic, thoughthrough eyes not sufficiently accustomed to use Eliza-bethan spectacles, has failed, to observe the full signi-

x Kittredge's gloss 'bodily weakness' (p. 101) will not

do for this; v. G. 'temper'. The whole burden of Cassius'sspeech is that Caesar lacks 'guts ' .

* See for example Skeat's Shakespeare's Plutarch, p . 58.3 Ibid. p . 86. 4 Ibid. p . 57.

I N T R O D U C T I O N xxix

ficance of this entry.1 Picture a great concourse ofpeople; a ceremonial procession, consisting of priests andother persons bound for the Lupercalia, among themAntony and a number of young men stripped for thechase; then, from the distance and drawing ever nearer,the sound of music such as Elizabethans were wont toassociate with royalty; and lastly, the great man himself,surrounded with all the pomp of an oriental monarch,and borne in, as I think, upon a litter :a a figure haughty,ageing, infirm. And, if this be set down as in part thecreation of editorial fancy, it cannot be denied thatShakespeare makes Csesar ride or walk alone, so thatwhen he desires to lay his commands upon Calphurnia,she has to hurry up from the rear; or that those com-mands at once express his anxiety for an heir andpublicly brand her as the barren party responsible forhis childlessness,3 words upon which Elizabethanswould be quick to set their own interpretation. Thusin stroke after stroke, as is shown further in mynotes, Shakespeare builds up a portrait of the man forhis spectators; and all this, the contemptible side of thecharacter, is solely of his own making.

What then? Axe we not left to conclude that, facedwith the problem of Julius, Shakespeare made up hisown mind about him? Long before, when called uponto depict a very different sort of dictatorship, he hadshown that he knew how the system worked. 'WhenI am king/ declares Jack Cade, 'all shall eat and drink on

1 See his Political Characters of Shakespeare, pp. 34-46.

9 In North (see below, 3. 1 head-note, Plutarch (iv))

Cassar rides to the Senate House in a litter on the Ides ofMarch, a point which Shakespeare might well have utilizedhere for stage purposes. Cf K. John, 5.3.16 j Lear, 3.6.97,for the use of a litter.

3 Both inventions, v. notes 1. 2 Plutarch (i).

xxx J U L I U S CffiSAR

my score, and I will apparel them all in one livery, thatthey may agree like brothers and worship me theirlord'.1 Such is Caesarism, including 'panem' if not'circenses', with the equality of all in one classless mob,united in reverence before a semi-divine being, whetherNapoleon, Fiihrer, or general secretary of the com-munist parly. But Cade was a comic figure; and * Julius'must be taken seriously; for Shakespeare has now toexhibit on the stage the effects of Csesarism on the soulof Csesar himself. Having written, or taken a largeshare in, eight history plays before 1599, he had beencontemplating, almost continuously for eight years ormore, men struggling for power by fair means or foul,and exercising it fairly or foully. Chambers points outthat Julius C

I N T R O D U C T I O N

that to crown Caesar would endow him with that ab-solute power which, as Acton notes, corrupts absolutely.1So far, Brutus admits, Caesar had not shown himself thetyrant; but then he has not yet attained 'the upmostround' of the ladder. Once thus high he will scorn'the base degrees by which he did ascend*. Oncecrowned, all barriers will be down; and, human naturebeing what it is, 'the bright day will bring forth theadder', since absolute rulers have no use for mercy('remorse'). What is there 'perplexing' (Coleridge)or 'pedantic' (Verity) or 'confused' (Palmer) or'fumbling' (Granville-Barker) in this, or why shouldit be described as 'a marvel of fanatical self-deception'(Herford)? That Brutus believes the end, of which heconfesses he has at the moment no proof, justifies themeans, which is murder, or that the means turn out tobe entirely mistaken, has of course an important bearingupon his character and on the political issue of the playas a whole. But Shakespeare does all he can to showus that the reading of Caesar's character in the soliloquyis correct. Had he represented Caesar as 'the perfectstatesman' of Mommsen, or the clear-eyed realisticopportunist of a living historian,* or the magnanimous,genial and wise, if over-ambitious, dictator whomPlutarch draws, he would have given us a very differentplay, at once far less tragic and less profound. And wewho have come to know what dictators look like whenthe facade of their synthetic magnificence is down andtheir myth exploded, can feel nothing but astonishmentat a genius which lacking our experience could sopenetrate to their secret.3

1 Acton, Historical Essays and Studies, p. 504.

9 The Roman Revolution, by Ronald Syme (1939).

3 See pp. xliv, xlvi for stage-productions in 1937 and 1939which turned this to account.

xxxii J U L I U S CiESAR

But this, I shall be told, was an accident. Shakespeare,Bernard Shaw declares, wrote 'Cajsar down for themerely technical purpose of writing Brutus up' . Hemight have added that he wrote Brutus down for a likepurpose in the Forum scene, and Antony down in theProscription scene immediately after, and then wroteBrutus and Cassius up again more and more from thatmoment until the catastrophe. Shakespeare is alwaysbusy adjusting his dramatic scales, making bids for thesympathies of the audience on behalf, now of thischaracter, then of that; now of this side, then of theother. These things are of the essence of his craft, andby such means he creates that final impression ofdramatic justice which all allow to be one of his chiefclaims to greatness. Moreover, he had a technicalreason of special weight for disparaging Csesar whilestill alive, namely, that his assassination scene was anextraordinarily difficult corner for an Elizabethan play-wright to turn. Cesar was not a crowned head, northe anointed of the Lord, as were Richard of Bordeauxand, implicitly, Duncan of Scotland. But he was 'thefirst emperor', and to the Elizabethans, as we have seen,a being of almost superhuman stature, so that thespectacle of his being hacked to pieces by assassinswould inevitably strike them as something appalling, ifnot sacrilegious. The purpose of 'the royal airs whichCsesar gives himself in this scene', notes Kittredge,*is to justify the act of the conspirators, which if oursympathies are not on their side will appear to bea cowardly assassination'.1 If that be true of readersin 1939, how much more must it have been true ofspectators in 1599.

But what is dramatically convenient, is not neces-sarily false. On the contrary, at any rate in Shakespearian

1 Kittredge, op. cit. note 3. 1. 32.

I N T R O D U C T I O N xxxiii

tragedy, it is likely to be truer than history itself. For'poetry is a more philosophic and a finer thing thanhistory, since poetry speaks of universals and historyonly of particulars'.1 The Gaius Julius who fell in theCuria Pompeiana on the Ides of March, 44 B.C. wasa 'particular' man over whose character and schemeshistorians will continue to dispute; the Cassar who fallson Shakespeare's Capitol is the universal Dictator. Yetwhen we turn and 'look upon Caesar' in our frontis-piece, which reproduces a contemporary, or almostcontemporary, portrait in stone, we are left wonderingwhether, in this play at any rate, the truth of poetrymay not be the truth of history also. For what con-fronts us is a divus Julius indeed, but one who haslong since disjoined 'remorse from power', if he everfelt it.

J. D. W.January, 1948

Aristotle, Poetics, 9.

3DDQV

THE STAGE-HISTORY OFJULIUS CMSAR

Popularity tempered with recurrent neglect is themark of'Julius Ccesar as a stage play. London witnessedit almost every year from the late seventeenth to the lastquarter of the eighteenth century; yet three of our mostfamous actors never appeared in it, and twice over foran extended period (1780-1812 and 1851-98) its stagehistory is a virtual blank. Part of the explanation may bethat it hardly provides actors with a supremely tragicrole, while it offers even less scope for great actresses.But its opportunities for pageantry made it one ofTree's most resounding triumphs, when he ended itslongest eclipse with nine successful revivals at HisMajesty's Theatre from 1898101913.

The earliest notice of it, as already shown,1 is bya Swiss traveller, Thomas Platter, who witnessed a per-formance at The Globe on 21 September 1599.3Thereafter till the closing of the theatres in 1642 itseems to have been a popular favourite. Thus LeonardDigges in his Verses Commendatory to Shakespeare'sPoems (1640) writes:

So have I seen when Cassar would appeare,And on the Stage at half-sword parley were,Brutus and Cassius; Oh how the audience,Were ravished, with what wonder they went thence 5

and he contrasts this reception with the impatienceshown at Ben Jonson's 'tedious (though well-laboured)'Roman plays. It was also presented several times at

1 V. Introd. pp. viii-ix.

* V. Clare Williams, Thomas Platter's Travels in England(*937)> P- 166.

S T A G E - H I S T O R Y xxxv

Courtfor example, at the festivities for the marriageof Princess Elizabeth and the Elector Palatine in thewinter of 1612-13,1 and again as late as 31 January1637, and 13 November 1638.*

From the Restoration to the rise of Garrick the playwas constantly shown. It is in Downes's list of thefifteen principal old stock plays revived at TheatreRoyal, Drury Lane, after its opening in May 1663; andit was one of the twenty-one plays allotted to the King'sCompany by a Royal Warrant early in 1669.3 Downesgives the cast for a performance dated ' about 1671'by Genest:4 Hart played Brutus, Mohun Cassius,Kynaston Antony, and Bell Caesar, with Mrs Marshaland Mrs Corbet as Calphurnia and Portia. A warrant of1 June 1677 proves a performance before Royalty inDecember 1676.S After the amalgamation of the twoCompanies it was again revived in Drury Lane in 1684,Betterton playing Brutus, which Hart ceased to acthenceforth, while Smith was Cassius and GoodmanCaesar. The 1684 Quarto of the play, 'as it is nowacted at Theatre Royal', shows the Folio text followedclosely, except for some change of minor parts, as whenCasca takes Marullus's speeches in 1. 1, a change whichlasted till Kemble's productions. When Betterton againformed a separate Company in 1695, he continued topresent the playin Lincoln's Inn Fields, February1704, and at the Haymarket, Marchi 706 and 14 January

1 This assumes, with Sir Edmund Chambers and most

scholars, that Casar's Tragedye named in the Warrant of20 May 1613 for payment to John Heminges, is our play.

8 J. Q. Adams, The Dramatic Records of Sir Henry

Herbert, pp. 57, 76, 77.3 Allardyce Nicoll, History of the Restoration Drama,

PP- 3i5> Zt6. J. Genest, Some Account of the English Stage, 1660-1830

(1832), I, 339. S Allardyce Nicoll, op. cit. pp. 307, 308.

xxxvi J U L I U S C-iESAR

1707. This last was a grand performance by subscriptionunder the patronage of Lord Halifax, with a cast ofunusual strength: Betterton Brutus, Verbruggen Cassius,Wilks Antony, Barton Booth Caesar, and Mrs Barry andMrs Bracegirdle as Calphurnia and Portia. The playwas repeated the next day, and on 1 April, when, sothe Daily Courant tells us, Mrs Bradshaw and MrsBowman took the women's parts, and Cibber was broughtin as an extra fifth citizen.

After the reunion of the companies in 1708 JuliusCaesar was one of the earliest Shakespeare plays put onat Drury Lane, but now without Betterton. In hisplace on 22 December 1709, Booth acted Brutus toPowell's Cassius. Betterton's Brutus had undoubtedlybeen a great creation. Cibber in his Apology adduces asproof of his versatility the contrast between 'the un-ruffled temper' in his acting of the Quarrel scene andthe 'fierce and flashing fire' of his Hotspur.

His steady look alone supplied that terror which hedisdained an intemperance in his voice should give rise to.1

It would seem that Betterton abandoned the traditionof a quarrel threatening a duel, which Digges's phrase,'half-sword parley', points to, and which Quin seemsto have revived.8

Though Betterton died in 1710, Drury Lane con-tinued to show the play every year (except 1711) downto 1728.3 The Booth-Powell partnership lasted till

1 Colley Cibber, Apology for His Life (ed. R. W. Lowe),

I, 103-4.* See Peregrine Pickle, ch. 51. The actor described is said to

be Quin (v. A. C. Sprague, Shakespeare and the Actors,^. 324).3 In Genest 1724 is also a blank; but Mr C. B. Hogan

of Yale, who is engaged on researches into the history ofeighteenth-century Shakespeare revivals, has kindly sent mea list which shows performances in January and Septemberthat year.

S T A G E - H I S T O R Y xxxvix

1715, when Elrington took Powell's place as Cassius;Wilkes played Antony; and Mills, at first Caesar, after1721 took over Cassius from Elrington. Genest namesboth Wilkes and Mills in the cast for 26 April 1721,and notices a revival for Mills's benefit in May 1723,with a further performance in September. In March1716 Booth chose the play for his own benefit, andwent on acting Brutus at Drury Lane till 1728.

Meanwhile the rival theatre in Lincoln's Inn Fieldshad put on Julius Ceesar'va. eleven different seasons from1716 to 1729. The part of Brutus was first taken byKeen, a deserter from Drury Lane, in October 1716,and again in March 1718, when Quin was Antony andRyan Cassius. Thereafter Quin took over Brutus andbecame Booth's great rival in the part. Davies contraststhe two men's acting of the quarrelQuin's 'look ofanger approaching to rage', with Booth's steadfast look,and speech 'not much above a whisper', but producing'a stronger effect than the loudness of Quin'.1 InNovember 1720, Boheme appeared as Cassar, but from1722 the part was given successively to Leigh and Ryan.In 1732 at Goodman's Fields Delane appeared as anewBrutus for twelve nights running. In 1734 Quin re-turned to Drury Lane, where our play was once againseen for six nights from 4 November; Quin acted Brutusto Mills's Cassius and Milward's Antony, while Cibberjunior was Casca, and Macklin one of five citizens (inSeptember 17 3 8, he played the second citizen). Furtherrevivals followed in 1736 and each year from 1738 to1741 (in 1740 three). Davies declared that Milwardwas the only man in his memory 'whose powers wereperfectly suited to' Antony's Forum speech, and hepraises his Antony, Quin's Brutus, and the Cassiusand Caesar of the two Mills as four parts never since

1 T. Davies, Dramatic Miscellanies (1783), II, 248-9.

xxxviii J U L I U S C-ffiSAR

'equally presented'.1 He never mentions Milward inany other part; yet for revivals in 1738, 1739 and 1740the cast gives Cassius to him and Antony to Wright; andGenest, though puzzled, accepted this.* Genest recordsfive separate revivals at Drury Lane in 17 3 8; Mr Hogan3adds a sixth. That of 28 April was given in aid of thefund for a monument to Shakespeare and by 5 Junehad realized 170, with 30 still to come in for ticketstaken.4 Several different actresses took the women'sparts during these forty years, but Mrs Thurmond wasmost frequent as Portia (1721-34), and Mrs Hortonas Calphurnia (1721 and 1725), both at Drury Lane.

Under Garrick Drury Lane never saw the play.Davies says Garrick once had the idea of acting Cassius,and suggests he gave it up for fear 'he should swell theconsequence of Quin as Brutus'.5 The latter had nowtransferred his talents to Covent Garden, where JuliusC&sar was shown in eleven different years from 1742to 1758, and three more times in the sixties and seven-ties. Quin gave Brutus there in 1742, 1747, 1748 and17 5 o, with Sheridan taking his place in 1744 and 17 5 5.In 1748 Delane (the Brutus of the previous year'srevival in Drury Lane), played Antony to Quin's Brutus,and Ryan came back (after thirty years) as Cassius;later, when well over sixty (in 1755 and 1758), Ryanagain played this part. Meanwhile, from 1750, Quin'slast recorded year as Brutus, Barry had taken overAntony from Delane, having previously acted the partin the 1747 production. In 1744 and 1747 Mrs

1 Davies, op. cit. ii, 244-5, 2I2*

* Genest, op. cit., in, 526.3 V. note 3 on p. xxxvi above.4 v. Allardyce Nicoll, History of the Early Eighteenth

Century Drama, p. 69.5 Davies, op. cit. n , 213.

STAGE-HISTORY xxxix

Pritchard, in 1748 and 1750 Peg Woffington, wasPortia.

The last revivals of the period (1766, 1767 and1773) are chiefly interesting because Bell's stage version(1773), printed, from the Covent Garden prompt-book, gives the text they used. An edition of 1719,absurdly claiming to be the play 'as altered by Davenantand Dryden', had put into Brutus's mouth after theghost's exit in 4. 3 the following:

Sure they have raised some devil to their aid,And think to frighten Brutus with a shade jBut ere the night closes this fatal day,I'll send more ghosts thy visit to repay.

It also made him die exclaiming:Scorning to view his country's wrongs,Thus Brutus always strikes for liberty.Poor slavish Rome 1 Now farewell.

Bell's text retains both interpolations, proving that theywere used in 1773; while Walker is reported as havingspoken the first in 1766. Bell also shows some doublingof minor parts, Casca now absorbing Titinius1 as wellas Marullus,* and Decius Brutus taking some of Flavius'sand Trebonius's speeches; while minor episodes, such asLigarius's entry in 2.1 and the killing of the poet Cinna,are omitted.

Only one more production in this century is recordedat Drury Lane for six nights in January and February1780. The cast was as a.whole undistinguished; buton 15 February, Bensley took Cassius. It was left to

1 This change goes back to earlier revivals, since Davies

(0/. cit. II, 212) says that 'many years since', Titinius's partwas added to Casca for lack of enough actors for the manycharacters; and other remarks of Davies point to the 1736or the 1738 productions.

* See above, p. xxxv.

xl JULIUS CMSAKJ. P . Kemble to restore the play to favour, but afterhe had left Drury Lane for Covent Garden. There on29 February 1812, and in each later year till 1817, hestaged the play with unprecedented splendour, payingsuch attention to historical accuracy in scenery andcostume that one young spectator felt as if he 'had beentransported to the very heart of the Julian Forum'.1The Times of 2 March, however, qualified its praise bycomplaining of the wrongly shaped Rostrum and thesmallness of the crowd.3 The cast was hardly less ef-fective than the stage equipment, Kemble proving a fineBrutus to C. M. Young's perhaps even more impressiveCassius; Charles Kemble was Antony, Egerton Caesar,Fawcett Casca, Mrs Powell Portia, and Mrs WestonCalphurnia. Kemble doubled minor characters muchas the 1773 version had done, and changed the namesof speakers rather perplexingly. He followed Bell alsoin omitting Ligarius in 2 . 1 , and Cinna the poet; andhe further omitted 4 . 1 . But he rejected the pre-posterous lines of Brutus at the end of the ghost scene,and he kept the addition to his dying speech only in animproved form:3

Disdaining life, to live a slave in Rome,Thus Brutus strikes his last for liberty.

{Stabs himself)Farewell,

Beloved country! Cassar, now be still, [etc.].1 J. C. Young,Memoir of Charles Mayne Young,Tragediait

(1871) p . 38; v. quotation in A. C. Ward, Specimens ofEnglish Dramatic Criticism, p. 89.

* Quoted by Prof. G. C. D. Odell, Shakespeare fromBetterton to Irving, 11, 105.

3 Cf. Odell, op. cit. n , 65. Harold Child's 'he did notlet Brutus speak' the lines added to 'his last speech' {Shake-spearian Productions of J. P. Kemble, p . 17) is somewhatmisleading in its phrasing.

STAGE-HISTORY xK

After Kemble till nearly the end of the century onlythree great actors, C. M. Young, Macready, and SamuelPhelps, concerned themselves with the play. Youngacted Brutus in Covent Garden in five seasons between1819 and 1827, and is last recorded as playing the part inOctober 1829m Drury Lane. * In all probability', saysGenest, 'there never was a better Brutus.'1 It was tohis Brutus that Macready first acted in the play asCassius in June 1819, at Covent Garden, and thennine times more before 1822; in 1836 he played thepart to Sheridan Knowles's Brutus with Charles Kembleas Antony (a part he had acted since 1822). In October1836 Macready changed to his henceforward mostfrequent role of Brutus, and played in the new partthirteen times in 1836-7, and ten times subsequently.*Yet he himself declared Cassius the part in which duringhis whole career lie had 'taken a peculiar pleasure'^ InFebruary 1850 he appeared as Brutus before QueenVictoria and Prince Albert in Windsor Castle, withCharles Kean as Antony (Kean's only appearance inJulius Casar in England). His last rendering was atthe Haymarket in January 18 51, when he wrote in hisdiary: ' I acted Brutus as I never, no never, acted itbefore.'4 Three weeks before he had here reverted oncemore to Cassius with Howe as Antony. Phelps firstacted in the play as Cassius to Macready's Brutus, inCovent Garden in 1838 and 1839, and at Drury Lanein 1843. On this last occasion Sheridan Knowles wasCasca and Miss Faucit Portia, while Antony, played byVandenhoffin 1839, was now J. R. Anderson, previously

1 J. Genest, op. cit. ix, 121.

8 Figures given in W. Archer, W. C. Macready, p . 30.

3 W. C. Macready, Reminiscences, ed. Sir F . Pollock,I, 179.

4 Ibid. U, 365.J-C-3

xlil JU.LIUS CAESAROctavlus. As Manager of Sadlers Wells, Phelps pro-duced the play there in 1846 and 1847, choosingitfor hisbenefit in May 1846, and showing it nine times in the1846-7 season. From now on he took the part ofBrutus. He again chose the play for his final farewellto Sadlers Wells on 6 November 1862, when EdmundPhelps was Antony and Creswick Cassius.

But in spite of Phelps's efforts the play was in totaleclipse in London (except for a performance by the Saxe-Meiningen actors at Drury Lane in 1881 and EdmundTearle's revival at the Olympic in 1892) till the turnof the century. Then, in 1898, began the revivals bySir Herbert (then Mr) Tree at His Majesty's Theatre.For a hundred nights from 22 January the play wasshown to enthusiastic audiences. The next year sawanother revival, and from 1905 to 1913 only one year(1912) was without one. The staging of 1898, designedand. supervised by Alma-Tadema, outdid in magni-ficence even Tree's usual efforts. The Times spoke ofits 'succession of scenes of unexampled beauty'; andDr Percy Simpson wrote: 'the Rome of 2000 yearsago lives before us'. The Forum scene, he declared, 'forits moving effect has probably never been surpassed onthe stage'.1 The play was shown in three Acts, the firstto the end of 3.1, the second the rest of Act 3, and thethird from 4. 2 to the end. The proscription scene (4.1)was cut out as by Kemble, though Ligarius's entry in2.1 and the killing of Cinna were now restored. Thecast was impressive; Tree took Antony (and made him,says Dr Simpson, 'the central figure in the play'),Lewis Waller was Brutus, Franklin McLeay Cassius,while Casca and Cssar fell to Louis Calvert and Charles

1 See the whole critique in Furness, Variorum edition of

the play, pp. 441-3, and in Appendix E of Mark Hunter'sedition.

STAGE-HISTORY xffii

Fulton, and Portia and Calphurnia to Evelyn Millardand Lily Handbury. Both Professor Odell and MrGordon Crosse judge McLeay's Cassius to be the mosteffective thing in the play, while the latter says also ofWaller's Brutus: ' I have never seen anyone play itbetter.'1

After Tree, the play in the twentieth century regainedits old vogue. The Tercentenary celebrations reachedtheir high watermark in a matme*e at Drury Lane on2 May 1916 before Their Majesties, when betweenthe Acts King George knighted Benson in the RoyalBox with a sword hurriedly procured from a theatricalcostumier.* Sir Frank had been playing Caesar toArthur Bouchier's Brutus, H. B. Irving's Cassius, HenryAinley's Antony, Basil Gill's Octavius and LilianBraithwaite's Portia; and the cast included a crowdnumbering over one hundred. In 1920 Basil Gillplayed Brutus to Ainley's Antony at St James's Theatre.The Old Vic has given four separate revivalsin 1926by Robert Atkins with Baliol Holloway as Cassius andEdith Evans as Portia; in 1930 with Harcourt WilliamsBrutus, Donald Wolfit Cassius and John GielgudAntony; in 1932 with 'the best Brutus since Waller'3in Ralph Richardson, playing to Robert Speaight'sCassius; and in 1935, when Ion Swinley was Antony,and the Brutus and Cassius of Leo Genn and WilliamDevlin provided a specially spirited quarrel. 1932 sawthree separate theatres presenting the play in Januaryand February, when besides the Old Vic production

1 Odell, op. cit. n, 390} Gordon Crosse, Fifty Tears of

Shakespearean Playgoing, pp. 49-52.* For a fuller account see M. C. Day and J. C. Trewin,

The Shakespeare Memorial Theatre (1932)? pp. 143-5? a ndW. J. Macqueen Pope, Theatre Royal, Drury Lane (1945),P. 3O3.3

Gordon Crosse, op. cit. p. 29.

xliv JULIUS CMSARand another at the 'Q ' Theatre (Basil Gill the Brutus),His Majesty's renewed the past glories of Tree. Theproducer, Oscar Asche, staged the play, as he explainedin a speech from the stage, on Tree's own principleswith spectacular magnificence; ingenious devices in-cluded a realistic downpour of rain in 2 .1 . In 1934 SirOswald Stall's production at the Alhambra had GodfreyTearle for Antony and Basil Gill as Brutus. In 1937,Robert Atkins gave the play in the Regent's ParkOpen-air Theatre. In November 1939 it was played inmodern dress at The Embassy Theatre in a way thatharmonized with the topical relevance, aimed atthedrama showed, said The Times of 30 November, 'thatShakespeare knew all there was to be known about theproblem of the dictator'.1

At Stratford the play has been shown sixteen timesin the old Theatre, three times after the 1926 fire in theadapted cinema, and in four different years in the newTheatre. Stratford, indeed, anticipated Tree with theplay, giving it first in 1889 with Osmond Tearle asproducer in the absence of Benson: and then in theFestivals of 1892, 1896 and 1898 under Benson'sdirection. Of this last revival he tells us that he hadprepared the play for presentation in London, but wasforestalledclearly by Tree; Benson's scenery, likeTree's, being designed by Alma-Tadema.* Bensonacted Antony, as always, and his rendering of the partrivalled, if it did not surpass, Tree's; Louis Calvert wasBrutus, and Oscar Asche Casca. A single passage(Brutus with Portia) was given during the Tercen-tenary; and on 9 November 1926, the Quarrel scene byGodfrey Tearle (Brutus) and Basil Gill (Cassius)formed the crowning item in a special programme which,raised 2000 towards the rebuilding of the theatre.

1 Cf. Introd. IV.

* F. R. Benson, My Memoirs, pp. 300-2.

STAGE-HISTORY xlv

In America, after a slow start (with only four revivalsbefore 1817) the play became a marked favourite;fifty-one different years in the nineteenth century sawit staged in New York, while it was revived fifteentimes in twenty years in Philadelphia.1 In the first halfof the century Hamblin, in the second half Davenportand Edwin Booth, were the outstanding players ofBrutus, while J. B. Booth and Eddy were the chieffigures as Cassius till eclipsed towards the end of thecentury by Laurence Barrett, 'the perfect Cassius',according to Professor Odell. The early thirties hadseen Hamblin and J. B. Booth in constant partnershipat the Bowery, with Cooper as Antony; in the lateeighties a similar partnership was Edwin Booth's andBarrett's, in extended runs in different theatres. NewYork saw both Macready (in 1827 as Cassius, and in1848 as Brutus) and Kean (1839) in our play. On 25November 1864 the three Booths acted together in theWinter Garden in the Tercentenary effort to raisemoney for a statue to the dramatist in Central Park;J. Wilkes Booth, Lincoln's assassin six months later,acted Antony. In 1871-2 a most spectacular produc-tion held Booth's Theatre for 85 nights, Edwin Boothplaying Brutus and Barrett Cassius; while in 1875-6the play ran for 101 nights, with Davenport now asBrutus. In the present century, New York has wit-nessed seventeen separate revivals, but none since 1937.*Of these 'the most notable' were Richard Mansfield's

1 G. C. D. Odell, Annals of the New Tori Stage (14 vok.

to 1892); A. H. Wilson, History of the Philadelphia Theatre,I835-55-

* I owe this information and all that follows to the kind-ness of Mr C. B. Hogan, who has sent me a detailed recordof all twentieth-century New York performances, notingthat in most cases the Companies carried the production onto the other chief cities of the United States. Inverted commasindicate quotations from his accompanying letter.

xlvi J U L I U S CiESAR

(1902), William Faversham's (1912), 'a very elaborateperformance', arid Orson Welles's (1937)157 times.'Welles's brilliant production, done completely withoutscenery, in modern dress, and tinged with Fascism,'1Mr Hogan regards as one of the best Shakespearianperformances he has ever seen. In 1907 and 1910Ben Greet's Company, with Sybil Thorndike as Portia,presented the play in The Garden Theatre, New York.

C. B. YOUNG

July 1947

Cf. the London revival of 1939} see above, p. xliv.

xlvii

TO THE READERThe following is a brief description of the punctua-

tion and other typographical devices employed in thetext, which have been more fully explained in the Noteon Punctuation and the Textual Introduction to be foundin The Tempest volume:

An obelisk ( t ) implies corruption, or emendationnot yet generally accepted, and suggests a reference tothe Notes.

A single bracket at the beginning of a speech signifiesan 'aside'.

Four dots represent a fullstop in the original, exceptwhen it occurs at the end of a speech, and they marka long pause. Original colons or semicolons, which denotea somewhat shorter pause, are retained, or representedas three dots when they appear to possess specialdramatic significance. Similarly, significant commas havebeen given as dashes.

Round brackets are taken from the original, and marka significant change of voice; when the original bracketsseem to imply little more than the drop in tone accom-panying parenthesis, they are conveyed by commas ordashes.

Single inverted commas (' ') are editorial; doubleones (" ") derive from the original, where they are usedto draw attention to maxims, quotations, etc.

The reference number for the first line is given atthe head of each page. Numerals in square bracketsare placed at the beginning of the traditional acts andscenes.

JULIUS CAESAR

The Scene: Rome; the neighbourhood of Sardis;the neighbourhood of Philippi

CHARACTERS IN THE PLAY

1 triumvirs after the death ofJulius Casar

conspirators against Julius Casar

JULIUS OESAROCTAVIUS CAESARMARCUS ANTONIUS \M. iEMiuus LEPIDUSJCICERO *|PUBLIUS \ senatorsPOPILIUS LENAJMARCUS BRUTUSCASSIUSCASCATREBONIUSLlGARIUSDECIUS BRUTUSMETELLUS CIMBERClNNAFLAVIUS and MARUIXUS, tribunesARTEMIDORUS of Cnidos, a teacher of RhetoricA SoothsayerCINNA, a poetAnother poetLUCILIUSTlTINIUSMESSALA \ friends to Brutus and CassiusYOUNG CATOVOLUMNIUS

servants to Brutus or his officers

VARRO

CLITUSCLAUDIUSSTRATOLUCIUSDARDANIUSLABEOFLAVIUSPINDARUS, bondman to CassiusCALPHURNIA, toife to CeesarPORTIA, wife to Brutus

Senators, Citizens, Officers, Attendants, etc.

JULIUS C^SAR[i. i.] "Rome. A street

FLAVIVS, MARVLLUS, and certain commonersFlavius. Hence! tome, you idle creatures, get

you home:Is this a holiday? what! know you not,Being mechanical, you ought not walkUpon a labouring day without the signOf your profession? Speak, what trade art thou?

1 Commoner. Why, sir, a carpenter.Marul/us. Where is thy leather apron and thy rule?

What dost thou with thy best apparel on?You, sir, what trade are you?

2 Commoner. Truly, sir, in respect of a fine workman, 10I am but as you would say a cobbler.

Marullus. But what trade art thou? answer medirectly.

2 Commoner. A trade, sir, that I hope I may use witha safe conscience, which is indeed, sir, a mender of badsoles.

Marullus. What trade, thou knave? thou naughtyknave, what trade?

2 Commoner. Nay, I beseech you, sir, be not out with,me: yet if you be out, sir, I can mend you. 20Marullus. What mean'st thou by that? mend me, thou

saucy fellow!2 Commoner. Why, sir, cobble you.Flavius. Thou art a cobbler, art thou ?2 Commoner. Truly, sir, all that I live by is with the

awl: I meddle with no tradesman's matters, nor women'smatters; but withal I am indeed, sir, a surgeon to

6 JULIUS CffiSAR x.1.28

old shoes; when they are in great danger, I recoverthem. As proper men as ever trod upon neat's leather

30 have gone upon my handiwork.Flavius. But wherefore art not in thy shop to-day?

Why dost thou lead these men about the streets?2 Commoner. Truly, sir, to wear out their shoes, to get

myself into more work. But indeed, sir, we make holi-day, to see Caesar and to rejoice in his triumph.Marullus. Wherefore rejoice? What conquest brings

he home?What tributaries follow him to Rome,To grace in captive bonds his chariot-wheels?You blocks, you stones, you worse than senseless

things!40 O you hard hearts, you cruel men of Rome,

Knew you not Pompey? Many a time and oftHave you climbed up to walls and battlements,To towers and windows, yea, to chimney-tops,Your infants in your arms, and there have satThe live-long day with patient expectationTo see great Pompey pass the streets of Rome:And when you saw his chariot but appear,Have you not made an universal shout,That Tiber trembled underneath her banks

50 To hear the replication of your soundsMade in her concave shores?And do you now put on your best attire?And do you now cull out a holiday?And do you now strew flowers in his wayThat comes in triumph over Pompey's blood?Be gone!Run to your houses, fall upon your knees,Pray to the gods to intermit the plagueThat needs must light on this ingratitude.

z.z.60 J U L I U S CiESAR 7

Flavius. Go, go, good countrymen, and for this fault 60Assemble all the poor men of your sort;Draw them to Tiber banks and weep your tearsInto the channel, till the lowest streamDo kiss the most exalted shores of all.

[the crowd melts awaySee, whe'r their basest mettle be not moved;They vanish tongue-tied in their guiltiness.Go you down that way towards the Capitol;This way will I : disrobe the images,If you do find them decked with ceremonies.Marullus. May we do so? 7

You know it is the feast of Lupercal.Flavius. It is no matter; let no images

Be hung with Caesar's trophies. I'll about,And drive away the vulgar from the streets:So do you too, where you perceive them thick.These growing feathers plucked from Caesar's wingWill make him fly an ordinary pitch,Who else would soar above the view of menAnd keep us all in servile fearfulness. [they go[1.2.] Enter in solemn procession, with music, C&SAR,reclining in his litter, JNTONT, stripped for the course,CALPHVRNIA, PORTIA, DECIUS, CICERO, BRUTUS,CASSIUS, CASCA, a Soothsayer, aud after themMARULLUS and FLAVIUS, with a great crowd following'

Ccesar. Calphurnia! [the procession haltsCasca. Peace, ho! Caesar speaks.Ccesar. Calphurnia!Calphurnia [comes forward"]. Here, my lord.Casar. Stand you directly in Antonius' way,

When he doth run his course. Antonius!Antony. Caesar, my lord?

8 J U L I U S C.3ESAR 1.2.6

Casar. Forget not, in your speed, Antonius,T o touch Calphurnia; for our elders say,The barren, touched in this holy chase,Shake off their sterile curse.Antony. I shall remember:

10 When Caesar says 'do this,' it is performed.Casar. Set on, and leave no ceremony out.

[music againSoothsayer. Cassar!Casar. Ha! who calls?Casca. Bid every noise be still: peace yet again!Casar. Who is it in the press that calls on me?

I hear a tongue, shriller than all the music,Cry 'Cassar.' Speak, Cassar is turned to hear.

Soothsayer. Beware the ides of March.Casar. What man is that?Brutus. A soothsayer bids you beware- the ides

of March.20 Casar. Set him before me, let me see his face.

Cassius. Fellow, come from the throng, lookupon Csesar.

Casar. What say'st thou to me now? speak once again.Soothsayer. Beware the ides of March.Casar. He is a dreamer, let us leave him: pass.

[Sennetj the procession moves forwardand f asses out of sight

Cassius. Will you go see the order of the course?Brutus. Not I.Cassius. I pray you, do.Brutus. I am not gamesome: I do lack some part

Of that quick spirit that is in Antony.30 Let me not hinder, Cassius, your desires;

I'll leave you.Cassius. Brutus, I do observe you now of late:

1.2.33 J U L I U S C-ffiSAR 9

I have not from your eyes that gentlenessAnd show of love as I was wont to have:You bear too stubborn and too strange a handOver your friend that loves you.

Brutus. Cassius,Be not deceived: if I have veiled my look,I turn the trouble of my countenanceMerely upon myself. Vexed I amOf late with passions of some difference, 40Conceptions only proper to myself,Which give some soil perhaps to my behaviours;But let not therefore my good friends be grieved(Among which number, Cassius, be you one),Nor construe any further my neglectThan that poor Brutus with himself at warForgets the shows of love to other men.

Cassius. Then, Brutus, I have much mistookyour passion,

By means whereof this breast of mine hath buriedThoughts of great value, worthy cogitations. 50Tell me, good Brutus, can you see your face?

Brutus. No, Cassius; for the eye sees not itselfBut by reflection, by some other things.

Cassius. 'Tis just,And it is very much lamented, Brutus,That you have no such mirrors as will turnYour hidden worthiness into your eye,That you might see your shadow. I have heardWhere many of the best respect in Rome(Except immortal Caesar), speaking of Brutus, 60And groaning underneath this age's yoke,Have wished that noble Brutus had his eyes.Brutus. Into what dangers would you lead

me, Cassius,

io JULIUS CiESAR 1.2.64

That you would have me seek into myselfFor that which is not in me?

Cassius. Therefore, good Brutus, be prepared to hear:And since you know you cannot see yourselfSo well as by reflection, I your glassWill modestly discover to yourself

70 That of yourself which you yet know not of.And be not jealous on me, gentle Brutus:"fWere I a common laughter, or did useTo stale with ordinary oaths my loveTo every new protester; if you knowThat I do fawn on men and hug them hard,And after scandal them; or if you knowThat I profess myself in banquetingTo all the rout, then hold me dangerous.

[flourish and shoutBrutus. What means this shouting? I do fear,

the peopleChoose Caesar for their king.

80 Cassius. Ay, do you fear it?Then must I think you would not have it so.

Brutus. I would not, Cassius, yet I love him well...But wherefore do you hold me here so long?What is it that you would impart to me?If it be aught toward the general good,Set honour in one eye and death i'th'other,And I will look on both indifferently:For let the gods so speed me as I loveThe name of honour more than I fear death.

90 Cassius. I know that virtue to be in you, Brutus,As well as I do know your outward favour.Well, honour is the subject of my story...I cannot tell what you and other menThink of this life; but, for my single self,

1.2.95 J U L I U S CffiSAR "

I had as lief not be as live to beIn awe of such a thing as I myself.I was born free as Caesar, so were you;We both have fed as well, and we can bothEndure the winter's cold as well as he.For once, upon a raw and gusty day, iooThe troubled Tiber chafing with her shores,Caesar said to me 'Dar'st thou, Cassius, nowLeap in with me into this angry flood,And swim to yonder point?' Upon the word,Accoutred as I was, I plunged inAnd bade him follow: so indeed he did.The torrent roared, and we did buffet itWith lusty sinews, throwing it asideAnd stemming it with hearts of controversy.But ere we could arrive the point proposed, n oCaesar cried 'Help me, Cassius, or I sink!'I, as -S)neas our great ancestorDid from the flames of Troy upon his shoulderThe old Anchises bear, so from the waves of TiberDid I the tired Caesar: and this manIs now become a god, and Cassius isA wretched creature, and must bend his bodyIf Caesar carelessly but nod on him.He had a fever when he was in Spain,And when the fit was on him, I did mark 120How he did shake: 'tis true, this god did shake;His coward lips did from their colour fly,And that same eye whose bend doth awe the worldDid lose his lustre: I did hear him groan:Ay, and that tongue of his that bade the RomansMark him and write his speeches in their books,Alas, it cried, 'Give me some drink, Titinius,'As a sick girl...Ye gods! it doth amaze me

12 JULIUS CiESAR 1.3.129

A man of such a feeble temper should130 So get the start of the majestic world,

And bear the palm alone. [shut'/ flourishBrutus. Another general shout!

I do believe that these applauses areFor some new honours that are heaped on Caesar.

Cassius. Why, man, he doth bestride thenarrow world

Like a Colossus, and we petty menWalk under his huge legs and peep aboutTo find ourselves dishonourable graves..Men at some time are masters of their fates:

140 The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars,But in ourselves, that we are underlings.Brutus and Caesar: what should be in that 'Caesar'?Why should that name be sounded more than yours?Write them together, yours is as fair a name;Sound them, it doth become the mouth as well;Weigh them, it is as heavy; conjure with 'em,Brutus will start a spirit as soon as Caesar.Now, in the names of all the gods at once,Upon what meat doth this our Caesar feed,

150 That he is grown so great? Age, thou art shamed!Rome, thou hast lost the breed of noble bloods!When went there by an age, since the great flood,But it was famed with more than with one man ?When could they say, till now, that talked of RomeThat her wide walls encompassed but one man ?Now is it Rome indeed, and room enough,When there is in it but one only man.O, you and I have heard our fathers sayThere was a Brutus once that would have brooked

160 Th'eternal devil to keep his state in RomeAs easily as a king.

1.8.16a J U L I U S CAESAR 13

Brutus. That you do love me, I am nothing jealous;What you would work me to, I have some aim:How I have thought of this and of these times,I shall recount hereafter; for this present,I would not (so with love I might entreat you)Be any further moved. What you have saidI will consider; what you have to sayI will with patience hear, and find a timeBoth meet to hear and answer such high things. 170Till then, my noble friend, chew upon this:Brutus had rather be a villagerThan to repute himself a son of RomeUnder these hard conditions as this timeIs like to lay upon us.

Cassius. I am glad that my weak wordsHave struck but thus much show of fire from Brutus.

Re-enter CMSAR and his train

Brutus. The games are done, and Caesar is returning.Cassius. As they pass by, pluck Casca by the sleeve,

And he will (after his sour fashion) tell you jgoWhat hath proceeded worthy note to-day.Brutus. I will do so: but, look you, Cassius

The angry spot doth glow on Caesar's brow,And all the rest look like a chidden train:Calphurnia's cheek is pale, and CiceroLooks with such ferret and such fiery eyesAs we have seen him in the Capitol,Being crossed in conference by some senator.-

Cassius. Casca will tell us what the matter is.Ceesar. Antonius! 190Jntony. Csesar?Casar. Let me have men about me that are fat,

J.C-4

i 4 J U L I U S CflSSAR i.a. 193

Sleek-headed men, and such as sleep a-nights:Yond Cassius has a lean and hungry look;He thinks too much: such men are dangerous.

Antony. Fear him not, Caesar; he's not dangerous;He is a noble Roman, and well given.

Casar. Would he were fatter! but I fear him notYet if my name were liable to fear,

200 I do not know the man I should avoidSo soon as that spare Cassius. He reads much;He is a great observer, and he looksQuite through the deeds of men; he loves no plays,As thou dost, Antony; he hears no music;Seldom he smiles, and smiles in such a sortAs if he mocked himself and scorned his spiritThat could be moved to smile at any thing.Such men as he be never at heart's easeWhiles they behold a greater than themselves,

210 And therefore are they very dangerous.I rather tell thee what is to be fearedThan what I fear; for always I am Csesar.Come on my right hand, for this ear is deaf,And tell me truly what thou think'st of him.

[Sennet. Ceesar and his train pass onCasca. You pulled me by the cloak, would you speak

with me?Brutus. Ay, Casca, tell us what hath chanced to-day,

That Caesar looks so sad.Casca. Why, you were with him, were you not?

220 Brutus. I should not then ask Casca what had chanced.Casca. Why, there was a crown offered him: and being

offered him, he put it by with the back of his hand, thus:and then the people fell a-shouting.

Brutus. What was the second noise for?Casca. Why, for that too.

i.a.226 JULIUS CffiSAR 15

Cassius. They shouted thrice: what was the last cryfor?

Casca. Why, for that too.Brutus. Was the crown offered him thrice?Casca. Ay, marry, was't, and he put it by thrice, every 230

time gentler than other; and at every putting-by minehonest neighbours shouted.

Cassius. Who offered him the crown?Casca. Why, Antony.Brutus. Tell us the manner of it, gentle Casca.Casca. I can as well be hanged as tell the manner of

it: it was mere foolery, I did not mark it. I saw MarkAntony offer him a crown, yet 'twas not a crown neither,'twas one of these coronets: and, as I told you, he putit by once: but for all that, to my thinking, he would 240fain have had it. Then he offered it to him again; thenhe put it by again: but, to my thinking, he was veryloath to lay his fingers off it. And then he offered it thethird time; he put it the third time by: and still as herefused it, the rabblement hooted and clapped theirchopped hands and threw up their sweaty night-capsand uttered such a deal of stinking breath becauseCaesar refused the crown, that it had almost chokedCaesar; for he swooned and fell down at it: and formine own part, I durst not laugh, for fear of opening 250my lips and receiving the bad air.

Cassius. But, soft, I pray you: what, did Caesar swoon ?Casca. He fell down in the market-place and foamed

at mouth and was speechless.Brutus. 'Tis very like: he hath the falling-sickness.Cassius. No, Caesar hath it not; but you, and I,

And honest Casca, we have the fal