have been removed by the care of successive editors. The usual date of the composition of Julius Cæsar is referred to the year 1607, but Mr. Collier has shown good reasons for believing that it was acted before 1603. The subject had previously been dramatized. Gosson mentions a play entitled The History of Cæsar and Pompey, in 1579; and in 1582 a Latin play by Dr. Richard Eedes, on the subject of Cæsar's murder, was acted in the University of Oxford. Lord Stirling, in 1604, published a tragedy entitled Julius Cæsar. To none of these, so far as can be ascertained, was Shakespeare indebted."-MEIKLEJOHN.

Composition of the Play." What has been most censured in Julius Cæsar is, that the piece suffers from a very undramatic form of composition, inasmuch as it obviously falls into two halves, one of which represents the death of Cæsar, the other the history of Brutus and Cassius. And certainly the external composition is defective in so far as in the first half the action turns upon the fall of Cæsar and in the second upon the fate of Brutus and Cassius. Yet both halves are nevertheless externally connected in so far as the subject of the action in the first part is not so much Cæsar's death as, in reality, the conspiracy against his supreme power and the attempt to restore the Republic; in the second, we have the course and unhappy termination of this undertaking.

"The unity of interest in a free dramatic poem, however, does not necessarily require to be a purely personal one; in this case the interest-just because it is dramatic-is first of all connected with the action, springs forth out of it, and rises and falls with it. And even though the free dramatic poem is the more perfect in form and composition the more it manages to concentrate the interest of the action in the one person of the hero, still the historical drama is not bound by exactly the same laws as the freely invented composition. In the historical drama, the interest—if it is to be historical-must above all things be truly historical, then it will be truly poetic as well. History, however, in a certain sense does not trouble itself about persons; its chief interest is in historical facts and their meaning.

"Now in Julius Cæsar we have absolutely only one point of interest-a true, but variously jointed, unity. One and the same thought is reflected in the fall of Cæsar, in the deaths of Brutus and Cassius, and in the victory of Antony and Octavius. No man, even though he were as mighty as Cæsar and as noble as Brutus, is sufficiently great to guide history according to his own will; every one, according to his vocation, may contribute his stone to the building of the grand whole, but let no one presume to think that he can, with impunity, experiment with it. The great Cæsar, however, merely experimented when he allowed the royal crown to be offered to him and then rejected it thrice against his own will. He could not curb his ambition-this history might perhaps have pardoned; but he did not understand her, and attempted that which she, at the time at least, did not yet wish. The consequence of this error which was entirely his own, the consequence of this arrogant presumption which the still active republican spirit, the old Roman love and pride of freedom, stirred up against him, proved his downfall.

"But Brutus and Cassius erred also, by imagining that Rome could be kept in its glory and preserved from its threatening ruin simply by the restoration of the Republic. They too experi

mented with history; Cassius trusted that his ambitious and selfish will, and Brutus, that his noble and self-sacrificing will, would be strong enough to direct the course of history. For both felt that the moral spirit of the Roman nation had sunk too deep to be able in future to govern itself as a Republic; Cassius knew, Brutus suspected, that the Republic was coming to an end. But in their republican pride, and feeling their republican honor hurt, they thought themselves called upon to make an attempt to save it, they trusted to their power to be able, as it were, to take it upon their shoulders and so keep its head above water. This was the arrogance which was added to the error, and which spurred them on not only to unreasonable undertakings but to a criminal act; and, therefore, they doubly deserved the punishment which befell them.

"Antony, on the other hand, with Octavius and Lepidus,—the

talented voluptuary, the clever actor, and the good-natured simpleton,—although not half so powerful and noble as their opponents, come off victorious, because, in fact, they but followed the course of history and knew how to make use of it. Thus in all the principal parts we have the same leading thought, the same unity in the (historical) interest, except that it is reflected in various

ways.

"Thus history appears represented from one of its main aspects, in its inner, autocratic, active, and formative power, by which, although externally formed by individual men, it nevertheless controls and marches over the heads of the greatest of them."ULRICI, Shakespeare's Dramatic Art.

CRITICAL OPINIONS

'Everything is wrought out in the play with great care and completeness; it is well planned and well proportioned; there is no tempestuousness of passion, and no artistic mystery. The style is full, but not overburdened with thought or imagery. This is one of the most perfect of Shakespeare's plays; greater tragedies are less perfect, perhaps for the very reason that they try to grasp greater, more terrible, or more piteous themes.

'In King Henry V Shakespeare had represented a great and heroic man of action. In the serious plays, which come next in chronological order, Julius Cæsar and Hamlet, the poet represents two men who were forced to act,—to act in public affairs, and affairs of life and death,-yet who were singularly disqualified for playing the part of men of action. Hamlet cannot act because his moral energy is sapped by a kind of scepticism and sterile despair about life, because his own ideas are more to him than deeds, because his will is diseased. Brutus does act, but he acts as an idealist and theorizer might, with no eyes for the actual bearing of facts, and no sense of the true importance of persons. Intellectual doctrines and moral ideals rule the life of Brutus; and his life is most noble, high, and stainless, but his public action is a series of practical mistakes. Yet even while he errs we admire him, for all his errors are those of a pure and lofty spirit. He fails to see how full of power Antony is, because Antony loves pleasure, and is not a Stoic, like himself; he addresses calm arguments to the excited Roman mob; he spares the life of Antony and allows him to address the people; he advises ill in military matters. All the practical gifts, insight and tact, which Brutus lacks, are possessed by Cassius; but of Brutus's moral purity, veneration of ideals, disinterestedness, and freedom from unworthy personal

motive, Cassius possesses little. And the moral power of Brutus has in it something magisterial, which enables it to oversway the practical judgment of Cassius. In his wife-Cato's daughter, Portia-Brutus has found one who is equal to and worthy of himself. Shakespeare has shown her as perfectly a woman,sensitive, finely tempered, tender,-yet a woman who, by her devotion to moral ideals, might stand beside such a father and such a husband. And Brutus, with all his stoicism, is gentle and tender; he can strike down Cæsar if Cæsar be a tyrant, but he cannot roughly arouse a sleeping boy (act IV. sc. iii. 1. 271). Antony is a man of genius, with many splendid and some generous qualities, but self-indulgent, pleasure-loving, and a daring adventurer, rather than a great leader of the state.

"The character of Cæsar is conceived in a curious and almost irritating manner. Shakespeare (as passages in other plays show) was certainly not ignorant of the greatness of one of the world's greatest men. But here it is his weaknesses that are insisted on. He is failing in body and mind, influenced by superstition, yields to flattery, thinks of himself as almost superhuman, has lost some of his insight into character, and his sureness and swiftness of action. Yet the play is rightly named Julius Cæsar. His bodily presence is weak, but his spirit rules throughout the play, and rises after his death in all its might, towering over the little band of conspirators, who at length fall before the spirit of Cæsar as it ranges for revenge."-DoWDEN, Shakespeare Primer,

"We doubt whether we shall find Shakespeare greater, when he invented everything regardless of his sources, or here where he took all as he found it-whether we shall most admire in the one case his free power of creation, or in the other his submission and self-denial. Far from all pride of authorship and all pursuit after originality, he appears here before a classic biographer, never attempting to strive with nature, but rather reverentially to preserve her uninjured in the genuine form which he found before him. . . .

"It is at the same time wonderful, with what hidden and almost