INTRODUCTION

NOTE. In citations from Shakespeare's plays and nondramatic poems the numbering has reference to the Globe edition, except in the case of this play, where the reference is to this edition.

I. SOURCES

No event in the history of the world has made a more profound impression upon the popular imagination than the assassination of Julius Cæsar. Apart from its overwhelming interest as a personal catastrophe, it was regarded in the sixteenth century as a happening of the greatest historical moment, fraught with significant public lessons for all time. There is ample evidence that in England from the beginning of Elizabeth's reign it was the subject of much literary and dramatic treatment, and in making the murder of "the mightiest Julius" the climax of a play, Shakespeare was true to that instinct which drew him for material to themes of universal and eternal interest.

THE MAIN STORY

1. North's Plutarch. There is no possible doubt that in Julius Cæsar Shakespeare derived the great body of his historical material from The Life of Julius Cæsar, The Life of Marcus Brutus, and The Life of Marcus Antonius

HE LIVES

OF THE NOBLE GRE-
CLANS AND ROMAINES, COMPARED
TOGETHER BY THAT GRAVE LEARNED
PHILOSOPHER AND HISTORIOGRAPHER,

Plutarke of Cherone

Tranflated out of Greeke into French by IAMES AMIOT Ab
bot of Bellozane, Bishop of Auxerre, one of the Kings privic Counfell,
and great Amner of France. VVith the liues of HANNIBAL and of SCIPIO
AFRICAN: tranflated out of Latine into French by CHARLES
de l'ESCLVSE, and out of French into English,
By Sir Thomas North Knight.

Hereunto are alfo added the lines of Epaminondas, of Philip of accdon, of Dionyfius the elder,
tyrant of Sicilia, of Auguftus Grfar, of Plutarke, and of Seneca: with the lines of

excellent Chiefetaines of warre: collected out of Emylius Probus, by
S.G.S. and Englifted by the aforjad Tranflator.

other

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