a scene of great power and a helpful part of the action, because it makes the audience realize vividly the terrible "mischief" that is "afoot." The presentations upon the "Shakespeare stage" offered an abundance of pleasure and instruction for the students of the great dramatist.

66

But certain disadvantages came with the gains of the new stage. The modern theater-goer loves the brilliant stage effects of Irving and others; and some of Shakespeare's plays make a somewhat bare and inadequate impression without the use of more elaborate accessories than the Shakespeare stage" can accommodate. Therefore, a few years ago, the same man who worked out the details of the "Shakespeare stage" invented a revolving back stage; and this is now in use at München. The rear portion of the stage consists of a great turn-table, with a partition separating it into two halves. While one half of this circular back stage is turned toward the audience and a scene is being presented upon it, the other half, turned from the audience, is being prepared for its next scene. It takes but a few seconds to revolve the new setting of the back stage into its place when it is wanted. Waits are done away with; but at the same time all desirable stage setting can be provided. The present director of the München court-theater, Dr. von Possart, tells us that this "revolving stage" has proved a great success, that a larger theater will erelong be constructed containing this device, and that this invention promises to give us "the stage of the future."

V. THE DATE OF THE COMPOSITION OF JULIUS

CESAR

In Weever's Mirror of Martyrs, published in 1601, occur the following lines:

"The many-headed multitude were drawne
By Brutus' speech that Cæsar was ambitious;
When eloquent Mark Antonie had showne
His vertues, who but Brutus then was vicious?"

It is generally agreed that these lines refer to Act III, scene ii, of Julius Cæsar.

written later than 1601.

Hence our play cannot have been
Francis Meres does not mention

this drama among those already in existence in 1598. It was first printed in the Folio of 1623.

Some reasons have lately been presented for believing that 1599 was the year of composition. In the dedication of his work to William Covell, Weever tells us that "This poem

some two years ago was made fit for the print." Moreover, Ben Jonson's Every Man out of his Humour (produced in 1599) seems to contain two references to Julius Cæsar. In III, i, of that play Clove says, "Reason long since is fled to animals, you know." This seems to be a distinct reference to Antony's words, "O judgment! thou art fled to brutish beasts" (III, ii, 103). Also in V, iv, Carlo Buffone, just before his lips are sealed up, says, addressing Macilente, "Et tu Brute!" Here again the reference to the present play (III, i, 77) seems unmistakable. These facts have been pointed out by Mr. Percy Simpson (Notes and Queries, 9th Series, III, pp. 105-106).

VI. THE STYLE

A person who has read several different plays of Shakespeare will be struck at once on beginning Julius Cæsar with the rounded completeness with which every thought is

expressed. There is, in general, a balance between thought and expression. The thought is sufficient for the words; the words are sufficient for the thought. We may say, perhaps, that this play presents a model style—at least a style remarkably free from faults. Passages which illustrate well the great clearness and adequacy of expression which mark this play are the first dialogue between Brutus and Cassius, I, ii, 25–181, and the speech in which Brutus refuses to bind the conspirators by an oath, II, i, 114–140.

Let us examine the account of the swimming-match between Cassius and Cæsar, I, ii, 97-115. Cassius narrates the incident in vigorous language, but there are no intensely condensed phrases. We receive a slight impression of wordiness, even when no particular word or phrase seems superfluous "We both have fed as well" contributes little strength to the passage. The stirring line, "And stemming it with hearts of controversy," adds little to the thought. The long and explicit close is a good specimen of the rhetorical largeness which delights us in this play :

"I, as Æneas our great ancestor

Did from the flames of Troy upon his shoulder

The old Anchises bear, so from the waves of Tiber

Clearness, fullness of language-with occasional overfulland loftiness may be said to be three marked qualities of the style of this play.

ness

We have seen that Julius Cæsar was probably written in 1599, that is, near the middle of Shakespeare's career as a playwright. It was then that his style showed the general characteristics we have just indicated; though, naturally, loftiness is not a prominent feature in the style of the comedies written at this period.

For the sake of comparison with the style of Julius Cæsar and of the middle portion of Shakespeare's career as a play

wright, let us look for a moment at the style of his earliest, and the style of his latest, plays. "In the earliest plays," says Dowden, "the language is sometimes as it were a dress put upon the thought a dress ornamented with superfluous care; the idea is at times hardly sufficient to fill out the language in which it is put" (Shakspere Primer, p. 37).

It is not easy to illustrate by specimen passages the early style of Shakespeare; but the following beautiful comparison shows, among other things, how long, in one of his first plays, he was willing to dwell upon one idea:

"The current that with gentle murmur glides,

Thou knowst, being stopp'd, impatiently doth rage;
But when his fair course is not hindered,

He makes sweet music with the enamell'd stones,
Giving a gentle kiss to every sedge

He overtaketh in his pilgrimage.

And so by many winding nooks he strays
With willing sport to the wild ocean.

Then let me go, and hinder not my course :
I'll be as patient as a gentle stream

And make a pastime of each weary step,

Till the last step have brought me to my love;
And there I'll rest, as after much turmoil
A blessed soul doth in Elysium."

Two Gentlemen of Verona, II, vii, 25-38.

Concerning the style of Cymbeline, The Tempest, and The Winter's Tale, probably the last three complete plays that Shakespeare wrote,- Hudson says in substance: these plays abound in "overcrammed and elliptical passages which show too great a rush and press of thought for the author's space." Although it is impossible by means of specimen passages to give any proper conception of the condensation, the energy, the audacity, and the intense expression of physical and moral beauty which mark Shakespeare's latest style, yet I venture to cite a few brief extracts.

In the following lines Imogen is speaking to the servant who has accompanied her husband to his ship:

"I would thou grew'st unto the shores o' the haven,
And question'dst every sail: if he should write,
And I not have it, 'twere a paper lost,

As offer'd mercy is."

This means,

"'twere a paper lost, which would be as welcome to me as offered mercy is to a condemned criminal." A few lines later Imogen says:

66 ere I could

Give him that parting kiss which I had set
Betwixt two charming words, comes in my father,

And, like the tyrannous breathing of the north,

Shakes all our buds from growing."

– Cymbeline, I, iii, 1–4, 33–37.

In The Winter's Tale Perdita, talking of flowers, speaks of

"The marigold, that goes to bed wi' the sun,
And with him rises weeping

daffodils,

That come before the swallow dares, and take
The winds of March with beauty; violets dim,
But sweeter than the lids of Juno's eyes

Or Cytherea's breath." IV, iv, 105–106, 118-122.

VII. THE DURATION OF THE ACTION

Mr. P. A. Daniel finds that the action of the play covers six days represented on the stage, with intervals (Transactions of New Shakspere Society, 1877-1879, p. 199), as follows: