The duration of the action according to real history may be seen in the following table, taken from Verity's edition of the play :

Proscrip-November, 43.

Formation of the Triumvirate, - Octa

vius, Antony, Lepidus.

tions' at Rome, in which Cicero falls,

Battles of Philippi. [The two battles October, 42 B.C.

were twenty days apart],

The student should note the different ways in which Shakespeare has departed from the historic time, and try to see why each change was made.

VIII. THE SOURCE OF THE PLOT

Shakespeare derived the materials for three of his plays from Sir Thomas North's translation of Bishop Amyot's French version of Plutarch's Lives. North's Plutarch was first published in 1579. The three dramas in which Shakespeare made extensive use of Plutarch are Julius Cæsar, Antony and Cleopatra, and Coriolanus. The story dramatized in the play of Julius Caesar is touched upon with more or less fullness in three of the 'Lives,' those of Marcus Brutus, Julius Cæsar, and Marcus Antonius. It is hoped that all the passages in Plutarch which can be identified as con

tributing toward the play will be found in the Appendix to this edition.

Gervinus speaks as follows concerning the indebtedness of Shakespeare to his source in the composition of this play:

"The component parts of our drama are borrowed from the biographies of Brutus and Cæsar in such a manner that not only the historical action in its ordinary course, but also the single characteristic traits in incidents and speeches, nay, even single expressions and words, are taken from Plutarch; even those which are not anecdotal or of an epigrammatic nature, and which any one unacquainted with Plutarch would consider in form and manner to be quite Shakespearian, being not unfrequently quoted as his peculiar property, and as evidencing the poet's deep knowledge of human nature. From the triumph over Pompey (or rather over his sons), the silencing of the two tribunes, and the crown offered at the Lupercalian feast, until Cæsar's murder, and from thence to the battle of Philippi and the closing words of Antony, which are in part exactly as they were delivered, all in this play is essentially Plutarch. The omens of Cæsar's death, the warnings of the augur and of Artemidorus, the absence of the heart in the animal sacrificed, Calpurnia's dream; the peculiar traits of Cæsar's character, his superstition regarding the touch of barren women in the course, and his remarks about thin people like Cassius; all the circumstances about the conspiracy where no oath was taken, the character of Ligarius, the leaving out of Cicero; the whole relation of Portia to Brutus, her selfinflicted wound, her words, his reply, her subsequent anxiety and death; the circumstances of Cæsar's death, the very arts and means of Decius Brutus to induce him to leave home, all the minutest particulars of his murder, the behaviour of Antony and its result, the murder of the poet Cinna; further on, the contention between the republican friends respecting Lucius Pella and the refusal of the money, their difference of opinion concerning the decisive battle, their conversation about suicide, the appearance of Brutus's evil genius, the mistakes in the battle, its double issue, its repetition, the suicide of both friends, and Cassius's death by the same sword with which he killed Cæsar -all is

taken from Plutarch's narrative, from which the poet had only to omit whatever destroyed the unity of the action. .

"The fidelity of Shakespeare to his source justifies us in saying that he has but copied the historical text. It is at the same time wonderful with what hidden and almost undiscernible power he has converted the text into a drama, and made one of the most effective plays possible. Nowhere else has Shakespeare executed his task with such simple skill, combining his dependence on history with the greatest freedom of a poetic plan, and making the truest history at once the freest drama. The parts seem to be only put together with the utmost ease, a few links taken out of the great chain of historical events, and the remainder united into a closer and more compact unity; but let any one, following this model work, attempt to take any other subject out of Plutarch, and to arrange even a dramatic sketch from it, and he will become fully aware of the difficulty of this apparently most easy task." (Bunnètt's Translation of Gervinus's Shakespeare Commentaries, pp. 699-701, fifth edition, London, 1892.)

1

In the following passage from his Lectures on Plutarch, Archbishop Trench compares the way in which Shakespeare treats Plutarch with his attitude toward those writers that furnished him materials for other plays:

a sug

"How noticeable is the difference between Shakespeare's treatment of Plutarch and his treatment of others, upon whose hints, more or less distinct, he elsewhere has spoken. How little is it in most cases which he condescends to use of the materials offered to his hand. Take, for instance, his employment of some Italian novel, Bandello's or Cinthio's. He derives from it the barest outline gestion perhaps is all, with a name or two here and there, but neither dialogue nor character. On the first fair occasion that offers he abandons his original altogether, that so he may expatiate freely in the higher and nobler world of his own thoughts and fancies. But his relations with Plutarch are different. . . . What a testimony we have to the true artistic

1 A few slight changes have been made in Bunnètt's translation of this passage.

sense and skill which, with all his occasional childish simplicity, the old biographer possesses, in the fact that the mightiest and completest artist of all times should be content to resign himself into his hands, and simply to follow where the other leads!" (Cited from Rolfe's edition of Julius Cæsar, p. 187.)

IX. THE CHARACTERS AND THE ACTION

The clear, simple style of this play is misleading if it makes the student think that the important characters are as transparent and easy to understand as are the separate sentences of the drama. The most able and conscientious critics are far from interpreting in the same way Shakespeare's delineation of the character of Brutus, of Cassius, or of Cæsar. Upon this subject Freytag speaks as follows:

"In the case of Shakespeare's heroes, the spectator never remains in uncertainty concerning the important motives which govern their action; indeed the full measure of his poetic greatness is evident just in this, that he understands, as no other poet does, how to express the mental processes of his chief characters, from the first stirring of emotion and desire up to the climax of passion, with the most intense power and reality. Also the most active opponents of the heroes in his dramas, for example, Iago and Shylock, do not fail to inform the spectators fully concerning their purposes. It may be said that those characters of Shakespeare whose passion beats in the mightiest billows, at the same time allow the spectator to look into the depths of their hearts more than do the characters of any other poet. But this depth is sometimes unfathomable to the eyes of the artist-actor even as it is to the auditor; and the characters of this poet are by no means always so transparent and simple, even to a thorough analysis, as they appear at a casual glance. Indeed, many of them have something about them peculiarly enigmatical and difficult to understand, which perpetually allures to an interpretation, and yet is never entirely comprehended.

"Not only do such persons as Hamlet, Richard III, and Iago come into this class, in whom an essential charac

teristic not easily understood, and certain real or apparent contradictions, strike our attention; but also those characters who, to superficial observation, stride away down the straight street, and are peculiarly fitted to be represented upon the stage.

"Let the judgments be brought to mind which for a hundred years have been pronounced in Germany on the characters in Julius Cæsar, and the delighted approval with which our contemporaries respond to the noble features of this drama. To the warm-hearted youth, Brutus is the noble, patriotic hero. One honest commentator, looking from his study, sees in Cæsar the great, immovable character, superior to all; a certain statesman delights in the ironical, stern severity with which from the beginning of the play the poet has treated Brutus and Cassius as unpractical fools, and their conspiracy as a silly venture of incapable aristocrats. The actor of judgment finds at last in this same Cæsar, whom his commentator has eloquently portrayed as a model ruler, a hero inwardly wounded to the death, a soul in whom the illusion of greatness has devoured the very joints and marrow. Who is right? Each of them. And yet each of them has the feeling that the characters are not at all mixtures of incongruous elements, artfully composed, or in any way unreal. Each of them feels distinctly that these persons are admirably portrayed, and live on the stage most effectively; and the actor himself feels this most strongly, even though the secret of Shakespeare's poetic power he cannot entirely understand. . . . The poet lets his characters in every place say exactly what is appropriate to them in such a situation; but he treats their nature as self-explanatory, and clears up nothing, not because each personality has become distinct to him through deliberate calculation, but because it has arisen with a natural force from all the presupposed conditions."

It has been questioned whether this play is well named. But certainly Julius Caesar was the best possible title to draw spectators; and if the play was not to be named from its hero, Brutus, it could not well receive a better title than the name of that hero's greatest, though unconscious opponent. Moreover, though Cæsar dies in the middle of the