תמונות בעמוד
PDF
ePub
[graphic]

REV. HENRY N. HUDSON, LL.D.

[ocr errors]

HARVARD
UNIVERSITY
LIBRARY

Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1879, by HENRY N. HUDSON,

In the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington.

TYPOGRAPHY BY J. S. CUSHING & Co., BOSTON, U.S.A.

PRESSWORK BY GINN & Co., BOSTON, U.S.A.

[graphic]

IUS CÆSAR was first printed in the folio of 1623. ne of the plays in that inestimable volume have reached h the text in a sounder and clearer state; there being assages that give an editor any trouble, none that are roublesome.

[graphic]

at some length in the Critical Notes, it need not be prosecuted further here.

Such are the main particulars urged by Mr. Fleay. His argument shows a good deal of learned diligence; still it does not, to my mind, carry any great force, certainly is far from being conclusive, and, as the Clarendon Editor observes, is "not such as the readers of Shakespeare have a right to demand." Nevertheless, as, on comparing the quarto and folio copies, we find that the folio has several other plays more or less abridged, some to the extent of whole scenes; so I think it nowise improbable that, after Shakespeare's retirement from the stage, perhaps after his death, Julius Cæsar may have been subjected to the same process, and for the same purpose, namely, to shorten the time of representation. If this was done, it is altogether credible that Jonson may have been the man who did it but I fail to catch any taste of Jonson's style or any smack of his idiom in the play as it stands. So that, while conceding that he may have struck out more or less of Shakespeare's matter, still I am by no means prepared to admit that he put in any thing of his own; though, possibly enough, in a few places, as in that already specified, he may have slightly altered Shakespeare's language.

There were several other plays on the subject of Julius Cæsar, written some before, some after, the composition of Shakespeare's play; but, as no connection has been traced between any of these and Shakespeare's, it seems hardly worth the while to make any further notice of them.

Date of the Writing.

The time when Julius Cæsar was composed has been

t

C

t

W

S

t

[graphic]

et's labours, others among the latest; and, as no ontemporary notice or allusion had been produced, stion could not be positively determined. It is inell known that the original Hamlet must have been as early as 1602; and in iii. 2, of that play Polonius I did enact Julius Cæsar: I was killed in the Capitol ; killed me." As the play now in hand lays the scene stabbing in the Capitol, it is not improbable, to say st, that the Poet had his own Julius Cæsar in mind he wrote the passage in Hamlet. And that such was e is made further credible by the fact, that Polonius of himself as having enacted the part when he "play'd n the University," and that in the title-page of the ition of Hamlet we have the words, "As it hath been times acted by his Highness' Servants in the city of ; as also in the two Universities of Cambridge and ." Still the point cannot be affirmed with certainty ; e were several earlier plays on the subject, and es7 a Latin play on Cæsar's Death, which was performed rd in 1582.

Collier argued that Shakespeare's play must have been stage before 1603, his reason being as follows. DrayTortimeriados appeared in 1596. The poem was afs recast by the author, and published again in 1603 Barons' Wars. The recast has the following lines, vere not in the original form of the poem:

Such one he was, of him we boldly say,
In whose rich soul all sovereign powers did suit;
In whom in peace the elements all lay

« הקודםהמשך »