dramatist yet, with a few almost imperceptible touches, a few changes in the order of construction, a few substitutions in the wording, the language of North, without losing any directness or force, gains a majestic volume and vibration that are only possible in the cadences of the most perfect verse. These are the cases in which Shakespeare shows most verbal dependence on his author, but his originality asserts itself even in them. North's admirable appeal is not Shakespeare's, Shakespeare's more admirable appeal is not North's.1 Similarly there has been a tendency to overestimate the loans of the Roman Plays from Plutarch. From this danger even Archbishop Trench has not altogether escaped in an eloquent and well-known passage which in many ways comes very near to the truth. After dwelling on the freedom with which Shakespeare generally treats his sources, for instance the novels of Bandello or Cinthio, deriving from them at most a hint or two, cutting and carving, rejecting or expanding their statements at will, he concludes: But his relations with Plutarch are very different-different enough to justify or almost to justify the words of Jean Paul when in his Titan he calls Plutarch "der biographische Shakespeare der Weltgeschichte." What a testimony we have here to the true artistic 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. To this it might be answered in the first place that Shakespeare shows the same sort of fidelity in kind, though not in degree, to the comparatively inartistic chronicles of his mother country. That is, 'The relations of the various versions-Greek, Latin, French, and English are illustrated from Volumnia's speech in Appendix B. "Childish simplicity" does not strike one as a correct description of Plutarch's method. it is in part, as we have seen, his tribute not to the historical author but to the historical subject. Granting, however, the superior claims of Plutarch, it is yet an overstatement to say that Shakespeare is content to resign himself into his hands, and simply to follow where the other leads. Delius, after an elaborate comparison of biography and drama, sums up his results in the protest that "Shakespeare has much less to thank Plutarch for than one is generally inclined to suppose." Indeed, however much Plutarch would appeal to Shakespeare in virtue both of his subjects and his methods, it is easy to see that even as a "grave learned philosopher and historiographer" he is on the hither side of perfection. He interrupts the story with moral disquisitions, and is a little apt to preach, and often, through such intrusions and irrelevances, or the adherence of the commonplace, his most impressive touches fail of their utmost possible effect at least he does not always seem aware of the full value of his details, of their depth and suggestiveness when they are set aright. Yet he is more excellent in details than in the whole : he has little arrangement or artistic construction; he is not free from contradictions and discrepancies; he gives the bricks and mortar but not the building, and occasionally some of the bricks are flawed or the mortar is forgotten. And his stories have this inorganic character, because he is seldom concerned to pierce to the meaning that would give them unity and coherence. He moralises, and only too sententiously, whenever an opportunity offers; but of the principles that underlie the conflicts and catastrophes which in his free-and-easy way he describes, he has at best but fragmentary glimpses. And in all this the difference between the genial moralist and the inspired tragedian is a vast oneso vast that when once we perceive it, it is hard to retain a fitting sense of the points of contact. In Shakespeare, Plutarch's weaknesses disappear, or rather are replaced by excellences of precisely the opposite kind. He rejects all that is otiose or discordant in speech or situation, and adds from other passages in his author or from his own imagination, the circumstances that are needed to bring out its full poetic significance. He always looks to the whole, removes discrepancies, establishes the inner connection; and at his touch the loose parts take their places as members of one living organism. And in a sense, "he knows what it is all about.' In a sense he is more of a philosophic historian than his teacher. At any rate, while Plutarch takes his responsibilities lightly in regard both to facts and conclusions, Shakespeare, in so far as that was possible for an Elizabethan, has a sort of intuition of the principles that Plutarch's narrative involves; and while adding some pigment from his own thought and feeling to give them colour and visible shape, accepts them as his pre-suppositions which interpret the story and which it interprets. Thus the influences of North's Plutarch, whether of North's style or of Plutarch's matter, though no doubt very great, are in the last resort more in the way of suggestion than of control. But they do not invariably act with equal potency or in the same proportion. Thus Antony and Cleopatra adheres most closely to the narrative of the biographer, which is altered mainly by the omission of details unsuitable for the purpose of the dramatist; but the words, phrases, constructions, are for the most part conspicuously Shakespeare's own. own. Here there is a maximum of Plutarch and a minimum of North. Coriolanus, on the other hand, apart from the unconscious modifications that we have noticed, Shakespeare allows himself more liberty than elsewhere in chopping and changing the substance; but In lengthy passages and some of the most impressive ones are incorporated in the drama without further alteration than is implied in the transfiguration of prose to verse. Here there is the maximum of North with the minimum of Plutarch. Julius Caesar, as in the matter of the inevitable and unintentional misunderstandings, so again here, occupies a middle place. Many phrases, and not a few decisive suggestions for the most important speeches, have passed from the Lives into the play: one sentence at least it is hard to interpret without reference to the context; but here as a rule, even when he borrows most, Shakespeare treats his loans very independently. So, too, though he seldom wittingly departs from Plutarch, he elaborates the new material throughout, amplifying and abridging, selecting and rejecting, taking to pieces and recombining, not from one Life but from three. Here we have the mean influence both of Plutarch and of North. In so far therefore Julius Caesar gives the norm of Shakespeare's procedure; and with it, for this as well as on chronological grounds, we begin. JULIUS CAESAR CHAPTER I POSITION OF THE PLAY BETWEEN THE HISTORIES AND THE TRAGEDIES. ATTRACTION OF THE SUBJECT FOR SHAKESPEARE AND HIS GENERATION. INDEBTEDNESS TO PLUTARCH ALTHOUGH Julius Caesar was first published in the Folio of 1623, seven years after Shakespeare's death, there is not much doubt about its approximate date of composition, which is now placed by almost all scholars near the beginning of the seventeenth century. Some of the evidence for this is partly external in character. (1) In a miscellany of poems on the death of Elizabeth, printed in 1603, and entitled Sorrowes Joy, the lines occur : They say a comet woonteth to appeare It looks as though the suggestion for the idea and many of the words had come from Calpurnia's remonstrance, When beggars die there are no comets seen: The heavens themselves blaze forth the death of princes. 1 (11. ii. 30.) Might not 1 Pointed out by Mr. Stokes, Chronological Order, etc. some of the expressions come, however, from Virgil's list of the portents |