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JULIUS CÆSAR

VOL. VIII

115

B

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FLAVIUS and MARULLUS, tribunes.

ARTEMIDORUS of Cnidos, a teacher of Rhetoric.

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Senators, Citizens, Guards, Attendants, etc.

SCENE: Rome: the neighbourhood of Sardis: the neighbour

hood of Philippi.

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Historic Time.-From October 45 B.C. (Cæsar's Triumph), or February 44 B.C. (the Lupercalia)—I. 1. synchronises the two occasions, cf. vv. 35 and 72-to autumn 42 B.C. (battle of Philippi).

Dramatis Persona. First given by Rowe. For Antonius, Marullus, Varro, Claudius, Ff have Antonio, Murellus, Varrus, Claudio, all clearly unauthentic. The name Calpurnia appears always as Calphurnia; Shakespeare found both forms in Plutarch; it remains uncertain which he wrote. The true form (Calpurnia) is thence adopted by most modern edd.

INTRODUCTION

Edition.

JULIUS CESAR was first published in the Folio of First
1623. The Cambridge editors justly emphasise the
extreme correctness of the text there given, and
conjecture that this play 'may have been (as the
preface falsely implied that all were) printed from
the original MS. of the author.' It was entered in
the Stationers' Register, November 8, 1623, among
the plays of Shakespeare 'not formerly entered to
other men,' and then first published.

position.

The most important evidence for the date of Date of Com Julius Cæsar is the following passage in Weever's Mirror of Martyrs, or the Life and Death of Sir John Oldcastle (printed in 1601):

The many-headed multitude were drawn

By Brutus' speech, that Cæsar was ambitious.
When eloquent Mark Antonie had shewn

His virtues, who but Brutus then was vicious?

Shakespeare's only known source, Plutarch, merely mentions the funeral speech of Brutus; summarises Antony's in three lines of quite a different purport; and knows nothing of the 'many-headed multitude's' ready change of front, exhibited with peculiarly Shakespearean sarcasm in the play. The inference is forcible that Shakespeare's Julius Cæsar was already familiar to the stage when Weever wrote. Weever, however, tells us that his Mirror was 'some two

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