JULIUS CESAR.

THIS tragedy, there can be no reasonable doubt, was first published in the folio collection of 1623, where it is printed with, for that volume, a remarkable exemption from typographical inaccuracies. The date of its production is less certain. Malone, in his "Attempt to ascertain the order in which the Plays of Shakespeare were written," concludes that it could not have been composed before 1607; but, as his argument mainly rests upon the fact that a tragedy with the same title by William Alexander, afterwards Earl of Sterline, was printed in London that year,* from which he conjectured Shakespeare had derived one or two ideas, it cannot be regarded as satisfactory. Upon safer grounds, we think, Mr. Collier believes that Shakespeare's "Julius Cæsar" was written and acted. before 1603. In Act V. Sc. 5, it will be remembered, Antony pays a beautiful tribute to the character of Brutus,—

"His life was gentle; and the elements

So mix'd in him, that Nature might stand up
And say to all the world, This was a man!"

Referring to this passage, Mr. Collier observes, "In Drayton's 'Barons' Wars,' Book III. edit. 8vo. 1603, p. 61, we meet with the subsequent stanza. The author is speaking of Mortimer :

Italic type is hardly necessary to establish that one poet must have availed himself, not only of the thought, but of the very words of the other. The question is, was Shakespeare indebted to Drayton, or Drayton to Shakespeare? We shall not enter into general probabilities, founded upon the original and exhaustless stores of the mind of our great dramatist, but advert to a few dates, which, we think, warrant the conclusion that Drayton, having heard Julius Cæsar' at a theatre, or seen it in manuscript, before 1603, applied to his own purpose, perhaps unconsciously, what, in fact, belonged to another poet.

"Drayton's Barons' Wars' first appeared in 1596, 4to., under the title of Mortimeriados.' Malone had a copy without date, and he and Steevens erroneously imagined that the poem had been originally printed in 1598. In the 4to. of 1596, and in the undated edition, it is not divided into books, and is in seven-line stanzas; and what is there said of Mortimer bears no likeness whatever to Shakespeare's expressions in Julius Cæsar.' Drayton afterwards changed the title from Mortimeriados' to 'The Barons' Wars,' and remodelled the whole historical poem, altering the stanza from the English ballad form to the Italian ottava rima. This course he took before 1603, when it came out in octavo, with the stanza first quoted, which contains so marked a similarity to the lines from Julius Cæsar.' We apprehend that he did so, because he had heard or seen Shakespeare's tragedy before 1603; and we think that strong presumptive

It was published in Scotland, of which Malone was not aware, three years before.

proof that he was the borrower and not Shakespeare, is derived from the fact, that in the subsequent impressions of the Barons' Wars,' in 1605, 1607, 1608, 1610, and 1613, the stanza remained precisely as in the edition of 1603: but in 1619, after Shakespeare's death and before Julius Caesar' was printed, Drayton made even a nearer approach to the words of his original, thus:

:

"He was a man, then boldly dare to say,

In whose rich soul the virtues well did suit;
In whom so mix'd the elements did lay,
That none to one could sovereignty impute;
As all did govern, so did all obey:

He of a temper was so absolute,

As that it seem'd, when Nature him began,
She meant to show all that might be in man.'"

We think it will be admitted that Mr. Collier has made out a very strong case,―all bat proved, indeed, that in this instance Drayton was the borrower, and, as a consequence, that Shakespeare's tragedy is of an earlier date by some years than Malone and others had supposed. The material incidents of this tragedy appear to have been derived from North's translation of Plutarch; but as there was a Latin play upon the subject of Cæsar-" Epilogus Cæsaris Interfecti," &c.—written by Dr. Richard Eedes, which was played at Christ's Church Coll., Oxford, in 1582, and an old anonymous play in English, of the same age, it is possible that Shakespeare may have incurred some obligations to one or both of these.

SCENE,-During a great part of the Play at ROME; afterwards at SARDIS; and near PHILIPPI,