so thickly sprinkled with classical allusions of all kinds, there are several to the great Roman Dictator. "Henry the Fifth! thy ghost I invocate ;" the Duke of Bedford apostrophizes his deceased brother in the First Part (i. 1); "Prosper this realm, keep it from civil broils! In the next Scene the Maid, setting out to raise the siege of Orleans, and deliver her king and country, compares herself to 'That proud insulting ship Which Cæsar and his fortunes bare at once." In the Second Part (iv. 1) we have Suffolk, when hurried away to execution by the seamen who had captured him, consoling himself with— "Great men oft die by vile bezonians : A Roman sworder and banditto slave Murdered sweet Tully; Brutus' bastard hand Pompey the great; and Suffolk dies by pirates." The Cassiope is supplied by Mr Collier's MS. annotator. But Theobald had proposed Cassiopeia, and not without supporting his conjecture by some ingenious and plausible reasoning. See his letter to Warburton, dated 29th January 1730, in Nichols's Illustrations, II. 451-453. This, then, is one of those remarkable instances in which the recently discovered MS. is found to concur with a previously published conjectural emendation,-like two independent witnesses testifying separately to the same fact, and so at once adding confirmation to the fact and corroborating each other's testimony, sagacity, or judgment. It is proper to add, however, that Theobald was afterwards induced to give up this reading. Writing again to Warburton on the 12th of February, he says: "I have received the pleasure of yours dated February 3, with a kind and judicious refutation of Cassiopeia; and, with a just deference to your most convincing reasons, I shall with great cheerfulness banish it as a bad and unsupported conjecture." (Illustrations, II. 478). And afterwards (iv. 7) we have Lord Say, in somewhat similar circumstances, thus appealing to Cade and his mob of men of Kent : "Hear me but speak, and bear me where you will. Kent, in the Commentaries Cæsar writ, Is termed the civilest place of all this isle ; Which makes me hope you are not void of pity." "O traitors! murderers!" Queen Margaret in the Third Part (v. 5) shrieks out in her agony and rage when the Prince her son is butchered before her eyes ; 66 They that stabbed Cæsar shed no blood at all, If this foul deed were by to sequel it : He was a man; this, in respect, a child; And men ne'er spend their fury on a child." In King Richard the Third (iii. 1) is a passage of great pregnancy. "Did Julius Cæsar build that place, my lord?" the young Prince asks Buckingham when it is proposed that he shall retire for a day or two to the Tower before his coronation. And, when informed in reply that the mighty Roman at least began the building, "Is it," he further inquires, "upon record, or else reported Successively from age to age, he built it?" "It is upon record, my gracious lord," answers Buckingham. On which the wise royal boy rejoins,— "But say, my lord, it were not registered, Methinks the truth should live from age to age, As 'twere retailed to all posterity, Even to the general all-ending day.” And then, after a "What say you, uncle ?", he explains the great thought that was working in his mind in these striking words: "That Julius Cæsar was a famous man: * Far away from anything Roman as the fable and locality of Hamlet are, various passages testify how much Cæsar was in the mind of Shakespeare while writing that Play. First, we have the famous passage (i. 1) so closely resembling one in the Second Scene of the Second Act of Julius Cæsar : "In the most high and palmy state of Rome, A little ere the mightiest Julius fell, The graves stood tenantless, and the sheeted dead Then there is (iii. 2) the conversation between Hamlet "This "" was "His conqueror " is the reading of all the Folios. restored by Theobald from the Quarto of 1597, and has been adopted by Malone and most modern editors. + Something is evidently wrong here; but even Mr Collier's annotator gives us no help. This passage, however, is found only in the Quartos, and is omitted in all the Folios. Nor, although retained by Mr Collier in his "regulated" text, is it stated to be restored by his MS. annotator. Many notices of Cæsar occur, as might be expected, in Cymbeline. Such are the boast of Posthumus to his friend Philario (ii. 4) of the valour of the Britons : Various "Our countrymen Are men more ordered than when Julius Caesar passages in the First Scene of the Third Act: "When Julius Cæsar (whose remembrance yet Lives in men's eyes, and will to ears and tongues "There be many Cæsars, Cæsar made here; but made not here his brag "Our kingdom is stronger than it was at that time; and, as I said, there is no more such Cæsars; other of them may have crooked noses; but to owe such straight arms, none;" "Cæsar's ambition (Which swelled so much that it did almost stretch The sides o' the world) against all colour, here, Lastly, we have a few references in Antony and Cleopatra; such as: Who at Philippi the good Brutus ghosted" (ii. 6); "What was it That moved pale Cassius to conspire? And what Have one man but a man? (ii. 6); "Your fine Egyptian cookery Shall have the fame. I have heard that Julius Cæsar "When Antony found Julius Cæsar dead, He cried almost to roaring; and he wept Thyreus.-"Give me grace to lay (iii. 2); Cleopatra." Your Cæsar's father oft, These passages taken all together, and some of them more particularly, will probably be thought to afford a considerably more comprehensive representation of “the mighty Julius" than the Play which bears his name. We cannot be sure that that Play was so entitled by Shakespeare. "The Tragedy of Julius Cæsar," or "The Life and Death of Julius Cæsar," would describe no more than the half of it. Cæsar's part in it terminates with the opening of the Third Act; after that, on to the end, we have nothing more of him but his dead body, his ghost, and his memory. The Play might more fitly be called after Brutus than after Cæsar. And still more remarkable is the partial delineation that we have of the man. |