Introduction.

'THE Tragedy of Julius Caesar' was first printed in the folio collection of 1623. The text is divided into acts; and the stage directions are full and precise. Taken altogether, we know no play of Shakspere's that presents so few difficulties arising out of inaccuracies in the original edition.

Years, perhaps centuries, nave rolled on since the æra of Coriolanus.' Rome had seen a constitution which had reconciled the differences of the patricians and the plebeians. The two orders had built a temple to Concord. Her power had increased; her territory had extended. In compounding their differences the patricians and the plebeians had appropriated to themselves all the wealth and honours of the state. There was a neglected class that the social system appeared to reject, as well as to despise. The aristocratic party was again brought into a more terrible conflict with the impoverished and the destitute. Civil war was the natural result. Sulla established a short-lived constitution. The dissolution of the Republic was at hand: the struggle was henceforth to be not between classes, but individuals. The death of Julius Cæsar was soon followed by the final termination of the contest between the republican and the monarchical principle. Shakspere saw the grandeur of the crisis; and he seized upon it for one of his lofty expositions of political philosophy.

He has treated it as no other poet would have treated it, because he saw the exact relations of the contending principle to the future great history of mankind. The death of Cæsar was not his catastrophe: it was the death of the Roman Republic at Philippi.

Of all Shakspere's characters none require to be studied with more patient attention than those of Brutus and Cassius, that we may understand the resemblances and the differences of each. The leading distinctions between these two remarkable men, as drawn by Shakspere, appear to us to be these: Brutus acts wholly upon principle; Cassius partly upon impulse. Brutus acts only when he has reconciled the contemplation of action with his speculative opinions; Cassius allows the necessity of some action to run before and govern his opinions. Brutus is a philosopher; Cassius is a partisan. Brutus therefore deliberates and spares; Cassius precipitates and denounces. Brutus is the nobler instructor; Cassius the better politician. Shakspere, in the first great scene between them, brings out these distinctions of character upon which future events so mainly depend.

Nothing can be more interesting than to follow Shakspere with Plutarch in hand. The poet adheres to the facts of history with a remarkable fidelity. A few hard figures are painted upon a canvas; the outlines are distinct, the colours are strong; but there is no art in the composition, no grouping, no light and shadow. This is the historian's picture. We turn to the poet. We recognise the same figures, but they appear to live; they are in harmony with the entire scene in which they

move; we have at once the reality of nature, and the ideal of art, which is a higher nature. Yet the art of the poet is so subtle that many have fancied that they could detect a want of art; and the character of Cæsar, as drawn by Shakspere, has been held not only to be tame, and below the historical conception of the great dictator, but as representing him in a false light. We believe that Shakspere was wholly right. At the exact period of the action of this drama, Cæsar, possessing the reality of power, was haunted by the weakness of passionately desiring the title of king. Plutarch says "The chiefest cause that made him mortally hated was the covetous desire he had to be called king." This is the pivot upon which the whole action of Shakspere's tragedy turns. There might have been another mode of treating the subject. The death of Julius Cæsar might have been the catastrophe. The republican and the monarchical principles might have been exhibited in conflict. The republican principle would have triumphed in the fall of Cæsar; and the poet would have previously held the balance between the two principles, or have claimed, indeed, our largest sympathies for the principles of Cæsar and his friends, by a true exhibition of Cæsar's greatness and Cæsar's virtues. The poet

chose another course. And are we then to talk, with ready flippancy, of ignorance and carelessness-that he wanted classical knowledge-that he gave himself no trouble? "The fault of the character is the fault of the plot," says Hazlitt. It would have been nearer the truth had he said-the character is determined by the plot. While Cæsar is upon the scene, it was for the

poet, largely interpreting the historian, to show the inward workings of "the covetous desire he had to be called king;" and most admirably, according to our notions of characterization, has he shown them. Altogether we profess to receive Shakspere's characterization of Cæsar with a perfect confidence that he produced that character upon fixed principles of art. It is not the prominent character of the play; and it was not meant to be so. It is true to the narrative upon which Shakspere founded it; but, what is of more importance, it is true to every natural conception of what Cæsar must have been at the exact moment of his fall.