1 Rowe was the first to give the list of Dramatis Personæ imperfectly. Theobald supplied some of the omissions. Decius Brutus should be Decimus Brutus, strictly speaking, but this mistake came from North's Plutarch, and indeed is found both in the early French translation and in the Greek text of the original (edn. 1572).

The name Marullus is throughout spelt Murellus in Ff., 78

Day 4: Act IV. Scene 1.-Interval.

Day 5: Act IV. Scenes 2 and 3.-Interval, one day at least. Day 6: Act V.

except in i. 2. 288, where it is spelt Murrellus. Theobald corrected this name to the form given in North's Plutarch, Marullus.

Calpurnia, wife to Cæsar, is uniformly called Calphurnia in the Folio; and so she is called in North's Plutarch, at any rate in the early editions of that work. Many editors retain the spelling Calphurnia.

This play was first published, so far as we know, in the Folio of 1623, where it occupies pages 109-130 in the division of "Tragedies." At the beginning of the play, and at the head of each page, it is entitled "The Tragedie of Julius Cæsar;" but in the Table of Contents (or, as it is called, "A CATALOGVE of the seuerall Comedies, Histories, and Tragedies contained in this Volume") it is set down as "The Life and Death of Julius Cæsar." No play in the Folio is printed with greater accuracy, and none presents fewer textual difficulties for the editor or critic.

The date of composition has been the subject of considerable discussion. Malone believed that the play "could not have appeared before 1607;" and Chalmers, Drake, and the earlier commentators generally, were unanimous in accepting his conclusions. There was a natural disposition at first to associate it chronologically with the other Roman plays, neither of which can be placed earlier than 1607; but, though Knight considers it "one of the latest works of Shakespeare," the great majority of recent editors are inclined to put it five years or more earlier than Antony and Cleopatra. Collier argues that it must have been performed before 1603; and Gervinus also decides that it "was composed before 1603, about the same time as Hamlet." He adds that this is "confirmed not only by the frequent external references to Cæsar which we find in Hamlet, but still more by the inner relations of the two plays." Halliwell, in his folio edition, 1865, takes the ground that it was written "in or before the year 1601." This is evident, he says, "from the following lines in Weever's Mirror of Martyrs, printed in that year-lines which unquestionably are to be traced to a recollection of Shake

speare's drama, not to that of the history as given by Plutarch:

The many-headed multitude were drawne
By Brutus' speech, that Cæsar was ambitious;
When eloquent Mark Antonie had showne

His virtues, who but Brutus then was vicious?"

I am inclined to believe that this is a reference to Shakespeare's play, though Halliwell appears to have modified his own opinion since the above was written. In his Outlines of the Life of Shakespeare (6th ed. 1886, vol. ii. p. 257) he says: "There is supposed to be a possibility, derived from an apparent reference to it in Weever's Mirror of Martyrs, that the tragedy of Julius Cæsar was in existence as early as 1599; for although the former work was not published till 1601, the author distinctly tells his dedicatee that 'this poem, which I present to your learned view, some two yeares agoe was made fit for print.' The subject was then, however, a favourite one for dramatic composition, and inferences from such premises must be cautiously received. Shakespeare's was not, perhaps, the only drama of the time to which the lines of Weever were applicable; and the more this species of evidence is studied, the more is one inclined to question its efficacy. Plays on the history of Julius Cæsar are mentioned in Gosson's Schoole of Abuse, 1579; the Third Blast of Retraite from Plaies, 1580; Henslowe's Diary, 1594, 1602; Mirrour of Policie, 1598; Hamlet, 1603; Heywood's Apology for Actors, 1612. There was a French tragedy on the subject published at Paris in 1578, and a Latin one was performed at Christ Church, Oxford, in 1582. Tarlton, who died in 1588, had appeared as Cæsar, perhaps on some unauthorized occasion, a circumstance alluded to in the Ourania, 1606."

The allusion in Weever's book does not fit