SCENE, during a great Part of the Play, at Rome: afterwards at

Sardis; and near Philippi.7

them, who concluded the first triumvirate in the year 60 before Christ.

2) This person was not Decius, but Decimus Brutus. The poet (as Voltaire has done since) confounds the characters of Marcus and Decimus. Decimus Brutus was the most cherished by Cæsar of all his friends, while Marcus kept aloof, and declined so large a share of his favours and honours, as the other had constantly accepted.

1) There were in Rome different | Pompey and Crassus had done before classes of triumvirs, or triumviri, i. e. three men, three joint commissioners, three colleagues who held an office together, or were otherwise associated in public business; for instance, triumviri coloniae deducendae, for settling new colonists and distributing land among them; tr. carceris, who had the charge of the public prison; tr. monetales, masters or directors of the mint, and others. Tr. reipublicae constituendae, i. e. for repairing the constitution of the state, was a title assumed by M. Antony, Lepidus and Octavianus after the death of Cæsar, in the year 43 before Christ, as Cæsar,

JULIUS CESAR.

3) The tribuni plebis, tribunes of the people, were from the ordinary rank of citizens, but possessed great power: they could by the word Veto,

1

proceeded to dispute. Hence the name came to be used by way of contempt, especially since many of these persons concerned themselves only with useless subtilties.

protest against any decrees of the | vel from town to town, and display senate, and proceedings of magis- their skill for money; for this purtrates, whether prejudicial to the pose they caused a subject to be procitizens or not; they were sacrosan-posed on which they immediately cti, i. e. no one dared, under pain of death, to lay hands upon them. Their origin was as follows. When the people were oppressed by debt, and were maltreated by their creditors, and received no protection from the 5) Cnidos, a town of Caria (a prosenate, in the year 492 b. Ch., they vince of Asia Minor, on the Egean removed from Rome to the hill call-sea), in which Venus was especially ed Mons Sacer, and did not return worshipped. until the senate granted them magistrates for themselves, to be elected from their own body, who should protect them from the oppression of the senate. At first there were two of them, afterwards five, finally ten. 4) A sophist, i. e. a learned man who professed philosophy and rhetotoric, and instructed others therein for hire. These sophists used to tra

6) Sardis, and more frequently plural Sardes, or Sardeis, ium, the chief town of Lydia, a country of Asia Minor, famous on account of king Crosus, and because the Etrurians are said to have sprung from Lydia.

7) Philippi, orum, a town of Macedonia, celebrated for the defeat of Brutus and Cassius by Antony and Octavianus.

Enter FLAVIUS, MARULLUS, and a Rabble1 of Citizens.

FLAV. Hence; home, you idle creatures, get you home;

Is this a holiday? What! know you not,

Being mechanical, you ought not walk,

Upon a labouring day,, without the sign

Of your profession? Speak, what trade art thou? 1 CIT. Why, sir, a carpenter.

MAR. Where is thy leather apron and thy rule? What dost thou with thy best apparel on?

You, sir; what trade are you?

2 CIT. Truly, sir, in respect of a fine workman, I am but, as you would say, a cobbler. 2

MAR. But what trade art thou? Answer me directly. 2 CIT. A trade, sir, that, I hope, I may use with a safe conscience; which is, indeed, sir, a mender of bad soles.3 MAR. What trade, thou knave; thou naughty knave, what trade?

2 CIT. Nay, I beseech you, sir, be not out with me:4 yet, if you be out, sir, I can mend you.

MAR. What meanest thou by that? Mend me, thou saucy fellow!

2 CIT. Why, sir, cobble you.

FLAV. Thou art a cobbler, art thou?

2 CIT. Truly, sir, all that I live by is, with the awl: I meddle with no tradesman's matters, but with awl.5 I am,

1) A tumultuous crowd, an assembly of low people.

2) A quibble: a cobbler meaning a mender of old shoes, and a clumsy workman in general: Stümper. The quibble may be expressed in some way by the German words, Flicker and Schuhflicker.

3) Fletcher has the same quibble: "If thou dost this, there shall be no more shoe - mending; Every man shall have a care of his own soul.

4) To be out means to fall out, to scold; and the following be out means, to have worn out shoes through which the toes appear.

5) Where our author uses words equivocally, he imposes some difficulty on his editor with respect to the mode of exhibiting them in print. Shakspeare, who wrote for the stage, not for the closet, was contented if his quibble satisfied the ear. I have with the other modern editors, print

appeared in 1607, at a time when he was little acquainted with English writers; for both these pieces abound with scotticisms, which, in the subsequent folio edition, 1637, he corrected. But neither The Tempest nor the Julius Cæsar of our author was printed till 1623. At all events it appears more probable that Shakspeare was indebted to Lord Sterline, than that Lord Sterline borrowed from Shakspeare.

The real length of time in Julius Cæsar is as follows: About the middle of February A. U. C. 709, (43 B. C.) a frantic festival, sacred to Pan, and called Lupercalia, was held in honour of Cæsar, when the regal crown was offered to him by Antony. On the 15th of March in the same year, he was slain. Nov. 27, A. U. C. 709, (43 B. C.) the triumvirs met at a small island, formed by the river Rhenus, near Bononia, und there adjusted their cruel proscription. A. U. C. 710, (42 B. C.) Brutus and Cassius

The last of the Romans" as they were called, were defeated near Philippi in Macedonia.

SCENE, during a great Part of the Play, at Rome: afterwards at

6

Sardis; and near Philippi.7

them, who concluded the first triumvirate in the year 60 before Christ.

2) This person was not Decius, but Decimus Brutus. The poet (as Voltaire has done since) confounds the characters of Marcus and Decimus. Decimus Brutus was the most cherished by Cæsar of all his friends, while Marcus kept aloof, and declined so large a share of his favours and honours, as the other had constantly accepted.

1) There were in Rome different | Pompey and Crassus had done before classes of triumvirs, or triumviri, i. e. three men, three joint commissioners, three colleagues who held an office together, or were otherwise associated in public business; for instance, triumviri coloniae deducendae, for settling new colonists and distributing land among them; tr.carceris, who had the charge of the public prison; tr. monetales, masters or directors of the mint, and others. Tr. reipublicae constituendae, i. e. for repairing the constitution of the state, was a title assumed by M. Antony, Lepidus and Octavianus after the death of Cæsar, in the year 43 before Christ, as Cæsar,

JULIUS CESAR.

3) The tribuni plebis, tribunes of the people, were from the ordinary rank of citizens, but possessed great power: they could by the word Veto,

1