MON. But I can give thee more: For I will raise her statue in pure gold; CAP. As rich shall Romeo by his lady lie; PRINCE. A glooming1 peace this morning with it brings; Go hence, to have more talk2 of these sad things; For never was a story of more woe, Than this of Juliet and her Romeo.4 Exeunt. 1) Glooming, melancholy, heavy, | friar Laurence was permitted to resullen. 2) To tell me more, etc. 3) This line has reference to the novel from which the fable is taken. Here we read that Juliet's female attendant was banished for concealing the marriage; Romeo's servant set at liberty because he had only acted in obedience to his master's orders; the apothecary taken, tortured, condemned, and hanged; while tire to a hermitage in the neighbourhood of Verona, where he ended his life in penitence and peace. Steevens. 4) Breval says in his Travels, 1726, that when he was at Verona, his guide showed him an old building, then converted into a house for orphans, in which the tomb of these unhappy lovers had been; but it was then destroyed. Malone. PREFACE. It appears from Peck's Collection of divers curious Historical Pieces, &c. (appended to his 'Memoirs, &c. of Oliver Cromwell,) p. 14. that a Latin play on this subject had been written. "Epilogus Caesaris interfecti, quomodo in scenam prodiit ea res, acta in ecclesia Christi, Oxon. Qui Epilogus a Magistro Ricardo Eedes et scriptus et in proscenio ibidem dictus fuit A. D. 1582." Dr. Eedes is enumerated among the best tragic writers of that time. Stephen Gosson in his School of Abuse, 1579, mentions a play entitled The History of Cæsar and Pompey. William Alexander, afterwards Earl of Sterline, wrote a tragedy on the story and with the title of Julius Cæsar. It may be presumed that Shakspeare's play was posterior to his; for lord Sterline, when he composed his Julius Cæsar, was a very young author. The death of Cæsar, which is not exhibited but related to the audience, forms the catastrophe of his piece. In the two plays many parallel passages are found, which might, perhaps, have proceeded only from the two authors drawing from the same source. However, there are some reasons for thinking the coincidence more than accidental. A passage in The Tempest (Act IV. sc. 1.) seems to have been copied from one in Darius, another play of Lord Sterline's, printed at Edinburgh in 1603. His Julius Cæsar 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 Caesar 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. |