THE AUTHORSHIP OF

JULIUS CAESAR.

CHAPTER I.—THE PRE-SHAKESPEAREAN PLAY

TWO features in connection with the history of the tragedy to

be discussed have hitherto escaped comment at least, if not observation. The first of these is the clear evidence of the play's early birth and of the influence it had upon the drama of the opening years of the last decade of the sixteenth century. Its incidents are alluded to by Greene (1589-90), Peele (1591), by one of the authors of Edward III. (before 1594), and, later, by Shakespeare himself: one of Marlowe's lines is a striking, verbatim rendering of one of its passages, and Peele has transcribed another almost as faithfully: and it probably set the fashion for, among other things, those prophetic utterances (wise after the event), the cheap effect of which is displayed, with wearisome consistency, in every one of the pseudo-Shakespearean histories.

The second feature is the absence of the slightest shred of tangible evidence supporting the play's Shakespearean authorship before the publication of the First Folio. And yet, Julius Caesar must have been in existence for some eight or nine years prior to 1598. Had the play been known as Shakespeare's-had he but been responsible for a reviser's touch here and there-it is difficult

to account for the silence of Meres upon that point, for, be it remembered, half of the plays enumerated by this authority were, strictly speaking, not entirely Shakespeare's. And the evidence of Weever is just as negative. In his Epigrams, published in 1598, he compliments Shakespeare upon Romeo and Juliet and Richard II. But he takes no notice at all of Shakespeare's authorship of Julius Caesar, although the play clearly impressed him. In this, he is in line with Meres. I hope to show, in the course of this work, that this play is identical with one written by Marlowe in 1589. Still, it may be urged, though Marlowe was the author of a tragedy on the same subject, that does not invalidate Shakespeare's claim to a later Julius Caesar.

The unlikelihood of the existence of a Shakespearean Julius Caesar before 1598 is evident. The interval, therefore, between that year and 1601 has been claimed as the time of the play's first production. How does that agree with the meagre information available on the subject? The language, the metre, the characterisation, all have to be considered, together with so-called "links," allusions, and conformity with, or departure from, Shakespeare's methods and usage. Considering, first, the language, it ought to be patent enough that it does not belong to the opening years of the seventeenth century. Its outworn forms belong rather to the time of Romeo and Juliet. Almost the same set of words is constantly being used in the two tragedies, as well as in the three parts of Henry VI. This point will not be laboured now, but it will be made quite clear in the subsequent examination of the text. Besides being archaic, the language is simple. Professor Bradley, in his Shakespearean Tragedy, has endeavoured to account for this by suggesting that Shakespeare purposely changed his style in order to make his language more consonant with the simpler manners of a still republican Rome than with the later period covered by Antony and Cleopatra. But there is nothing to show, nor is there any reason to believe, that Shakespeare ever did this.

Moreover, Coriolanus, dealing with an even ruder age, should be simpler still; but it is not. It is written in the same style as Antony and Cleopatra. No; the language of Julius Caesar is simple because it was written by a man of simple language and revised by one who cared not at all for the big and strange word. No one in the Elizabethan galaxy has a plainer, simpler style than Beaumont.

Bathurst, who was the first critic to study Shakespearean metre methodically was of opinion that the verse of Julius Caesar was "much earlier than 1602." What he meant by "much earlier" is open to question; but two years is hardly a time of adequate length to agree with the import of the words used. And, indeed, the play can only be placed, on metrical grounds, in the position it usually holds in the sequence of Shakespeare's dramas by a sort of haggler's bargain, in which the evidence of late work is set against earlier peculiarities, and a convenient balance struck between the two. It should be noticed however, that the play contains a greater percentage of end-stopped lines, and a smaller percentage of double-ending lines-a third of the number of which, by the way, are due to the presence at the close of the line of names accented on the penultimate syllable-than Shakespeare was using at any time after 1598. The ratio of doubleending to regular lines in Julius Caesar is 1 in 6. But, notwithstanding the disadvantage mentioned under which this play labours in the comparison, it will, I think, be conceded that a remarkable disparity is shown between the verse of the Roman play and that of some members of the group in which it is usually placed. In 2 Henry IV. (1597-8), the ratio is 1 in 6; in Henry V. (1599), 1 in 6; in Much Ado (1599-1600), 1 in 5; in As You Like It (1600), 1 in 41; in Twelfth Night (1601), 1 in 5; in All's Well (a play of mixed periods, usually dated 1601, but containing much earlier work), 1 in 5; and in Hamlet (1601), 1 in 5. The difference between the ratio in Julius Caesar and that in Hamlet,

which, it is thought, followed closely on the Roman tragedy, may not appear very striking; but here again the earlier play is at a disadvantage, since a very large proportion of the lines in Hamlet is a legacy from the age of Kyd. And, unless I am grossly mistaken, the end-stopped test is even more indicative of the 'much earlier" period than 1602. While the metre may not conform with either the Marlowe or Beaumont canon, it agrees reasonably well with what one might expect from a work in which both authors had a share.

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Many efforts have been made to explain Shakespeare's caricature" of Caesar. But one might just as well beat one's brains to probe the secret of the rainbow under the delusion that it was brushed into the sky by a human painter. There never was a time when Shakespeare could have created such a type, unless, like Pistol-Shakespeare's nearest approach to that figure-Caesar had been meant for comedy. But, reading the play as Marlowe's, Caesar needs no explanation. He falls naturally into line with Tamburlaine, the Faustus of the early scenes, the Guise, Gaveston, Barabas-all those vainglorious coxcombs who, after a life of crime and tumult, met with sudden and sanguine deaths, and, meeting Marlowe's fate, had also surely a share of his turbulent clay in their unlucky compositions. And Brutus owes just as much to Beaumont as Caesar does to Marlowe. The comparison of Brutus and Lucius with Philaster and Bellario is inevitable and convincing. In Portia, also, there are touches of Beaumont, not so many, perhaps, in the famous bedroom scene as in the one that takes place out of doors. In judging the authorship of these scenes, they should be compared with the interview between Hotspur and his wife in 1 Henry IV. The arguments used by Kate are practically identical with those of Portia. But what a difference in tone! For Kate is but a middle-class wife, with the country girl's trick of crooking her husband's little finger in hers. And yet, in her own country, she was as great a lady as Portia

was in Rome. The fact is that, while Beaumont must have been well acquainted, from boyhood upwards, with women of the most refined and well-bred type, it was very late in Shakespeare's career before he was able to indicate the nice distinction between the good woman and the good woman who is also a lady. And one need not go farther back, to exemplify this, than Hamlet, where Ophelia, a Court lady, designed as a wife for Hamlet, goes mad to the tunes of coziers' catches" and "carmen's songs," which it is extremely unlikely she could ever have heard, and which (had she heard) she would have taken immediate pains to forget. The tender graces of Portia are due to Beaumont, who, be it remembered, made his own middle-class heroine, Viola, a lady—that is to say, a girl carefully nurtured, virtuous herself and ignorant of the sins and grossness of the lower world.

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Shakespearean critics, as a rule, do not unduly perturb themselves about the poet's shortcomings in constructing his plays. A man who adores a swarthy mistress is not likely to set much store by a complexion of lilies and roses. Still, he knows when he sees one; and, in Julius Caesar, the critic perceives something that is not in Shakespeare's usual method. Unlike Antony and Cleopatra, for example, the scene is not whirled about from place to place, a dozen times or more in the course of a solitary act, with the rapidity and wrenchings of a personally conducted tour. Nor does it include extraneous episodes, such as the story of Pompey the Younger-a perfect little tragedy in itself, but of no vital connection at all with the main theme of the play that contains it. It is the nearest approach to a regular tragedy in Shakespeare. That the poet did not intend it to be so will be seen later, and that it remained so, or was made so, indicates that it was Beaumont who licked Marlowe's rugged bear-whelp into final shape.

It will be as well to show here some of the differences between the practice of Shakespeare and the rule of Beaumont in the construction of their plays. Shakespeare apparently prefers a