we may conclude, that he had procured a copy of it, and had then thoughts of publishing it. It was not, however, printed by him till 1631, eight years after it had appeared in the edition of the players in folio. 30. JULIUS CESAR, 1607. A tragedy on the subject, and with the title of Julius Caesar, written by Mr. William Alexander, who was afterwards Earl of Sterline, was printed in the year 1607. This, I imagine, was prior to our author's performance. Shakspere, we know, formed seven or eight plays on fables that had been unsuccessfully managed by other poets *; but no contemporary writer was daring enough to enter the lists with him in his life-time, or to model into a drama a subject that had already employed his pen; and it is not likely that Lord Sterline, who was then a very young man, and had scarcely unlearned the Scottish idiom, should have been more hardy than any other poet of that age. I am aware, it may be objected, that this writer might have formed a drama on this story, not knowing that Shakspere had previously composed the tragedy of Julius Cæsar; and that, therefore, the publi * See a note on Julius Cæsar, A&t I. Sc. i. in which they are enumerated. cation of Mr. Alexander's play in 1607 is no proof that our author's performance did not then exist.In answer to this objection, it may, perhaps, be sufficient to observe, that Mr. Alexander had, before that year, very wisely left the bleak fields of Menstrie in Clackmananshire, for a warmer and more courtly residence in London, having been appointed gentleman of the privy chamber to prince Henry, in which situa→ tion his literary curiosity must have been gratified by the earliest notice of the productions of his brother dramatists. Lord Sterline's Julius Casar, though not printed till 1607, might have been written a year or two before; and perhaps its publication in that year was in consequence of our author's play on the same subject being then first exhibited. The same observation may be made with respect to an anonymous performance, called The Tragedie of Cæsar and Pompey, or Cæsar's Revenge, which was likewise printed in 1607. The subject of that piece is the defeat of Pompey at Pharsalia, the death of Julius, and the final overthrow of Brutus and Cassius at Philippi. The attention of the town being, perhaps, drawn to the history of the hook-nosed fellow of Rome, by the exhibition of our au *This play, as appears by the title-page, was privately acted by the students of Trinity-College in Oxford. In the running title it is called The Tragedy of Julius Cæsar; perhaps the better to impose it on the publick for the performance of Shakspere. thor's thor's Julius Cæsar, the booksellers, who printed these two plays, might have flattered themselves with the hope of an expeditious sale for them at that time, especially as Shakspere's play was not then published. We have certain proof that Antony and Cleopatra was composed before the middle of the year 1608. An attentive review of that play and Julius Cæsar will, I think, lead us to conclude that this latter was first written*. Not to insist on the chronology of the story, which would naturally suggest this subject to our author before the other, in Julius Cæsar Shakspere does The following passages in Antony and Cleopatra (and athers of the same kind may perhaps be found) seem to me to discover such a knowledge of the appropriated chazacters of the persons exhibited in Julius Cæsar, and of the events there dilated and enlarged upon, as Shakspere would necessarily have acquired from having previously written a play on that subject: "Wherefore my father should revengers want, "There saw you labouring for him. What was't "With the arm'd rest, courtiers of beauteous freedom, does not seem to have been thoroughly possessed o Antony's character. He has, indeed, marked one or two of the striking features of it; but Antony is not fully delineated till he appears in that play which takes its name from him and Cleopatra. The rough sketch would naturally precede the finished picture. From a passage in the comedy of Every Woman in her Humour, which was printed in 1609, we learn, that a droll on the subject of Julius Cæsar had been exhibited before that year. "I have seen (says one of the personages in that comedy), The City of Nineveh, and Julius Cæsar, acted by mammets." Most of our ancient drolls and puppet-shews are known to have been regular abridgments of celebrated plays, or particular scenes of them only. It does not appear that lord Sterline's Julius Cæsar was ever celebrated, or even acted; neither that nor his other plays being at all calculated for dramatick representation. On the other hand, we know that Shakspere's Julius So, in another place, "When Antony found Julius Cæsar dead, Again, "Ant. He at Philippi kept "His sword ev'n like a dancer, while I struck 66 That the mad Brutus ended." LI Casar Casar was a very popular piece; Digges, a contem porary writer, having, in his commendatory verses on our author's works, particularly alluded to it, as one of his most applauded performances *. The droll here mentioned was, therefore, probably formed out of Shakspere's play and we may presume that it had been in possession of the stage at least a year or two, before it was exhibited in this degraded form. Though the term mammets, in the passage above quoted, should be considered as contemptuously applied to the children of Paul's, or those of the Chapel (an interpretation which it will commodiously enough admit), the argument with respect to the date of Julius Cæsar will still remain in its full force. In the prologue to The False One, by Beaumont and *Nor fire nor cank'ring age, as Naso said "Of his, thy wit-fraught book shall once invade : "Nor shall I e'er believe or think thee dead, * (Though miss'd) until our bankrout stage be sped "Or till I hear a scene more nobly take "Than when thy half-sword parlying Romans spake." Verses by L. Digges, prefixed to the first edition of our author's plays, in 1623. By a similar figure these children are, in Hamlet, called little Eyases." 3 Fletcher, |