"Julius Cæsar" It is an interesting speculation whether the conspiracy of Essex contributed to direct Shakespeare's attention to the conspiracy of Brutus as the subject of his next play. There can be little doubt that Julius Cæsar appeared in 1601, for it is alluded to in Weever's Mirror of Martyrs, published in that year, and it seems out of keeping with the plays of 1599-1600. Professor Dowden has pointed out its intellectual affinity to Hamlet, a drama of the succeeding year. In resorting to Plutarch for a subject, Shakespeare was merely repeating the procedure with the English chroniclers which had answered so well in his English historical plays, but he had now to deal with material already sifted by a masterly hand. It was not the especial business of the English chroniclers to record noble actions: they relate the history of the times with fidelity, and take things noble or ignoble as they come. But Plutarch's Lives are eclectic; his aim is to preserve what is really memorable in a strictly human point of view, and in so doing he gives it so admirable a form that Shakespeare himself cannot improve upon Many, therefore, of it. THE Tragicall Hiftorie of HAMLET Prince of Denmarke By William Shake-fpeare. the most striking traits and sayings in Julius Cæsar are taken directly from his biographies of Cæsar and Brutus. Referring back from the poet to the biographer, we find continually how what has most impressed and charmed us belongs to Plutarch. An inferior writer would have attempted to heighten or refine upon his original. Shakespeare never alters what he knows cannot be improved. Where, however, he sees his opportunity, he fairly carries Plutarch away in his talons. The finest scenes in the play, scenes which Shakespeare himself never surpassedthe oratory and tumult at the funeral of Cæsar and the dispute between Brutus and Cassius-are developed from the merest hints. With exquisite judgment, these grand displays of eloquence and passion are reserved for the part of the play that requires them. The first half, full of incident and character, needs no embellishment; but after Cæsar's death the interest would flag but for these potent reinforcements. In another respect Shakespeare is very dependent upon Plutarch-the delineation of character. He has not to do here with rude faint outlines, like the traditional Macbeth or the traditional Lear, but with portraits painted after authentic history by the hand of a master. These As it hath beene diuerfe times acted by his Highneffe feruants in the Cittie of London: as alfo in the two Vniuerfities of Cambridge and Oxford,and elfe-where VOL. II At London printed for N.L. and Iohn Trundell. 1603. Title page of the First Quarto of "Hamlet" Messrs. Smith, Elder & Co.) P Shakespeare he follows religiously. It hence comes to pass that in the character of Brutus he has made a nearer approach than anywhere else to drawing a perfect man, for Plutarch will have it so. "In all Brutus's life," says Plutarch, after recording one undeniable blot, "there is but this one fault to be found," and Shakespeare's Brutus is equally perfect ethically, save for his requiring Cassius's prompting to do what he should have resolved upon by himself. Professor Dowden justly points out the analogy with Hamlet. The very perfection of Brutus's moral nature renders him inefficient intellectually; he cannot condescend to the sphere of an unscrupulous man of the world like Antony, and Antony beats him from the field. This, of course, is also in Plutarch, but Plutarch does not show, as Shakespeare does, the necessary connection of Brutus's moral nobility with his intellectual failings. The other personages are depicted as in Plutarch, but with much greater vividness. The subordination of Cæsar's part has been censured, but appears inevitable. Had Cæsar been a more prominent character he must have been represented in personal relation to Brutus, inimical or benevolent. If the former, suspicion must have been cast upon the disinterestedness of Brutus's patriotism; if the latter, he would have been open to the charge of ingratitude. There is an interesting indication that Shakespeare read other lives of and Plutarch Plutarch than those he dramatised, and even before he had written Julius Cæsar. Cæsar says to Antony, wishing to elicit his opinion of Cassius : Come on my right hand, for this ear is deaf, Cæsar is nowhere represented as deaf, but the idea seems borrowed from Plutarch's statement, in his life of Alexander the Great, that Alexander "always used to lay his hand upon one of his ears to keep that clean from the matter of accusation." On the whole, save for defects inherent in the subject, Julius Cæsar is perhaps as perfect a work as the dramatist's art is capable of producing. That perfection and power are not convertible terms appears from the undeniable fact that Shakespeare's next production, though imperfect in structure and full of puzzling riddles, has affected mankind far more deeply and exhibits qualities far more exceptional. This play is Hamlet. The stage history of Hamlet is remarkable. It is entered on the Stationers' Register in 1602 as a piece lately acted. In 1603 a quarto edition appeared containing not more than about three-fifths of the play as republished in the following year. In the earlier edition Polonius is called Corambis, and there are many discrepancies in language and in the arrangement of scenes and speeches. It is a highly interesting question whether the first edition was printed after an imperfect or an acting copy, or possibly taken down in shorthand during the performance, or whether Shakespeare himself revised and enlarged his drama. The former seems the more probable supposition; although even the second edition, described as "printed from the only true and perfect copy," wants several passages found in the folio of 1623, though this again has various signs showing that it was abridged for the stage. These may have been retrenched owing to the length of the play, or may have been subsequent addi tions. We feel that Hamlet expresses more of Shakespeare's inner mind than any other of his works, and is the most likely of any to have been subjected to close revision. One trifling circumstance indicates revision, the alteration of twelve years, given in the First Quarto as the period for which Yorick's skull had been interred, to twenty-three upon Shakespeare's marking that he had made Hamlet a man of thirty. re Another interesting question is the relation of Shakespeare's drama to an older play. From an allusion of Thomas Nash we learn the existence in 1589 of a play on the subject of Hamlet, in which a ghost ap 1. O you come moft carefully vpon your watch, Enter Horatio and Marcellus. Mar. And leegemen to the Dane, O farewell honeft fouldier, who hath releeued you? 2. Welcome Horatio, welcome good Marcellus, Mar. Horatio fayes tis but our fantafie, B There The opening page of the First Quarto of "Hamlet" From the copy (wanting the title-page) in the British Museum peared crying "Revenge! " The theme may well have been suggested by the The old play English actors lately returned from Copenhagen, and, perhaps, were the play of "Hamlet" now extant, the origin of Shakespeare's remarkable acquaintance with the topography of Elsinore might be ascertained. It has been attributed with much probability to Thomas Kyd. It was acted again in 1594, and must have been well known to Shakespeare, who, no doubt, took from it the idea of Hamlet Exceptional character of "Hamlet as a dramatic subject. It would be of service to him by bringing together the Hamlet legend as related by Saxo Grammaticus and the version of it in the novel of Belleforest. Apart from this, we cannot believe that he adapted it, or that any considerable trace of it would be found in his work. It may even be that he has unkindly burlesqued his predecessor in the Player's bombastic speech about "the rugged Pyrrhus" but Hamlet's apology for the lukewarmness of Polonius's appreciation suggests that Marlowe, the declared adversary of "jigging veins," was the butt of the parody. Fechter as Hamlet Hamlet is Shakespeare's most wonderful play, and the most famous, but, regarded as a drama, it is not the best. The action is loose and inartistic, there is logical sequence in the incidents; the moral might almost seem to be that life is a chance medley, and that the high resolve of the avenger and the sagacious plotting of the usurper are alike at the mercy of trivial accidents. Given the situation and the character of an Othello or a Macbeth, we foresee the issue, but no reader or spectator of Hamlet for the first time could tell whether Hamlet's vengeance was to be accomplished or not. It seems as though Shakespeare, having written so much for Art's sake, determined at last to write something for his own, and made Hamlet, as Goethe made Wilhelm Meister, a vessel into which he could put his views and observations of men and things. It is noteworthy that it is much the longest of his plays; that in no other, unless The Tempest be an exception, does a single character so completely dominate the action; and that nowhere is such an amount of speaking imposed upon a leading personage. These are, no doubt, among the chief sources of its popularity, to which may be added the wonderful perfection of individual scenes considered by themselves; the truth and depth of the characters, not one of which but has some strong and original trait; above all, the sense of mystery, vagueness, and the gazing, as it were, upon a vast and remote horizon. In fact, Hamlet is more nearly akin to Faust than to Shakespeare's other tragedies, and the main idea, so well pointed out by Goethe, of a noble and tender spirit sinking beneath the load of a duty which it cannot perform, is almost buried in the multitude of minor issues. The question of Hamlet's madness has been much debated. We feel no doubt |