COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. WITH A LIFE OF THE POET, EXPLANATORY FOOT-NOTES, CRITICAL Barvard Edition. BY THE REV. HENRY N. HUDSON, PROFESSOR OF SHAKESPEARE IN BOSTON UNIVERSITY. IN TWENTY VOLUMES. VOL. XIV. BOSTON: PUBLISHED BY GINN & HEATH. 1881. Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1880, by HENRY N. HUDSON, in the office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington. GINN & HEATH: J. S. CUSHING, PRINTER, 16 HAWLEY STREET, BOSTON. 19-40 JULIUS CÆSAR. FIRS IRST printed in the folio of 1623, and one of the best-printed plays in that inestimable volume; the text being in so clear and sound a state, that editors have but little trouble about it. The date of the composition has been variously argued, some placing it in the middle period of the Poet's labours, others among the latest; and, as no clear contemporary notice or allusion had been produced, the question could not be positively determined. It is well known that the original Hamlet must have been written as early as 1602; and in iii. 2 of that play Polonius says "I did enact Julius Cæsar: I was killed in the Capitol; Brutus killed me." As the play now in hand lays the scene of the stabbing in the Capitol, it is not improbable, to say the least, that the Poet had his own Julius Cæsar in mind when he wrote the passage in Hamlet. And that such was the case is made further credible by the fact, that Polonius speaks of himself as having enacted the part when he "play'd once in the University," and that in the title-page of the first edition of Hamlet we have the words, "As it hath been divers times acted in the city of London; as also in the two Universities of Cambridge and Oxford." Still the point cannot be affirmed with certainty; for there were several earlier plays on the subject, and especially a Latin play on Cæsar's death, which was performed at Oxford in 1582. Collier argued that Shakespeare's play must have been on the stage before 1603, his reason being as follows. Drayton's Mortimeriados appeared in 1596. The poem was afterwards recast by the author, and published again in 1603 as The Barons' Wars. The recast has the following lines, which were not in the original form of the poem: Such one he was, of him we boldly say, In whose rich soul all sovereign powers did suit, |