Page:The Tragedy of Julius Caesar (The Warwick Shakespeare).djvu/15

 three classes of evidence are entirely in harmony, and though none of them would be conclusive, taken in conjunction they make the date 1600-1601 practically certain.

2. SOURCES OF THE PLAY.

The sole literary source of Shakespeare's Julius Cæsar was Plutarch, whose 'Lives' he read in North's translation (the mistakes wherein he several times repeats, showing that he had not read the original). North himself translated (1579 and 1595) not from the Greek, but from the French translation by Amyot (1559). I have quoted freely in the notes; but the student is advised to read the 'Lives' of Cæsar, Brutus, and Antony. Professor Skeat's reprint in Shakespeare's Plutarch (Macmillan) is the most convenient volume.

A Latin play on the same subject was performed at Oxford in 1582, from which the ' et tu, Brute ' may have been derived; and mention is found of other plays dealing with it. But whether Shakespeare's play was at all affected by these, we have no means of ascertaining. Attention is called in the notes to points which seem to show conclusively that Shakespeare had no first-hand knowledge of the classical writers.

3. CHARACTERISTICS OF THE PLAY.

When Shakespeare set himself to write a historical play, it was not primarily his intention to educate his audience in historical details of which they had been previously ignorant; but he wrote as a dramatist who happened to have found an interesting story to tell in the pages of history. He treated Plutarch and Holinshed very much as he treated Boccaccio. He had not any great regard for accuracy of detail for its own sake, caring only for its dramatic interest. And for that end, speaking broadly, it was of much more importance to follow accepted popular tradition than to defy tradition for the sake of strict historical precision. We all know that in the case of the stories which are most popular in the nursery, children resent any variation on the version to which they are