Shakespeare's death, "some one, probably Jonson, compressed the two dramas into the present composition known as Shakespeare's 'Julius Cæsar.” ” 1

Fleay and Robertson give plausibility to their speculations by basing them upon striking peculiarities of the play. But both of them, Robertson especially, attach an impossible importance to such matters as once-used words, peculiarities of phrasing, and parallel passages. These are the slipperiest evidence in the world.

In general Robertson has a low estimate of "Julius Cæsar" as compared with "the flaming power of "Coriolanus'" and "the wealth of portraiture flung into 'Antony and Cleopatra'" (79). But although the portrayal of Cleopatra is marvellous, the play of "Antony and Cleopatra" breaks up into forty-two separate scenes. The stage has always found "Julius Cæsar" far more effective than the other Roman plays. Mr. William Archer, in his vigorous refutation of Robertson's view," says of this play: "If we are to reconcile its stage history with Mr. Robertson's criticism, we must suppose it that contradiction in terms, a very strong chain composed of very weak links." Mr. Archer rightly calls the play "an example of Shakespeare's technique at its best."

Some passages which trouble Mr. Robertson have been discussed earlier in these studies. Fleay noted that "the phrase 'bear me hard' (or 'bear Cæsar hard') occurs thrice in this play (I, ii, 317; II, i, 215; III, i, 157) and nowhere else in Shakespeare. "But it occurs in Jonson's 'Cati

1 The quotations are from p. 267 of Professor T. S. Graves' valuable bibliography, "Recent Literature of the English Renaissance," Studies in Philology, University of North Carolina, April, 1923 (XX), 244-292.

2 The Contemporary Review, June, 1922, 746-753.

line'" (Robertson, 73). A person may use a certain locution, a turn of phrase, for a time, and not before or after. When the community as a whole shows this passing partiality for a phrase, we are apt to call the expression slang.

1

Mr. Archer shows 1 that the new charge of "supporting robbers," which is brought against Cæsar by Brutus in IV, iii, 23, and which troubles Mr. Robertson greatly, was suggested by some words of Brutus in Plutarch belonging to this very scene. On different grounds Robertson objects to Antony's address to the corpse of Cæsar, III, i, 254-275 (118); to the disparagement of Lepidus, IV, i, 12-40 (101); and to "the sudden dispute between Antony and Octavius as to which of their commands shall make the right wing,” V, i, 16-20 (101). These are all vivid bits of anticipation, historical prolepsis. When Antony prophesies "domestic fury and fierce civil strife" accompanied with "blood and destruction," we are to feel that he is unconsciously foretelling, among other things, his own self-inflicted death. The unimportance and the later disappearance of Lepidus, and the oncoming strife between Antony and Octavius, are salient features in the great mass of happenings which the spectators or readers of the play have in mind. In these places Shakespeare makes us feel vividly "the future in the instant." One might as well object to the great Temple Garden scene in Part I of "Henry VI" (II, iv), because the prophecy "This quarrel will drink blood another day" does not especially concern Part I.

Robertson does not like the character of Portia as portrayed in the play (90 ff.); but Shakespeare followed Plutarch, and few readers will regret that he did so.

1 Article cited, p. 750.

Various points brought out by Fleay, Robertson, and E. H. C. Oliphant1 do suggest that the play experienced some revision, that all of the parts were not composed in their present form at the same time. But the reviser may well have been Shakespeare himself, even for the line that Ben Jonson ridiculed.

The crowning performance of Mr. Robertson is the attributing of Antony's speech at Cæsar's funeral, the great feature of the entire play and one of the world's recognized literary masterpieces, to Marlowe (119 ff.). Mr. M. A. Bayfield found the end-stopped lines of this address, which trouble Robertson, to be highly expressive. He says:

Never perhaps has Shakespeare's unapproachable genius shown itself greater than in this achievement of the utmost oratorical effectiveness in spite of, and yet partly by means of, a deliberate rejection of rhythmical grace and form. Antony poses as a poor speaker, 'no orator as Brutus is' but 'a plain blunt man,' the utmost of whose art is to 'speak right on'; and in that rôle, that he may gain the ear of his audience in preparation for his ultimate purpose, he adopts in this prelude [the first 36 lines of his speech] a style which superficially is as inartistic as can well be imagined."

Mr. Robertson's assigning of this whole speech to Marlowe will rank among the curiosities of criticism. Why did Marlowe not display this marvellous dramatic power in the plays that we accept as his ?

Fleay and Robertson are ingenious, acute, stimulating. But they do not seem to me to appreciate the heavy burden of proof that rests upon them. In literary productions,

The Modern Language Review, Jan., 1909, 191-192.

'A Study of Shakespeare's Versification, Cambridge University Press, 1920, p. 48.

as in actual history, it is perhaps a part of probability that some improbable things will happen. In their practice of inferring large conclusions from scattered bits of evidence, these scholars seem to me to claim supernatural power. Mr. Robertson is the legitimate successor of Fleay. "The spirit of Elijah doth rest on Elisha."

Mr. Robertson's closing words are: "It was not Shakespeare who set out to portray Cæsar and failed." Did the dramatist make this attempt? Let us rather say: it was Shakespeare who set out to make an effective stage-play out of the circumstances connected with Cæsar's death, and succeeded, succeeded supremely.1

Upon the stage this play is exceedingly effective. It constantly makes its appeal to the mind through both the eye and the ear. The craftsmen and the tribunes, the stately procession, the mysterious warning of the soothsayer, the careful manipulation of Brutus by the crafty Cassius, the dark gathering of the conspirators, the hesitation and in

1 Since the above section was written, I have read The Authorship of Julius Cæsar, by William Wells, Routledge, 1923. Mr. Wells thinks "that this play, as we now have it, is a more or less drastic revision of an earlier play by Marlowe, which revision was undertaken, in the first place, by Shakespeare, but afterwards entrusted to Beaumont to complete" (p. 134). Mr. Wells, like Robertson, makes Marlowe the author of the play in its first form. The book is studiously fair, and deserves careful reading, but I feel that the presumption is against this elaborate theory. In the annual Shakespeare lecture of The British Academy for 1924, Dr. E. K. Chambers ably opposes the hypercritical skepticism of Robertson and others concerning the usually accepted Shakespeare canon. (The Disintegration of Shakespeare, Milford, Oxford University Press, pamphlet.)

2

* Reprinted from the writer's edition of Julius Cæsar, 1901, now published by World Book Co., Yonkers, N. Y. Pp. xxxviii-xl.

decision of the unconscious victim, the pomp of the senate chamber, the stabbing of the astonished Cæsar, the mob swayed this way and that by the dignified Brutus and the skillful Antony, the quarrel scene, the ghostly visitor, the stress and strain of the final battles, and the self-inflicted deaths of Cassius and Brutus, these parts are not all poetical, and they are not all life-like in the fullest meaning of that word, but they are all intensely dramatic. These scenes and incidents make up one connected series; they constitute a mighty complication, entanglement, followed by a resolution, a steady progress to a definite conclusion. Only those portions and aspects of the entire story are presented which are really dramatic, which at the same time occupy the eye by the stir and movement of life, and interest the mind by the constant play of character upon character. Not only is history departed from when that will add to dramatic effectiveness; slight improbabilities are permitted for the same purpose. What likelihood, for example, that in real life the funeral of such a ruler as Cæsar would follow immediately after his assassination? And Plutarch does not so represent it. Shakespeare does not attempt primarily to secure an outward realism, or to write charming poetry; he does give us deeply real characters and a thrilling action.

Since "Julius Cæsar" has always been a favorite play upon the stage, why is it never reckoned among the supreme tragedies of the dramatist, such as "Hamlet," "Othello," "King Lear" and "Macbeth"? For one thing, the stoical, reserved nature of Brutus makes it practically impossible that he should be a tragic hero of the most effective kind. Hamlet, Othello, Lear, and Macbeth, thwarted by hostile circumstances and assailed by bitter enemies, all pour forth torrents of passion; the very depths