historical plays, as in "Julius Cæsar," the kingly personage gives a kind of unity to the play that otherwise it would lack; the titles, besides-and this is our pointare good titles; they at once command attention.

A second and more telling stricture is the faulty characterisation Shakspere has given of the great conqueror of antiquity. Cæsar lives in the play as a mere grandiloquent boaster and braggart. His nature seems to have not one element of the greatness it possesses in history. Then, too, he is physically declining; "he hath the falling sickness," he is deaf in one ear, he swoons when the crown is offered him, and worse still, "he is superstitious grown of late, quite from the main opinion he once held of fantasy, of dreams, and ceremonies." Yet in the midst of this deterioration, he struts about like a veritable pasteboard divinity, boasting himself "constant as the northern star," telling rather "what is to be fear'd than what I fear; for always I am Cæsar." "Danger," moreover, "knows full well that Cæsar is more dangerous than he." No wonder Calpurnia warns him that his "wisdom is consum❜d in confidence"! Between the simple, straightforward commentator of the Gallic War and this strutting cock how wide a chasm!

Shakspere received some of these hints as to the change in Cæsar's character just before his death from Plutarch; as to the rest, we can only conjecture his meaning. In other places in his plays he shows full appreciation of Cæsar's greatness; here, Cæsar is perversely distorted from what almost every other great writer has conceived him to be.

Why is this so ? Gervinus has said that Shakspere under the artistic circumstances did not dare to bring Cæsar forward too conspicuously. The poet, if he intended to make the attempt of the republicans his main theme, could not have ventured to create too great an interest in

Cæsar; it was necessary to keep him in the background, and to present that view of him which gave a reason for the conspiracy. Hudson goes a bit further. "The great sun of Rome," he says, "had to be shorn of his beams, else so ineffectual a fire as Brutus could nowise catch the eye. I have sometimes thought that the policy

of the drama may have been to represent Cæsar, not as he was, but as he must have appeared to the conspirators; to make us see him as they saw him. was literally too great to be seen by them."

For Cæsar

Furthermore, he finds an irony pervading this play—the irony of Providence, so to speak, or, if you please, of Fate; much the same as is implied in the proverb, "A haughty spirit goes before a fall." This applies especially to Cæsar, whom, says Hudson, "we have most blown with arrogance and godding it in the loftiest style when the daggers of the assassins are on the very point of leaping at him."

"This," retorts Brandes, "is the emptiest cobweb-spinning." So indeed it is, for our purposes, suggestive though it be, and we can only echo, in closing this discussion, the regret that Shakspere has not given us a portrait of Cæsar comparable to his Antony (of the later tragedy) and his Coriolanus. We cannot agree with Hudson's suggestion that Cæsar was too great for the hero of a drama; rather do we think with Brandes that "the play might have been immeasurably deeper and richer than it is, had Shakspere been inspired by a feeling of Cæsar's great

ness.

V. SHAKSPERE'S LANGUAGE

THE student of Shakspere should remember that the English language three hundred years ago was in a much more fluid state than it is to-day. Good use had not been

codified into the rules and principles that at present guide the writer from his earliest years; as a result, Shakspere and his contemporaries employed their mother-tongue with an almost absolute lack of restraint that must have been little short of intoxicating. These men are far from inelegant in their diction, but they used with freedom many forms that to-day would hardly pass muster with even the half-educated. Grammar and rhetoric have at last gathered under fixed laws much that in Shakspere's day was unsettled and wavering. It is commonly said that the Elizabethan writers were helped by this uncertainty in the medium they used, and that a more rigid discipline would have hampered their genius. Shakspere at least may be given the benefit of the doubt. It is more to our purpose here to see wherein the Elizabethans had the advantage in freedom over nineteenth century writers, and a brief discussion of the Shaksperian language will follow, for the assistance of those who may be making, in 'Julius Cæsar," their first venture in the study of the greatest of the English poets.

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Three things the reader of Shakspere must at once become accustomed to: (1) Shakspere's rather free syntax; (2) his unhampered use of words; and (3) his large and unrestrained manner of expressing thought. A discussion of these three subjects will help the young student to understand much that may seem to him odd or inexplicable in the poet's work. The discussion, here, will be based entirely on "Julius Cæsar," with the caution that what is said under the first two heads in connection with this play will usually be found applicable to almost any other of the plays, and, indeed, to any piece of Elizabethan literature.

Shaksperian Grammar

PERSONAL PRONOUNS

1. CASE FORMS.-There was almost absolute uncertainty in Shakspere's time as to the proper form of the nominative and objective cases of the personal pronounsan uncertainty that continues to this day in ignorant speech. In "Julius Cæsar," consequently, the nominative or objective form is used indifferently after verbs and prepositions.

Examples: All the conspirators, save only he (v, 5, 69); And let no man abide this deed, But we, the doers (iii, 1, 95-6); I do beseech ye (originally nominative, and used by Shakspere chiefly in earnest address) if you (originally dative or accusative) bear me hard (iii, 1, 158); For I have seen more years, I'm sure, than ye (iv, 3, 130).

2. THE NEUTER POSSESSIVE.-Its is rarely found in Elizabethan writing; instead, Shakspere and his contemporaries largely use the Old English possessive his.1 Several instances occur in "Julius Cæsar."

Examples: That every nice offence should bear his comment (iv, 3, 8); And chastisement doth therefore hide his head (iv, 3, 16); Humour, Which sometime hath his hour (ii, 1, 250–1).

3. MINE, THINE, MY, THY.-These forms seem to be used by Shakspere with little distinction, before vowels, unless, as Abbott suggests, my and thy are used for emphasis.

Examples: For mine own part (i, 2, 248); By my honour (iii, 1, 142); Respect unto mine honour (iii, 2, 15).

1

Shakspere frequently uses the form it for the possessive: It lifted up it head" (Hamlet, i, 2, 216).

4. THOU AND YOU.-The second person singular is used (a) to relatives and intimate friends; (b) to inferiors in rank; (c) in a contemptuous way toward strangers; and (d), as it was becoming somewhat archaic in Shakspere's time, in the exalted language of poetry or prophecy. Yet these rules were not infallible; cf. in the first scene the "Speak, what trade art thou?" with the immediately following "You, sir, what trade are you?"1

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Examples: Compare Calpurnia's respectful address to Cæsar, "Your wisdom is consumed in confidence! . Call it my fear That keeps you in the house, and not your own" (ii, 2, 49–51); with his affectionate answer: "And for thy humour, I will stay at home" (ii, 2, 56). Note, too, the "you" of the councils of the conspirators, and Brutus' affectionate "thou" to Lucius, and his contemptuous thou" to Octavius: "O if thou wert the noblest of thy strain, Young man, thou couldst not die more honourable" (v, 1, 59-60). According to Abbott ("A Shaksperian Grammar," § 232) "the difference between thou and you is well illustrated by the farewell addressed by Brutus to his schoolfellow, Volumnius, and his servant, Strato: "Farewell to you; and you; and you, Volumnius; Strato, thou hast been all this while asleep; Farewell to thee, too, Strato" (v, 5, 31-3).

5. THE PERSONAL AND THE REFLEXIVE CONFUSED.As in modern colloquial English this confusion is not uncommon in "Julius Cæsar."

Examples: Submitting me unto the perilous night (i, 3, 47); Myself have letters of the self-same tenour (iv, 3, 169); Here is himself, marr'd, as you see, with traitors (iii, 2, 197).

"When the appellative 'sir' is used, even in anger, thou generally gives place to you."-Abbott. A Shaksperian Grammar, § 232.