Two types of notes appear in the original book: text variants, printed immediately below the text on each page, and editor's notes, printed at the bottom of each page; both types reference the text by line number. In this HTML version, all of the notes are collected together towards the end, before the index, and instead of referencing line numbers, they are numbered sequentially. There are separate sequences for notes to the Introduction and to each of the five Acts. Anchors in the text are hyperlinked. In some cases, the original references to text line numbers have been preserved.

A list of the abbreviations used in the notes for cited editions can be found on page lv.

As in the original, throughout the text Cæsar is spelled with the ligature æ, except for one instance: "composition of _Julius Caesar_".

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iii

PREFACE

The text of this edition of Julius Cæsar is based upon a collation of the seventeenth century Folios, the Globe edition, and that of Delius. As compared with the text of the earlier editions of Hudson's Shakespeare, it is conservative. Exclusive of changes in spelling, punctuation, and stage directions, very few emendations by eighteenth century and nineteenth century editors have been adopted; and these, with every variation from the First Folio, are indicated in the textual notes. These notes are printed immediately below the text so that a reader or student may see at a glance the evidence in the case of a disputed reading and have some definite understanding of the reasons for those differences in the text of Shakespeare which frequently surprise and very often annoy. A consideration of the more poetical, or the more dramatically effective, of two variant readings will often lead to rich results in awakening a spirit of discriminating interpretation and in developing true creative criticism. In no sense is this a textual variorum edition. The variants given are only those of importance and high authority.

The spelling and the punctuation of the text are modern, except in the case of verb terminations in -ed, which, when the e is silent, are printed with the apostrophe in its place. This is the general usage in the First 

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