vii vii INTRODUCTION Note. In citations from Shakespeare's plays and nondramatic poems the numbering has reference to the Globe edition, except in the case of this play, where the reference is to this edition. Note. I. SOURCES No event in the history of the world has made a more profound impression upon the popular imagination than the assassination of Julius Cæsar. Apart from its overwhelming interest as a personal catastrophe, it was regarded in the sixteenth century as a happening of the greatest historical moment, fraught with significant public lessons for all time. There is ample evidence that in England from the beginning of Elizabeth's reign it was the subject of much literary and dramatic treatment, and in making the murder of "the mightiest Julius" the climax of a play, Shakespeare was true to that instinct which drew him for material to themes of universal and eternal interest. The Main Story The Main Story I. North's Plutarch. There is no possible doubt that in Julius Cæsar Shakespeare derived the great body of his historical material from The Life of Julius Cæsar, The Life of Marcus Brutus, and The Life of Marcus Antonius viii in Sir Thomas North's translation of Plutarch.[1] This work was first printed in 1579 in a massive folio dedicated to Queen Elizabeth. A second edition appeared in 1595, and in all probability this was the edition read by Shakespeare. The title-page is reproduced in facsimile on page ix. viii ix ix
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