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'^r ^\ p Digitized by tine Internet Arciiive in 2007 witii funding from IVIicrosoft Corporation littp://www.arcliive.org/details/englisliofsliakespOOcrairicli THE English of Shakespeare; ILLDSTKATED IK ^ i^ilfllopal Cflmm^ntars JULIUS CESAR. GEORGE L. CRATK, PBOFES30B or BISTORT AND OF ENGLISH LitrrAT:JKB IJf QUSEK'S COij;.SGA, BELFAST. ^. m * . !EB£leK, from iije tirtjitts iaebigeO Honfion EDttton, BY W. J. ROLFE, KA8TEB or THE HIGH SCHOOL, CAKBBIDOB, MASS. BOSTON: PUBLISHED BY EDWIN GINK WOOLWORTH, AINSWORTH, & CO. CHICAGO: FRED B. QINN. 1869. Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1867, by CROSBY AND AINSWORTH, In the Clerk'B Office of the District Court of the District of Massachusett*. THIRD EDITION. • Tt«eOTVrt AT TN t NO. 4 SPKINO LANS. Preuwork bj John Wilson and Sob. PREFACE TO THE AMERICAN EDITION. A YEAR ago I let a class at school take yulius CcEsar as their first reading in Shakespeare, and made daily use of this book of Professor Craik's in teaching them. They noted down all the more im- portant points as I gave them, and, without having seen the book, learned the better part of it pretty thoroughly. It took more time than I had ever before given to a single play, — considerably more, of course, than would have been necessary if the book had been in the hands of the scholars ; but the results satisfied me that it was time well spent. I never had a class that became so heartily interested in Shakespeare, or that went on so rapidly and so well in reading other plays. It was the success of this experiment with the book that led me to think of editing it. I wanted it for my own classes, and I venture to hope that it may be of service to other students of Shakespeare, whether in school or out of school. rr: i\^^ f\ viii Preface to the American Edition. as well as I could Prof. Craik's plan of giving the readings adopted by the different editors, and their comments on difficult or disputed passages. I have added largely to the references to Bible passages illustrating Shakespeare's English. I had done a good part of this work some months before I met with The Bible Word-Book^ by Eastwood and Wright (London, 1866) ; but in revising my notes for publication I made free use of that admi- rable little book, and drew from it considerable additional matter. To Prof. F. J. Child, of Harvard College, for the encouragement he has given me in my work, and for many valuable criticisms and suggestions, I am under especial obligations. W. J. R. Cambridge, Feb. 15, 1867. THE AUTHOR'S PREFACE. In this attempt to illustrate the English of Shakespeare, I would be understood to have had a twofold purpose, in conformity with the title of the volume, which would naturally be taken to*prom- ise something of exposition in rg^nrri bftth to the * language or style of Shakespeare and to the English Janguage generally. My first business I have considered to be the cor- rect exhibition and explanation of the noble work of our great dramatist with which the volume pro- fesses to be specially occupied. I will begin, there- fore, by stating what I have done, or endeavored to do, for the Play of Julius C^sar. I have given what I believe to be a more nearly authentic text than has yet appeared. Julius Ccesar is, probably, of all Shakespeare's Plays, the one of which the text has come down to us in the least unsatisfactory state. From whatever cause it has happened, the passages in this Play as to the true reading of which there can be much reasonable doubt are, comparatively, very few. Even when anything is wrong in the original edition, the man- ner in which it is to be set to rights is for the most part both pretty obvious and nearly certain. There (Ix) ; X The Author's Preface. are, perhaps, scarcely so many as half a dozen lines of any importance which must be given up as hope- lessly incurable or even doubtful. It is, I should think, of all the Plays, by much the easiest to edit both the settlement of the text and its explanation are, I conceive, simpler than would be the case in any other; and it is for that reason partly that I have selected it for the present attempt. The alterations Which I haVe found it necessary to make upon the commonly received text do not amount to very many ; and the considerations by which I have been guided are in every instance fully stated in the Commentary. The only conjectural innovations which I have ventured upon of my own are, the change of " What night is this ? " into " What anight is this!" in the speech numbered 117; the insertion of *' not" after " Has he," in that numbered 401 ; and the transposition of the two names Lu- cilius and Lucius in that numbered 520. The first and second of these three corrections are of little moment, though both, I think, clearly required ; the third I hold to be both of absolute certainty and necessity, and also of considerable importance, af- fecting as it does the whole course of the Fourth Act of the Play, restoring propriety and consistency to the conduct of the action and the parts sustained by the various personages, and vindicating a reading of the First Folio in a subsequent speech (570), which, curiously enough, had never been previously noticed by anybody, but has been silently ignored and departed from even by those of the modern editors who have professed to adhere the most scru- pulously to that original text. The Author's Preface. xi For the rest, the present text differs in nothing material from that which is found in all the modern editions, unless it be that I have restored from the First Folio one or two antiquated forms, — such as ^em for them^ and moe in several places for more^ — which have been usually suppressed, although ^em remains familiar enough in our colloquial speech, or at any rate is still perfectly intelligible and unam- biguous, and moe is sometimes the only form that will suit the exigencies of the verse. As for the present Commentary on the Play of Julius Ccesar^, it will be perceived that it does not at all aspire to what is commonly distinguished as the higher criticism. It does not seek to examine or to expound this Shakespearian drama aesthetically, but only philologically, or with respect to the lan- guage. The only kind of criticism which it pro- fesses is whaf is called verbal criticism. Its whole aim, in so far as it relates to the particular work to which it is attached, is, as far as may be done, first to ascertain or determine the text, secondly to ex- plain it; to inquire, in other words, what Shake- speare really wrote, and how what he has written is to be read and construed. Wherever either the earliest text or that which is commonly received has been deviated from to the extent of a word or a syllable, the alteration has been distinctly indicated. In this way a complete representation is given, in so far at least as regards the language, both of the text of the editio princeps and of the textus receptus. I have not sought to register with the same exactness the various readings I be- of the other texts, ancient and modern ; but : xii The Author's Preface. lieve, nevertheless, that all will be found to be noted that are of any interest either in the Second Folio or among the conjectures of the long array of edi- tors and commentators extending from Rowe to our own day. Then, with regard to the explanation of the text I confess that here my fear is rather that I shall be thought to have done too much than too little. But I have been desirous to omit nothing that any reader might require for the full understanding of the Play, in so far as I was able to supply it. I have even retained the common school-boy explanations of the few points of Roman antiquities to which allusions occur, such as the arrangements of the Calendar, the usages of the Lupercalia, etc. The expressioii^ however, is what I have chiefly dwelt upon. The labors of scores of expositors, emlDodied in hun- dreds of volumes, attest the existence m the writings of Shakespeare of numerous words, phraseologies, and passages the import of which is, to say the least, not obvious to ordinary readers of the present day. This comes partly from certain characteristics of his style, which would probably have made him occasionally a difiicult author in any circumstances ; but much more from the two facts, of the corrupted or at least doubtful state of the text in many places, and the changes that our national speech has under- gone since his age. The English of the sixteenth century is in various respects a different language from that of the nineteenth. The words and con- structions are not throughout the same, and when they are they have not always the same meaning. Much of Shakespeare's vocabulary has ceased to The Author's Preface. xiii fall from either our lips or our pens ; much of the meaning which he attached to so much of it as still survives has dropped out of our minds. What is most misleading of all, many words and forms have ac- quired senses for us which they had not for him.

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