^{Note 1 in page 765} See the discussion in J. E. Phillips' The State in Shakespeare's Greek and Roman Plays (Columbia Univ. Press, 1940), pp. 172 ff. Phillips quotes at length from such typical spokesmen as Sir Thomas Elyot and Thomas Craig. His analysis of Julius Caesar on this basis is also illuminating. See also the present author's The Populace in Shakespeare (Columbia Univ. Press, 1949), p. 147, for a condemnation by William Covell of Romans who wrongfully instigated civil dissension by covering their purposes “with the fine terms of a common good, of the freedom of the people, of justice,” etc. The parallel with Brutus is a very close one, and Covell, moreover, explicitly avows a topical relation of such Roman history to the civil tensions of Elizabethan England.

^{Note 2 in page 766} Shakespeare's Plutarch, ed. C. F. Tucker Brooke (London, 1909), i, 137.

^{Note 3 in page 767} While demonstration of this follows, it may be reassuring to note a similar quality in another play. Dover Wilson has suggested that “Richard II ought to be played throughout as ritual” (Introd., Cambridge edition, p. xiii). His argument shows at least that the conception is not foreign to Shakespeare's dramatic method. Far from being a refined modern notion, it is quite consistent with the characteristics of Elizabethan historical drama.

^{Note 4 in page 769} Shakespeare, of course, never presents Brutus as a demagogue, but there are ironical traces of the politician in him which suggest Covell's adverse picture of Roman champions of liberty, cited in note 1, above. It is curious, in fact, that although Brutus is commonly understood as being austerely unconcerned about public favor, he expresses clear concern for it in the passage just quoted, and repeats that concern as clearly in ii.ii.244–251, where he sanctions Antony's funeral speech only if Antony agrees to tell the crowd that he speaks by generous permission, and only if he agrees to utter no evil of the conspiracy. And is Brutus' speech to the crowd in iii.ii wholly the “non-political” performance it is supposed to be? Certainly Shakespeare's Roman citizens are the best judges of that, and they react tempestuously to Brutus. Antony, however, has the advantage of speaking last. The speech Brutus makes is compressed, but a rereading of it will scarcely disclose aloofness or an avoidance of popular emotive themes.

^{Note 5 in page 773} A reference at this point to Plutarch will serve both to clarify my meaning and to allay some natural doubts concerning the dramatist's intention. While it is true that the “sacrificial” murder of Caesar is Shakespeare's own contribution, the expositional preparation for this in Act ? nevertheless comes from an episode in Plutarch in which Antony, participating in the Lupercalian rites, concludes them by offering a laurel crown twice to Caesar, and in which also the tribunes are described as desecrating ritual offerings (Shakespeare's Plutarch, i, 92–93; see also ii, 19–20). Hence we have basic ritual materials for Shakespeare's first two scenes present in one convenient block of his source which also offered a convenient beginning for the play. Does this prevent us from attaching significance to the unusual presence of ritual elements in the exposition scenes? I believe it does not, for two reasons. First, the choice of source material by a dramatist is itself significant; Shakespeare could have started the play with other episodes in Plutarch or with scenes of his own invention. Secondly, it is immaterial whether he began Julius Caesar with this episode in his source and, because of its wealth of ritual detail, was led to the theme of ritualized assassination, or whether he began with the latter motif and chose the source material for Act i because its ritual elements agreed in tone with the selected theme. In either case the same remarkable unity between earlier and later parts of the play would have been achieved, and it is this unity which is important. Guesses about its origin in the playwright's composition are profitless. We do know that Shakespeare's Brutus plans the murder of Caesar as ritual, while Plutarch presents the murder as the very opposite of this. Plutarch's description of the assassination emphasizes, in fact, its resemblance to the hunting down of an animal, the very effect Brutus seeks explicitly to avoid in the “carcass-hounds” figure, and the one which Antony magnifies in his counter-emphasis of imagery drawn from hunting. North's Plutarch notes it thus: “Caesar turned him nowhere but he was stricken at by some . . . and was hacked and mangled among them, as a wild beast taken of hunters” (Shakespeare's Plutarch, i, 101–102).