(my son) and determined not to speak, the state of our poor bodies, and present sight of our raiment, would easily bewray to thee what life we have led at home, since thy exile and abode abroad. But think how with thyself, how much more unfortunately1 than all the women living we are come hither." The same correspondence is found in the other great speech of the play; "the two speeches," as Mr. George Wyndham excellently observes, "dressed the one in perfect prose, the other in perfect verse, are both essentially the same under their faintly yet magically varied raiment."

The literary history of North's book is briefly summarized on its title-page:-"The Lives of the Noble Grecians and Romans, compared together by that grave learned philosopher and historiographer PLUTARKE OF CHARONIA, translated out of Greek into French by JAMES AMYOт, Abbot of Bellozane, Bishop of Auxerre, one of the King's Privy Council, and great Amner of France, and out of French into English by THOMAS NORTH. 1579."

1" Unfortunately" in the editions of 1579, 1595, 1603; but "unfortunate" in the 1612 edition; hence some scholars argue that Shakespeare must have used the late edition, and that the play must therefore be dated 1612 or after; the argument may, however, be used the other way round; the emendation in the 1612 edition of North may have been, and probably was, derived from Shakespeare's text.

In this connection it is worth while noting that there is a copy of the 1612 edition of North's Plutarch in the Greenock Library, with the initials "W. S." In the first place it is not certain that the signature is genuine; in the second, if it were proved to be Shakespeare's, it would merely seem that Shakespeare possessed this late edition of the work. Julius Cæsar is sufficient evidence that he possessed a copy of one of the early editions. It happens that in the Greenock copy there are some suggestive notes in the Life of Julius Cæsar, and these seem to me to tell against the genuineness of the initials on the fly-leaf. Vide Skeat's Shakespeare's Plutarch, Introduction.

DURATION OF ACTION

The time of this play is eleven days represented on the stage with intervals, arranged as follows:

The actual Historical time represented in this play "comprehends a period of about four years, commencing with the secession to the Mons Sacer in the year of Rome 262, and ending with the death of Coriolanus, A.U.c. 266" (vide New Shak. Soc. Translations, 1877).

INTRODUCTION

By HENRY NORMAN HUDSON, A.M.

The three great Roman plays, Julius Cæsar, Antony and Cleopatra, and Coriolanus, made their first appearance in the folio of 1623, having been entered at the Stationers' in November of that year among the copies "not formerly entered to other men." This entry was to Edward Blount and Isaac Jaggard, the publishers of the original edition. It may be worth the while to observe here, that the words "not entered to other men" do not necessarily infer but that some of the plays in question may have been formerly entered to the same men, or to one of the same; as there is some reason for thinking that Antony and Cleopatra had been entered to Blount as early as 1608.

The historical matter of these three superb dramas appears to have been drawn almost entirely from Plutarch's Lives of the Noble Grecians and Romans, as set forth in the spirited and racy version of Sir Thomas North, which first came out in 1579, and went to a second edition in 1595. North's translation was avowedly made from the French of James Amiot, Bishop of Auxerre. It is as fine a specimen of robust and manly English as one need desire to see, and has the smack of an original work as strongly perhaps as any translation ever made into the same tongue. The book, though very large in size and very high in price, went through as many at least as five editions before 1632; which proves it to have been exceedingly popular, as indeed it had every right to be.

The Tragedy of Coriolanus stands the second in the division of tragedies, as originally published: the acts are

regularly marked, but not the scenes; the stage-directions are remarkably full and complete; while the text, though very well printed in the main, has perhaps a large number of difficult and seemingly-corrupt readings, than any other play in the volume. Some of these readings have hitherto baffled and nonplussed all the resources of editorial ingenuity and learning. Several of them, however, have, we think, at length been greatly relieved, if not entirely removed, by the help of the manuscript corrections lately discovered by Mr. Collier in a copy of the second folio; which presents a greater number of valuable new readings in this play than in any other where we have thus far consulted it. Several important corrections from this source we have adopted with little hesitation, and some with none; not indeed from any authority which they may be supposed to carry, but from what seems to us their intrinsic fitness and propriety.

As to the date of the writing of Coriolanus, we have no external evidence whatsoever. The internal evidence of meter, diction, and temper refers it the Poet's latest period of composition. In all the qualities of style and versification, it clearly falls into the same class with The Tempest, The Winter's Tale, and King Henry VIII, being as nearly like them as the difference of the subject-matter would readily admit. Malone, accordingly, assigns the year 1610 as the probable date of the writing. We should be strongly inclined to place it some three or four years later, partly from the cast and texture of the workmanship itself, and partly from the tradition, that Shakespeare continued to write for the stage after his retirement to Stratford. The most, however, that we can affirm with any great degree of confidence is, that Coriolanus was written somewhere between 1610 and the time of the Poet's death, which, as every reader ought to know, took place in April, 1616.

The more rigid and sceptical researches of our time have made great invasions upon the history of early Rome, as heretofore received, and some have even gone so far as to

question whether the whole story of Coriolanus were not a fiction. We mention this neither for the purpose of endorsing nor of opposing it; but merely as giving occasion for stating that it was a question with which the Poet had nothing to do, and did nowise concern himself. Like others of his time, he was cortent to take the rambling and credulous, but lively and graphic narratives of old Plutarch as veritable and authentic history. And he would have been every way justifiable in doing this, even if the later arts of historical doubting and sifting, together with the results thereof, had been at his command. For his business as an artist was, to set forth a free and lifelike portraiture of human character as modified by the old Roman nationality, and clothed with the drapery of the old Roman manners. Here, then, the garrulous and gossipping old story-teller of Cheronea was just the man for him; since it will hardly be questioned that his tales, whether half legendary or not, are replete with the spirit and life of the times and places to which they refer. The Poet would have made sorry work indeed, had he used, like our modern historical abstractionists, the methods of crossquestioning all his matter, and so proceeded by receiving nothing as true to life but what make good its ground against him as fact.

The events of the drama now in hand, as related by Plutarch, extend over a period of about four years, beginning with the popular secession of Mons Sacer in the 262d year of Rome, and ending with the hero's death, in the 266th. Our abstract from the history includes nearly all the matter used by the Poet, and is made, as far as practicable, in the very words of the old translator; our aim being, to give a faithful showing of what the Poet borrowed, so that the reader may justly estimate both his obligations and his additions.

After relating the popular insurrection with which the play opens, the founding of the Tribunitian office, and the appointment of the first Tribunes, the narrative goes on substantially as follows: