"Et Tu, Brute"
Dyce and other researchers have made clear that in Shakespeare's day "Et tu, Brute" was a familiar phrase which had special reference to a wound from a supposed friend. It probably owed its popularity to having been used in the earlier plays on the subject of Julius Cæsar. In The True Tragedie of Richard Duke of York (1595), upon which Shakespeare's 3 Henry VI is based, occurs the line,
Et tu, Brute? wilt thou stab Cæsar too?
This line is repeated in S. Nicholson's poem, Acolastus, his Afterwitte (1600). In Ben Jonson's Every Man out of His Humour (1599), Buffone uses "Et tu, Brute" in speaking to Macilente (V, iv). In the Myrroure for Magistrates (1587) we find,
And Brutus thou, my sonne, quoth I, whom erst I loved best.
The Latin form of the phrase possibly originated, as Malone suggested, in the Latin play referred to above (Earlier Plays) which was acted at Oxford in 1582. It is easy to see how the Elizabethan tendency to word-quibble and equivoque would help to give currency to the Latin form. Cf. Hamlet's joke on 'brute' quoted above.
Brutus's Speech, III, ii
In view of the close connection between Julius Cæsar and Hamlet as regards date of composition and the characterization of Brutus and Hamlet, interest attaches to Professor Gollancz's theory (Julius Cæsar, Temple Shakespeare) that the original of the famous speech of Brutus to the assembled Romans (III, ii) may be found in Belleforest's History of Hamlet, in the oration which Hamlet makes to the Danes after he has slain his uncle. "The situation of Hamlet is almost identical with that of Brutus after he has dealt the blow, and the burden of Hamlet's too lengthy speech finds an echo in Brutus's sententious utterance. The verbose iteration of the Dane has been compressed to suit 'the brief compendious manner of speech of the Lacedæmonians.'"—Gollancz. As the English translation from which Professor Gollancz quotes in support of his theory is dated 1608, and is the earliest known,[12] it cannot have been from this that Shakespeare drew any suggestions or material. The question arises, Did Shakespeare read the speech in the original French? The volume of Belleforest's Histoires Tragiques, which contained the story of Hamlet, was first published in 1570, and there were many reprintings of it before 1600.
II. DATE OF COMPOSITION
Modern editors fix the date of composition of Julius Cæsar within 1601, the later time limit (terminus ante quem), and 1598, the earlier time limit (terminus post quem). The weight of evidence is in favor of 1600–1601.
External Evidence
1. Negative. Julius Cæsar is not mentioned by Meres in the Palladis Tamia, published in 1598, which gives a list of twelve noteworthy Shakespeare plays in existence at that time. This establishes 1598 as a probable terminus post quem.
2. Positive. In John Weever's Mirror of Martyrs or the Life and Death of Sir John Oldcastle Knight, Lord Cobham, printed in 1601, are the following lines:
The many-headed multitude were drawne
By Brutus speech that Cæsar was ambitious,
When eloquent Mark Antonie had showne
His vertues, who but Brutus then was vicious?
Man's memorie, with new, forgets the old,
One tale is good, until another's told.
Halliwell-Phillipps was the first to note that here is a very pointed reference to the second scene of the third act of Julius Cæsar, as the antithesis brought out is not indicated in any of Shakespeare's historical sources. The fact that Weever states in his Dedication that the Mirror "some two years agoe was made fit for the print" has been held by Mr. Percy Simpson[13] to indicate that the play was not brought out later than 1599, a conclusion supported, he thinks, by a passage in Ben Jonson's Every Man out of His Humour, produced in that year, where Clove (III, i) says, "Then coming to the pretty animal, as Reason long since is fled to animals, you know," which may be a sneering allusion to Antony's "O judgment! thou art fled to brutish beasts" (III, ii, 104). The "Et tu, Brute" quotation in the same play has been used to strengthen the argument. But the lines from the Mirror of Martyrs quoted above may easily have been inserted by Weever into his poem in consequence of the popularity of Shakespeare's play. This contemporary popularity is well attested. Leonard Digges,[14] in his verses Upon Master William Shakespeare prefixed to the 1640 edition of Shakespeare's Poems, thus compares it with that of Ben Jonson's Roman plays:
So have I seene, when Cesar would appeare,
And on the Stage at halfe-sword parley were
Brutus and Cassius: oh how the Audience
Were ravish'd, with what new wonder they went thence,
When some new day they would not brooke a line
Of tedious (though well laboured) Catiline;
Sejanus too was irkesome, they priz'de more
Honest Iago, or the jealous Moore.
"Fustian" Clove's quotation may apply to references to the Pythagorean doctrine of the transmigration of souls in Shakespeare's earlier plays and other Elizabethan literature; and little can be based upon the "Et tu, Brute" quotation, as Ben Jonson may have drawn it from the same source as Shakespeare did.
On the other hand, Henslowe in his Diary under May 22, 1602, notes that he advanced five pounds "in earneste of a Boocke called sesers Falle," which the dramatists Munday, Drayton, Webster, Middleton "and the Rest" were composing for Lord Nottingham's Company. Cæsar's Fall was plainly intended to outshine Shakespeare's popular play, but, as Professor Herford comments, "the lost play … for the rival company would have been a somewhat tardy counterblast to an old piece of 1599." He adds: "Julius Cæsar was certainly not unconcerned in the revival of the fashion for tragedies of revenge with a ghost in them, which suddenly set in with Marston's Antonio and Mellida and Chettle's Hoffman in 1601."
Dr. Furnivall, a strong advocate for 1601 as the date of composition, has suggested[15] that Essex's ill-judged rebellion against Queen Elizabeth, on Sunday, February 8, 1601, was the reason of Shakespeare's producing his Julius Cæsar in that year. "Assuredly," he says, "the citizens of London in that year who heard Shakespeare's play must have felt the force of 'Et tu, Brute,' and must have seen Brutus's death, with keener and more home-felt influence than we feel and hear the things with now."
Drayton's revised version of his Mortimeriados (1596–1597); published in 1603 under the title of The Barons' Wars, has a passage which strongly resembles some lines in Antony's last speech (V, v, 73–74), but common property in the idea that a well-balanced mixture of the four elements (earth, air, fire, and water) produces a perfect man invalidates any argument for the date of the play based upon this evidence. See note, p. 167, l. 73.
Internal Evidence
Dr. W. A. Wright[16] has argued against an earlier date than 1600 for the composition of Julius Caesar from the use of 'eternal' for 'infernal' in I, ii, 160. See note, p. 20, l. 160. Of course there is no certainty that Shakespeare wished to use the word 'infernal,' and, besides, if any substitution was made, it may have been at a later date. But adumbrations of Hamlet everywhere in Julius Cæsar, the frequent references to Cæsar in Hamlet, the kinship in character of Brutus and Hamlet (see note, p. 46, l. 65), the treatment of the supernatural, and the development of the revenge motive give strong cumulative evidence that the composition of Julius Cæsar is in time very near