¹ The Staging of Elizabethan Plays At the Red Bull Theater 1605–1625 (New York: MLA, 1940), p. 41. My sources for the above paragraph have largely been Reynolds, pp. 40–41, 85; Wilhelm Creizenach, The English Drama in the Age of Shakespeare (Philadelphia-London, 1916), p. 403; W. J. Lawrence, Pre-Restoration Stage Studies (Harvard Univ. Press, 1927), pp. 235–241. All the items selected from these three have been examined in and taken from the original texts themselves.

² Mark Van Doren, Shakespeare (New York, 1939), p. 185.

³ These quotations are from H. H. Furness, Jr., ed., Julius Caesar, New Variorum Edition (Philadelphia-London, 1913), pp. 145–146.

⁴ Prefaces to Shakespeare (Princeton Univ. Press, 1946–47), ii, 389–390. I like neither Granville-Barker's juggling of the order of the speeches nor his highly subjective interpretation. Why he believes Brutus comes off well in this scene and Casca and Cassius do not is not made clear. Cf. “Our sympathy with Brutus has next to weather the murder, through the planning and doing of which he stalks so nobly and disinterestedly and with such admirable self-control” (p. 355) and “Butchered by Casca, sacrificed by Brutus—these two doings of the same deed are marked and kept apart—Caesar lies dead” (p. 388). But for another play Granville-Barker can see the functional significance of a horror scene: “Shakespeare then deals the dreadful blow to Gloucester. The very violence and horror of this finds its dramatic justification in the need to match in another sort—since he could not hope to match it in spiritual intensity—the catastrophe to Lear” (i, 274).

⁵ When critics interpret the blood wash in iii. i as awe-inspiring ritual, they must be recalling (as Capell indicates) the passage in ii. i in which Brutus advises the conspirators not to kill Antony along with Caesar. But the critics are then contaminating iii. i with ii. i and confusing intention with act. The least one can say of the blood bath is what John Palmer says (my italics): “Brutus [carries] to dreadful extremes the sacrificial mood in which he struck the fatal blow”—Political Characters of Shakespeare (London, 1945), p. 14.

⁶ (Harvard Univ. Press, 1945), pp. 321, 427. That an earlier stage tradition was faithful to Shakespeare may be indicated by Voltaire's words in 1731 concerning a London production in which he saw Brutus speak to the mob, “tenant encore un poignard teint du sang de César” (quoted ibid., p. 323). “Tree … used the business [of blood washing] (Irving's eagerly awaited comment on his production was ‘H'm—yes—too much blood!’) and, when Antony shakes hands with the conspirators, ‘Casca with rude intent and purposeful cruelty smirches with a crimson stain the arm of butchered Caesar's friend’ ” (pp. 321–322). Percy Simpson tells us a bit more about the Tree production: “Gathering round the body, the conspirators reddened their hands in blood—a graphic touch usually omitted in acting copies, as its significance depends upon a hunting custom long obsolete. … As each man ‘rendered him [Antony] his bloody hand,‘ the blunt Casca wiped off the stains on Antony's wrist, and he repressed a rising look of horror” (Furness, Variorum, p. 443).

⁷ C. F. Tucker Brooke, ed., Shakespeare's Plutarch, Shakespeare Classics (London 1909), i, 133–137, 101–104; ii, 22.

⁸ See Furness, Variorum, p. 296; North's Plutarch (1579), Shakespeare Head Press (Oxford, 1928), i, 265.

⁹ Shakespeare as a Dramatic Artist (Oxford, 1906), pp. 197–198.

¹⁰ Op. cit., ii, 366, 390.

¹¹ Van Doren, Shakespeare, p. 284.

¹² ii, 150–299.

¹³ Shakespeare's Plutarch, ii, 148–152.

¹⁴ “He played it as if he were a symmetrical statue cut out of cold steel and set in motion by some precise mechanical action” (W. R. Alger). “The most dominant of his characteristics was intrinsic dignity. His figure was tall and impressive, his demeanor majestic, his utterance … was clear, sonorous, and sympathetic” (W. Winter). The same critic suggests a similarity between the actor's interpretation and his own character in private life. Furness, Variorum, pp. 730–731.

¹⁵ The Lion and the Fox (New York and London, n.d.), p. 244.

¹⁶ Shakespeare's Satire (Oxford Univ. Press, 1943), p. 200.

¹⁷ The Olive and the Sword (Oxford Univ. Press, 1944), p. 62.

¹⁸ Alfred Harbage, Shakespeare's Audience (Columbia Univ. Press, 1941), pp. 153–154.

¹⁹ “Me, Them and You” (1925), in Abinger Harvest (New York, 1936), pp. 28–29.