The escape of the play from the sweep of this widely-flung, but afterwards-ripped, drag-net must be a perplexing point for the critic. It seems either to throw the play forward to a time when it must have been known to Meres or backward to the year of Weever's fortuitous reference to it. (I take the opportunity of correcting an inadvertent mistake in a previous page, where the date of publication of this author's Epigrams is given as 1598: it should have been 1596.)

There are still two more points to be considered, the added effect of which is to throw doubt upon Shakespeare's authorship of the tragedy under discussion. The first of these is the apparent clearness of the manuscript from which the play was "set up" for the Folio. The second is the fact that, while Shakespeare, both before and after 1600, used the form "Anthonie," this alone of his recognised plays contains "Antonie." It may be objected that in both cases this is due to the correcting influence of the transcriber. But there is strong evidence to show that our old plays were printed either directly from the author's manuscripts or from scrupulously faithful copies. And there is one play in the FolioTimon of Athens-that bears striking witness to this fact. This tragedy is a Shakespearean revision of an earlier play, of a part of which, at least, Middleton was the author. It is the only work in Shakespeare containing the expletive "Push!" Other writersBeaumont, Massinger, Field, for example-used the more modern "Pish!" which Middleton also employed as well as the other form. But "Push!" is peculiar to Middleton, and the retention of this characteristic word in Timon indicates either that Shakespeare incorporated some sheets of Middleton's manuscript in the revised version, or copied faithfully that part of Middleton's work he thought fit to use. Farther, the transcriber wrote, or the compositor set, "Push!" because he found that word and not "Pish!" in the manuscript. Nor is this evidence confined to the Shakespeare Folio. Another peculiarity with Middleton was his

liking for such combinations as "a-late" and "a-life." Fletcher preferred "o' late" and "o' life." But, in the few plays in the Beaumont and Fletcher collection written by Middleton, that writer's forms are strictly adhered to. These facts justify my belief that "Antonie," and not "Anthonie," was the poet's choice. And this choice is farther evidence that Shakespeare did not write the play. An author may, under correction, change the spelling or the quantity of a name; but it is surely ridiculous to assume that Shakespeare started with "Anthonie,” altered it to "Antonie for Julius Caesar, and reverted to the earlier form in Antony and Cleopatra.

The reader has, by this, probably come to the conclusion that, whatever his opinion on the genuineness of the ascription may be, the Shakespearean claim is "proved" by somewhat dubious facts. In such a doubting mood he may be, perhaps, readier to give a patient hearing to the arguments on Marlowe's behalf-the main business of this chapter. And the evidence to be brought forward-both external and internal-is of the strongest kind. How may we know that Marlowe wrote a play on Julius Caesar? And why are we to believe that that play is the one that has so long passed for Shakespeare's? The two facts are vouched for by both Marlowe and his contemporaries. The first witness to be called is Robert Greene. His prose tract, Never Too Late (1590), is of an autobiographical nature. In this, after describing his love affairs, he relates a meeting with Roscius, whom Fleay (rightly, I think) identifies with Robert Wilson. A speech addressed to Roscius contains the following reproachful passage:

"Of thyself, thou canst say nothing, and if the Cobler hath taught thee to sayAve Caesar,' disdain not thy tutor, because thou pratest in a King's Chamber."

There can be no doubt that the "Cobler" is Marlowe, who was the son of a Canterbury shoemaker, and it is clear that Wilson acted in a play written by Marlowe and containing an "Ave Caesar" speech. Fleay believed that Edward III. was the play

alluded to, and, before proceeding farther, it will be as well to clear Fleay's misconception out of the way.

To account for all Mr. Fleay's theories in connection with Edward III., one must assume three editions of this play: one before 1590, the date of Greene's tract; another, in which Shakespeare inserted the King and Countess episode; and a third in which is an obvious tribute to Lucrece, surely not by Shakespeare. However, I believe that Mr. Fleay himself finally fixed its date at 1594, too late, therefore, for Greene's allusion. And a consideration of the passage itself will show that it was not the one Greene was aiming at. These are the lines (Act i. Sc. 1):

"As, at the coronation of a king,

The joyful clamours of the people are,

When, Ave, Caesar! they pronounce aloud."

It will be seen that the utterance is not a personal one, and that it forms part of a speech of a minor character-the Black Princewho does not cut so fine a figure in the play as he does in history. In the first act, he is given 20 lines; in the second, but 4; in the third, 84; in the fourth, 149; and in the fifth, 27-not at all a "fat" enough part for an actor-manager. If "Roscius" acted in the play, it must have been as the King.

Turn again to Greene, and he "will tell us what the matter is." In that writer's play, Orlando Furioso (contemporaneous with, if not earlier than, the tract), we find on page 94, Dyce's (Routledge) edition:

'He knows the county, like to Cassius,

Sits, sadly dumping, aiming Caesar's death,

Yet crying 'Ave' to his majesty."

There is no known history containing these particulars. Greene must therefore have invented them or, what is more likely, taken them from a scene in an existing play. Reading the passage with the speech in the tract, there can be no doubt that Julius Caesar, and not Edward III., was the play Greene had in mind. Farther, it is clear that Marlowe must have written that play, and that

"Roscius" must have acted the part of Cassius in it. More evidence as to the existence of the earlier Julius Caesar is furnished by Peele in Alphonsus, Emperor of Germany-referred by Mr. Fleay to the year 1591. Peele was a notorious filcher from Marlowe, and Alphonsus contains quite a crop of reminiscences of Julius Caesar. Its fifth act is alluded to in these lines (v. 3):

"Like Caius Cassius, weary of thy life,

Now wouldst thou make thy page an instrument,

By sudden stroke to rid thee of thy bonds."

There is a reference to the third act of Julius Caesar in the scene in Peele's play quoted above:

"Methinks I now present Mark Anthony,

Folding dead Julius Caesar in mine arms."

Although Antony no longer does that, some such an incident would be quite in keeping with a play by Marlowe on Julius Caesar ("These arms of mine shall be thy sepulchre," Jew of Malta). When reading the speech containing the two lines given above, one cannot resist the impression that the poet must have written it with a vivid view of Antony's speech in front of him. Finally, in the line

"There is no ill intended to thy person' -from Alphonsus, iii. 1, we have almost the exact double of a line in Julius Caesar, iii. 1:

"There is no harm intended to your person."

That one of these allusions may be accidental is a probability that I am ready to admit, but when one considers that there are three to be accounted for, coincidence must be waved aside as an unlikely explanation. It is plain enough that Peele is borrowing here from his usual sources. But, it may be urged, Peele may not have written the passages cited: why could they not have been inserted by a reviser later than the production of Shakespeare's Julius Caesar? This plea is not an idle one: we know that Alphonsus was revived in the seventeenth century. But one may search in vain for any evidence of revision: there seems to

be no break in its antiquated style, common to the plays of the early nineties. Moreover, even if Alphonsus has been revised, it is clear that the phrase, "to rid thee of thy bonds," in one of the allusions cited, must have appeared in the play's original version. And the man who was responsible for one passage probably wrote the two others.

However slight an importance the reader may attach to the value or the bearing of the evidence of Greene and Peele on the subject, no reason for doubt or qualification exists when dealing with the witness of Marlowe himself. For he has practically reproduced parts of Julius Caesar in a later play. The following extract is from the Massacre at Paris (p. 242, Dyce's (Routledge's) edition):

"Guise.-Yet Caesar shall go forth.

Let mean conceits and baser men fear death;
Tut, they are peasants; I am Duke of Guise;

And princes with their looks engender fear.

First Murd. (within).-Stand close; he is coming; I know him by his voice."

The first line of this extract, "Yet Caesar shall go forth," is from line 28 of Act ii. Sc. 2 of Julius Caesar. It is remarkable how many times the word "forth "—the leit-motif of the scene-occurs in the course of the conversation preceding Caesar's final resolve to follow the becking of his fate that drew him to the Senate. In addition to the line quoted, there are "Think you to walk forth," "Caesar shall forth," "They would not have you to stir forth to-day," "And Caesar shall go forth," and "Do not go forth to-day." This last, the warning of Calpurnia, is echoed by the Third Murderer-" therefore, good my lord, go not forth "-just as the Guise is going to his place of execution. Farther, looking at the short and probably garbled speech of the Guise, we shall find that its sentiments are more or less closely copied from the utterances of Caesar in the earlier play. It represents, in fact, the Conqueror's own "moral" views in little, as will be seen by the