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mendatory verſes on our author’s works, particularly alluded to it, as one of his moſt applauded performances[1]. The droll here mentioned, was therefore, probably formed out of Shakſpeare’s play: and we may preſume that it had been in poſſeſſion of the ſtage at leaſt a year or two, before it was exhibited in this degraded form. Though the term ‘‘mammets’’, in the paſſage above quoted, ſhould be conſidered as contemptuouſly applied to the children of Paul’s or thoſe of the Chapel[2], (an interpretation which it will commodiouſly enough admit) the argument with reſpect to the date of ‘‘Julius Cæſar’’ will ſtill remain in its full force.
In the prologue to The Falſe One, by Beaumont and Fletcher, this play is alluded to[3]; but in what year that tragedy was written, is unknown.
If the date of The Maid’s Tragedy by the ſame authors, were aſcertained, it might throw ſome light on the preſent enquiry; the quarreling ſcene between Melantius and his friend, being manifeſtly copied from a ſimilar ſcene in Julius Cæſar. Dryden mentions a tradition (which he might have received from Sir William D’Avenant) that Philaſter
NOTES.
- ↑ “Nor fire nor cank’ring age, as Naſo ſaid
Of his, thy wit-fraught book ſhall once invade:
Nor ſhall I e’er believe or think thee dead
(Though miſs’d) untill our bankrout ſtage be ſped
(Impoſſible!) with ſome new ſtrain, t’out do
Paſſions of Juliet and her Romeo;
Or till I hear a ſcene more nobly take
Than when thy half-ſword-parlying Romans ſpake.”
Verſes by L. Digges, prefixed to the firſt edition of our author’s plays, in 1623. - ↑ By a ſimilar figure theſe children are in Hamlet called “little Eyaſes.”
- ↑ “New titles warrant not a play for new,
The ſubject being old; and ’tis as true,
Freſh and neat matter may with eaſe be fram’d
Out of their ſtories that have oft been nam’d
With glory on the ſtage. What borrows he
From him that wrought old Priam’s tragedy,
That writes his love for Hecuba? Sure to tell
Of Cæſar’s amorous heats, and how he fell
In the Capitol, can never be the ſame
To the judicious.”Prologue to the Falſe One.
