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SHAKESPEARE has given us in his 7ulius Caesar a vivid picture of a critical period of Roman history. He combined within the dramatic composition of one play the assassination of Julius Caesar and the death of his two distinguished murderers Brutus and Cassius. His play is not merely a tragedy which draws its contents from Plutarch's biographies of Caesar and of Brutus. It also contains an historical interpretation which is taken for granted by all of us who do not make a special study of the events which took place between the Ides of March and the battle of Philippi. By a bold neglect of the unity of time and place, Shakespeare shifts the scene from Rome and Mark Antony's funeral speech to Sardis and the discussion between Brutus and Cassius. He thus connects in his reader's mind the military actions of Brutus and Cassius in Asia Minor and later in Greece with their escape from Rome under the impact of Mark Antony's rousing panegyric for the murdered Caesar. The battle of Philippi, and its outcome, thus becomes the necessary sequel of Caesar's assassination. Not only are these two events connected by Caesar's death and its avenging and by Brutus' crime and punishment, but also by the fate of the Roman Republic which was to be restored by Caesar's death, yet perished with Brutus upon the field of Philippi. Brutus, the symbolic champion of the Republic, is revealed as its actual destroyer. Herein lies the true unity of Shakespeare's play and this is the theme and message of Shakespeare's historical interpretation. It is an interpretation which one may readily accept in spite of recent and ancient attempts to place the responsibility for the end of the Republic upon the shoulders of Caesar or of Cicero, of Mark Antony or of Octavian himself. The assassination of a chief magistrate is a greater blow to constitutional government than any accumulation of power in the hands of this magistrate. With all due admiration for Shakespeare's play, we must remember that history is not a tragedy composed by even the greatest artist. The tragic link between the deaths of Caesar and Brutus, the paradoxical concept of Brutus the champion and destroyer of the Republic, these connections may reveal a higher or deeper truth, but they are not historical in the sense that they represent the causes, the motives, and the purposes of the actors upon the real stage of history. I should like to illustrate this point by examining the activities of Brutus between the two scenes of Shakespeare's play, namely between the funeral speech of Mark Antony and the meeting of Brutus and Cassius in the military camp at Sardis. It is appropriate to do this in
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