Alexander also makes Cassius mention that Laena had accosted him, and expressed the wish that his desires might prosper, thus making Cassius suspect the conspiracy was discovered. This parallels Brutus’ experience in Pescetti. Decius refers to the banquet at the house of Lepidus and Caesar’s opinions on death. This is also mentioned in Pescetti. Alexander’s recital of Caesar’s perturbation, as he describes it in soliloquy, is too long to quote, but it is simply an echo of Calpurnia’s state of mind as revealed in Pescetti.

If we can assume that Alexander was acquainted with Pescetti’s drama, as these parallels seem to indicate, we have no reason for supposing that it was unknown to the literati of his time. “Cesare” was popular enough to go through two editions in Italy. Alexander was a man of wide reading, but no more so than was Ben Jonson. Possibly Alexander was indebted to the latter for his knowledge of Pescetti’s work.[[132]] Alexander’s drama followed that of Shakespeare. If he knew Pescetti’s work some few years after the composition of Shakespeare’s drama, there is no reason to deny to Jonson, the most learned author of his day, a prior acquaintance.

In this connection, the hypothesis advanced by Frederick Gard Fleay,[[133]] regarding the two-part nature of Shakespeare’s play, assumes new significance. According to him, “Julius Caesar” was originally written in two parts, “Caesar’s Tragedy” and “Caesar’s Revenge,” following a custom of the time, and that through some exigency the two were later merged into the play as we now have it. This is not the place to enter this controversy. Fleay presents his reasons, and among them the fact that in “Julius Caesar” the name Antony occurs without the h, contrary to Shakespeare’s custom in his other plays wherein the name occurs. It may be well to suggest here that the prevalent fondness for Italian names probably prompted the use of the name as found in Pescetti: Antonio or Marcantonio. But especially significant is Fleay’s surmise that it was Jonson who performed the merging of the two plays, and who is, therefore, responsible for the present form. If this be the case, it may well be that Jonson introduced “Cesare” to Shakespeare’s notice, for notwithstanding its tediousness, it was cast in a form which appealed to Ben’s classic taste. The hypothetical “Tragedy of Julius Caesar” could well have been inspired by Pescetti’s drama, for the first three acts of “Julius Caesar” as we have it now, form a satisfactory dramatic whole, and all of Shakespeare’s assumed indebtedness to the Italian is contained in these three acts.

Jonson’s “Sejanus,” whose composition was probably prompted by the popularity of Shakespeare’s work in the same field, followed “Julius Caesar” in 1603. The friendly relations existing at this time between the two great dramatists is sufficiently attested by the fact that Shakespeare was one of the actors in Jonson’s tragedy. “Julius Caesar” as we now have it appears first in the 1623 folio; what alterations were made in the preceding twenty years are matters of speculation. Jonson was sufficiently interested in its success is strive to rival it along purely classic lines, while about the only criticism of a Shakespearean play that we possess from Ben deals with a speech in “Julius Caesar.”[[134]] It seems, therefore, within the bounds of probability that Jonson may have introduced “Cesare” to Shakespeare’s notice.

There were, however, other means whereby Shakespeare may have become acquainted with “Cesare.” Much as we know of his wonderful age, we do not even now realize its vast and all-embracing activities, especially in literature. Translations by the score were made from the Italian.[[135]] Plagiarism, especially from foreign sources, was rampant; nor was such plagiarism decried.[[136]] Shakespeare may not have known Italian, yet the evidence to the contrary is steadily growing stronger. Italian was the fashion in his day; many of his colleagues had travelled in Italy; many knew the language. His patron, Southampton, spoke Italian fluently, while among his guests Italian scholars were conspicuous. Amid such surroundings it is well-nigh inconceivable that Shakespeare failed to come into intimate contact with the Italian literature of the day. Recent research renders it almost positive that he not only did, but that he was sufficiently versed in the language to read the literature in the original tongue. We marvel at his intimate descriptions of Italian life, explicable, apparently, only on the supposition that he was an eye-witness of the scenes he describes. We wonder at the familiarity with Italian authors evident upon a close examination of his work. Brandes, in his study of Othello[[137]] calls attention to several portions of that drama, which both in content and expression, form too close a parallel to the Italian of Ariosto and Berni to be accidental. More recently, Professor Carlo Segré[[138]] has pointed to places in Othello explicable only upon the supposition that Shakespeare was intimately acquainted with the Italian version of Cinthio.

“Segré disagrees with Sidney Lee, who avers that Shakespeare borrowed from Italian sources, only bare outlines and general ideas which lent themselves to his scheme, and that these in his masterly hands were so arranged and reconstructed as to be almost unrecognizable. In Segré’s opinion, Shakespeare studied the Italian literature, not only with the analysis of a man of letters, but also with the careful attention and open mind of a poet, for the benefit he drew from these sources was chosen with consummate art and critical skill, according to what seemed most useful to him in the exercise of his marvellous gifts.”[[139]] As we have seen, Shakespeare’s procedure with “Cesare” differed in no essentials from his usual method.

Even if Shakespeare knew no Italian, it was still possible for him to become fairly familiar with “Cesare.” Shakespeare was a dramatist because the drama was profitable. Like a keen playwright, he studied the taste of his public. The story of Caesar was no new one to theatre-goers. Other plays on the subject had met with success. The chronicle history had had its day, and with its waning popularity Shakespeare turned to that hazy, romantic epoch in history when Rome was mistress of the world; for in his day Rome’s name still loomed large in the imagination of mankind. The great dramatist never scrupled to appropriate the efforts of others, when, by the transforming power of his genius, he might use them to further the success of his own work. The more we know of the Elizabethan world, the more modern it seems to us. No doubt, in those days as in these, theatrical managers were ever on the lookout for promising material. Perhaps Jonson did not introduce “Cesare” to his notice, yet what was to prevent Shakespeare’s employing lowly but learned hacks to investigate plays or other works, both native and foreign, which promised to provide adequate material for his own dramas? There is nothing startlingly novel in this assumption, although it seems to have been overlooked in the discussions concerning the poet’s linguistic knowledge. It had been done before; it was done afterwards. Association and collaboration were common. What one man lacked another supplied. Why did Henslowe, in 1602, commission Munday, Drayton, Webster, Middleton, and “the rest,” to write a “sesers falle”? Why so many to write one play? No doubt many an old drama was ransacked for material, many an ancient source laid under contribution, many a verbal jewel or entire scene torn from its setting to grace the new production. Shakespeare, employing scholarly searchers, who brought to his notice whatever they considered valuable in the material they investigated, had no need of knowing various languages. He wanted the ideas; his imagination provided the rest.

There was no lack of books. The late Professor J. Churton Collins, in his consideration of Shakespeare as a classical scholar, says: “The collection of books was not only the fashion, but the passion of the age. His friend Ben Jonson had one of the finest private libraries in England, so had Camden and Cotton, and their liberality in lending books was proverbial. He could have had books from the library of Southampton and through Southampton from the libraries of others of the nobility. The magnificent collection of Parker at Lambeth would have been open to him, as well as the collection at Gresham College. There was the Queen’s library at Whitehall, well stored according to Hentzner, who visited it in 1598, with Greek, Latin, Italian, and French books. What afterwards formed the nucleus of the Bodleian at Oxford, which contains, by the way, an Aldine Ovid, with his name in autograph, to all appearances genuine, on the title-page, was during the last decade of the sixteenth century almost within a stone’s throw of the Black Friars Theatre.”[[140]]

CONCLUSION

To claim that Pescetti’s drama possesses any intrinsic attraction for the modern reader would be straining truth in the interest of zeal. It is doubtful whether it ever attained the dignity of a stage representation; the least regard for the patience of humanity prompts the hope that it never was inflicted upon an audience. Too often, throughout its toilsome progress, “Declamation roars while Passion sleeps.” Pescetti attempted to individualize his major characters, yet we miss the life which throbs in Shakespeare’s pages; all too frequently the passionate utterances of real men and women are sunk in the frigid rhetoric of book-born puppets. Still while it was not given to Pescetti to scale Olympus, he at least glimpsed the path. His drama is true to the traditions of its type; in some ways it marks an advance over its predecessors. While the English drama, freed from the shackles of convention, buoyed by the exuberant spirit of a conscious nationalism, followed the Zeitgeist to the highest pinnacle of achievement, Italian tragedy, misled by the ignis fatuus of a false classicism, floundered ever more helplessly and hopelessly in the depths of the Senecan morass.