Et trouveray moyen de le faire haster.
It is at least curious to find the same sort of addition, in the same circumstances and with the same speakers in Shakespeare.
Cassius.But it is doubtful yet,
Whether Caesar will come forth to-day, or no....
Dec. Brut. Never fear that: if he be so resolved,
I can o’ersway him....
For I can give his humour the true bent
And I will bring him to the Capitol.
(II. i. 194, 202, 210.)
Such minutiae, however, are far from conclusive, especially since, as in the two instances quoted, which are the most significant, Plutarch, though he did not authorise, may at any rate have suggested them. The first looks like an expansion of Caesar’s remark when his friends were discussing which death was the best: “Death unlooked for.” The second follows as a natural dramatic anticipation of the part that Decimus actually played in inducing Caesar to keep tryst. They may very well have occurred independently to both poets; or, if there be a connection, may have been transmitted from the older to the younger through the medium of some forgotten English piece. There is more presumptive evidence that Grévin influenced the Julius Caesar of Sir William Alexander, Earl of Stirling; but Stirling’s paraphrase of his authorities is so diffuse that they are not always easy to trace. His apparent debts to Grévin may really be due to the later and much more famous French Senecan Garnier, two of whose works have an undoubted though not very conspicuous place in the history of the English Drama generally, and especially of the Roman Play in England.