[18] "... Absolute in their numbers, as he conceiued them.... His mind and hand went together: And what he thought, he vttered with that easinesse, that wee haue scarse receiued from him a blot in his papers" (Heminge and Condell's Address "To the great Variety of Readers," First Folio).
[19] Mr. F.G. Fleay in his Shakespeare Manual (1876) argues that "this play as we have it is an abridgement of Shakespeare's play made by Ben Jonson."
[20] For an interesting defense of the so-called 'dragging' tendency and episodical character of the third scene of the fourth act, see Professor A.C. Bradley's Shakespearean Tragedy, pp. 55-61.
[21] "It must be understood that a play can be analyzed into very different schemes of plot. It must not be thought that one of these schemes is right and the rest wrong; but the schemes will be better or worse in proportion as—while of course representing correctly the facts of the play—they bring out more or less of what ministers to our sense of design."—Moulton.
[22] Professor J. Churton Collins's Shakespeare as a Prose Writer. See Delius's Die Prosa in Shakespeares Dramen (Shakespeare Jahrbuch, V, 227-273); Janssen's Die Prosa in Shakespeares Dramen; Professor Hiram Corson's An Introduction to the Study of Shakespeare, pp. 83-98.
Act I
[I.1] Dramatis Personæ. Rowe was the first to give a list of Dramatis Personæ. His list was imperfect and Theobald enlarged it.
[I.2] Antonius. In [I, ii, 3], 4, 6, the First Folio gives the name in the Italian form, 'Antonio.' See [note, p. 9, l. 3.]
[I.3] Decius Brutus. The true classical name was Decimus Brutus. In Amyot's Les Vies des hommes illustres grecs et latins (1559) and in North's Plutarch (1579) the name is given as in Shakespeare.
[I.4] Marullus. Theobald's emendation for the Murellus (Murrellus, [I, ii, 281]) of the First Folio. Marullus is the spelling in North's Plutarch.