Ebook Plutarch's Lives of Coriolanus, Caesar, Brutus, and Antonius

This volume is designed first as an introduction to the complete Lives of Plutarch in Sir Thomas North's splendid version, and secondly as an attempt to provide the student with a critical edition of the sources of Shakespeare's three Roman plays. Shakespeare's indebtedness to North is discussed in every modern edition of these plays, but no editor of North hitherto has catered directly for the Shakespearean student, by supplying lineal references from the prose to the verse text.

The system adopted in the Notes is that mere references are given where Shakespeare appears to have borrowed subject-matter only, and full quotations where he appears to have followed North's actual language. An Index is appended, containing a list of the references to the plays, arranged in order under Act and Scene. All references are to the Oxford Shakespeare, edited by Mr. W. J. Craig.

In the Text the spelling has been modernized throughout, subject to the preservation of all interesting or obsolete forms. The punctuation also has been revised and corrected for the sake of clearness, though the characteristic colon is preserved to the exclusion of the modern semi-colon. The reasons for this tampering with the text are two-fold. First, it is a frank concession to the reader's convenience. Black letter, long s's, and sixteenth century spelling attract the bibliophile, but too often hamper and annoy the student. Secondly, modernization helps to bring author and reader nearer together. Every book that is worth reading from other than antiquarian motives makes a truer appeal to literary taste when it is dressed in modern guise; and it may be remembered that Charles Lamb's perfect instinct demanded an old edition of the Anatomy of Melancholy but preferred a modem Shakespeare.

The account of Sir T. North's life in the Introduction (§ II) owes much to the invaluable Dictionary of National Biography, supplemented as regards his problematical connexion with Peterhouse by the kindness of Dr. T. A. Walker, Fellow of that College.