ge Eld as printer. It
was a quarto printed in roman type of a body similar to modern pica (20
ll. = 83 mm.). Of this original issue copies survive in the Dyce Library
at South Kensington and in the collection of the Duke of Devonshire. In
other copies the original title-leaf has been cancelled and replaced by
a reprint. This, which is dated 1607, bears the names of both
stationers, and a different address, which is presumably Fosbrook's. The
printer's initials have been omitted, and, more important, his device
has made way for the note 'Priuately acted by the Studentes of Trinity
Colledge in Oxford'. The original type had already been distributed, and
not only the title, but also the list of personae on the verso of the
leaf, was reset. Why Fosbrook should have been originally forgotten, as
it would seem he was, and his portion of the stock provided with a
title-page which is evidently of the nature of an afterthought, there is
nothing to show. Copies of this second issue are in the Bodleian Library
at Oxford and the British Museum. All the copies mentioned are perfect,
and for the purpose of the present reprint those in the British Museum,
Bodleian and Dyce libraries have been collated throughout. The two
former are in substantial agreement: the Dyce copy has both formes of
sheet A in an uncorrected state: there is a curious progressive error at
l. 2481.

No record of performance survives to corroborate the information
supplied by the second title-page, but from internal evidence it may be
supposed to have taken place some years before publication, the style of
the play being modelled on those popular in the last decade of the
sixteenth century, especially _Tamburlaine_ and the _Spanish Tragedie_.
The complete absence of comic relief, and the exceptional number of
recondite classical allusions, are in favour of the academic origin of
the play, and this is perhaps further evidenced by the fact that the
source, upon which the anonymous author drew, appears to have been, not
Plutarch, but Appian's _Bellum Civile_. Appian alone (book II, chapters
113 and 117) names Bucolianus among Caesar's murderers, though Cicero
mentions him twice in his letters to Atticus as Bucilianus. There is
also one local reference to connect the play with Oxford, in the lines
put into Caesar's mouth.

And _Isis_ wept to see her daughter _Thames_,
Chainge her cleere cristall, to vermilian sad.
(ll. 12