no printed copy of Julius Caesar earlier than that of
the First Folio. Since it was not mentioned by Meres in 1598 and was
alluded to in 1601 in John Weever's _Mirrour of Martyrs_, it probably
appeared between those two dates. Weever says in his dedication that
his work "some two years ago was made fit for the print." This
apparently means that he wrote the allusion to _Julius Caesar_ in 1599
and that consequently the play had been produced by then. There is a
possible reference to it in Ben Jonson's _Every Man Out of His Humour_,
which came out in 1599. Metrical tests and the general character of
the play agree with these conclusions. Hence we can put the date
between 1599-1601, with a preference for the former year.

+Sources+.--Shakespeare drew his material from North's _Plutarch_,
using the lives of Caesar, Brutus, and Antony. He has {180} enlarged
the parts of Casca and Lepidus, and made Brutus much nobler than in the
original. This last change was a dramatic necessity in order to give
the play a hero with whom we could sympathize.

+Hamlet+.--On the surface the story of Hamlet is a comparatively simple
one. The young prince is heart-broken over the recent death of his
father, and his mother's scandalously hasty marriage to Hamlet's uncle,
the usurping sovereign. In this mood he is brought face to face with
his father's spirit, told that his uncle was his father's murderer, and
given as a sacred duty the task of revenging the crime. To this object
he sacrifices all other aims in life--pleasure, ambition, and love.
But this savage task is the last one on earth for which his
fine-grained nature was fitted. He wastes his energy in feverish
efforts which fail to accomplish his purpose, just as many a man wavers
helplessly in trying to do something for which nature never intended
him. Partly to deceive his enemies, partly to provide a freer
expression for his pent-up emotions than the normal conditions of life
would justify, he acts the role of one who is mentally deranged.
Finally, more by chance than any plan of his own, he achieves his
revenge on the king, but not until he himself is mortally wounded. His
story is the tragedy of a sensitive, refined, imaginative nature which
is required to perform a brutal task in a brutal world.

But around this story as a framework Shakespeare has woven such a
wealth of poetry and philosophy that the play has been called the
"tragedy of thought." It is in Hamlet