poets.]

[Footnote 534: Death of Julius Caesar. An account of the plots which
ended in the assassination of the great Roman general.]

[Footnote 535: Plutarch. See note on _Heroism_(264). Shakespeare, like
the earlier dramatists, drew freely on Plutarch's _Lives_ for
material.]

[Footnote 536: Brut. A poetical version of the legendary history of
Britain, by Layamon. Its hero is Brutus, a mythical King of Britain.]

[Footnote 537: Arthur. A British King of the sixth century, around
whose life and deeds so many legends have grown up that some
historians say he, too, was a myth. He is the center of the great
cycle of romances told in prose in Mallory's _Morte d'Arthur_ and in
poetry in Tennyson's _Idylls of the King_.]

[Footnote 538: The royal Henries. Among the dramas popular in
Shakespeare's day which he retouched or rewrote are the historical
plays. Henry IV., First and Second Parts; Henry V; Henry VI., First,
Second, and Third Parts; and Henry VIII.]

[Footnote 539: Italian tales. Italian literature was very popular in
Shakespeare's day, and authors drew freely from it for material,
especially from the _Decameron_, a famous collection of a hundred
tales, by Boccaccio, a poet of the fourteenth century.]

[Footnote 540: Spanish voyages. In the sixteenth century, Spain was
still a power upon the high seas, and the tales of her conquests and
treasures in the New World were like tales of romance.]

[Footnote 541: Prestige. Can you give an English equivalent for this
French word?]

[Footnote 542: Which no single genius, etc. In the same way, some
critics assure us, the poems credited to the Greek poet, Homer, were
built up by a number of poets.]

[Footnote 543: Malone. An Irish critic and scholar of the eighteenth
century, best known by his edition of Shakespeare's plays.]

[Footnote 544: Wolsey's Soliloquy. See Shakespeare's _Henry VIII._
III, 2. Cardinal Wolsey was prime minister of England in the reign of
Henry VIII.]

[Footnote 545: Scene with Cromwell. See _Henry VIII._ III, 2. Thomas
Cromwell was the son of an English blacksmith; he rose to be lord high
chamberlain of England in the reign of Henry VIII., but, incurring the
King's displeasure, was executed on a charge of treason.]

[Footnote 546: Account of the coronation. See _Henry VIII._ IV, 1.]

[Footnote 547: Compliment to Queen Elizabeth. See _Henry VIII._ V, 5.]

[Footnote 548: Bad rhythm. Too much importance must not be attached to
these mat