_Date._ From the Accounts of the Revels, we learn that this play was performed at Court, November 1st, 1604; and if the Egerton Papers, published by Mr. Collier, can be relied on, it had been performed before Queen Elizabeth. In them we meet as follows:--"6 August, 1602. Rewards to the vaulters, players, and dancers--of this x^{li} to Burbidge's players for Othello--lxiiii^{li} xviii^{s} x^{d}." "The part of the memorandum which relates to Othello," says Mr. Collier, "is interlined as if added afterwards." Mr. Halliwell asserts that Othello must have been written even before 1600; for in a MS. of that date, entitled The Newe Metamorphosis, &c., is a passage evidently, he thinks, imitated from "who steals my purse steals trash" in Othello. But, though Mr. Halliwell thinks otherwise, this passage may have been a later insertion; or it may be a mere coincidence, a thing much more common than is usually supposed. At all events Othello was written, at latest, in 1604. I know not if it has been observed that Voltaire evidently had Othello in his mind when writing his Zaïre. _Origin._ The only known source of this play is a tale in the Hecatommithi of Cinthio; and as no English translation of it is known to have existed, the obvious and natural inference is that Shakespeare had read it in the original. There was, however, it seems, a French translation: Paris, 1584. JULIUS CÆSAR. _Edition._ Only in the folio, 1623. _Date._ The real date of this play is very uncertain, and I am very dubious whether I am right or not in giving it this position. Mr. Collier--with whom Mr. Dyce agrees--is positive that it appeared before 1603, for in that year Drayton published his Barons' Wars, in which is a passage so like the character of Brutus given in this play (v. 5), that one poet must have borrowed from the other; and it is inferred of course that Drayton was the borrower. But this is not by any means so certain, as the eagle did not always disdain to take a plume from the smaller birds (see above, The Two Gentlemen of Verona). It is very strange, however, that neither of these critics seems to have been aware that the very same ideas, and even expressions, are to be found in the character given of Crites in Ben Jonson's Cynthia's Revels (ii. 1), which was performed in 1600, and which may therefore I think justly be regarded as the real immediate original of the passages in both poets; the germ, however, is to be found in Chaucer's Tale of the Doctor of Physik. All, then, that we can venture to affirm is, that Julius Cæsar is posterior to 1600. I incline to place it in point of time before Shakespeare's other plays on Roman subjects. It may be observed that his Antony and Cleopatra and Coriolanus are as much Histories as those that are so entitled, the history being Roman instead of English. _Origin._ North's Plutarch, from the French of Amyot. ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA. _Edition._ Only in the folio 1623.