There were, indeed, numerous plays on the subject of Julius Cæsar--they are mentioned in Gosson's _Schoole of Abuse_, 1579, in _The Third Blast of Retraite from Plaies_, 1580, in Henslowe's Diary, 1594 and 1602, in _The Mirrour of Policie_, 1598, &c.--but Weever's words do not apply to any of those which have come down to us. It can therefore scarcely be doubted that they refer to Shakespeare's drama; and as the poem appeared in 1601, it affords us almost decisive evidence as to the date of _Julius Cæsar_. In all probability, it was in the same year that the play was written and produced. Weever, indeed, says in his dedication that his poem was "some two yeares agoe made fit for print;" but even if this be true, the lines above quoted may quite well have been inserted later. There are several reasons for believing that _Julius Cæsar_ can scarcely have been produced earlier than 1601. The years 1599 and 1600 are already so full of work that we can scarcely assign to them this great tragedy as well; and internal evidence indicates that the play must have been written about the same time as _Hamlet,_ to which its style offers so many striking resemblances. The immediate success of the play is proved by this fact, among others, that it at once called forth a rival production on the same theme. Henslow notes in his diary that in May 1602, on behalf of Lord Nottingham's company, he paid five pounds for a drama called _Cæsar's Fall_ to the poets Munday, Drayton, Webster, Middleton, and another. It was evidently written to order. And as _Julius Cæsar_, in its novelty, was unusually successful, so, too, we find it still reckoned one of Shakespeare's greatest and profoundest plays, unlike the English "Histories" in standing alone and self-sufficient, characteristically composed, forming a rounded whole in spite of its apparent scission at the death of Cæsar, and exhibiting a remarkable insight into Roman character and the life of antiquity. What attracted Shakespeare to this theme? And, first and foremost, what _is_ the theme? The play is called _Julius Cæsar_, but it was obviously not Cæsar himself that attracted Shakespeare. The true hero of the piece is Brutus; he it is who has aroused the poet's fullest interest. We must explain to ourselves the why and wherefore.