His method of using this material differs considerably from his treatment of his other authorities. From a chronicler like Holinshed he, as a rule, takes nothing but the course of events, the outline of the leading personages and such anecdotes as suit his purpose. From novelists like Bandello or Cinthio he takes the main lines of the action, but relies almost entirely on his own invention for the characters and the dialogue. From the earlier plays, which he adapts or re-casts, such as _The Taming of a Shrew, King John, The Famous Victories_ of Henry V., and _King Leir_ (the original _Hamlet_ is unfortunately not preserved), he transfers into his own work every scene and speech that is worth anything; but in the cases in which we can make the comparison, there is little enough that he finds available. Here, on the other hand, we find a curious and instructive example of his method of work when he most faithfully followed his original. We realise that the more developed the art and the more competent the psychology of the writer before him, the more closely did Shakespeare tread in his footsteps. Here for the first time he found himself in touch with a wholly civilised spirit--not seldom childlike in his antique simplicity, but still no mean artist. Jean Paul, with some exaggeration, yet not quite extravagantly, has called Plutarch the biographical Shakespeare of world-history. The whole drama of _Julius Cæsar_ may be read in Plutarch. Shakespeare had before him three Lives--those of Cæsar, Brutus, and Mark Antony. Read them consecutively, and you find in them every detail of _Julius Cæsar_. Let us take some examples from the first act of the play. It begins with the tribunes' jealousy of the favour in which Cæsar stands with the common people; and everything down to the minutest trait is taken from Plutarch. The same with what follows: Mark Antony's repeated offer of the crown to Cæsar at the feast of the Lupercal, and his unwilling refusal of it. So too with Cæsar's suspicions of Cassius; Cæsar's speech on his second entrance-- "Let me have men about me that are fat, Sleek-headed men, and such as sleep o' nights: Yond Cassius has a lean and hungry look; He thinks too much; such men are dangerous,"--