I intend in this monograph to demonstrate the probability of Shakespeare’s indebtedness in the composition of the first three acts of his “Julius Caesar,” to the “Cesare” of Orlando Pescetti, an Italian tragedy on the same theme, first published at Verona in 1594. This connection has never yet been demonstrated. The work seems almost totally unknown to the English literary world. Il Cesare Tragedia d’Orlando Pescetti Dedicata al Sereniss. Principe Donno Alfonso II. d’Este Duca di Ferrara, etc. (Device) In Verona Nella stamparia di Girolamo Discepolo MDXCIIII Pescetti’s work is in quarto, and consists of six pages of dedicatory matter, and one hundred and fifty pages of verse, for the most part hendecasyllabic varied with septenarians. In the tragedy proper there are nearly four thousand lines. The author in his dedication establishes, to his own satisfaction at least, the descent of the family of Este from the mighty Julius, and ventures the belief that Brutus and Cassius, though they could not abide Caesar’s rule, would rejoice in Alfonso’s. At the end of several pages of this sort of flattery we read: “Di Verona il dÌ 19 di Febraio 1594. Di V.A.S. Divotiss. et umiliss. Servitore Orlando Pescetti.” |