“BEWARE THE IDES OF MARCH”: A GREAT RARITY—EXCEPTIONAL FIRST QUARTO EDITION OF SHAKESPEARE’S JULIUS CAESAR, 1684

SHAKESPEARE, William. Julius Caesar. A Tragedy. As it is Now Acted at the Theatre Royal. London: Printed by H. H. Jun. for Hen. Heringman and R. Bentley, 1684. Slim quarto (6-1/2 by 8-1/2 inches), early 20th-century full red crushed morocco gilt, raised bands; pp. (ii), 60. Housed in a custom chemise and half morocco slipcase.

Exceedingly rare first quarto edition of Shakespeare’s immortal Julius Caesar, the first separate printing of the play, an especially lovely copy, handsomely bound in full morocco gilt.

“Something extraordinary was beginning to happen as Shakespeare wrote Julius Caesar in the spring of 1599… as if all his energies were self-consciously focused on a new and different kind of invention… The result was a significant breakthrough,” one richly expressed in “the extraordinary lines of Brutus, deep in thought, as he sets in motion one of the most consequential events in Western history. It’s one of Shakespeare’s first great soliloquies and conveys a sense of inwardness new to the stage: ‘Between the acting of a dreadful thing And the first motion, all the interim is Like a phantasma or a hideous dream” (Shapiro, Year in the Life, 134-5). First performed in 1599, Julius Caesar, along with Henry V, displays “the culmination of Shakespeare’s middle style… Shakespeare had in these plays reached the top of his career” (Baugh et al., 527). Julius Caesar ran through six quarto editions in the 17th century, a clear indication of its great popularity among audiences of the day. Thomas Betterton played the role of Brutus in the production of 1684, ensuring the play’s enormous popularity. Julius Caesar was first printed in the 1623 First Folio. Sixteen of Shakespeare’s plays were first printed in quarto form (1594 to 1622) before the publication of the 1623 First Folio; of the 20 plays which made their first appearance in the First Folio, only three appeared in quarto form during the 17th century: The Taming of the Shrew and Macbeth (each in one quarto edition) and Julius Caesar (in six quarto editions). Such Shakespeare quartos have become nearly unobtainable. When offering a copy of Julius Caesar in 1920, Rosenbach noted that the first quarto edition of the play is “of the utmost rarity.” “This was the first play by Shakespeare founded on Sir Thomas North’s translation of Plutarch’s Lives, which appeared in 1579 and was reprinted in 1595. Shakespeare used portions of the lives of Caesar, Antony and Brutus and followed Plutarch very closely” (Bartlett, Mr. William Shakespeare, 47). Occasional mispagination as issued without loss of text. Bartlett 112. Bartlett Census, 33. Wing S2922. See Pforzheimer 886.

Some old dampstaining, final six leaves with neatly repaired holes to lower quarter of leaf, with a few characters in neat manuscript facsimile. A lovely copy. Extremely rare.