Note 220 — XIII—MATURITY OF GENIUS

The most scornful criticism that Jonson is known to have passed on any composition by Shakespeare was aimed at a passage in Julius Cæsar, and as Jonson’s attack is barely justifiable on literary grounds, it is fair to assume that the play was distasteful to him from other considerations. ‘Many times,’ Jonson wrote of Shakespeare in his Timber, ‘hee fell into those things [which] could not escape laughter: As when hee said in the person of Cæsar, one speaking to him [i.e. Cæsar]; Cæsar, thou dost me wrong. Hee [i.e. Cæsar] replyed: Cæsar did never wrong, butt with just cause: and such like, which were ridiculous.’ Jonson derisively quoted the same passage in the induction to The Staple of News (1625): ‘Cry you mercy, you did not wrong but with just cause.’ Possibly the words that were ascribed by Jonson to Shakespeare’s character of Cæsar appeared in the original version of the play, but owing perhaps to Jonson’s captious criticism they do not figure in the Folio version, the sole version that has reached us. The only words there that correspond with Jonson’s quotation are Cæsar’s remark: