WorkWilliam Shakespeare

Julius Caesar

William Shakespeare (1564–1616) · c. 1599; First Folio 1623

AnalyzedQuotedReadMentioned

Documented 1840–1846

Additional passages preserved in the Memoirs (1852)

Letters • Books

Selected engagements, in chronological order.

Totals count documented engagements, once at the earliest witness. How we count →

Reprints, Memoirs passages, and repeat notes within a single manuscript are shown but never counted twice. Evidence for this work is selective, not exhaustive. Methodology →

DemonstratedConfirmed readingEvidence ↓

Confirmed reading

Passages where the evidence goes beyond allusion to indicate that Fuller had this work in hand — an explicit statement of reading, sustained excerpting or translation, or a specific reading episode recorded by those who knew her.

undatedJulius CaesarDemonstrated
“By that great vow / Which did incorporate and make us one... Portia is Brutus' harlot, not his wife.”
Woman in the Nineteenth Century
Massive verbatim Shakespeare passage (~106-line span) quoted at length.

When Fuller engaged with this work

I. Childhood

II. Adolescence

III. Self-Directed

IV. Transcendentalist1record

V. New York1record

VI. Europe1record

✦. Memoirs (1852)1record

1810

1820

1832

1836

1844

1846

1850

1840—

Letter to William H. Channing(?)

p108

analyzed · read

“than to have it enlightened by worldly sagacity, as in the case of julius Caesar”

Fuller, Margaret. The Letters of Margaret Fuller. Edited by Robert N. Hudspeth. Vol. II. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1984.

Inferred Fuller invokes Julius Caesar as a character type whose will is "enlightened by worldly sagacity," positioning him in philosophical contrast to Hamlet; her reference draws on Shakespeare's dramatic treatment of the historical figure, using the character archetypally to illustrate a particular mode of pragmatic, this-worldly intention.

1845—

Woman in the Nineteenth Century

p41-42

analyzed · quoted · read

“By that great vow / Which did incorporate and make us one, / Unfold to me, yourself, your half, / Why you are heavy.”

Fuller, Margaret. Woman in the Nineteenth Century. New York: Greeley & McElrath, 1845.

1846—

The Modern Drama

“The Modern Drama”

mentioned

“But a third class, of higher interest, is the historical, such as may well have been suggested to one whose youth was familiar with Shakspeare’s Julius Csesar, and Kings of England.”

Fuller, Margaret. Papers on Literature and Art. New York: Wiley and Putnam, 1846. · p125

Also printed in Art, Literature, and the Drama (1869), p125; page given is to the 1869 reprint.

Preserved in the Memoirs (1852)

1852—

Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli

p31

analyzed · read

“will palsied like Hamlet, by a deep-searching tendency...”

Emerson, Ralph Waldo, William Henry Channing, and James Freeman Clarke, eds. Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli. 2 vols. Boston: Phillips, Sampson and Company, 1852.

Inferred Margaret Fuller engages with William Shakespeare's The Tragedie of Julius Caesar (1623) as a foil to Hamlet and Coriolanus in her analysis of will. She casts Shakespeare's Caesar as exemplifying a will "enlightened by worldly sagacity," distinguishing this mode of agency from Hamlet's "deep-searching tendency" and Coriolanus's pride.