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t
V.-..T
I;
The Tragedie of Ivlivs CiESAR
I
A NEW VARIORUM EDITION
OF
Shakespeare
The Traced IE
OF
IVLIVS C^SAR
EDITED BY
HORACE HOWARD FURNESS, Jr,
PHILADELPHIA
J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY
LONDON: 5, HENRIETTA STREET, COVENT GARDEN
I913
\
\
\
Copyright, 1913, by H. H. FURNESS, Jr.
181843
• ••
I • • •
• • •
• •
• «
••• : : •
• • • •
• , • • •
•« • • • •
• • • •
IN MEMORIAM
H. H. F.
Methinks, 'tis prize enough to be his son.
3 Henry VI : II, i, 20.
. /
PREFACE
The earliest text of Julius Casar is that of the First Folio. It is
markedly free from corruptions, and we may almost say that in but
one or two instances would an earlier Quarto text be required to
render any doubtful readings more sure.
The most notable example is that of the lines: 'Know, Cssar doth
not wrong, nor without cause Will he be satisfied.' — ^DI, i, $6, 57.
This line is quoted by Ben Jonson in his Discoveries: ' Caesar did never
wrong, but with just cause'; this change in form and Jonson's
ridicule of its absurdity seem to point to the existence of a text
earlier than that which has come down to us. As the remarks of
editors and commentators are given at some length in the notes on
this passage, it is unnecessary to recapitulate them individually here.
The general feeling is, however, that even had the line ever existed
as quoted by Jonson, it is not so widely inconsistent with other
grandiloquent speeches of Shakespeare's Caesar, and, in this case at
least, Jonson — ^to use Druminond's words — Gloved his jest better
than his friend. Another passage wherein an earlier Quarto text
might have helped towards a better understanding of the author's
intention is in Act IV. scene iii, where Brutus, having told Cassius
of Portia's death, denies all knowledge of it when questioned later
by Messala, for no purpose, apparently, other than to exhibit his
stoic power of self-control under that insupportable and touching
loss. Resch's sagacious conjecture, that the dialogue with Messala
is the result of an interpolation of an alternative passage from a
player's copy, is a happy solution of the problem, and clears Brutus
of the ugly stain of making capital out of the death of Portia.
Other corruptions — ^which may be classed as purely textual —
wherein ingenious editors may frolic in conjecture are, in the present
play, pleasurably few in number. In the Appendix will be found a
list of those passages wherein emendations of the Folio text have
been adopted in the Cambridge Edition; the small number of these
is a striking proof of the purity of the earliest text.
vi PREFACE
By several of the older editors Julius Casar is considered as one of
Shakespeare's later plays; but the range of dates of composition
stretches between 1599 as the earliest, down to and including 1608.
Of the thirty commentators who have discussed this question, seven
are in favour of 1607; six, in favour of 1601; five, in favour of 1599;
three, in favour of 1603; two, for 1600. The remaining five are some-
what non-committal, preferring a date within certain limits, with no
more definite assignment. That the two dates, 1601 and 1607 —
separated by six years — should be thus so closely shared by the
larger number of editors — seven for the later date; six for the earlier
— seems, at first sight, somewhat odd; the reason is, however, not far
to seek: The first editors, beginning with Capell, all accepted the
later date, partly on account of the style and general treatment of
the tragedy as showing the maturer poet; partly on account of its
apparent dose relation to Hamlet; and it was not until Halliwell
in 1865 pointed out a passage in Weever's Mirror of Martyrs, pub-
lished in 1601, wherein there is a reference to the speeches of Brutus
and Mark Antony on the death of Cssar, and, though Weever does
not mention Shakespeare's play, his use of the word 'ambitious' as
that of Brutus, and his sa3dng how Mark Antony by his eloquence
showed Caesar's virtues, point pretty dearly to the fatt that he had
before him the memory of a very striking scene. Whether it were
that in Shakespeare's Julius CtBsar who shall say? Halliwell himself
later was disposed to discoimt somewhat the value of this piece of
external evidence, characterising it as a 'possibility derived from an
apparent reference' to Shakespeare's play; but, nevertheless, his dis-
covery turned the tide in favour of the earlier date for the composition,
1601. The Mirror of Martyrs was, however, written two years before
its publication — Weever says so in his dedication — ^moreover. Meres,
in his PaUadis Tamia, 1598, among other works of Shakespeare, does
not enumerate Julius Ccesar; these two facts will account for the year
1599 being accepted by the other editors. It is, I think, well-nigh
impossible to assign the date within limits closer than these two
years, 1599 to 1601, and, therefore, accept that period as its time of
composition. The whole question is, however, piu'ely academic, and
whether Julius Casar were written in 1599 or 1607 can in no way affect
our admiration of Antony's oration; the scenes between Brutus and
Cassius; or the wonderful dramatic climax.
Shakespeare's indebtedness to Sir Thomas North's translation of
Plutarch for the plot of his tragedy, and for countless detaQs, has
been universally admitted. The lives of Julius C(Bsar, Marcus
PREFACE
Vll
BruiuSy and Antonius are so wonderfully blended that a narration of
the plot of the play forms a remarkably coherent story; and it is
only by seemg the many passages that have been used in its com-
position that we realise Shakespeare's marvellous ingenuity in dra-
matic construction. Certain details have been omitted; others given\
prominence; incidents widely separated are placed in dose sequence,^/
and the auditor is now hurried on, now held back. What cares he
that actually more than a year elapsed between the murder of Caesar,
the proscriptions of the Triumvirate, and the first battle at Philippi?
Or that, in reality, three weeks separated the first encounter at that
place from the death of Brutus?
In the Appendix will be found a transcript from Leo's facsimile of
those portions of North's Plutarch, ed. 1595, on which are based the
incidents of the tragedy; throughout the Commentary references are,
however, made to the passages in Skeat's volume, Shakespeare^s
Plutarch — this for two reasons, first, Skeat's text is that of the edition
of 1603, and it is at times interesting to note the slight verbal changes
between the two editions; secondly, for convenience of reference; the
chapter divisions as in Skeat's work are entirely absent in the earlier
edition.
That Shakespeare consulted the works of other Roman historians
is not impossible, but that he made any extensive use of The Lives
of the C(BsarSj by Suetonius, is, I think, doubtful; Philemon Hol-
land's translation did not appear until 1602, which is late if we
accept the date of composition as between 1599-1601. Malone's
references to Holland's Suetonius are based on his belief in the
later date, 1607. With Appian's Civil Wars the case is different;
of this a translation by Bynniman was made in 1578. Shakespeare
has apparently taken certain points in Antony's oration over Caesar
from the harangue as given at length in Appian's account of the funeral.
Plutarch mentions the displaying of the blood-stained mantle by
Antony and the frenzy of the people, but does not give the substance
of the speech. That Appian's report is authentic is not contended — it
was written over two hundred years after the event — ^it is merely what
Appian thought Antony should have said. On the same principle
Samuel Johnson wrote the Parliamentary Debates, and did not, as he
said, allow 'the Whig dogs to have the best of it.'
Satisfactory evidence of Shakespeare's acquaintance with the other
Greek historian, Dion Cassius, is, so far, not forthcoming. His
Annals of the Roman People was but little known in Shakespeare's
time; no translation appeared until early in 1700; the work was.
viii PREFACE
therefore, accessible to those only who could read it in t&e original
Greek.
Too little attention, I think, has been paid heretofore by editors
and commentators of the present play to the writings of Cicero — ^not
that Shakespeare has made use of these, but that they contain many
valuable hints in regard to contemporary events, and thus furnish a
check upon the incidents related by Plutarch. Taken together,
Cicero's Letters and the Philippics give almost a daily record of
those troublous times preceding and following the assassination of
Caesar. For example, in Plutarch's Life of Casar it is said that Dedus
Brutus was the conspirator who drew Marc Antony out of the way
during the murder; in the Life of Brutus this office is given to Tre-
bonius; but the question of identity is settled at once by a letter to
Trebonius, 2 February, B. C. 43, from Cicero, who, in referring to the
assassination, says: 'In fact, for Antony's having been taken out of
the way by you, ... I sometimes feel, though perhaps I have no
right to do so, a little angry with you.' (See note on in, i, 33.)
Again, Cicero's letter to Atticus, wherein he gives his opinion of the
oration by Brutus after Caesar's death, is an interesting piece of
testimony from one who was an acknowledged master of the art of
the orator. Cicero's letter, also, to Brutus, offering his sympathy
on the death of Portia, is corroboration of Plutarch's statement that
her death preceded that of Brutus.
Although, as has been shown, Shakespeare follows where North
leads and trusts to his guide for the salient points of his drama,
there is a curious discrepancy as regards the character of the
protagonist, Julius Caesar. The reader of North's Plutarch is at
once struck with the nobility of the character of Caesar, the
intrepid warrior, astute statesman, and sagacious governor, and
although his biographer does not disguise the fact that in his
later years Caesar became vain and arrogant, that side of his
character is not given imdue prominence. Very different is, how-
ever, the Caesar of Shakespeare. He is a braggart, inflated with
the idea of his own importance; speaking of his decrees as of those
of a god. The Roman Senate is his Senate, and himself like Olym-
pian Jove. In fact, in his life nothing becomes him like the leaving
it; his most dignified action is that of his death, with his face muffled
in his mantle. Wherefore then did Shakespeare depart thus from his
authority? We know, from many references in the other plays,
that Julius Caesar was one in whom Shakespeare ever took a keen
interest. In the present tragedy Antony speaks of him as the
PREFACE
IX
noblest man that ever lived in the tide of times; and Brutus, as the
foremost man of all this world. The solution of this is found in the
fact that Shakespeare is but following the traditional representation
of Caesar as manifested in the writings of his predecessors. The
gradual evolution of the braggart Csesar from its direct prototypes —
the Hercules of Seneca, and the Ajax of Sophocles — ^is the subject of a
careful study by H. M. Aykes, the main points of which, so far as
they relate to the Character of Casar, will be found in the Appendix.
Although Julius Caesar apparently held a prominent place as an
historic character in Shakespeare's regard, as such he occupies but
comparatively a small part in the tragedy which bears his name.
The themes of the action are the conflict in the mind of Brutus
between two opposing interests — ^love of country and love of Caesar
as friend and benefactor; his decision to sacrifice that friend upon
the altar of his country; and his tragic suicide in ignorance of his
complete failure as a patriot. It would almost seem as though Brutus
were rightly the titular hero. The bodily presence of Caesar, it is true,
disappears from the scene at Jthe beginning of the third Act, yet
thereafter his spiritual presence is omnipresent and brings about the
final catastrophe. Antony's prophecy, that Caesar's spirit shall come
forth ranging for revenge, is fulfilled. Brutus recognizes its power at
the death of Cassius, and his last words bear witness to his belief that
by his death alone will that perturbed spirit find rest. This is but the
carrying out of the classic idea of tragedy: mortals striving impotently
against fate; and Shakespeare, according to his invariable custom,
has chosen the most dramatically effective treatment of his material.
If any tragedy is to be named from that character which is its domi-
nant force, then this can be called by no name other than Jtdius Casar,
The incidents connected with the career of Caesar, especially his
rivalry with Pompey, have been made the subject of dramas by other
authors. As early as 156 1 there was performed at Whitehall a play
entitled Julius CtEsar^ which is mentioned by Collier* as the earliest
instance of a subject from Roman History being brought upon the
English' stage. Not all of these dramas are extant; such of them as
have survived are now known in only their printed form; some never
even gained a hearing in the theatre; but they one and all bear witness
within themselves to the cause of their early deaths: they are unre-
lievedly tedious. That one which is perhaps the best known, chiefly
on accoimt of Malone's references in his notes on the present play,
* History of Dramatic Literature ^ i, 180.
X PRE FA CE
is The Tragedy of Julius C(Bsar, by Sir William Alexander, Earl of
Stirling (or Sterline, as he himself prints in his title-pages). His
tragedy is based upon Plutarch's Life of Ccesar, and was composed
probably in 1604 or 1606, though not published imtil 1607. It has
been lately shown that, in large part, Alexander's work is a translation
of a tragedy by Jules Grevin, which, in turn, is based on one in Latin
by Muret.* The one or two points wherein Alexander's tragedy
coincides with Shakespeare's may be ascribed to the fact that their
source of information was identical, namely, Plutarch. Alexander's
final and authorised edition of his Tragedy was published, with his
other works, in a voliune entitled Recreations wUh the Muses^ in 1637.
A reprint of this is included in the Appendix to the present voliune.
A work on somewhat the same theme, by an author now imknown,
entitled The Tragedy of Cmsar and Pompey, or Cmsar^s Revenge^
was performed at Trinity College, Cambridge, in 1605, and published
in 1607. Its chief claim to notoriety now is that it was the first
drama in English, on a classic theme, performed at either of the
Universities. It is thoroughly academic in treatment; at no point
does it rise above a imiform level of dulness, and one is divided in
opinion as to which deserves the more commiseration — the unhappy
performers on that occasion or their patient auditors.
George Chapman's Tragedy, of the same title as this Trinity College
play, was probably composed some years before its publication in
1 63 1. Like its predecessor, it is academic in form, and is based upon
the lives of Cassar, Pompey, and Marcus Cato as related by Plutarch;
but neither in point of poetic style nor in dramatic construction is it
worthy of comparison to Chapman's later works.
While, as has been said, the story of Caesar's life was the first subject
from Roman history to be cast in dramatic form for the English stage,
Shakespeare's tragedy was the first of all his works to be translated
into German, and through which he became first known in Germany.
This translation was by Caspar Wilhelm von Borck, who was Prus-
sian envoy in London from 1735 to 1738, its title-page is as follows:
Versuch einer gebundenen Uebersetzung des TrauerSpiels von dem Tode
Julius Ccesar, Aus dem Englischen Werke des Shakespeare. Berlin,
hey Ambrosius Hande — i74i.t Ten years before this date Voltaire
had composed his tragedy. La Mort de Cesar, which he did not hesitate
* H. M. Ayses: Shakespeare^ 5 Jul. Ceu. in the Light of Some Other Versions,
p. 220.
t W. Paetow: Die Erste metrische Deutsche Uebersetzung ^ passim.
PREFACE xi
to say was inspired by his having seen Shakespeare's work on the
same subject when in London; and his wonder at the deep emotion
and interest which it ever excited. Voltaire's work was, however,
not produced on the stage imtil 1735. It was never received with
quite the amount of applause which its author thought that it de-
served. Thirty years later, while at work on his Commentaires sur
ComeiUe, Voltaire appended to that writer's Cinna a literal trans-
lation (as he persisted in calling it) of those parts of Shakespeare's
Julius Casar which dealt also with a conspiracy against a Roman
chief-magistrate, in order that his coimtrymen might comprehend
how vastly superior was the work of the nobleman (Comeille) to that
of the commoner (Shakespeare). 'If this translation,' says Francois-
Victor Hugo, 'had only been imfaithful it still might have passed
muster; but it is disloyal. That Voltaire did not always imderstand
the text of Shakespeare is excusable, but not his absolute falsification
of it.' — {Shakespeare, x, 463). The whirligig of time has brought in
its revenges. Voltaire's Tragedies, dealing with the lives and acts
of Julius Caesar and Brutus — written, be it remembered, to show
Shakespeare's inferiority — belong to the past, but the spirit of
Shakespeare's Cassar is mighty yet, and still walks abroad.
Be my thanks here given to Dr. Morris Jastrow, Jr., Librarian of the
University of Pennsylvania; to Dr. William J. Taylor and Mr. Charles
P. Fisher, Librarian of the College of Physicians; to Mr. George M.
Abbot, and his efficient assistants, Mr. D. C. Knoblauch and Mr. John
£. Govan, of the Philadelphia Library, one and all, for their imfailing
courtesy and attention to many demands.
My most just and severe — albeit, my most tender — critic has
passed beyond my inadequate words of gratitude. He to whom I
owe the deepest obligations, the inspiration of all my work, is no
longer by my side with ever-ready help and never-failing and in-
valuable coimsel. The rest is silence.
H. H. F., Jr.
••v.-.
-• • •
Dramatis Perfonae *-;
JUUUS CiESAR.
Octavius Caesar^ ^
M. Antony I '^^^^^^h ^fi^^ ^^^ death ^Julius
M. iEmil. Lepidus^ J ' 5
Cicero.
X. As in Dyce. Om. Ff. First given 5, 6. Jf . jEmil, Lepidus.,,Cicero]
imperfectly by Rowe. Added by Theob.
3. Octavius Caesar] Niebuhs (iii» 87): Cssar in his will had appointed C.
Octavius, the grandson of his sister Julia, heir ex dodranUf that is, of three-fourths
of his property, after the deduction of all legacies, and his other relatives were to
have the remaining fourth. . . . Young C. Octavius was in his nineteenth
year when Caesar was murdered, having been bom on the 23d of September, 689.
Cssar had taken an interest in him ever since his return from Spain; whereas be-
fore that time he does not appear to have taken any particular notice of him.
. . . [He] had been adopted by Cssar, which is the first instance of an adop-
tion by will that I know in Roman history; afterwards such adoptions are very
frequent. ... If we compare Antony with Octavian, we must admit that
Antony was open-hearted; whereas Octavian was made up of hypocrisy: his whole
life was a farce. It is well known that on his death-bed at Nola he asked his
friends whether he had not played the comedy of his life well? He was an actor
throughout; everything he did was a farce, well devised and skilfully executed.
The most profoimd hypocrisy was his greatest talent. In the vicious and prof-
ligate life of Antony, on the other hand, there occur some actions which shew good
nature, generosity, and even greatness. — ^Tolman (Introd., p. zxxviii) : Probably,
upon the Elizabethan stage, the same actor took the parts of Caesar and Octavius,
and thus gave outward expression to the spiritual connection of the two r61es.
4. M. Antony] Horn (i, 112): Antony is one of the most perfect portraits
that the poet has drawn. His overflowing nature delights in combining the
extremes of thought and action with dangerous abilities. He is rash and prudent,
brave and sensual, he fears not death, but, a wastrel, seeks every sort of pleasure
from quickly flying life. So long as Caesar lived Antony is but seldom to be
blamed — ^he feels towards Caesar an absolute love; prefers to be subordinate to
him, and is therewith become, so to speak, dependent upon him, a dependence
which, however, causes him enjoyment; is it not the mighty Julius who loves him
in retiim? He desires the crown for Caesar that thus all friction may be avoided,
and that, after Caesar, he can have the highest position, he who seems rather to
desire more of the pleasures of life than the highest place. Yet all these particu-
lars are moved to the background as soon as Caesar is no more. He has lost hiT]
only love, and is now in the highest degree dangerous. ' It is impossible for him to
DRAMATIS PERSONjE
[4. M. Antony]
sil^rainate himself to anyone else; least of all to the conspirators, the greater part
.qf wHom he values slightly. Brutus alone he regards highly; but he does not love
. *»)^ti, the high virtue of the man is uncomfortable to Antony; towards Cassius he
•••^iias no feeling other than that expressed by Caesar (I, ii, 217-229), but, at peace
*%*in those pleasant da3rs, he endeavors to place even this thought to one side. It
* * was repugnant to him to regard anyone as repugnant. But with Cssar dead,
the thought returns and will not away. — Dowden (p. 289): Antony is a man
of genius without moral fibre; a nature of a rich, sensitive, pleasure-loving kind;
the prey of good impulses and of bad; looking on life as a game in which he has ^
•'*•.**' a distinguished part to play, and playing that part with magnificent grace and
skill. He is capable of personal devotion (though not of devotion to an idea),
\*** and has, indeed, a gift of subordination, — subordination to a Julius Caesar, to a
Cleopatra. And as he has enthusiasm about great personalities, so he has a
* "^^s^ contempt for inefficiency and ineptitude. Lepidus is to him 'a slight, unmerit-
able man meet to be sent on errands,' one that is to be talked of not as a
person, but as a property. Antony possesses no constancy of self-esteem; he can
drop quickly out of favour with himself; and being without reverence for his
own type of character, and being endowed with a fine versatility of percep-
tion and feeling, he can admire qualities the most remote from his own. It is
Antony who utters the doge over the body of Brutus at Philippi. Antony is
not without an aesthetic sense and imagination, though of a somewhat unspiritual
kind: he does not judge men by a severe moral code, but he feels in an aesthetic
way the grace, the splendour, the piteous interest of the actors in the exciting
drama of life, or their impertinence, ineptitude and comicality; and he feels that
the play is poorer by the loss of so noble a figure as that of a Brutus. But Brutus, '
over whom his ideals dominate, and who is blind to facts which are not in harmony
with hb theory of the universe, is quite unable to perceive the power for good or lot'
evil that is lodged in Antony, and there is in the great figure of Antony nothing
which can engage or interest his imagination; for Brutus' view of life is not imagina-
tive, or pictorial, or dramatic, but wholly ethical. The fact that Antony abandons
himself to pleasure, is 'gamesome,' reduces him in the eyes of Brutus to a very
ordinary person, — one who is silly or stupid enough not to recognize the first
principle of human conduct, the need of self-mastery; one against whom the laws
of the world must fight, and who is, therefore, of no importance. And Brutus was
right with respect to the ultimate issues for Antony. Sooner or later Antony
must fall to ruin. But before the moral defect in Antony's nature destroyed his
fortime much was to happen. Before Actium might come Philippi. — Marshall
(p. 87): Except in the great scene in the Forum, where his speech to the people is
perhaps the finest piece of oratory to be found in all Shakespeare, Antony plays
no very striking part in the drama. We see him aroused by a sudden ambition
from his early career of dissipation, and taking a place in the Triumvirate; and it
reminds us of Prince Hal's coming to himself, like the repentant prodigal, when he
comes to the throne. But Antony is, morally at least, a slighter man than Henry.
His reform lacks the sincerity and depth of the latter's, and he cannot hold the
higher plane to which he has temporarily risen. His fall is to be depicted in a later
and greater draima, of which he is the hero and not a subordinate actor as here. —
OECHELHAtysER {Einjukrungen^ etc., p. 227): Antonius should be represented as
a young man, in his thirtieth year (historically he was thirty-seven years old
»
lO
► Conspirators against Julius Caesar.
DRAMATIS PERSONjE
Brutus^
CassiuSy
Casca^
Trebonius,
Ugarius^
Decius Brutus^
Metellus Cimber^
Cinna^ J 14
9. Casct^ Caska Ff throughout. 12. Decius] Decimus Han.
at the time of Caesar's assassination), as a man of the world, of noble bear-
ing and handsome features and insinuating manner. In outward appearance
he thus offers a contrast to Brutus, upon whose character and task the poet has
imprinted that of a noble patriot, as an assassin, stamping the frivolous egoist
as the avenger, both characters labouring under tasks in complete contrast to
their original natures.
6. Cicero] Froude (p. 531): In Cicero Nature half-made a great man and left
him uncompleted. Our characters are written in our forms, and the bust of Cicero
is the key to his history. The brow is broad and strong, the nose large, the lips
tightly compressed, the features lean and keen from restless intellectual energy.
The loose, bending figure, the neck, too weak for the weight of the head, explain
the infirmity of will, the passion, the cimning, the vanity, the absence of manliness
and veradty. He was bom into an age of violence with which he was too feeble
to contend. — J. M. Brown (p. 67): The only character in the whole play that
stands clear of its effects is the prosaic, jronceited, lukewarm Cicero. He is the
incarnation of the pedant and critic who is dissatisfied with most things and people,
but will never follow others into remedying the evils or even lead himself. He is
the^typejoL the commonplace man wh6 is ever trying to impress his neighbors
with his leaning and importance by uttering trite maxims that face both ways, and
to seem wise by expressing himself in confidential and futile mystery o^^in a lan-^
gusge not understood by those around him/^Xjke all such busybodies, he is
omnisdent and cannot bear contradiction or even information. His 'ferret and
fiery eyes' gleam out when he is crossed. Brutus will not have him told of the con-
sfHracy, ' For he will never follow an3rthing That other men begin.' At the great
crisis in Roman affairs, when the crown was offered to Caesar^ he 'spoke Greek' in
cvdojtqjook wise and yet hide the nothing he had to say; and his following wagged
their heads as if they understood it and ranged high above the imlettered crowd.
Such a mind would scorn to be surprised at anything in this so commonplace world;
he knows too much for even nature to astonish him. And thus in the portentous
night before the assassination, when the coldly sceptical soul of Cassius is stirred
to passion and defiance, and the prickly hiunour and cynidsm of Casca is awed into
superstition, he assumes the most superior indifference and will not commit him-
self; interpretation dther way might be quite mistaken: all he will venture on is
that 'it b a strange-disposed time' and that 'this disturbed sky is not to walk in,'
remarks of the usual type about the weather. It is such 'men cautelous, old feeble
carrions,' that along with 'priests and cowards' need oaths to spur them on to
redress of wrongs. What other fate was there in revolutionary times for such a
DRAMATIS PERSONjE
[8. Cassius]
Mr Fadng-both-ways, such a 'dish of skimmed milk' as Hotspur would have
called him» but to vanish by an ignominious death in the proscriptions?
8. Cassius] Plutarch {Lijt oj BrtUus, § 22): Cassius would have done Brutus
much honour, as Brutus did unto him, but Brutus most commonly prevented him,
and went first unto him, both because he was the elder man as also for that he was
sickly of body. And men reputed him commonly to be very skilful in wars, but
otherwise marvellous choleric and cruel, who sought to rule men by fear rather
than with lenity: and on the other side, he was too familiar with his friends, and
would jest too broadly with them. — Gervinus (ii, 339) : Shakespeare has scarcely
created anything more splendid than the relation in which he has placed Cassius
to Brutus. vCtoselylis he has followed Plutarch, the poet has, by slight alterations,
— sEiIfUlly placed this character, even more than the historian has done, in the
jt contrast to Brutus, — the clever, politic revolutionist, opposed to the
man ^ noble soul and moral nature. Roman state-policy and a mode of reason-
ing'peculiar to antiquity are displayed in every feature of this contrast of Cassius
to Brutus, as well as in the delineation of the character itself; the nature and spirit
of antiquity operated with exquisite freshness and readiness upon the imburdened
/ brain of the poet, unfettered by the schools. . . . According to Plutarch,
^ public opinion distinguished between Brutus and Cassius thus: that it was
said that Brutus hated tjrranny, Cassius, tyrants; yet, adds the historian, the
latter ws^lnspired with a universal hatred of tyranny also. Thus has Shake-
speare represented him. His Cassius is imbued with a thorough love of
freedom and equality; he groans under the prospect of a monarchical time
more than the others; he does not bear this burden with thoughtful patience like
Brutus, but his ingenious mind strives with natural opposition to throw it off;
he seeks for men of the old time; the new, who are like timid sheep before the wolf,
are in abhorrence to him. His principles of freedom are not crossed by moral
maxims which might lead him astray in his political attempts; altogether a pure
political character, he esteems nothing so highly as his country and its freedom
and honour. These principles, if they were not rooted in the temperament, spirit,
and character of Cassius, would at all events have been more powerfully sup-
ported by them than the same principles would have been by Brutus' more
humane, more feeling nature. . . . Throughout with eagle-eye he sees the
right means for attaining his ends, and would seize them undeterred by scruples
of morality; less irreproachable as a man than Brutus, he b as a statesman far more
excellent. Full of circumspection, he is full of suspicion of his adversary; he is
very far from that too great confidence in a good cause which is the ruin' of Brutus.
He possesses the necessary acuteness of judgment and action available only in
times of revolution; he knows that it is useless mixing in politics, far less in revolu-
tion, unless one is prepared to exchange the tender morality of domestic life for a
ruder kind; he would treat tyranny according to its own baseness; he would carry
on matters according to the utmost requirements of his own cause, but not with
the utmost forbearance towards the enemy; he would not use unnecessary harsh-
ness, but he would omit none that was necessary; he would think just as ill of the
tyrant as the tyrant would of his adversary; he would, as far as in him lay, turn
against him his cunning, his cruelty, and his power; he would go with the flood
at the right time, and not, like Brutus, when it was too late. The difference,
therefore, between his nature and the character of Brutus comes out on every
DRAMATIS PERSON JE
5
[9, Casca]
occasion: Brutus appears throughout just as humanely noble as Cassius is politic-
ally superior; each lacks what is best in the other, and the possession of which
would make each perfect. — Goll (p. 43) : Cassius, wiffi liis mixture of political
hatred, with his power to let the one strengthen and exdte the other, is the type of
one of the groups of which the adherents of revolution consists, th^_great haters,
those who, as Auguste Comte says about the fdlowers of the great French Revolu-
tion, are perpetually in a condition of 'chronic rage,' which enables them, whenever
they consider the right moment has come, to perform the most horrible actions —
the men of whom the anarchists of the present time are the lineal descendants.
9. Casca] Staffer (p. 365) : If it were not a somewhat hazardous conjecture
when applied to the most impartial of dramatic poets, one would be inclined to
suspect that the type of character to which Casca belongs was a peculiar favourite
of Shakespeare's. In the first place, he is a humourist, he has a strong sense of
the comedy of human life, and of the nothingness of this world. It is he that
relates in a tone of transcendent mockery to Brutus and Cassius, who are not at all
in a mood to laugh with him, the great event of the feast of Lupercal, and describes
how Antony offered the crown to Cssar. Brutus is shocked at his levity of tone,
and when Casca leaves them he expresses his disapprobation with all the weighty
injustice of a stem moralist, who takes everything seriously, and who, as a matter
of course, is invariably wrong in his judgments of men. Cassius, who has no
obtuseness of this sort, answers that what shocks Brutus in him is only put on, and
that he may be safely counted on for any bold or noble enterprise. Casca, when
enrolled amongst the conspirators, soon justifies this opinion of him, and is the one
to strike the first blow. This mingled good-humour and practical energy, this
strength and solidity of character imderlying all his merry jests and laughter,
cannot but represent not only one of Shakespeare's favourite types, but the special
type of his predelection, if we admit, with his most learned commentators, that
Henry V., in whom these characteristics are most strongly marked, was his ideal.
Casca is, moreover, an aristocrat in true disdainful English fashion. He expresses
the most elegant contempt, which is all the more cutting because he speaks without
any bitterness and with a smile on his lips, for the folly of the crowd, and for
their dirty hands and sweaty night-caps and stinking breath. . . . One last
thing to be noticed concerning Casca is the wonderiul effect that the prodigies
foretelling the death of Caesar have upon him; they work a complete revolution in
his nature, and give a suddenly meditative turn to his usual airiness of tone; his
irony is, in reality, only a thin and superficial covering, which falls at the first serious
occasion and lets the true nature of the man be seen. — OECHEiHAt^SER {Einfukr-
ungenf p. 222) : The actor is to take account of a well-calculated hypocrisy in Casca.
His loyalty to Caesar is only assumed; to Brutus also, whose attitude towards
Caesar he does not wholly understand, he expresses himself guardedly, masking his
true opinion of the important occurrence he describes under an affected indiffer-
ence, concealing it by a rough, coarse himior. In such a fashion is the story of
Caesar's refusal of the offered crown to be delivered. His true character is revealed
for the first time when he finds himself alone with Cassius during the dreadful
night of storm and rain. His mode of expression suddenly changes to the normal
tone of a serious man. Cassius happily makes use of this mood in order to enrol
him among the conspirators. He is to become its most zealous member, and his
hand the first to strike a mortal blow at Caesar. With that his part is finished.
6 DRAMATIS PERSON jE
Popilius Laena. 1 ^ 15
Publius, / ^''"^'^'-
Flavius, I ^ ., , r- . ^
*l II ^ Trwunes and Enemies to yj^^ss. «
15, 16. PopUius Lana..Publius] 15. LiEna] Lena Cap. et seq.
Added by Theob. 18. Murellus] Ff , Rowe, Pope, Cap.
MaruUus Theob. et cet.
Casca should be represented as somewhat younger than Brutus, whose school-
friend he formerly was. A very expressive power of mimicry should be at his
command, and this should be well taken into account in casting the part. — Mac-
Callum (p. 286): Plutarch has only two particulars about Casca, the one that he
was the first to strike Caesar and struck him from behind; the other that when
Cassar cried out and gripped his hand, he shouted to his brother in Greek. Shake-
speare, as we have seen, sununarily rejects his acquaintance with Greek, but the
stab in the back sets his fancy to work, and he constructs for him a character and
life-history to match. Casca is a man who shares with Cassius the jealousy of
greatness — 'the envious Casca,' Antony described him — ^but is vastly inferior to
Cassius in consisteiicyand manhood. He seems to be one of those alert, precocious
natures, clever at the uptake in their youtfi, and full of a promise that is not always
fulfilled: Brutus recalls that 'he was quick mettle when we went to school' (I, ii,
318). Such sprightly youngsters when they fail often do so from a certain lack
of moral fibre. And so with Casca. He appears before us at first as the most
obsequious henchman of Caesar. When Caesar calls for Calpumia, Casca is at his
elbow: 'Peace, hoi Caesar speaks.' When Caesar, hearing the soothsayer's shout,
cries, 'Ha! who calls?' Casca is again ready: 'Bid every noise be still: peace yet
again!' Cassius would never have condescended to that. For Casca resents the
supremacy of Caesar as much as the proudest aristocrat of them all: he is only
waiting an opportunity to throw off the mask. But meanwhile in his angry bitter-
ness with himself, and others he affects a cross-grained bluntness of speech, 'puts
on a tardy form, ' as Cassius says, plays the satirist and misanthrope, as many others
conscious of double dealing have done, and treats friend and foe with caustic
brutality. But it is characteristic that he is panic stricken with the terrors of the
tempestuous night, which he ekes out with superstitious fancies. It illustrates
his want both of inward robustness and of enlightened culture. We remember
that Cicero's remark in Greek was Greek to him, and that Greek was as much the
language of rationalists then as was French of the eighteenth century Philosophes.
Nor b it less characteristic that even at the assassination he apparently does not
dare to face his victim. Antony describes his procedure: 'Damned Casca, like a
cur, behind Struck Caesar on the neck.' Yet even Casca is not without redeeming
qualities. His humour, in the account he gives of the coronation fiasco, has an
undeniable flavour: its very tartness, as Cassius says, b a 'sauce to hb good wit.'
And there b a touch of nobility in hb avowal:
' You speak to Casca, and to such a man,
That b no fleering tell-tale. Hold, my hand:
Be factious for redress of all these griefs.
And I will set this foot of mine as far,
As who goes farthest.' — L iii, 1 27-131.
DRAMATIS PERSONS 7
I^CSSStlct )
Titinius ' J ^^^^^^ ^^ Brutus and Cassius.
Artemidorus, a Soothsayer.
A Sootltsayer.
Young Cato.
Cinna, a Poet.
Another Poet.
Lucilius,
DardaniuSy
Volumnius,
Varro,
Clitus^
Claudius,
Strato,
Lucius,
35
»• Servants of Brutus. 30
33
31. Soothsayer] Sophbt of Cnidos Added by Theob.
Theob.4-. of Cnidos, a teacher of 25. Another Poet] Added by Cap.
Rhetoric, Cam. ii. 26-32. Lucilius„^traio] Added by
32, 23. A Soothsayer...Young Cato] Theob.
19. Messala] Appian (Bk IV, ch. vi, § 38) says of Messala: 'A young man of
distinction [who] fled to Brutus. The triumvirs, fearing his high spirit, published
the following edict: ''Since the relatives of Messala have made it clear to us that
he was not in the city when Gains Oesar was slain, let his name be removed from
the list of the proscribed." He would not accept pardon, but, after Brutus and
Cassius had fallen in Thrace, although there was a considerable army left, as well
as ships and money, and strong hopes of success still existed, Messala would not
accept the command when it was offered to him, but persuaded his associates to
yield to overpowering fate and join forces with Antony. He became intimate with
Antony and adhered to him until the latter became the slave of Cleopatra. Then
he heaped reproaches upon him and joined himself to Octavius, who made him
consul in place of Antony himself, when the latter was deposed and again voted a
public enemy. After the battle of Actium, where he held a naval command
against Antony, Octavius sent him as a general against the revolted Celts and
awarded him a triumph for his victory over them.* — (Trans. White, vol.
ii, 318.)
21. Artemidorus] Theobald (Nicholas LU, lUusL^ ii, 491) : Who told our editors
that Artemidorus was a soothsayer? They were thinking, I suppose, of his name-
sake, whose critique on Dreams we still have, but did not think that he did not
live till the time of Antoninus. Our Poet's Artemidorus, who had been Caesar's
host in Cnidos, did not pretend to know anything of the conspiracy against Csesar
by prescience or prognastication: but he was the Cnidian sophist, who taught
that science in Greek at Rome: by which means, being intimate with Brutus and
those about him, he got so far into the secret as to be able to warn Csesar of his
danger.
8 DRAMATIS PERSON jE
Pindarus, Servant of Cassius.
Ghost of Julius Caesar. 35
Cobler.
Carpenter.
Other Plebeians.
Calphumia, Wife to Caesar.
Portia, Wife to Brutus. 40
34-38. Pimiafi«...Other Plebeians] 36, 37. Cobler... Carpenter] Om. Cam.
Added by Theob. 39. Calphumia] Calpurnia Wh.
35. Ghost...C(Bsar] Theob. Om. Cap. Cam.4-, Rolfe.
ct seq. 40. Portia] Porcia Theob. +.
39. Calphumia] F. Horn (i, 129): We encounter in this tragedy two women,
both alike in the absorbing love for their husbands, on which their characters are
foimded; and yet — what a difference do we notice in them! Calphumia lives in
Cssar's life alone, and by night and day it is her joy; but her solicitude for him is,
perhaps, at times obtrusive; she wishes to be his sole possessor, and, since he has
already done too much, that he undertake nothing further; he must, in short, take
care and reserve himself for her alone. She loves him not only as her husband,
but almost as a mother loves her child, or as a tenderly domestic wife guards and
nurses her helpmate, who, although intellectually greater than she, is still weak and
sickly. By a nimiber of portents she is deeply moved to solicitude for Caesar's
safety, and herein we wish to be more lenient than many English critics, who
blame, almost harshly, the superstition of this well-meaning woman without re-
membering that she, poor creature, had not the advantages of their education. —
Rolfe (Poet Lore^ vi, 12): No critic or commentator, I believe, has thought Cal-
purnia worthy of notice, but the reader may be reminded to compare carefully the
scene between her and Caesar with that between Portia and Brutus. . . . The
difference in the two women is not more remarkable than that in their husbands'
bearing and tone towards them. Portia, with mingled pride and affection, takes her
stand upon her rights as a wife — *a woman that Lord Brutus took to wife' — and
he feels the force of the appeal as a man of his noble and tender nature must.
Calpurnia is a poor creature in comparison with this true daughter of Cato, as her
first words to Caesar sufficiently prove: * Think you to walk forth? You shall not
stir out of your house today.' When a wife takes that tone, we know what the
reply will be: * Caesar shaU forth!' Later, of course, she comes down to entreaty.
Caesar, with contemptuous acquiescence in the suggestion, yields for the moment
to her weak importimities. When Decius comes in and urges Caesar to go, the
story of her dream and its forebodings is told him with a sneer (could we imagine
Brutus speaking of Portia in that manner?), and her husband, falling a victim to
the shrewd flattery of Decius, departs to his death with a parting fling at her
foolish fears, by which he is ashamed of having been moved.
40. Portia] Mrs Jameson (p. 330) : Portia, as Shakespeare has truly felt and
represented the character, is but a softened reflection of that of her husband
Brutus; in him we see an excess of natural sensibility, an almost womanish tender-
ness of heart, repressed by the tenets of his austere philosophy: a stoic by profes-
sion and in reality the reverse — acting deeds against his nature by the strong force
DRAMATIS PERSONjE
[40. Portia]
of principle and will. In Portia there is the same profound and passionate feel-
ing, and all her sex's softness and timidity, held in check by that self-disdpline,
that stately dignity, which she thought became a woman 'so fathered and so
husbanded.' The fact of her inflicting on herself a volimtary wound to try her
own fortitude is perhaps the strongest proof of this disposition. Plutarch relates
that on the day on which Caesar was assassinated Portia was overcome with terror,
and even swooned away, but did not in her emotion utter a word which could
affect the conspu^tors. Shakespeare has rendered this circumstance literally
[n, iv]. . . . There is another beautiful incident related by Plutarch which
could not well be dramatised. When Brutus and Portia parted for the last time
in the island of Nisida, she restrained all expression of grief that she might not
shake Hs fortitude; but afterwards, in i>assing through a chamber in which there
himg a picture of Hector and Andromache, she stopped, gazed upon it for a time
with a settled sorrow, and at length burst into a i>assion of tears. — OECHEiHAt^SER
(Einfiikrungeny etc., i, 229) : Portia herself mentions her 'once commended beauty';
therefore it would be quite proper to represent her in the present time as a hand-
some woman, about thirty years old. She is, although well built and intellectual,
by no means a masculine woman; of tender nature (according to Plutarch she was
sickly), her emotion in the scene with Lucius completely shattered her, and almost
fainting she staggered home. In the fourth act we hear that she has killed herself;
she could not bear the separation from her husband and the accounts of his ill-
success. — ^Hudson (Lifcy Art, etc., ii, 238): The delineation of Portia is completed
in a few, brief, masterly strokes. Once seen, the portrait ever after lives, an old
and dear acquaintance of the reader's inner man. Like some women I have known,
Portia has strength enough to do and to puffer for others, but very little for herself.
As the daughter of Cato and wife of Brutus^ she has set in her eye a pattern of how
she ought to think and act^ being 'so fathered and husbanded^; but still her head
floats merged over the ears in her heart; and it is only when affection speaks that
her spirit is hushed into the listening which she would fain yield only to the speech
of reason. She has a clear idea of the stoical calmness and fortitude which appears
so noble and so graceful in her Brutus; it all lies faithfully reproduced in her mind;
^jht knows well how to honour and admire it; yet she cannot work it into the texture
I of her character; she can talk it like a book, but she tries in vain to live it. Portia
' gives herself that gash without flinching, and bears it without a murmur, as an ex-
ercise and proof of manly fortitude; and she translates her pains into smiles, all to
comfort and support her husband. So long as this purpose lends her strength, she
is fully equal to her thought, because here her heart keeps touch perfectly with
her head. But, this motive gone, the weakness^ if it be not rather the strength,
of her woman's nature rushes full upon her; her feelings rise into an uncontrollable
flutter, and run out at every joint and motion of her body; and nothing can arrest
I the inward mutiny till affection again whispers her into composure, lest she spill
Something that may hurt or endanger her Brutus. O noble Portia! — Staffer
(p. 370): Portia as she appears in Plutarch is, I think, an even finer and more
interesting character to study than she is in Shakespeare. The poet has im-
doubtedly enriched the historian's accoimt with the more vivid life of the drama,
and has given more force to her words, more distinctness to her actions, but he
could add no further feature of any importance to her character. History fur-
nishes a complete and finished portrait of Portia, to which poetry may give a warmer
10 DRAMATIS PERSONjE
Scene, For the three first Acts, and beginning 41
of ttie Fourth in Rome : For tJu remaiftder
of the Fourth near Sardis ; for the Fifth in
the Fields of Philippi. 44
41-44. and beginning.. J'Art/i^^'.] at Romt: afterwardsi at an IsU near Mtdina;
at Sardis; and PMippi, Theob.+.
glow and richer colouring, but which in its essential lines it can never improve.
It is only fair that this should be openly and clearly stated, that Plutarch may
have the full credit of his victories in a most unequal combat, in which it would
seem that his highest success could only consist in not being entirely beaten.
But not only does the poet's rendering not surpass his model, but it seems to me to
fall a little short of it, and to leave out some of its beauties, which apparently
belong peculiarly to the form of narrative and refuse to be transplanted into
dramatic regions. It requires all the wooden inflexibility of a systematic admira-
tion not to regret the absence in Shakespeare's tragedy of the beautiful scene in
which Brutus and Portia take leave of each other at Elea.
510
THE TRAGEDIE OF
IVLIVS C^SAR.
A6ius Primus. Sccena Prima.
Enter Flauius , Murellus , and certaine Commoners
ouer the Stage,
5
H
Flauius,
Ence: home you idle Creatures, get you home:
Is this a Holiday ? What, know you not
8
I. Tragedie] Tragedy F3F4.
3. Actus Primus. Sccena Prima]
Act I. Scene i. Rowe.
Scene. Rome. Rowe. a Street in
Rome Theob. et seq. (subs.)
4, 5. Enter Flauius... the Stage]
F£, Cam.+. Enter a Rabble of Citi-
zens: Flavins and Murellus driving
them. Capell. Enter Flavins, Marul-
lus, and a body of Citizens. Collier,
Hal. Enter Flavins, Marullus, and a
rabble of Citizens. Malone et cet.
4. Murellus] Ff, Rowe, Pope, Cap.
Marullus Theob. et cet.
Murellus, and...] Marullus, a Car-
penter, a Cobbler, and... Jennens.
Commoners] Plebeians Han.
5. ouer.. .Stage] Om. Pope et seq.
8. Holiday] Holy-day F4, Rowe.
I. The Tragedie] Gildon (p. 377): This Play or History is caird Julius Casar^
tho' it ought rather to be called Marcus Brutus; Caesar is the shortest and most
inconsiderable part in it, and he is kiird in the beginning of the Third Act. But
Brutus is plainly the shining and darling character of the Poet; and is to the end
of the Play the most considerable Person. If it had properly been call'd Julius
Casar it ought to have ended at his Death, and then it had been much more regu-
lar, natural, and beautifxil. But then the Moral must naturally have been the
punishment or ill Success of Tyranny. — Steevens: It appears from Peck's Collec-
tion of divers curious historical Pieces (appended to his Memoirs, &c., of Oliver
Cromwell), p. 14, that a Latin play on this subject had been written: EpUogus
Cdsaris itUerfectif quomodo in scenam prodiit ea res, acta, in Ecdesia Ckristi, Oxon.
Qui Epilogus a Magistro Ricardo Eedes, et scriptus et in proscenia ibidem dictusfuit,
A. D. 1582. Meres, whose Wit^s Commonwealth was published in 1598, enumerates
Dr Eedes among the best tragic writers of that time. — Malone: From some words
spoken by Polonius in Hamlet, I think it probable that there was an English play on
this subject before Shakespeare commenced as a writer for the stage. Stephen
Gosson, in his School of Abuse, 1579, mentions a play entitled The History of Casar
and Pompey. William Alexander, afterwards Earl of Sterline, wrote a tragedy on
the story and with the title of Julius C<tsar. It may be presumed that Shake-
speare's play was posterior to his; for Lord Sterline, when he composed his Julius
II
12 THE TRACED IE OF [act i, sc. i.
[i. The Tragedie of Ivlivs Csesar]
CcuoTt was a very young author, and would hardly have ventured into that circle
within which the most eminent dramatic writer of England had already walked.
The death of Caesar, which is not exhibited, but related to the audience, forms the
catastrophe of his piece. In the two plays many parallel passages are found,
which might, perhaps, have proceeded only from the two authors drawing from
the same source. However, there are some reasons for thinking the coincidence
more than accidental. A passage in The Tempest: 'The cloud-capped towers,'
etc., rV, i, 152, seems to have been copied from one in Darius y another play of Lord
Sterline's, printed at Edinburgh in 1603. His Julius Cczsar appeared in 1607, at
a time when he was little acquainted with English writers; for both these pieces
abound with Scotticisms, which, in the subsequent folio edition, 1637, he corrected.
But neither The Tempest nor Julius C<tsar of our author was printed until 1623.
It should also be remembered that our author has several plays founded on sub-
jects which had been previously treated by others. Of this kind are King John,
Rich. II,, J Henry IV,, 2 Henry IV,, Henry V., Rich, III., Lear, Ant. & Cleo.,
Meas, for Meas,, Tam, of Shr,, Met, of Ven,, and, I believe, Timon and 2 and j
Hen. VI,, whereas no proof has hitherto been produced that any contemporary
writer ever presumed to new-model a story that had already employed the pen
of Shakespeare. On all these grounds it appears more probable that Shakespeare
was indebted to Lord Sterline than that Lord Sterline borrowed from Shakespeare.
If this reasoning be just, this play could not have appeared before the year 1607.
I believe it was produced in that year. [See Appendix: Date of Composition,
Malone. The reference, in the foregoing note, to a play The History of Casar and
Pompey, mentioned by Gosson in his Schoole of Abuse, has been repeated by sub-
sequent editors. It was, however, Halliwell, in 1864 (Folio ed., Introd,), who
gave the correct reference, as Gosson's second pamphlet: Plaits Confided in Five
Actions, to which Collier {Introduction to the Shakespeare Society's edition of
The Schoole of Abuse, p. vii) assigns the date of the 'autumn of 1581, or spring of
1582.' The passage to which Malone refers is as follows: 'So was the history of
Csesar and Pompey, and the play of the Fabii at the Theatre, both amplified there,
where the Drummes might walke, or the pen ruflfle.' — English Drama and Stage
under the Tudor and Stuart Princes: Roxburghe Library; ed. W. C. Hazlitt; p. 188.
— Ed.] — Collier {Introd., p. 5): It is a new fact [1842], ascertained from an entry
in Henslowe's Diary, 22nd May, 1602, that Anthony Munday, Michael Drayton,
John Webster, Thomas Middleton, and other poets were engaged upon a tragedy
entitled C<Bsar*s Fall, The probability is that these dramatists imited their exer-
tions in order without delay to bring out a tragedy on the same subject as that of
Shakespeare, which, perhaps, was then performing at the Globe Theatre with suc-
cess. Malone states that there is no proof that any contemporary writer 'had
presumed to new-model a story that had already employed the pen of Shakes[>eare.'
He forgot that Ben Jonson was engaged upon a Richard Crookback in 1602; and he
omitted, when examining Henslowe's Diary, to observe that in the same year four
distinguished dramatists, and 'other poets,* were employed upon Ccesar^s Fall,
[In a foot-note Collier remarks that Lord Sterling's [sic] Julius Caesar was first
printed in 1604, which date may be accounted for, he thinks, by the popularity of
Shakespeare's tragedy about 1603, and, therefore, this 'date is of consequence.'
Of this earlier date Malone appears to have been unaware.] — Upton: The real
length of time in Julius Casar is as follows: About the middle of February, A. U. C.
ACT I, sc. i.] IVLIVS C^SAR 1 3
[i. The Tragedie of Ivlivs Csesar]
709 [6. C. 44], a frantic festival, sacred to Pan, and called Lupercaliaf was held in
honor of Csesar, when the regal crown was offered to him by Antony. On the 15 th
of March in the same year he was slain. November 27, A. U. C. 710, the trium-
virs met at a small island, formed by the river Rhenus, near Bononia, and there
adjusted their cruel proscriptions. A. U. C. 711 Brutus and Cassius were defeated
near Philippi. — Bathurst (p. 79): This play does not contain so much of high
poetical passages, delicate descriptions, nor tender touches of feeling as often occiu:
in many of Shakespeare's plays; but then it has very little that is not quite easy to
understand; it is full of active business; of spirit in the dialogue; contains a good deal
of dignity without being stiff or tiresome, and very considerable expression of char-
acter; besides, the extraordinary merit of one long speech, that of Antony to the
people, which alone would be sufficient to attract us to the play. Shakespeare in
this play, as in some others, was taken out of his usual turn and taste by founding a
play strictly upon history. This makes him more regular.
3. Actus Primus] OECHELHAt^SER (Einjiikrungen, i, 234) : The First Act takes
place in an open square decorated with statues and memorials, a temple or a palace
with a colonnade in the distance. Caesar's train, both in its entrance and exit,
passes across the stage diagonally, or goes aloc^ a rais^ street, or viaduct winding
downwards. Over this way Cinna rushes during the storm. The greatest care
b to be taken to render this dreadful night as realistic as possible. — Verity: The
value of this scene is twofold: (i) It indicates the feeling of Rome towards Caesar;
among the official classes he has jealous enemies, with the crowd he is popular. (2)
It illustrates the fickleness of the crowd, a point of which so much is made on the
occasion of Antony's great speech. Also the reference to the Lupercalia fixes the
time of the action of the play at its opening. — F. C. Kolbe (Irish Monthly ^ Sept.,
1896, p. 511): The power of the people is a force external to the action of the play,
yet it underlies and determines that action; in such cases it is Shakespeare's habit
to begin the play with the underlying force, as, e. g., the Ghost in Handel ^ the
Witches in Machethy and the storm in The Tempest. The mob then, thus shouting
for Caesar, is confronted by the Tribunes, who remind them of their love for Pom-
pey, and chide them for cheering the man who comes in triumph over Pompey's
blood. ... It is the first muttering of the storm against Caesar; and the spirit
of the storm is the veiled figure of the Nemesis of Pompey, justifying the con-
spiracy that is to be. It is the beginning of the dip of the wave of public opinion
which curls in continuous motion throughout the play, — it is crested with Caesar's
triumph, sinks to its trough at Caesar's death, and rises once more crested with
Caesar's revenge.
4. Murellus] Theobald: I have, upon the authority of Plutarch, &c., given to
this tribune his right name, Mandlus.
4. Flauius, Murellus] FRANas Gentleman, author of the Dramatic Censor ^
has written a number of comments, for the most part laudatory, on passages and
scenes of the stage arrangement of Julius Ccesar as given in Bell's British Theatre.
On the present line Gentleman remarks: 'Though ludicrous characters appear
very incompatible with tragedy, yet the mob, in this historical piece, are natural,
justifiable, and exceedingly well supported; several characters, to reduce an enor-
mous multiplicity and insignificance of some, are judiciously blended with others;
particularly those of Flavius and Marullus^ in the first scene, are thrown into
Casca and Decius Brutus* — The wisdom of a change which reduces the multi-
14 THE TRACED IE OF [act i. sc. i.
[4. Plauius, Murellus]
plicity of characters at the eicpense of consistency is certainly questionable. The
indignant speech of Marullus, beginning: 'Wherefore rejoice? What conquest
brings he home? ' 1. 40 et seq., is utterly unlike any other speech which Shakespeare
has assigned to Casca. A casual comparison of this speech, in verse, with Casca's
humorous account, in prose, of the offering of the crown to Oesar will show that
the same character could not consistently deliver both. Again, in Bell's arrange-
ment, it is Decius Brutus who bids Casca 'disrobe the images,' and later in the scene,
when Casca is speaking with Brutus and Cassius, it is Casca who tells them Flavins
and Marullus 'are put to silence' for this same deed. The retention of this is,
perhaps, merely an oversight on the part of the adapter; if so, it was not noticed by
Mrs Inchbald, who has the same assignment of characters and speeches as has
Bell. — Ed. — Mark Hunter: Note that the tribunes of the people are no longer
demagogues as they are in CorioL They have not the slightest personal S3rmpathy
or relationship with the 'people.* The 'people^sy^n, Mjsjobvioiis.in tiiis first
scene, are thoroughly monarchical in sentiment. They have not the smallest
desire to be 'free' in the conspirators' sense. Thusj even before we hear of the
conspiracy^ ^c see that sfuch is bound to prove futile.
4. certaine Commoners] Knight {Studies, etc., p. 411): Shakespeare, in the
opening scene of /«/. Ccu.y has marked very distinctly the difference between the
citizens of this period and the former period of Coriolanus, In the first play
they are a turbulent body. They would revenge with their pikes: the wars
would eat them up. In Jul. C<bs,, on the contrary, they are 'mechanical' — the
carpenter or the cobbler. They 'make holiday to see Caesar, and to rejoice in his
triumph.' The speech of Marullus, the Tribune, brings the Rome of the hour
vividly before us. It is the Rome of mighty conquests and terrible factions.
Pompey has had his triumphs, and now the men of Rome 'Strew flowers in his
way. That comes in triumph over Pompey's blood.' — ^Jusserand (Literary History,
etc., iii, 258): In this play, as in CorioL, one of the most minutely described
personages, if it can be so called, is the People. Shakespeare, who belongs to his
time, not to ours, has no tenderness for the people; he depicts with great compla-
cency their exigencies, their credulity, their ignorance, their fits of irresistible but
transient ferocity, their contradictions, their violent exaggerations, everything, in
fact, that history has ever reproached them with. And as history repeats itself,
and as Shakespeare's knowledge of the himian heart was marvellous, he seems at
times to divine traits unknown then, and which modem researches have dis-
covered in the past; or, at other times, to describe the most tragic incidents of
recent revolutions. On that point, from the beginning of his career to the end,
Shakespeare never varied; his scornful disposition remained the same; the people
who follow Jack Cade in Henry VI. are the same as those who now applaud Brutus
and Antony, exile Coriolanus, and proclaim Laertes king to console him for the
death of his father slain by Hamlet. — A. H. Tolman (Introd., p. xliii) : In the
plays of Jul. Cas. and Coriol. Shakespeare is not following Plutarch when he
represents the common people of Rome as too fickle, too ignorant, too subject to
demagogues, to deserve the slightest respect Coriolanus tells the populace:
'He that depends Upon your favours swims with fins of lead, And hews down oaks
with rushes.' — I, i, 183. It seems clear that the evil smell of the very crowds which
thronged his theater and helped to make him rich was most distasteful to the
sensitive player-poet. . . . We need to remember that Shakespeare as a dramatist
ACT I. sc. L] IVLIVS C^SAR 1 5
(Being Mechanicall) you ought not walke
Vpon a labouring day, without the figne 10
Of your Profeflion ? Speake, what Trade art thou ?
was concerned entirely with what the common people were in his own time, and
had been in the past.
9. yoa ought not walke] Wright: In all other cases in which 'ought' occurs
in Shakespeare it is followed by to. Both constructions are found. For in-
stance, in the later Widiffite version of Genesis, joodv, 31: 'S3rmeon and Leuy
answeriden, Whether thei oughten mysuse oure sistir'; where some maniiscripts
read 'to mysuse.' Again, in Holinshed's Chronicle (ed, 1577), ii, ioo6a: 'But the
Lord Henry Percy L. Marshall, . . . came to the knight, and told him, that he
ought not come at that time.' The earlier construction appears to have been with
to, Dt Morris {English Auidence, § 303) states that owe as an auxiliary verb first
appears in Laghamon*s Brut, If this be the case, it is instructive to observe that
in the earlier recension of the poem (ed. Madden, i, 262) we find 'and that that heo
aghen me to ghdden,' and that they ought to yield to me; while in the later the
line stands thus, 'and hii thathahteghdden'«« and they ought 3ridd that. ... On
the other hand, we find in the earlier recension, when the word is more strictly
used as an auxiliary (ii, 276): 'and swa thu aghest Hengest don'<* and so thou
oughtest do to Hengest. In the last-quoted example 'aghest' is the present tense,
but ought, though properly past, is used also as a present, like wot and must. On
this irregularity in the use of the infinitive, with or without to after auxiliary or
quasi-auxiliary verbs, Dr Guest remarks (Philological Society's Proceedings, ii,
227): 'Originally the to was prefixed to the gerund, but never to the present, in-
finitive; as, however, the custom gradually prevailed of using the latter in place of
the former, the to was more and more frequently prefixed to the infinitive, till it
came to be considered as an almost necessary appendage of it. . . . The to is still
generally omitted after the auxiliaries and also after certain other verbs, as bid,
dare, see, hear, make, &c. But even in these cases there has been great diversity
of usage.' The following early instances of the omission of to are taken from M&tz-
ner's Englische Grammatik, and the WorterJmch which accompanies his Altenglische
Sffrachprdben: 'I oughte ben hyere than she' — Piers Ploughman (ed. T. Wright),
1. 936; 'Withlherc bodies that aghte be so free* — Robert of Gloucester (ed. Heame),
i, p. 12; 'And glader ought his freend ben of his deth*^— Chaucer, Cant, Tales, 1. 3053.
Milton imitated the construction in Paradise Lost: 'And not divulge His secrets,
to be scann'd by them who ought Rather admire.' — Bk, viii, 73, 74.
10, II. without the signe Of your Profession] Ward says (i, 425) that
Shakespeare here 'applies a police-law, originating in the mediaeval distinction of
guilds, to Roman dtizens,' thus using the present passage to show that 'Shake-
speare's acquaintance with Roman history was slender.' — Wright, on the other
hand, notes that 'it is more likely that Shakespeare had in his mind a custom
of his own time than any sumptuary law of the Romans.' — Marshall, after
quoting Wright, says: 'It is evident that there is no reference here to the mediaeval
guilds; as the next speech but one, that of Marullus, shows us that what the Tribune
meant was not that the mechanics should wear any special badge or sign, but merely
the usual working dress of their trade or occupation; in short^.that they had no
right to be in holiday, or, as we should say, in their Sunday clothes, on a working
day.' — Miss Porter and Miss Clarke discern a reference here to the Sumptuary
1 6 THE TRACED IE OF [act i. sc. L
[lo, II. without the signe Of jrour Profession]
Laws, particularly to that prescribing the wearing of a woollen cap on Sundays and
holidays by all persons 'above six years, except ladies, knights, and gentlemen,'
which law was repealed in 1597. — [But does not Flavins mention specifically that
they should wear the sign of their profession upon a laboiuing day? He does not
recognise the present occasion as a festival. I am inclined to agree with Marshall
that this line does not refer to any regulation of the mediaeval guilds. The follow-
ing account of these associations is abridged from TouLMm-SMirH's exhaustive
monograph on this subject (issued by the Early English Text Society) and Herbert's
History of the Livery Companies of London: The mediaeval guilds, or gilds, were
originally mutual benefit or protective societies, and took their names from char-
acters either from the Bible or offices of the church, e. g.. The Gild of the Holy
Spirit, the Gild of St. Peter, or of St. Paul. The members paid a small entrance
fee and a sum annually. Fines were also exacted for non-attendance at meetings
or infraction of the rules. The general fimd was used for the help of the poorer
brethren during illness, or payment of funeral expenses. The various trades were
quick to understand the advantage of such fraternities, and the transition from the
gild to the trade-union was accomplished. In the regulations and by-laws of gilds
and trade-unions there is not, as far as I have been able to discover, any mention
prescribing a form of dress or badge to be worn on all occasions, though mention
is made of certain hoods or gowns which are to be worn on the feast of a gild's
patron saint. They were not, however, distinctive of the profession of the gild
or trade-union. Later these trade-unions were merged into twelve companies
representing the principal trades of the time, such as, the Merchant Tailors; the
Masons; the Skinners; the Stationers, etc., and to them was granted each a royal
charter with the right to wear certain liveries on festival occasions. These liveries
were not typical of the various companies, but were merely imiforms to distinguish
the members of one company from another. Neither in the charter nor in the by-
laws is it made compulsory to wear this livery except on certain holidays or festi-
vals. It is, I think, quite evident that the speech of Flavins cannot, therefore,
refer to this custom, since he mentions the fact that the sign of the profession must
be worn upon a laboring day. Referring now to the question of a Sumptuary Law:
Such laws were first issued in the time of Edward IH., and related not to the particu-
lar form of costume which the different classes should wear, but to the cost of the
material. Every one was limited, according to his rank, in the cost. If there
were any clause, which there is not, in these Sumptuary laws making it obligatory
that artisans wear a distinctive dress it would furnish a valuable piece of internal
evidence to determine the date of composition of JuL Cas.j as all such laws were
repealed in the first year of James I. (1603), and it is hardly probable that Shake-
speare would have referred to an unpopular law which was no longer in force.
In the 22nd year of Henry VIII. (1531) there was passed an act relating to vagrants
wherein it was stated that : *if any man or woman being whole & mightie in bodie,
& able to labour, having no land, master, nor using any lawful merchandise, craft
or mysterie, whereby hee might get his living ... be vagrant, & can give no
reckoning how he doeth lawfully get his living: that then it shalbe lawfull to the
Constables, and all other the kings officers ... to arrest the sayd vagabonds,'
etc. (Rustal: English Statutes y 1594). Then follows the form of punishment for
such vagrants. This Act remained in force until the 39th year of Elizabeth (1597),
when it was reissued, with many changes in phraseology. The clause in regard to
ACT I, sc. i.] IVLIVS CjESAR 1 7
Car. Why Sir, a Carpenter. 12
Mur. Where is thy Leather Apron, and thy Rule?
What doft thou with thy beft Apparrell on ?
You fir, what Trade are you ? 15
CobL Truely Sir, in refpeft of a fine Workman, I am
but as you would fay, a Cobler.
Mur. But what Trade art thou ? Anfwer me direftly.
Cob. A Trade Sir, that I hope I may vfe, with a fafe
Confcience, which is indeed Sir, a Mender of bad foules. 20
Fla, What Trade thou knaue ? Thou naughty knaue,
what Trade ? 22
12. Car.] I Pleb. Hanmer. i C. 20, Joules] JoulsTy Joals'F^,'Bsmt-\',
Capell. I Cit. Malone et seq. (subs.) Cap. Varr. Mai. Steev. Varr. Sing.
15. You fir,] F3F4. You fir Fa. You, soles Knt et cet.
Sify — Theob. Warb. Dyce, Sta. 21. Fla.] Mur. Capell. Mar. Jen-
— YoUf Siry Johns. Var. '73. You, sir nens. Mai. Ran. Steev. Varr. Sing.
Cap. et cet. Dyce, Wht. Hal. Cam.+.
16, 19, 23, 27, 29. Cob.] 2 Pleb. Trade thou] trader thou Rowe et
Hanmer. 2 C. Capell. 2 Cit. seq.
Malone et seq. (subs.)
the vagrant's inability to give an account of his means of livelihood does not ap-
pear; and there is added one relating to players of interludes and stage-players,
who are not under the patronage of some nobleman, classing them among vaga-
bonds and vagrants. Such an act would naturally be humiliating to all players,
and it is possible that to this Shakespeare has made Flavins refer. The evidence
is, it must be admitted, slight and, at best, but circumstantial. On the other hand,
there is no evidence whatever to support the view that there is here a reference
either to the laws of the Trade-gilds or to the Sumptuary Laws. — Ed.]
11-15. art thou . . . are you] For other examples of this use of 'thou' and
'you,* see, if needful, Abbott §§ 232-234.
20. Mender of bad soules] Malone: Fletcher has the same quibble in his
Women Pleased: 'If thou dost this (mark me, thou serious sowter), ... If thou
dost this, there shall be no more shoe-mending; Every man shall have a special care
of his own soal.* — [Act IV, sc. i. Compare also: *Not on thy sole, but on thy soxil,
harsh Jew.* — Mer, of Ven.j IV, i, 123. — Ed.].
21. Fla. What Trade] Capell (ii, 96): The mistake made in this speech's
assignment is evinced by the immediate reply to it, the reply to that reply, and
what proceeds from this speaker. Short as is the part of these tribunes, they
have different characters; Marullus is grave and severe and no relisher of evasions
and quibbles: the first with which the cobbler regales him puts him out of humoiur,
his second increases it, and a third endangers a storm; but that Flavins — who is
somewhat gentler disposed, and a better decypherer, interposes a question that
puts a stop to evasions, but not to quibbling, for that goes on as before; but not
clear as before, if former copies are kept to, who read *withall* [1. 31] in one word,
and with no point to it; what the speaker would now say in that sentence is this:
that he meddled not with this or that matter particularly, but with all in which the
awl had concern. — Knight: We doubt whether it is correct to assume that only
l8
THE TR AG ED IE OF
[act I, sc. i.
?.
CobL Nay I befeech you Sir, be not out with me : yet 23
if you be out Sir, I can mend you.
Mur, What mean ft thou by that? Mend mee, thou 25
fawcy Fellow?
Cob. Why fir, Cobble you.
Fla. Thou art a Cobler,art thou ?
Cob. Truly fir, all that I liue by, is with the Aule : I
meddle with no Tradefmans matters, nor womens mat- 30
ters; but withal I am indeed Sir, a Surgeon to old fhooes :
when they are in great danger, I recouer them. As pro-
per men as euer trod vpon Neats Leather, haue gone vp-
on my handy-worke.
Fla. But wherefore art not in thy Shop to day/ 35
Why do^ft thou leade thefe men about the ftreets?
Cob. Truly fir, to weare out their fhooes, to get my
felfe into more worke. But indeede fir, we make Holy- 38
24. ij you be] if you should be Ktly.
25. Mur.] Flav. Theobald, Han.
Warb. Sing. Ktly.
mean ft thou] meanest thou Cap.
Varr. Mai. Stccv. Van*. Knt, Dyce, Sta.
28. Cobler] cobbler , then Quincy (MS) .
29. with the] the Rowe,+}' Cap.
(Enrata).
30. Tradefmans] tradesmen's Warb.
tradej — man's Farmer, Var. '78, '85.
trades, man's Sta. conj.
womens] womans Ff. woman's
Rowe,+i Varr. Ran.
31. wUhal /] Wh. i. wUhaU I F,F,.
tt^Ao/, / F4, Rowe. u^A-otf, / Pope,+.
with all. I Cap. Var. '73, Ran. Knt,
Coll. Hal. Sing, ii, Ktly, Huds. with
awl. I Farmer, Jen. et cet.
33. Neals Leather] Neals-Leaiher
F,F,.
34. handy-worke] handy worke Ff .
36. do'ft] doft F,F4.
37, 38. Truly fir. ..worke] Mnemonic
Warb.
one should take the lead; whereas it is clear that the dialogue is more natural,
certainly more dramatic, according to the original arrangement, where Flavins and
Marullus alternately rate the people, like two smiths smiting on the same anvil.
25. mean at thou by that] Steevens: Perhaps this, like all the other speeches
of the Tribunes (to whichsoever of them it belongs), was designed to be metrical,
and originally stood thus, 'What mean'st by that? Mend me, thou saucy fellow?'
— (Coleridge {Notes, p. 131) suggests the same omission and arrangement.]
29, 30. I meddle . . . matters] Brentano says (p. czxxix): 'Sometimes the
richer craftsmen withdrew from their poorer brethren into separate gilds, as, for
instance, the Shoemakers from the Cobblers, the Tanners from the Shoemakers.'
30, 31. no Tradesmans matters . . . but withal] M alone: Where our
author uses words equivocally, he imposes some difficulty on his editor with
respect to the mode of exhibiting them in print. Shakespeare, who wrote for the
stage, not for the closet, was contented if his quibble satisfied the ear. I have,
with the other modem editors, printed here with awl, though in the First Folio
we find 'withal'; as in a preceding speech bad soals, instead of 'bad soules.'
37, 38. Truly sir . . . But indeede] Delius: The Cobbler, with the jocular
ACT I, sc. i.] IVLIVS CjESAR 19
day to fee Ccefaty and to reioyce in his Triumph.
Mur. Wherefore reioyce ? 40
What Conqueft brings he home ?
What Tributaries follow him to Rome,
To grace in Captiue bonds his Chariot Wheeles ?
You Blockes,you ftones,you worfe then fenfleffe things :
O you hard hearts, you cruell men of Rome, 45
Knew you not Pompey many a time and oft ?
40, 41. As one line Rowe et seq. 46. yov^ ye Var. '73.
41. Conqueft] conquests Pope ii. Pompey ... 0//?] Pompey?.,, oft
43. Wheeles?] Wheels Fj. Rowe ii et seq.
subtlety of the clown, makes a distinction between 'truly' and 'indeed/ as though
there were two meanings. — Wright, after referring to the foregoing note, says:
'I think the Cobbler had no more meaning in using them than Master Slen-
der had, and that certainly is not much. Shakespeare frequently puts such petty
expletives into the mouth of his uneducated characters. See Merry Wives, I, ii,
322-326.'
39. his Triumph] Wright: Cssar had returned from Spain, where he had
defeated the sons of Pompey at the battle of Munda, 17th March, B. C. 45.
. . . This triumph took place in the beginning of October, and as it was for a
victory over Pompey's sons it makes the reproaches of Marullus more pointed.
Shakespeare, not caring for dates, has placed the triumph at the time of the Lupe-
calia, which was held 15 February, B. C. 44.
40. Wherefore reioyce] Campbell (Life br Writings^ etc., p. lix) : It is evident
from the opening scene of Jul, Cos. that Shakespeare, even dealing with classical
subjects, laughed at the classic fear of putting the ludicrous and sublime into
juzta-position. After the low and farcical jests of the saucy Cobbler the elo-
quence of the Roman Tribune, Marullus, 'springs upwards like a pyramid of fire.'
. . . It can be no exaggeration to say that these lines are among the most mag-
nificent in the English language. They roll over my mind's ear like the lordliest
notes of a cathedral organ, and yet they succeed immediately to the ludicrous idea
of a cobbler leading a parcel of fools about the streets, in order to make them wear
out their shoes and get himself into more work.
41. 42. home . . . Rome] Walker (Crit., ii, 114): In quoting Ant, & Cleo.,
I, ii, 189, 190, 'many our contriving friends in Rome Petition us at home,' I
observed, 'Pronounce " Rome" as usual, Room^; this removes the jingle between
*Rome' and *home.' Coriol, V, iii, 172: 'so we will home to Rome And die among
our neighbors.' Here, too, the same pronunciation obviates the jingle; as it does
the rh3rme in Jul. Cas.y I, i, [41, 42]. Was this the ordinary pronunciation down
to the beginning of the present century? (I learnt it at school.) In Heber's
Palestine it must be Roonif auribus postulantibus: 'When Tiber slept beneath the
cypress gloom. And silence held the lonely woods of Rome.' . . . 'But heavier
far the fetter'd captive's doom! To glut with sighs the iron ear of Rome.' Read
the poem continuously, and it will be evident. Tait's Magazine, z, p. 444- '"I
say, that if he was in Room" — Every one — Kemble himself — said "Room" in
those days — "if he was in Room,"' &c. [See I, ii, 172.]
i
20 T//£ TRAGEDIE OF [act i, sc. i.
Haue you climbM vp to Walks and Battlements, 47
To Towres and Windowes? Yea, to Chimney tops,
Your Infants in your Armes, and there haue fate
The liue-long day, with patient expeflation, 50
To fee great Pompey paffe the ftreets of Rome :
And when you faw his Chariot but appeare,
Haue you not made an Vniuerfall fhout,
That Tyber trembled vndemeath her bankes
To heare the replication of your founds, 55
Made in her Concaue Shores ?
And do you now put on your bed attyre ?
And do you now cull out a Holyday ? 58
48. Windowes?] windows, Rowe et tn6mg:now,..now,„now.„Rome„.Be
seq. gone Han.
54, 56. her. ..her] his...his Rowe,4-, 56. Shores] Sh*otes Fa.
Cap. Var. '78, Ran. her...his Var. '85. 58. a Holyday] a Hdy-day Fj. an
56-61. Made...Be gone] Five lines, Holy-day F4, Rowe,4-.
54. her bankes] Steevens: As Tyber is always represented by the figure of a
man, the feminine gender is improper. Milton says that 'the river of bliss . . .
Rolls o*er Elysian flowers her amber stream.' — [Paradise Lost, iii, 358.] But he is
speaking of the water, and not of its presiding power or genius. — Malone: Dray-
ton, in his Polyolbion, frequently describes the rivers of England as females, even
when he speaks of the presiding power of the stream. Spenser, on the other hand,
represents them, more classically, as males. — ^To this note by Malone Steevens
replies that *The presiding power of some of Drayton's rivers were females; like
SabrinOf &c. ' For several examples where rivers are spoken of as feminine in
the Polyolbion, see First Song, lines 506-546. — Wright notes that in Shake-
speare where a river is not personified it is neuter, e. g., 'Like a proud river peering
o'er his bounds' — King John, III, i, 23; and 2 Hen, IV: IV, iv, 127, and adds:
*In Drayton's Polyolhion the rivers are mostly feminine. But in the Seventeenth
Song the Thames, the king of rivers, is masculine, as he is to this day; and Spenser's
description of the marriage of the Thames and Medway {Faerie Queene, IV, 11),
the Medway being the bride, shews that in this respect the usage is not uniform.'
56. Made ... Concaue Shores] Craik (p. 141): An imperfect line (or
hemistich, as it is conmionly called), but prosodically regular so far as it goes, which
is all we have a nght to look for. The occasional use of such shortened lines woxild
seem to be, at least in dramatic poetry, one of the proper and natural prerogatives
of blank verse, according well, as it does, with the variety of pause and cadence
which makes the distinctive charm of verse of that form. But, apparently, it need
not be assumed, as b always done, that the fragment must necessarily be in all
cases the beginning of a line. Why should not the poet be supposed sometimes,
when he begins a new sentence or paragraph in this manner, to intend that it should
be connected, in the prosody as well as in the meaning, with what follows, not with
what precedes? A few lines lower down, for instance, the words 'Be gone'
might be either the first foot of the verse or the last
ACT I, sc. i.] IVLIVS C^SAR 21
And do you now ftrew Flowers in his way,
That comes in Triumph ouer Potnpeyes blood ? 60
Be gone,
Runne to your houfes, fall vpon your knees,
Pray to the Gods to intermit the plague '
That needs muft light on this Ingratitude.
Fla. Go,go,good Countrymen, and for this fault 65
Affemble all the poore men of your fort ;
Draw them to Tyber bankes,and weepe your teares
Into the Channell, till the loweft ftreame 68
60. comes in] comes to Rome in Han. 62. your knees] you knees Var. '78
61, 62. Be gone,,. knees] One line (misprint).
Ktly. 65. this] that Theob. ii,+ (—Var.
61. Be gone,] Be gone — Rowe,+. '73)-
Be gone; Cap. Van*. Mai. Steev. Varr. 67. Tyber bankes] Tyber bank Rowe,
Be gone! Knt ct seq. Pope. Tyber* s bank Theob. ii,+.
59, 60. his way, That comes] Abbott (§ 218): That is, in the way of him
that comes. [Other passages, wherein the genitive of the pronoun 'stands as the
antecedent of a relative,' are given.]
60. Pompeyes blood] Hebpord: That is, his son, Cneius, who had fallen in the
battle of Munda, the immediate occasion of Cesar's Triumph. That 'blood' has
this special reference is shown by Plutarch's emphatic statement, which Shakespeare
clearly had in view, that this triumph was peculiarly offensive to the Romans
'because he had not overcome a4)tains that were strangers, nor barbarous kings,
but had destroyed the sons of the noblest man of Rome, whom fortune had over-
thrown.'
63. intermit] Walkek (Crit., i, 65) quotes this line as an instance of the inaccu-
rate use of the word 'intermit' for remit; adding that ' in this case the inaccuracy
seems rather to have originated in a slight degree of carelessness.' — ^The word
is not used elsewhere by Shakespeare. — Murray (N, E, D., s. v. Intermit, v'. i.
fe.) gives four examples, extending from 1563 to 1692, wherein this word is used in
the sense of 'To omit, leave out, pass over, let slip,' which is, perhaps, the meaning
as used in the present line. It is marked by Murray as obsolete in this sense. — Ed.
67. weepe your teares] Wright: This transitive use of 'weep' is not com-
mon. See Lovers Labour* Sy IV, iii, 33: 'Thou shinest in every tear that I do
weep.' (Schmidt {Lex.) also quotes: 'Purple tears that his wound wept.' — Ven.
fir Ad.j 1054; 'May have a tomb of orphan's tears wept on *em*—*Hen. VIII:
m, ii, 399; besides other examples, such as to weep seas, to tueep blood. — Ed.]
67, 68. weepe . . . till the lowest streame, etc.] Jusserand (Literary Hist.,
etc., iii, 342): Sometimes those luminous rays with which natural objects are
aureoled in Shakespeare's eye, distort the contours and destroy proportions.
Such is the case, for instance, when it is a question of sighs or tears. Those signs
of emotion scarcely ever offer themselves to the dramatist's imagination save under
the guise of floods and storms. The Romans risk causing the Tiber to overflow
with their tears; Richard II. spoils the harvest with his sobs and sighs. Juliet is
'a bark, a sea, a wind'; her tears, old Capulet explains, are the sea, her body is the
\
22 THE TRACED IE OF [act i, sc. i.
Do kiiTe the mod exalted Shores of all.
Exeunt all the Commoners. 70
See where their bafeft mettle be not mouM,
They vanifli tongue-tyed in their guiltineffe :
Go you downe that way towards the Capitoll,
This way will I : Difrobe the Images^ 74
70. all the] Ff, Cam.+i Om. Rowe whir Dyce, Sta. whether Cam.+-
et cet. Qiiincy MS. whe^r Han. et cet.
Commoners] Ff, Cam.+* Citi- 71. their] that Quincy MS.
zens Capell et cet. 72. tongue-4yed[ Umgue-ty'd FJP4,
71. where] F£. whe're Tlieob.+.
barki her sighs are the wind. Laertes does not weep over drowned Ophelia:
'Too much of water hast thou, poor Ophelia, And therefore I forbid my tears.'
Romeo roams abroad before sunrise: 'With tears augmenting the fresh morning's
dew, Adding to clouds more clouds with his deep sighs.' The habit is a settled
one; the poet reverts to it almost mechanically; his heroes feel they have never
said enough, they try to outdo each other; Richard 11. proposes a competition in
weeping: ' — ^To drop them [tears] still upon one place, Till they have fretted us a
pair of graves Within the earth.' Mere child's play, thinks Queen Elizabeth in
Rich. III.; as for herself, she will 'send forth plenteous tears to drown the world.'
It may be appropriate to recall that such exaggerations were frequent in the
romances then in vogue. In the Diana of Montemayor a shepherd causes the grass
to grow in a meadow, and the water surrounding an island to rise, by the abundance ,
of his tears.
69. Do kisse] Crajk (p. 142) : In this we have a common archaism, the reten-
tion of the auxiliary, now come to be regarded, when it is not emphatic, as a pleo-
nasm enfeebling the expression, and consequently dem'ed alike to the writer of
prose and to the writer of verse. It is thus in even a worse predicament than the
separate pronunciation of the final ed in the preterite indicative or past participle
passive. In the age of Shakespeare they were both, though beginning to be aban-
doned, still part and parcel of the living language, and instances of both are numer-
ous in the present play. The modem forms probably were as yet completely
established only in the spoken language, which commonly goes before that which
is written and read, in such economical innovations.
71. where] Guest (p. 58): We have one of the best proofs of the elision
[of the final syllable] in the further corruptions such words have undergone,
ov*r became o'w, fp'r erey ath*r or, whether wheW; and in those dialects which are so
intimately connected with our own, as almost to make part of the same language,
we find these letters similarly affected. Thus, in the Frisic faer is father , moar is
mother y broer is brother yfoer is fodder. With a slight change in the orthography, we
find the same words in the Dutch. This seems to point clearly to a similar cause
of corruption in all these dialects. The elision of the vowel I believe to have been
the first step. [Compare also V, iv, 35: 'And see where Brutus be alive or dead. ']
74. Disrobe the Images] According to Plutarch, ' — there were set up im-
ages of Caesar in the city, with diadems upon their heads like kings. Those
the two tribunes. Flavins and Marullus, went and pulled down' — ed. Skeat, p. 96.
Suetonius says: ' — one of the crowd put upon a statue of him a laurel crown, with
ACT I, sc. L] IVLIVS CjESAR 23
If you do finde them deckt with Ceremonies. 75
Mur. May we do fo ?
You know it is the Feaft of Lupercall.
Fla. It is no matter, let no Images
Be hung with Ccefars Trophees : He about,
And driue away the Vulgar from the ftreets ; 80
So do you too, where you perceiue them thicke.
Thefe growing Feathers, pluckt from Ca/ars wing,
Will make him flye an ordinary pitch.
Who elfe would foare aboue the view of men.
And keepe vs all in feruile fearefulneffe. Exeunt. 85
75. Ceremonies] ceremony Wh. i.
a white ribbon tied round it, and the tribunes of the commons, Epidius ManiUus
and Caesetius Flavius, ordered the ribbon to be taken away, and the man to be
carried to prison.' — Cap. haiz.
75. deckt with Ceremonies] R. G. White; It can hardly be necessary to
remark, ceremoniously or pompously decorated. [See Text. Note.] The Folio
has 'with ceremonies,' which has been hitherto retained, with the explanation that
'ceremonies' means here religious ornaments or decorations [thus Warburton and
Malone]. But such a use of the word is illogical and unprecedented. The word
in the Folio is merely ceremonie with the superfluous s so constantly added in
books of its period. — Craik (143) : By ceremonies must here be meant what are
afterwards in 1. 79 called 'Caesar's trophies,' and are described in I, ii, 306 as
'scarfs' which were himg on Caesar's images. No other instance of this use of
the word, however, is produced by the commentators. — ^Wright, after citing the
two passages, also referred to by Craik, in which mention is made of 'Caesar's
trophies' and the 'scarfs, ' thinks, with Malone, that ' ceremonies' must here be 're-
garded as denoting marks of ceremonious respect'; and compares: 'His ceremonies
laid by, in his nakedness he appears but a man,' Hen. V: IV, i, 109. Wright adds
to this: 'In a passage from Hakluyt's Voyages f i, 114, given in Richardson's Dic-
tionary, "ceremony" is used loosely, not only of outward observance, but of the
things whereby such observance was shown. "And I asked him, Why therfore
haue you not the crosse with the image Jesu Christ therupon? And he answered:
We haue no such custome. Wherupon I coniectured that they were indeede
Christians: but, that for lacke of instruction, they omitted the foresaide ceremonie.
. . . For the Saracens doe onely inuite men thither, but they will not haue them
speake of their religion. And therfore, when I enquired of the Saracens concerning
such ceremonies, they were offended thereat." In Du Cange one of the meanings
given to "Ceremonia" is Vidima hostiay showing that the concrete sense had be-
come attached to the word.' — Murray {N. E. D., s. v. Ceremony. t4. concr.) : An
external accessory or s3rmbolical 'attribute' of worship, state, or pomp. [Besides
the present line Murray quotes] 1581 Sidney Apol. Poetrie {Arh.) 47: Aeneas . . .
carrying away his religious ceremonies, if «w. for Meas., II, ii, 59: * No ceremony
that to great ones 'longs, Not the king's CTOwn, nor the deputed sword. The mar-
shad's truncheon^ nor the judge's robe Become them with one half so good a grace
As mercy does.'
77. the Feast of Lupercall] For a description of the rites attending this
24
THE TRACED IE OF
[act I, sc. ii.
\Scene II.\
Enter Cafary Antony for the Courfe y Calphurniay PorttUy De- i
ciuSy CicerOy BrutuSy CaffiuSy CaskayU Sooth/qyenaf"
ter tlum MureUus and Flauius. 3
Scene n.] Pope et seq.
The Same. A publick Place. Rowe.
I. Enter Cxfar...] Enter in solemn
procession, with Musick, &c., Cssar...
Rowe. Enter in procession with
trumpets and other music, Csesar...
CoU. u, iii (MS).
z, 2. Decius] Decimus Hanmer, Ran.
Zy 4, 6, Z2. Calphumia] Calpumia
Wh. Cam.+, Rolfe.
2. Caska, a...] Casca and a... Han-
mer. Casca, &c., a great crowd follow-
ing; Soothsayer in the Crowd. Capell
et seq. (subs.)
2, 3. after...Flauius] Ff, Rowe, Pope,
Jen. Var. '78, '85. Om. Theob. et cet.
3. Murellus] Ff, Rowe, Pope, Cap.
Marullus Theob. et cet.
Roman festival, see Smith: Diclionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities, s. v. Luper-
calia. The time of its celebration was the 15th of February.
83. Will make him flye, etc.] Craik (p. 144): A modem sentence con-
structed in this fashion would constitute the 'him' the antecedent to the 'who,'
and give it the meaning of the person generally who (in this instance) 'else
would soar,' etc., or whoever would. But it will be more accordant with the
style of Shakespeare's day to leave the 'him' unemphatic, and to regard 'Caesar'
as being the antecedent to 'who.' Compare: 'Two mighty eagles fell, and there
they perched. Gorging and feeding from our soldiers' hands; Who to Philippi here
consorted us.' — V, i, 94.
83. pitch] That is, the highest flight of a hawk or falcon.
z. Antony for the Course] ' — that day [the Feast of Lupercal] there are
divers noblemen's sons, young men (and some of them magistrates themselves
that govern them), which run naked through the dty, striking in sport them they
meet in their way with leather thongs, hair and all on, to make them give place.
And many noblewomen and gentlewomen also go of purpose to stand in their way,
and do put forth their hands to be stricken, as scholars hold them out to their
schoolmaster to be stricken with the ferula: persuading themselves that, being
with child, they shall have good delivery; and so, being barren, that it will make
them to conceive with child. . . . Antonius, consul at that time, was one of them
that ran this holy course.' — Plutarch: Casar, cap. xli (p. 96, ed. Skeat).
I. Calphumia] R. G. White: The Folio has Calphumia here and wherever
the name occurs; yet the needful correction has not hitherto been made, although
the name of Caesar's wife was Calpurniay and it is correctly spelled throughout
North's Plutarch, and although no one has hesitated to change the strangely
perverse 'Varn«' and 'Claudio' of the Folio to *Varr<?' and 'Claudftt^', or its
'AntAony' to 'Antony' in this play and in Ant. (sr Cleo, I am convinced that in
both 'Anthony' and 'Calphumia' h was silent to Shakespeare and his readers. —
pSixis, speaking of the pronimciation during the fourteenth, fifteenth, and sixteenth
centuries, says (pt i, p. 316) : ' There is no reason for supposing p, ph, qu to have been
anything but p,f, and kw.* — Ed.] — Wright: Calpumia was the daughter of L. Cal-
pumius Piso, married to Caesar B. C. 59. She was his fourth wife, the other three
being Cossutia, Comelia, and Pompeia.
I, 2. Decius] Steevens: This person was not Decius, but Decimus Brutus,
ACT I. sc. ii.] IVLIVS CjESAR 25
Ccef. Calphtimia.
Cask. Peace ho, CcBfar fpeakes. 5
Ccef. Calphumia.
CcUp. Heere my Lord.
Caf. Stand you direftly in Antonic/s way,
When he doth run his courfe. Antonio.
Ant. Cafary my Lord. 10
Caf. Forget not in your fpeed Antonio^
To touch Ccdphurnia : for our Elders fay,
The Barren touched in this holy chace,
Shake off their fterrile curfe. 14
5. [Miisick ceases. Cap. Mai. Steev. 10. Caefar] Om. anon. ap. Cam.
Varr. 13. touched] touchM Dyce.
8. Antonio's] F£, Rowe, Ktly. An- 14. fterrile] F,. fterril Fj. sterile
tonius' Pope et cet. Dyce, Sta. Cam.-h, Huds. Col. iii.
9, II. Antonio] Ff, Rowe, Ktly. fterU F4 et cet.
Antonius Pope et cet. curje] course Rowe ii, Pope, Han.
The poet (as Voltaire has done since) confounds the characters of Marcus and
Decimus. Decimus Brutus was the most cherished by Cssar of all his friends,
while Marcus kept aloof, and declined so large a share of his favors and honors
as the other had constancy accepted. Velleius Paterculus, speaking of Decimus
Brutus f says: 'For, though he had been the most intimate of all his [C. Cssar's]
friends, he became his murderer, and threw on his benefactor the odium of that
fortime of which he had reaped the benefit. He thought it just that he should
retain the favors which he had received from Caesar, and that Caesar, who had
given them, should perish. — Bk ii, cap. Ixiv, [p. 475, trans. Watson. Steevens
quotes also from Thomas May's Supfdement to Lucan's Pharsalia two passages in
which Decimus Brutus is referred to as among the closest of the friends of Caesar.] —
Faxher: Shakespeare's mistake of Decius for Decimus arose from the old transla-
tion of Plutarch. — Malone: In Holland's translation of Suetonius, 1606, which
I Believe Shakespeare had read, this person is likewise called Dedus Brutus. —
R. G. White: This mistake is not in the spelling of a name, but the identity of a
person, and is one into which the poet was lead by his authority. North's Plutarch.
Therefore it should not be corrected.
8. Antonio's] Steevens: The old copy generally reads 'Antonio,* 'Octavio,*
'Flavio.' The players were more accustomed to Italian than Roman terminations,
on account of the many versions from Italian novels, anc^ the many Italian charac-
ters in dramatic pieces formed on the same originals. — [The form Antonio occurs
but four times throughout the play. In all other instances the name is given either
as Marke Antony or Antony. Octavio occurs twice, and Labio and Flavio but once
each. — Ed.]
13, 14. The Barren . . . sterrile curse] See note on I. i; extract from
Plutarch. — F. Schone (p. 17, foot-note): It has been thought that Caesar here
shows himself childishly superstitious. . . . But what Shakespeare wishes clearly
to indicate is Oesar's anjdety for an heir to his power and the establishing of a
djmasty: TlMt"he'was not actually superstitious is shown "ShrJrtly after by his
26 THE TRACED IE OF [act i, sc. u.
Ant. I (hall remember, 15
When Ccefar (ayes, Do this ; it is performed.
C(Ef. Set on, and leaue no Ceremony out.
Sooth. Ca/ar.
Caf. Ha? Who calles?
Cask. Bid euery noyfe be (Hll : peace yet againe* 20
Ca/. Who is it in the preflTe, that calles on me/
I heare a Tongue (hriller then all the Muficke
Cry, Cce/ar : Speake,C:?^^r is tum'd to heare.
Sooth. Beware the Ides of March.
Caf. What man is that ? 25
Br.h Sooth-fayer bids you beware the Ides of March.
16. Do this] As quotation Knt, Coll. 30, 21 continued to Cssar Sta. conj.
Dyce, Wh. Hal. Cam.+, Huds. 23. Cefar: Speake^] Caesar. Speak;
17. [Musick; and the procession Pope,+, Dyce, Sta. Caesar 1 Speak
moves. Capell. Hsin. Coll. Wh. Hal. Ktly, Cam.+,
20. pbf usick ceases. Capell. Huds.
20, 31. againe. Caef. Who...] Caes. 26. bids you] bids Cap.
Again/ (as sep. line) Who,., or all of 11.
curt dismissal of the soothsayer, who bids him beware of the Ides of March,
calling him merely 'a dreamer.' — [Wright says, however, that Caesar, 'though a
professed free-thinker, was addicted to superstition'; and cites, in support of this,
Merivaie;: History of the Romans, etc., ii, 446, 7; see also note on II, i, 219.]
17. Ceremony] Wright: The scanning of this line shows that Staunton was
wrong in maintaining that Shakespeare pronounced the first two syllables of
'ceremony' as cere in cerecloth. — [Although Walker's Criticisms did not appear
tmtil i860, the same date of publication as Staunton's Shakespeare, jret it was
written several years before that date, and as Walker has quite an article on the
subject of this pronunciation of 'Ceremony' (vol. ii, p. 73), he should, I think, be
given the priority; he has furnished many examples of its pronunciation as a tri-
syllable from Shakespeare and from other writers. — Ed.]
18. Sooth. Csesar] Verity: This incident strikes the note of mystery. The
strangeness of this unknown voice from the crowd, giving its strange warning,
creates an impression of danger. In Plutarch the warning is more precise; here
the vague sense of undefined peril inspires greater awe.
20. Cask. Bid . . . againe] Wright: There is no need for any change in the
arrangement [see Text. Notes], as the whole suits well with the officious character
of Casca.
26. A Sooth-sayer . . . March] Coleridge {Notes, etc., p. 131): If my ear
does not deceive me, the metre of this line was meant to express that sort of
mild philosophic contempt characterizing Brutus even in his first casual speech.
The line is a trimeter, each dipodia containing two accented and two unaccented
syllables, but variously arranged. — Craik (p. 144) : That b. It is a sooth-sayer,
who bids. It would not otherwise be an answer to Caesar's question. The omis-
sion of the relative in such a construction is still common. — [Wright acknowl-
edges that such omissions are common, but adds that the present line 'does
ACT 1, sc. ii.] IVLIVS C^SAR. 2/
Caf. Set him before me, let me fee his face. 27
Ca^.Fellow, come from the throng, look vpon Cafar.
Caf. What fayft thou to me now? Speak once againe.
Sooth, Beware the Ides of March. 30
Ca/. He is a Dreamer, let vs leaue him : PaflTe.
Sennet. Exeunt. Manet Brut. & Caff.
CaJJi. Will you go fee the order of the courfe ?
Brut. Not I.
Cajfi. I pray you do. 35
Brut. I am not Gamefom: I do lacke fome part
Of that quicke Spirit that is in Antony :
Let me not hinder Caffus your defires ;
He leaue you.
CaJJi. Brutus^ I do obferue you now of late : 40
38. Caffi.] Casca. Johns. Var. '73. Exeunt ail but Bru. and Cass. Cap.
39. ilun^ ikon F3. et cet.
31. Dreamer,] Dreamer FsFj. 33. Scene m. Pope, Han. Warb.
32. Sennet.] Senate. F4. Om. Johns. Jen.
Rowe,+. Musick. Cap. 34. Not I.] Not I. Fj.
£xeunt...& CaiT.] Ff (Manent 39. lie leaue you] Om. Seymour.
F1F4), Rowe, Pope. Exeunt Caesar 40. you now] Om. Steev. conj. .
and Train. Theob.+, Varr. Ran.
not seem to be an instance.' Abbott (§ 460) suggests that metri gratia^ 'beware/
be shortened by the omission of the prefix. Capell's reading (see Text. Notes) is,
perhaps, preferable. — Ed.] — Schwartzkopf (p. 324): It is noteworthy that it
is Brutus who inmiediately repeats the soothsayer's warning words to Caesar.
And they are to be heard again by both, as we see later. To one as a warning
which, heeded, could have been his salvation; to the other as a magnetic attraction
towards the assassin's dagger.
32. Manet Brut. A Cass.] Knight (Studies j p. 114): The leading distinc-
tions between these two remarkable men, as drawn by Shakespeare, appear to
us~to be'these: Brutus acts wholly upon principle; Cassius partly upon impulse.
Brutus acts only when he has reconciled the contemplation of action with his
speculative opinions; Cassius allows the necessity of some action to run before and
govern his opinions. Brutus is a philosopher; Cassius is a partisan. Brutus, there-
fore, deliberates and spares; Cassius precipitates and denounces. Brutus is the
nobler instructor; Cassius the better politician. Shakespeare, in the first great
scene between them, brings out these distinctions of character upon which future
events so mainly depend. Cassius does not, like a merely crafty man, use only
the arguments to conspiracy which will most touch Brutus; but he mixes with
them, in his zeal and vehemence, those which have presented themselves most
strongly to his own mind.
40. Brutus, I do obserue, etc.] Wright: In Plutarch's Life of Brutus the
quarrel between Brutus and Cassius arose from their contest for the praetorship,
which Caesar assigned to Brutus. This, too, was one of the causes of Cassius'
28 THE TRAGEDIE OF [act i, sc. iL
I haue not from your eyes, that gentleneffe 41
And (hew of Loue^as I was wont to haue 2
You beare too ftubborne,and too ftrange a hand
Ouer your Friend, that loues you.
Bru. CaJJius^ 45
Be not deceiuM : If I haue veylM my looke,
I turne the trouble of my Countenance
Meerely vpon my felfe. Vexed I am
Of late, with paflions of fome difference,
Conceptions onely proper to my felfe, 50
Which giue fome foyle (perhaps) to my Behauiours 2
But let not therefore my good Friends be greeu'd
(Among which number Coffins be you one)
Nor conftrue any further my negleft,
Then that poore Brutus with himfelfe at warre, 5 5
Forgets the fliewes of Loue to other men.
CaJJi. Then Brutus^ I haue much miftook your paffion.
By meanes whereof, this Breft of mine hath buried 58
44. Friend] Friends Ff, Rowe, Pope. ( — ^Johns. Var. '73).
hues] love F4, Rowe, Pope. 54. further] farther Pope ii, Theob.
48. Vexed\ Vex^ Dyce. Warb. Johns. Var. '73, Coll. Wh. i,
51. Behauiours] Behaviour Rowe,+ Hal.
personal animosity against Caesar, and the first step in the plot for his assassina-
tion was the reconciliation of Cassius and Brutus.
43. strange] Johnson: That is, alienf unfamiliar , such as might become a
stranger.
49. passions of some difference] Johnson: That is, with a fluctuation of
discordant opinions and desires. — Steevens: Compare * — thou hast set thy mercy
and thy honour At difference in thee.* — CorioLy V, iii, 201. — Malone: A following
line may prove the best comment on this: 'Than that poor Brutus, with himself at
war,' 1. 55.
57. passion] Mxtrray {N. E. 27., s, v., ni, 6): Any kind of feeling by which the
mind is powerfully affected or moved; a vehement, conunanding, or oveipowering
emotion; in psychology and art, any mode in which the mind is affected or acted
upon (whether vehemently or not), as ambition, avarice, desire, hope, fear, love,
hatred, joy, grief, anger, revenge.
58. By meanes whereof] Cafell 0- 97): That is, by means of mistaking; but
what was Cassius* mistake? Wherein lay it? Why, in thinking that his friend's
'passion,' what he appeared to suffer, proceeded from his concern for the public;
which thought of his he calls a thought of great value, a worthy cogitation; and then
enters upon his sounding in terms that show it premeditated, and a manner more
artificial than is consistent with real friendship; which the poet does not attribute
to him or make a part of his character, and that in order to difference him from the
open and honest Brutus.
ACT I. sc. ii.] IVLIVS CJESAR 29
Thoughts of great value, worthy Cogitations.
Tell me good BrutuSj Can you fee your face ? 60
Brutus. No CaJJius :
For the eye fees not it felfe but by refleflion,
By fome other things.
Cajffuis. 'Tis iuft,
And it is very much lamented Brutus, 65
60. face] eye Upton (Obs., p. 237). kim/elf: F4.
61-63. No Ca£^us,.,other things] Two 63. By] from Popc,+, Ran. of Sta.
lines, ending: Jelfe,.Jkings Rowe et conj.
seq. things] thing Walker (Crit. i,
62. il felfe] himfelfe Fa. himfelf, Fj. 243), Wh. i, Dyce ii, iii, Coll. iii.
60. Can you see your face] J. Hxtnter: Cassius is now proceeding to move
Brutus to conspiracy. Observe how artfully he employs the considerations of Ju3
affection fo^ Brutus; ofjhe^resp^t in which Brutus is held by others, and in which
he should hold his own honour; of the republican principles whidi Brutus cherishes;
and of his being a descendant of that Brutus who drove Tarquin from the throne;
and then observe the result which manifests itself in the speech: 'That you do
love me,' etc.
62. the eye sees not it selfe] Steevens: So^ Sir John Dayies (Nosce Teipsum,
1599) : * Is it because the Mind is like the Eye (Through which it gathers knowledge
by degrees), Whose rays reflect not but spread outwardly, Not seeing itself, when
other things it sees?' [p. 48, ed. Arberj. — [Steevens quotes also a passage from
Marston's Paristtaster which contains this same idea; and M alone gives another
from Davies' second part of Nosce Teipsum, which is, perhaps, more nearly parallel
to the present line in Julius Ccesar: 'Mine eyes which see all objects nigh and far,
Look not into this little world of mine; Nor see my face, wherein they fixed are'
(p. si» cd. Arber). — Craik compares 'Nor doth the eye itself, That most pure
spirit of sense, behold itself — Tro, &• Cress., in, iii, 105, 106 — and adds: 'It may
be worth noting that these lines appear only in the two original quarto editions of
the play (1609), and are not in any of the Folios.' — Ed.]
62, 63. by reflection . . . other things] Craik (p. 150): The 'other things'
must apparently, if we interpret the words with reference to their connection,
be the reflectors or mirrors spoken of by Cassius. Taken by itself, however,
the expression might rather seem to mean that the eye discovers its own existence
by its power of seeing other things. The verse in the present speech is ingeniously
broken up in the original edition [by the colon after ' Cassius ' and the comma
after 'reflection']. It may still be suspected that all is not quite right, and pos-
sibly some words have dropped out. 'By reflection, by some other things* is
hardly Shakespeare's style. It is not customary with him to employ a word which
he finds it necessary thus to attempt immediately to amend, or supplement, or
explain by another. — Wright, referring to the foregoing note by Craik, says: 'I do
not see why " by," in the sense of by means of, does not give a very good mean-
ing, even if we connect it closely with reflection.' — [More reliance might be placed
upon the punctuation of the Folio were we sure that it was from Shakespeare's own
hand. Wright's interpretation, based upon the removal of the printer's comma,
shows how needless the latter point is. — Ed.]
30 THE TRACED JE OF [act i. sc. ii.
That you haue no fuch Mirrors, as will tume 66
Your hidden worthineffe into your eye,
That you might fee your fhadow :
I haue heard,
Where many of the beft refpeft in Rome, 70
(Except immortall Ccefar) fpeaking of BtidtuSj
And groaning vndemeath this Ages yoake,
Haue wifli'd, that Noble Brutus had his eyes.
Bru. Into what dangers, would you
Lead me Cajftus ? 75
That you would haue me feeke into my felfe,
For that which is not in me ?
Caf. Therefore good Brutus^ be prepared to heare : 78
66. Mirrors] mirror Walker (Crit. i, 73. eye^,] eyes — Johns.
343), Dyce ii, iii, Huds. 74, 75. /it/(i...CafIius?] One line Rowe
68, 69. That...heard\ One line Rowe, et seq.
Pope, Theob. Han.+* 74- dangers] daungers Fa.
69,70. I haue heard ... best respect in Rome] Boissier (p. 301): The
conspirators were but little over sixty in number, but they had all Rome for their
accomplice. 'All the honest men,' said Cicero {PhUiPy ii, 12), 'in so far as they
could, have killed Oesar. Some wanted the means, others the resc^ution, several
the opportunity; no one wanted the will.'
71. speaking of Brutus] Mark Hxtmter: The repetition of 'Brutus' imme-
diately afterwards is by no means natural or graceful. I believe the 'Brutus' in
1. 72 caught the printer's eye, and he substituted it for some other word.
73. Haue wish'd . . . Brutus ha4 his eyes] Deuus: That is, the Romans
mourned the fact that Brutus did not see, and wbhed that he might but use
the eyes nature had given him in order to recognise the needs of the times. —
Wright: I should rather suppose that 'his' was written carelessly for their , as if
what precedes had been 'Many a one . . . hath wish'd, ' etc. The speakers wished
Brutus to see himself as they saw him, and to recognize his own importance at such
a oiusi This seems to be the whole point of Cassius' appeal. Of course, ' to have
one's eyes' does occur, in the sense in which Delius takes it, in other passages of
Shakespeare; as, for instance: 'Nay, indeed, if you had your eyes, you might fail
of the knowing me.' — Mer. of Ken., II, ii, 79. Again: 'If you saw yourself with
your eyes, or knew yourself with your judgment.' — As You Like It, I, ii, 185.
78. Therefore good Brutus] Craik (p. 151): The eager, impatient temper of
Cassius, absorbed in his own one idea, is vividly expressed by his thus continuing
hb argiiment as if without appearing to have even heard Brutus' interrupting
question; for such is the only interpretation which his 'therefore' would seem to
admit of. — [Craik is doubtless right regarding the impetuous temper of Cassius,
but in the present instance is his interpretation of 'therefore' the only one? does
not 'therefore' here introduce the answer to the foregoing question? Brutus a^:
Why do you ask me to search within myself for something which does not exist?
Cassius replies: Since you yourself cannot, after seeking, find it, therefore be pre-
ACT I. sc. ii.] IVLJVS CtESAR 3 1
And fince you know, you cannot fee your felfe
So well as by Refle6bon; I your Glaffe, 80
Will modeftly difcouer to your felfe
That of your felfe, which you yet know not of.
And be not iealous on me, gentle Brutus 2
Were I a common Laughter, or did vfe
To ftale with ordinary Oathes my loue 85
82. ywt yei] yet you FjF4, Rowc,+, Steev. Van. Sing. i.
Varr. Ran. Cap. 84. Laughter] talker Kinnear (p. 363).
83. on] of Rowe,+, Varr. Mai. Ran. lover Herr (p. 7). laugher Rowc ct seq.
pared to have me tell you *That of yourself, which you yet know not of 0. 82). —
£d.]— ^Mask Hunter: It is plain that Cassius' vehemence, his outspoken envy,
do not and cannot appeal to a person of Brutus' temperament, and that Brutus'
more philosophic doubts can win no S3rmpathy from Cassius. He does not tmder-
stand them. Thus Brutus scarcely seems to hear all that Cassius says to him, and
Cassius attends to nothing that Brutus says save where it seems to coincide with
his own thoughts^
83. on me] For examples of 'on' meaning 0/, see Shakespeare passim.
84. a common Laughter] Ckaik (p. 153): The necessity or propriety of
[Rowe's] change is, perhaps, not so unquestionable as it has been generally thought.
Neither word seems to be perfectly satisfactory. 'Were I a common laughter'
might seem to derive some support from the expression of the same speaker in
IV, iii, 126: 'Hath Cassius lived to be but mirth and laughter to his Brutiis?' —
Heath (p. 435) : Seward, in his notes on Beaumont and Fletcher (Note 10 of the
Faithful Shepherdess) f thinks ['laughter'] 'a stronger word to express a low bufifoon
than laugher. But he seems to have misunderstood the drift of the poet; a low
buffoon, who is conmionly laughed at, is not the idea he intended, but one who,
without regard to friendship or any other consideration, abuses the confidence of
his friends in order to expose them to the laughter of the first company he comes
into. — ^Hudson: 'Laughter' may possibly be right in the sense of laughing-stock.
Some one has proposed 'a conmion lover ^ [see Text. Notes]; and so, I have hardly
any doubt, we ought to read. This would make common emphatic, and give it the
sense of indiscriminate or promiscuous; which quite accords with the context. —
Wright: I do not feel quite certain that the Folio reading may not be correct,
'laughter' being used in the sense of laughing-stock. Whether Cassius were a com-
mon buffoon or a conmion butt, he would be equally imtrustworthy; but he ap-
peals here to what Brutus knows of his habits of speech. — Miss Porter and Miss
Clarke: Rowe's change ... is a misrepresentation of the meaning. Cassius
means to say: 'were I an object of laughter, as a man like Antony is,' his whole
conversation glancing at Antony as standing for all Brutus is opposed to. . . . 'An-
tony,' says Plutarch, 'was laughed at. For he would further every man's love
and . . . not be angry that men should merrily tell him of those he loved.' Cas-
sius says, therefore, that he is not given, like Antony, to 'fawn on men, and hug
them hard, And after scandal them.' — [Murray {N. E. D.) does not apparently
give any example of the use of 'laughter' in the sense of the object laughed at. — Ed.]
85. To stale] Johnson: That is, to invite every new protester to my affection by
the stale or allurement of customary oaths. — Hudson: 'To stale' a thing is to make
32 THE TRAGEDIE OF [act i. sc. ii.
To euery new Protefter : if you know, 86
That I do fawne on men, and hugge them hard,
And after fcandall them : Or if you know.
That I profeffe my felfe in Banquetting
To all the Rout, then hold me dangerous. 90
Flourijhj and Shout.
Bru. What meanes this Showting ?
I do feare, the People choofe Ccsfar
For their King.
CaJJi. I, do you feare it ? 95
Then muft I thinke you would not haue it fo.
Bru. I would not CaffmSj yet I loue him well :
But wherefore do you hold me heere fo long ?
What is it, that you would impart to me ? 99
•
86. Protefter] Ktly here marks an in. Cap. Jen.
omission. 92-95. Whai meanes., .feare U?\ Two
89. my felfe] Om. Ff. lines, ending: People...feareU? Roweet
91. Flourifh, and Shout] Shout with- seq.
it common or stale by indiscriminate use. Compare: 'Out of use and staled by
other men,* IV, i, 43. — [R. G. White accepts Johnson's explanation; but that given
by Hudson seems preferable, and has been generally followed. — Ed.]
88. scandall] Craik (p. 153): We have lost the verb 'scandal' altogether, and
we scarcely use the other form, to scandalizey except in the sense of Hellenistic
skandalizo, to shock, to give offence. Both had formerly also the sense of to defame
or traduce.
91. Flourish, and Shout] Moulton (Sh. as Dram. Art., p. 190): All through
the conversation between Brutus and Cassius the shouting of the mob reminds
of the scene which is at the moment going on in the Capitol, while the conver-
sation is interrupted for a time by the returning procession of Csesar. In this
action behind the scenes, which thus mingles with the main Incident, Caesar
is committing the one fault of his life: this is the fault of 'treason,' which can be
justified only by being successful and so becoming 'revolution,' whereas Cssar is
failing, and deserving to fail from the vacillating hesitation with which he sins.
Moreover, imfavourable as such incidents would be in themselves to our sympathy
with Caesar, yet it is not the actual facts that we are permitted to see, but they are
further distorted by the medium through which they reach us — the cynicism of
Casca which belittles and disparages all he relates.
97. I loue him well] Ferrero (ii, ^12, foot-note): The affection and intimacy
between Caesar and Brutus have been much exaggerated. It must be remem-
bered that from Pharsalia down to Caesar's return from Spain they can only have
been together for quite a short time, during 47 in the East; afterwards Caesar went
to Africa and Brutus spent the whole of 46 as Governor of Cisalpine Gaul. When
Brutus returned to Rome Caesar had already left for Spain.
ACT I, sc. ii.] IVLIVS C^SAR 33
If it be ought toward the generall good, lOO
Set Honor in one eye, and Death i'th other,
And I will looke on both indifferently :
For let the Gods fo fpeed mee, as I loue
The name of Honor, more then I feare death. 104
100. oughi] aught Theob. et seq. 102. both] death Warb. Theob. Han.
loi. i'th] iW F,F4 et seq. Quincy MS.
zoo. If it be ought toward] Craik (p. 154): All that the prosody demands
here is that the word 'toward' be pronounced in two syllables; the accent may be
dther on the first or on the second. 'Toward* when an adjective has, I believe,
always the accent on the first syllable in Shakespeare; but its customary pronuncia-
tion may have been otherwise in his day when it was a preposition, as it is here.
Milton, however, in the few cases in which he does not run the two syllables
into one, always accents the first. And he uses both 'toward* and tcwards. —
Wright: When 'toward' is a preposition I find only the following lines in which
the accent could be placed on the last syllable: 'Toward that shade I might behold
addrest.' — Love's Labour's Lost^ V, ii, 92; 'And sigh'd his soul toward the Grecian
tents.* — Mer, of Ven., V, i, 5; ' Toward Peloponnesus are they come.' — AtU, & Cleo,,
m, X, 31. But even in these lines such an accentuation is not necessary, and, as
it is contrary to Shakespeare's usage and also to analogy, I believe it to be wrong.
100. the generall good] Verity: This is the keynote of the action of Brutus.
He is influenced by 'no personal cause': what he believes to be the 'common good
to all' is his sole motive — as Antony himself allows (V, v, 83, 84).
102. And I ... on both indifferently] Warburton: What a contradiction
to this are the lines inmiediately succeeding! Jf he lov'd Honour more than he
feftr*d Death, how could they be both indifferent to him? Honour thus is but in
equal Balance to Death, which is not speaking at all like Brutus; for, in a soldier
of any ordinary pretension, it should always preponderate. We must certainly
read: 'I will look on Death indifferently.' What occasioned the corruption, I pre-
simie, was the transcriber's margining; the adverb 'indifferently' must be applied
to two things opposed. But the use of the word does not demand it; nor does Shake-
speare always apply it so. In the present passage it signifies negledingly; without
Jear or concern. And so Casta afterwards again in this Act employs it: 'And
dangers are to me indifferent,' i. «., I weigh them not; am not deterred on the score
of danger. — ^Johnson: Warburton has a long note on this occasion, which is very
trifling. When Brutus first names 'honour' and 'death,' he calmly declares them
indifferent; but as the image kindles in his mind, he sets honour above life. Is not
this natural? — ^Upton {Crit, Obs., p. 293): That is, whatever comes in competition
with the general good, will weigh nothing; death and honour are to me things of an
indifferent nature; but, however, I freely acknowledge that, of these indifferent
thingSj^ honour has my greatest esteem, my choice and love; the very name of
honour I love, more than I fear even death. — Heath (p. 435) : I entirely concur
in Warburton's emendation. . . . What appears decisive in this point is the oiusal
particle 'for,' which introduces the two following lines, and the express declaration
which Brutus therein makes of the superior influence which the love of honour
had with him beyond the fear of death. — Capell (i, 97) : Here the editor must play
3
34 THE TRACED IE OF [act i, sc. ii.
[102. And I will looke on both indifferently]
the recanter; and repent him that a reading of his three predecessors had not a place
in his text; for, notwithstanding all the plausible reasons that have been urged for
the old one [by Upton], a more intent examen of the passage at large has con-
vinced him it will not proceed rightly without reading as they do— t^AZ^A for 'both':
'And I will look on death indifferently, or with indifference/ L e,, tmconcem.
The subjoined assertion of Brutus concerning 'honour* contradicts the equality
which the old reading sets up between that and death; and his friend's declaration
that what he had to impart to him, his stores subject ^ was 'honour/ b every whit
as repugnant to the reading of elder copies and of this copy after them. For what
sensible man would urge a topic from 'honour' to one who had just told him
that 'honour' had no weight with him when put in balance with 'good,' the good
of the general. — Coleridge {Notes, p. 132): I prefer the old text. There are here
three things — the public good, the individual Brutus' honour, and his death.
The latter so balanced each other that he could decide for the first by equipoise;
nay, — the thought growing, — that honour had more weight than death. That
Cassius understood it as Warburton is the beauty of Cassius as contrasted with
Brutus. — Ckaik (p. 154): What Brutus means by saying that he will look upon
Death and Honour indifferently, if they present themselves together, is merely
that, for the sake of the honour, he will not mind the death, or the risk of death, by
which it may be accompanied; he will look as fearlessly and steadily upon one as
upon the other. He will think the honour to be cheaply purchased even by the
loss of life; that price will never make him falter or hesitate at clutching such a
prize. He must be understood to set honour above life from the first; that he should
ever have felt otherwise for a moment would have been the height of the imheroic.
— Wright: Warburton ought to have remembered the clause in the prayer for the
Qiurch Militant: 'that they may truly and indifferently administer justice.' —
L. F. MoTT {Mod, Lang, Notes, May, 1897, p. 160): The^diflSculty which both
Johnson and Coleridge have felt seems to have been occasioned by their failure
to perceive that Brutus is here punninyg on the word 'honor,' which means not only
personal integrity, but also high rank, dignity, distinction. In this latter sense we
find it, for example, in the Mer. of Ven.: 'O, that estates, degrees and offices Were
not derived corruptly, and that clear honour Were purchased by the merit of the
wearer! . . . How much low peasantry would then be glean'd From the true seed
of honour! and how much honour Pick'd from the chaff and ruin of the times.' —
n, ix, 142. A score of further examples might be dted, but I content myself with
one from Cymb.: * — of him I gathered honour Which he to seek of me, again per-
force, Behoves me keep at utterance.' — HI, i, 70. According to the interpretation
here advanced, Brutus' meaning might be stated thus: Injxiatters concerning the
public good, I will take indifferently high position or death, for I love my personal
integrity more than I fear death. The probability of this explanation is increased
by the fact that the same play upon the word 'honor' is found in another of Shake-
speare's dramas : 'Meantime receive such welcome at my hand As honour without
breach of honour may Make tender of to thy true worthiness.' — Love*s Labour^s
Lost, ILL, i, 170. I have been unable to find either of these puns upon 'honor' in
Wurth's Worts piel bei Shakspere, — Mare Hunter: Brutus looks at honour and
death together; death has become a necessaiy condition or consequence of honour,
and, since that is so, Brutus loves the one as well as the other; the love of honour
has taken away the fear of death. We may, therefore, paraphrase the whole: If
ACT I, sc. u.] IVLIVS OESAR 35
CaJJi. I know that vertue to be in you Brutus^ 105
As well as I do know ypyr outward fauour.
Well, Honor is the mbie^^of my Story :
I cannot tell, what you and other men
Thinke of this life : But for my iingle felfe,
I had as liefe not be, as Hue to be . no
In awe of fuch a Thing, as I my felfe.
I was borne free as Ccefarj fo were you.
We both haue fed as well, and we can both
Endure the Winters cold, as well^as hee.
^For once, vpon a Rawe and Guftie'jday, 115
The troubled Tyber, chafing with her Shores,
Cafar faide to me, Dar'ft thou CaJJius now
Leape in with me into this angry Flood,
And fwim to yonder Pointf Vpon the word, 1 19
109. jor\ Om. Ff. 11 7-1 19. Dar%,,PoifU?] F£, Rowc,
115-125. Mnemonic Warb. Pope, Warb. As quotation Theob.
116. chafing] chafing FaFj. Johns. Var. '73, Knt, Coll. Dyce, Wh.
her] his Rowe,+t Varr. Ran. Hal. Cam.+, Huds. In Italics Han.
117. /aide] fates FJ*j. Jays F4, ct cct.
Rowc, 4-.
the thing be for the public good, even though it cost me my life, I will do it, for the
cause of honour is more to me than the fear of death.
105. Cassi. I know that vertue, etc.] F. Gentleman (ap. Bell, p. 10):
Tho' this speech of Cassius is unusually and, perhaps, blameably long, yet there is
such an exquisite variety of expression and richness of description that the actor
must be very deficient of capability who does not entertain, if not strike, in it;
however, we think attention would be greatly strengthened, and the actor's powers
much relieved, if a couple of lines were given to Brutus after the words: 'Did I the
tired Oesar,' D. 131). — [The above note, with its patronising suggestion of a dra-
matic improvement, is here given merely to show the attitude of the majority of
the early criticasters and adapters toward Shakespeare. — Ed.]
no. I had ... as Hue to be] Shuckburgh (iv, 244) calls attention to the
similarity of thought in this and the following passage in a letter written by Brutus
to Cicero in B. C. 43, wherein the writer is speaking of Octavius: 'The one and
only thing — ^you say — that is demanded and expected of him is that he consent
to the safety of those citizens, of whom the loyalists and the people have a good
opinion. What? If he doesn't consent, shall we not be safe? And yet it is better not
to be than to be by his favour.' — [The original reads: 'Quid? si nolit, non erimus?
Atqui, non esse, quam esse per ilium praestat.' — ed. LeMaire, iii, 683. — Ed.)
116. her Shores] For the feminine gender as applied to rivers, see note on I, i, 55.
1 1 7-1 19. Dar*st thou ... to yondef Point] M alone: Shakespeare prob-
ably recollected the story which Suetonius has told of Caesar's leaping into the
sea when he was in danger by a boat's being overladen, and swimming to the next
ship with his Commentaries in his left hand. (Holland's Translation, ed. 1606, p.
36 THE TRAGEDIE OF [act i. sc. ii.
Accoutred as I was, I plunged in, 120
And bad him follow : fo indeed he did.
The Torrent roar'd, and we did buffet it
With lufty Sinewes, throwing it afide.
And (lemming it with hearts of ControJierTie.
But ere we could arriue the Point proposed, 125
Cafar cride, Helpe me CaJfttiSy or I fmke.
I ( as yEneaSy our great Anceftor,
Did from the Flames of Troy, vpon his fhoulder
The old Anchffes beare) fo, from the waues of Tyber
Did I the tyred Ccefar : And this Man, 130
Is now become a God, and CaJJius is
120. Accautredl Accounted Ff. 125. ere] e*re F4.
plunged] plungM Dyce. 126. Helpe...finke] Ff, Rowe, P<^,
121. bad] Ff, Rowe, Pope i, Han. Warb. As quotation Theob. Johns.
Cap. bid Pope ii, Theob. Warb. Johns. Var. '73, Knt, Coll. Dyce, Wh. Hal.
Var. '73. bade Var. '78 et seq. Cam.+i Huds. In Italics Han. et cet.
122. we] he Pope ii. 130. tyred] tirid Dyce.
36.) So also ibid., p. 24: 'Were rivers in his way to hinder his passage, crossover
them he would, either swimming, or else bearing himself upon blowed leather
bottles.' — [Plutarch also relates this story of Caesar's swinuning, 'holding diuers
books in his hand,' and if this anecdote be not due to Shakespeare himself, Plutarch
is, I think, more likely than Suetonius to have furnished it. — Ed.]
125. arriue the Point] Steevens quotes as another example of the use of
'arrive' without the preposition: ' — the powers that the queen Hath raised in
Gallia, have arriv'd our coast.' — 3 Hen, VI: V, iii, 8. — ^Abbott (§ 198) also quotes
the above and the present passage as the only two wherein 'arrive' is thus used,
although several others are given wherein the preposition is omitted after a verb of
motion. — Ed.
127. I (as ^neas] Craik (p. 159): This commencement of the sentence,
although necessitating the not strictly grammatical repetition of the first personal
pronoun, is in fine rhetorical accordance with the character of the speaker, and
vividly expresses his eagerness to give prominence to his own part in the adven-
ture. Even the repetition (of which, by the way, we have another instance in
this same speech) assists the effect. At the same time, it may just be noted that
the '/' here is not printed differently from the adverb of affirmation in 'I, and
that tongue of his,' 1. 140.
129. The old ... of Tyber] Craik (p. 160) suggests that the redundant sylla-
bles in this line typify the efforts and emotion of Cassius. [It is, however, to be
remembered that proper nouns, particularly at the end of a line, are not always
strictly metrical. — Ed.] — Delius compares: 'As did Aeneas old Anchises bear,
So bear I thee upon my manly shoulders.' — 2 Hen. VI: V, ii, 62.
130, 131. this Man . . . God] Hudson (Lr/e, etc., ii, 230): [Cassius] over-
flows with mocking comparisons, and finds his pastime in flouting at Caesar as
having managed, by a sham heroism, to hoodwink the world. And yet the Poet
makes Caesar characterize himself very much as Cassius, in his splenetic temper,
ACT I, sc. ii.] IVLIVS CjESAR 37
A wretched Creature, and muft bend his body, 132
If Ccefar caioelefly but nod on him.
He had a F|faiier when he was in Spaine,
And when the Fit was on him, I did marke 135
134. Feauer] Feaher Fa.
describes him. Caesar gods it in his talk, as if on purpose to approve the style
in which Cassius mockingly gods him. This, taken by itself, would look as if the
Poet sided with Cassius; yet one can hardly help feeling that he S3rmpathised rather
in Antony's great oration. And the sequel, as we have seen, justifies Antony's
opinion of Csesar. Thus, it seems to me, the subsequent course of things has the
effect of inverting the mockery of Cassius against himself; as much as to say,
'You have made fine work with your ridding the world of great Oesar: since your
daggers pricked the gas out of him, you see what a grand humbug he was.'
132. Creature] For many examples wherein 'creature' is pronounced as a tri-
syllable, see Walker, Cn/., ii, 19.
134. He had a Feauer, etc.] Voltaire, in a note on this passage in his
translation, says: 'All these incidents which Cassius recounts resemble a discourse
made by a mountebank at a fair. It is natural, yes; but it is the naturalness of a
man of the populace who is conversing with his crony in a pot-house. Not thus
did the great men of the Roman republic talk.' — Theatre de Corneille, ii, 272. [An
efficacious antidote to the virulence of the foregoing is supplied by the following
remarks by Trevelyan on Macauley's attitude towards the Roman dramas of
Shakespeare: 'He knew that what Shakespeare could teach him about human
nature was worth more than anything which he could have taught Shakespeare
about Roman history and Roman institutions. He was well aware how very
scanty a stock of erudition will qualify a transcendent genius to produce admirable
literary effects; and he infinitely preferred Shakespeare's Romans, and even his
Greeks, to the classical heroes of Ben Jonson, and Addison, and Racine, and Cor-
neille, and Voltaire. Of the conversation in the street between Brutus and Cassius,
Act I, sc. ii, Macauley says [in a marginal note]: "These two or three pages are
worth the whole French drama ten times over."' — edition 1908, p. 704. — Ed.] —
T. R. Gould (p. 151): [J. B. Booth's] description of Cassius and Caesar swimming
in the Tiber on that 'raw and gusty day,' and of Caesar's sickness were especially
noteworthy. Booth's vivid portraiture recreated the event. He touched the arm
of Brutus; leaned, but without undue familiarity, upon his shoulder. In the line:
*His coward lips did from their color fly' Cassius, by a subtle reversion of the common
phrase, the color fled from his lips, implies a sarcasm on Caesar's quality as a soldier.
Booth illustrated the meaning by a momentary gesture, as if carrying a standard.
The movement was fine, as giving edge to the sarcasm, but pointed to a redimdancy
of action which sometimes appeared in this great actor's personations.
135. I did marke] Appian says that Caesar appointed Quintus Cassius governor
of Spain on his departure after the Ilerda campaign in B. C. 49 (Bk II, ch. vi, § 43),
and, according to Shuckburgh (iii, 173), on Caesar's second invasion of Spain Caius
Cassius refused to accompany him, and spent that winter, B. C. 45, at Bnmdisium.
Plutarch does not refer to an attack of fever in his account of Caesar in Spain; he
says, however, that it was at Corduba that Caesar had the falling sickness. TheV^
present incident is, therefore, an invention of Shakespeare. — Ed. ^ ^
\
38 THE TR AG ED IE OF [act i. sc. ii.
How he dia fhake : Tis true, this God did (hake, 136
His Coward Hopes did from their colour flye,
And that fame JEye. whofe bend doth awe the World,
Did l^Ie his iJurtre : I did heare him gronej
I, and that Tongue of his, that bad the Romans 140
Marke him, and write his Speeches in their Bookes,
Alas, h c/ied, Giue me fome drinke TitiniuSy\
As a ficke Girle : Ye Gods, it doth amaze me,
A man of fuch a feeble temper fhould
So get the ftart of the Maiefticke world, 145
138. hend\ beam Daniel (Sh. Notes, 141. wrUe] writ F^F^.
p. 70). 142. Alas] ^Alasl* Sta.
139. kis] its Pope,+, Cap. Giue.„T\tim\i&] Ff, Rowe, Pope,
140. hai\ hade Theob. ii,+» Varr. Warb. As quotation Theob. Johns.
Mai. Ran. Steev. Varr. Sing. Knt, Coll. Var. '73, Knt, Coll. Dyce, Wh. Hal.
Dyce, Wh. i. Cam.+) Huds. In Italics Han. et cet.
•
137. lippes did . . . flye] Warbukton: A plain man would have said the
colour fled from his lips, and not his lips from their colour. But the false impression
was for the sake of as false a piece of wit: a poor quibble, alluding to a coward
flying from his colours. — Whites (p. 107) : Warburton has discovered the associa-
tion which had escaped the author; who, indeed, intended no quibble, but was him-
self entangled by the similitude of colour and ' colours.' This introduced to him the
appropriate terms of 'coward' and 'fly'; and thus, under the influence of such an
embarrassment, it was scarcely possible to express the sentiment in a form less
equivocal than the present. Let me add likewise another circumstance, which
might operate in suggesting this military metaphor, that the cowardice of a soldier
is the subject of the narrative. — Wright quotes Warburton's note and adds:
'No doubt; but Shakespeare does not always say what a plain man would have
said.'
138. bend] Murray (N, E, D., s. v. sb^. I. 3) quotes the present line as the
only example of 'bend' in the sense of 'an inclination of the eye in any direction,
glance.' — Scmcnxr (Lex.) furnishes several examples of the verb 'to bend* as ap-
plied to the act of looking.
139. his Lustre] For a philological account of the use of the personal possessive
pronoun 'his' in place of the neuter pronotm, see Murray, N. E, 27., 5. v. Its.
139. I did heare him grone] Mark Hunter: Cassius shows himself want-
ing in tact, or true judgment of character, in addressing such arguments as these
to a man of Brutus' disposition and philosophy. Brutus was the last man 'to
spurn at' Caesar for shivering and turning pale when a fever was on him. But
Cassius has no craft or cunning, save such as suggests the simple artifice of throwing
papers in different hands through Brutus' windows. He influences others only by
the energy and earnestness of his character.
145- get the start, etc.] Warburton: This image is extremely noble: it is taken
from the Ol3rmpic games. 'The majestic world ' is a fine periphrasis for the Roman
empire: their citizens set themselves on a footing with kings, and they called their
dominion Orbis Romanus. But the particular allusion seems to be to the known
ACT I. sc. ii.] IVLIVS C^SAR 39
And beare the Palme alone. 146
Shout. Flaurijh.
Bru. Another generall (hout ?
I do beleeue, that thefe applaufes are
For fome new Honors, that are heapM on Ca/ar. 150
Caffi. Why man, he doth beftride the narrow world
Like a Coloffus, and we petty men
Waike vnder his huge legges,and peepe about
To finde our felues difhonourable Graues.
Men at fometime, are Mafters of their Fates. 155
The fault (deere Brutus J is not in our Starres,
But in our Selues, that we are vnderlings. 157
147. Shout. Flouriih] Shout again. Pope,+ {sometimes Warb.). Jome
Capell. Shout. Jen. time F,F4, Var. '73 et cet.
151-171. Mnemonic Pope, Warb. 155. Fates,] fates: Rowe et seq.
155. fometime] Fa. fome times Rowe,
story of Caesar's great pattern, Alexander, who, being asked whether he would
run the course at the Olympic games, replied: 'Yes, if the racers were kings.' —
M alone: That the allusion is to the prize allotted in games to the foremost in the
race is very clear. All the rest existed, I apprehend, only in Warburton's imagina-
tion.— [To Coleridge we are indebted for the happy and veracious phrase: *the
idealess, but thought-swarming Warburton.' — Ed.]
148. Another . . . shout] J. Hxtnter: This henustich and the one preceding
do not together form the usual metrical line; it is, as it were, regardless of the
former, and represents the interruption occasioned by the shouting.
151. man] Wright: Cassius grows more familiar as Brutus is more moved.
151. he doth bestride, etc.] Ferrero (ii, 306): One of the greatest mistakes
made by all historians of Cesar is the assertion that after Pharsalia and Thapsus he
was practically omnipotent, sole master of the republic and of the Roman world.
In truth, he was nothing of the kind. Sulla had saved the whole Empire from
imminent destruction and rescued an entire class of citizens from political extinc-
tion. Csesar had not emerged triumphant from a revolution; he had merely
happened to win in a civil war brought about in a peaceful and peace-loving country
through the rivalry of two political cliques. He had neither the prestige to inspire
one-tenth of the terror or admiration of Sulla, nor an army on whose fidelity he could
rely, nor a body of supporters united in their aims and ideals. On the contrary, dis-
cord was making way among his adherents and the solid block of his party showed
new fissures every day. Antony himself had refused to obey him in paying for
Pompey's goods which he had bought by auction, and was spreading threats and
invectives against his leader broadcast through Rome. It was even whbpered that
he had made attempts to hire an assassin.
156) 157* The fault ... we are vnderlings] J. M. Brown (p. 69): It is
one of the most striking facts about these great tragedies that their writer should
have taken so little trouble to make their merits and their authorship known.
Once only does he struggle against this paralysis that is creeping over his hold of
the prizes of exbtence. And the feebleness of the effort is apparent when we see
40 THE TRAGEDIE OF [act i, sc. ii.
Brutus and Cafar : What fliould be in that Cafar'^ 158
Why fhould that name be founded niore then yours ?
Write them together 2 Yours, is as faire a Name; 160
Sound them, it doth become the mouth afwell :
Weigh them, it is as heauy : Coniure with 'em,
Brutus will ftart a Spirit as foone as Ca/ar.
Now in the names of all the Grods at once,
Vpon what meate doth this our Cafar feede, 165
That he is growne fo great ? Age, thou art fhamM.
Rome, thou haft loft the breed of Noble Bloods.
When went there by an Age, fince the great Flood,
But it was fam'd with more then with one man ?
When could they fay (till now) that talkM of Rome, 170
That her wide Walkes incompaft but one man ?
158. Csefar:] Cassar. Rowe. Caesar I 163. [Shout. Jen. Mai. Steev. Varr.
Pope,+, Huds. Sing. Knt.
160. YourSt is] yours* Walker (Vers. 171. Walkes] Ff, Rowe i, Mai. Steev.
98). Varr. Sing, i, Huds. Walls Rowe ii
161. a/well] as well Ff. et cet.
162. wUh *em] with *em many ¥^¥4, incompaft] incompass*d Theob.
with them Cap. Var. Mai. Ran. Steev. et seq.
Varr. Sing. Knt, Coll. Hal. Ktly, Huds. one man?] one? Fj.
that he puts a sentiment into the mouth of Cassius as an argument to stir Brutus
up to conspiracy: 'The fault, dear Brutus/ etc. There is no heart in this utter-
ance. AU his poetry, all his imagination is on the side of fatalism; he feels that the
reward of human honour and glory and fame are not worth the infinite toil and
struggle, the pettiness and injustice that men apply in order to attain them.
158. V^at should be] That is, what might therej or what could there, be; see, if
needful, Abbott, § 325.
158. V\^hat should be . . . Caesar] Boas (p. 462) : Such an argiunent is an
unconscious reductio ad absurdum of Cassius' own theory, and it is needless to say
that, from a historical point of view, this decidedly primitive conception of de-
mocracy is curiously inapt on the lips of a Roman of the first century B. C. With
Cassius' passionate conviction of the divine rig^t of republicanism, he sees in
Caesar's ascendancy nothing but a proof of the degeneracy of the times.
163. Spirit] R. G. White: Here 'spirit 'is doubtless meant to be pronoimced as a
monosyllable, and perhaps should be so printed.
163. as soone as Caesar] Jennens: It is said [1. 246] that the people shouted
thrice; but we have no direction in any edition for any more than two shouts.
This seems the most proper place for the third shout, which I look upon to be the
occasion of the sudden apostrophe: * Now in the name,' etc.
168. the great Flood] That of Deucalion and Pyrrha; Wright compares:
'Marcus is proud; who, in a cheap estimation, is worth all your predecessors since
Deucalion.' Coriol.y H, i^ 102.
171. V^^alkes] Craik (p. 172): Despite the critical canon which warns us
against easy or obvious amendments, it is impossible not to believe that we have a
ACT I, sc. ii.] IVLIVS CJESAR 41
Now is it Rome indeed, and Roome enough 172
misprint here, [see Text. Notes], What Rome's 'wide walks' may mean is not
obvious; still less, how she coiild be encompassed by her 'walks/ however wide. —
Staunton: The original 'wide walkes/ ». e., spacious bounds, ought not to be dis-
placed. 'It happened therefore in rogation weeke that the clergie going in solemne
procession a controversie fell betweene them about certeine walkes and limits which
the one side claimed and the other denied.' — ^Holinshed: Description of Britaine,
p. 57. — ^Wright [referring to Staunton's note]: It is more probable that Walles
was corrupted into 'Walkes' by the transcriber or printer from 'talk'd' in the
previous line; for it is not likely that Shakespeare would have used a word which
produced such a disagreeable assonance, while on other grounds it is inappropriate.
Milton could say with reference to the garden of Eden: 'But if within the circuit
of these walks In whatsoever shape he lurk,' Paradise Lost, iv, 586; for walks in
this sense are proper to a pleasure ground; but they are out of place in a description
of Rome, and the word 'encompass'd,' which follows, points to itniUs as the true
reading. — Pesbing (p. 355): On a question of euphony not every ear will hear
alike. All I can say is, that, if these lines jar, there are scores of jarring lines to be
found in Shakespeare. We will grant that waUs woiild in all probability have been
preferred by a prose writer; but 'walks,' which is the rarer word, strikes me as of
more exquisite fancy, more picturesque and poetical, true topographically, and
even more appropriate here, because it admits of a more comprehensive span. For
the walls of Rome did not include all the inhabitants of Rome; there were plenty
of habitations outside as well as inside the old Servian ramparts; but the 'circuit
of the walks' (to introduce Milton's significant phrase) — the outlying pleasure
grounds which environed the metropolis; the vast ring of groves and parks and
gardens in which the citizens were wont to walk abroad and refresh themselves —
these contained within their compass all the inhabitants of Rome, and to insinuate
that but one man could be found within them was monstrous, startling, invidious.
There is an allusion in this very play to a portion of these 'walks' — those which
Oesar bequeathed to the Roman people — ' Moreover, he hath left you all his walks,'
m, ii, 258. . . . 'Walks' is entitled to the place on the ground that it is supported
by the Folios, besides having distinct claims of its own to recommend it. Walls
reads to me poor and tame in comparison with it.
172. Rome . . . and Roome] Dyce (Gloss, , s. v. Rome) quotes: 'That I
have room with Rome to curse a while,' King John^ III, i, 180, and besides the
present passage, two others in which occurs the same play on the words, namely.
The Tragedie of Nero, 1607, sig. F verso; and Hawkins' ApoUo Shroving, 1626, p. 88.
He also gives an example from Sylvester's Du B arias. The Colonies, p. 130, ed.
1641, wherein Rome is made to rhyme with tomb. In regard to a passage in 3 Hen.
VI: 'Rome shall remedy this. Roam thither then,' — ^IH, i, 51, Dyce says (ad. loc.) :
'This may, perhaps, be considered as one of the proofs that Shakespeare was not
the author of this play.* — Elus (pt iii, p. 925), after quoting the foregoing remarks
by Dyce, adds: 'But the existence of the pun shows that the old Chaucerian {00)
of Roome was still known though the final e was dropped. ... To these [ex-
amples given by Dyce] we may add Shakespeare's own rhymes: Rome, doom,
Lucrece, 715; Rome, groom, lb., 1644. Bullokar also writes (Ruum). It is, how-
ever, certain that both pronunciations have been in use since the middle of the
sixteenth century. Ruum may still be heard [1867], but it is antiquated; in Shake-
speare's time it was a fineness and an innovation, and it is therefore surprising that
42 THE TRACED IE OF [act i. sc. ii.
When there is in it but one onely man. 173
O! you and I, haue heard our Fathers fay,
There was a Brutus once, that would haue brook'd
Th'etemall Diuell to keepe his State in Rome, 176
173. When..,man,] In margin Pope, 176. etemall] infernal Grey (ii, 172),
Han. Johns, conj.
Bullokar adopted it.' — Earle (p. 148): No doubt [the pronunciation of Rome as
Room] is the phantom of an old French pronunciation of the name, bearing the same
relation to the French R&me that boon does to the French bon. But what is odd
about it is that in Shakespeare's day the modem pronunciation Qike roam) was
abready heard and recognised, and that the double pronunciation should have gone
on till now, and it should have taken such a time to establish the mastery of the
latter. The fact probably is that the room pronunciation has been kept alive in the
aristocratic region, while the rest of the world has been saying the name as it is
generally said now. Room is said to have been the habitual pronunciation of the
late Lord Lansdowne; not to instance living persons. — ^Wright adds to the fore-
going examples from Lucrecty 1. 1851, and says: 'A similar equivoque is found
in Mer. of Ven., Ill, v, 44 : '' It is much that the Moor should be more than reason.'' '
[See also note by Walker, I, i, 42.]
iTS'i??* There was a Brutus ... as a King] Staffer (p. 344): Here
begins the tragedy in the soiil of Brutus. He hated tyranny, but he loved Cssar.
Shakespeare has passed Plutarch's hint over in silence as to Brutus being Caesar's
own son, not considering any complication of emotion of this kind necessary to
the dramatic interest, and wishing to preserve the tragedy in purer and more
ideal regions by not allowing the conscience of his hero to be disturbed by the
too obtrusive pleadings of a love enforced by the ties of nature.
175. a Brutus once] Steevens: That b, Lucius Junius Brutus.
176. etemall Diuell] Grey (ii, 172) conjectures that we should here read
infernal devil; Johnson likewise makes this suggestion. — Steevens: I would con-
tinue to read 'eternal devil.' L. J. Brutus (says Cassius) woiild as soon have sub-
mitted to the perpetual dominion of a damon, as to the lasting government of a
king. — ^Walker (Cril,, i, 62) : The following [is an instance] of an inaccurate use
of words in Shakespeare, some of them owing to his imperfect scholarship (imper-
fect, I say, for he was not an ignorant man even in this point), and others common
to him with his contemporaries. 'Eternal' for in/^'na/; ' But this eternal blazon
must not be' — Hamlet, I, v, 21; 'Some eternal villain. Some busy and insinuating
rogue' — OthdlOf IV, ii, 130. And this, I think, is its meaning, * — O proud Death!
What feast is toward in thine eternal cell' — Hamlet , V, ii, 375. * [Walker also quotes
the present line in Jul, Ctts,] This seems to be still in use among the common
people. In two tales of Allan Cunningham's (OUier's Miscellany and London
Magazine) I observe the exclamation, 'Eternal villain!' I need scarcely notice
the Yankee Harnal. — ^Wright: Johnson is undoubtedly right. In truth, Shake-
speare uses 'eternal' without the least intention of expressing his belief in the
continued existence of the impersonation of evil, but probably to avoid coming
under the operation of the Act of James I, 'to restrain the abuses of players'
in the use of profane language. ... On the other hand, infernal occurs in Muck
Ado, 2 Hen, IV , and Tit. And., all of which were printed in 1600. — Mark Hunter:
Though an alteration may have been made in the MS after the passing of the
ACT I, sc. u.] IVLIVS C^SAR 43
As eafily as a King. 177
Bru. That you do loue me, I am nothing iealous :
What you would worke me too, I haue fome ayme :
How I haue thought of this, and of thefe times 180
I fhall recount heereafter. For this prefent,
I would not fo (with loue I might intreat you)
Be any further moouM : What you haue faid,
I will confider : what you haue to fay
I will with patience heare, and finde a time 185
Both meete to heare, and anfwer fuch high things.
Till then, my Noble Friend, chew vpon this :
Brutus had rather be a Villager,
Then to repute himfelfe a Sonne of Rome
Vnder thefe hard Conditions, as this time 190
Is like to lay vpon vs.
Cajft. I am glad that my weake words
Haue ftrucke but thus much fhew of fire from Brutus.
Enter Ccefar and his Traine.
Bm. The Games are done, 195
And Cafar is returning.
Caffi, As they paffe by,
Plucke Caska by the Sleeue,
And he will (after his fowre fafhion) tell you
What hath proceeded worthy note to day. 200
179. aym^ aim of Ktly conj. (£zp. 192, 193. / am,..from Brutus] Lines
p. 307). end: glad...Jhew...BTUtus Walker (Crit.
180. thought] though Fa. ili, 244).
186. Both] But Rowe ii. 193. Scene iv, Pope,+ ( — ^Var. '73),
things] thing Rowe i. Jen.
187-191. Till then.,.vpon vs] Trans- 194. £nter...Traine] After 1. 196 Coll.
posed to follow 1. 330 in Bell's Edit. Sing. Wh. i, Hal. Ktly, Huds. After 1.
190. thefe] such Rowe,+, Cap. Jen. 200 Dyce, Sta. Cam.H-.
Varr. Ran. those Craik conj.
Act of 1605, it is difficult to conceive why, if it be not an * abuse in players ' to
speak of the devil, it should be an abuse to style him infernal.
178. nothing iealous] Schmidt (Lex.) gives numerous examples of 'nothing'
used adverbially, in the sense of not at all. And s. v., 'Jealous (3): suspiciously
fearful, doubtful.' Schmidt quotes the present line with other passages, wherein
'jealous' is used with much the same meaning as here.
187. chew vpon this] Johnson: That is, consider this at leisure, ruminate on this.
193. Haue stnicke . . . fire] Wright: Brutus' emotion was like Ajax's
wit, of which Thersites says: *It lies as coldly in him as fire in a flint' — Tro. fir
Cress,, m, iii, 257. Compare IV, iii, 122, 123.
44 THE TRACE DIE OF [act i, sc. ii.
Bru. I will do fo : but looke you CaJJius ^ 20 1
The angry fpot doth glow on Ccs/ars brow,
And all the reft, looke like a chidden Traine ;
Ccdphumiafs Cheeke is pale, and Cicero
Lookes with fuch Ferret, and fuch fiery eyes ] 205
As we haue feene him in the CapitoU
Being croft in Conference, by fome Senators.
Caffi. Caska will tell vs what the matter is.
C(Bf. Antonio.
Ant, Ca/ar. 2iO
202. glow] hlaw Fa. blow ¥^¥4, 207. by] with Rowe, Pope, Han.
Rowe i. Senaiars] Senator Walker (Crit.
204. Calphumia's] Calpumia's Wh. i, 244), Dyce ii, iii.
Cam.+, Rolfe. 209. Antonio] Ff, Rowe, Cap. Ktly.
207. croft] crossed Cap. et seq. Antonius Pope et cet.
Conference] confrence Pope,+ 210. Csfar.] Caesar? Theob. Warb.
( — Var. '73). Johns.
204. Cicero] Wright: This portrait of Cicero is from Shakespeare's own
imagination. — [Dion Cassius, in a speech purporting to have been delivered by
Cicero before the Senate, gives many reasons for the orator's anger on this occa-
sion, and among others: 'The Lupercalia woiild not have missed its proper rever-
ence, but you [Antony] disgraced the whole city at once, — not to speak a word yet
about your remarks on that occasion. Who b unaware that the consulship is
public, the property of the whole people, that its dignity must be preserved every-
where, and that its holder must nowhere strip naked or behave wantonly. . . •
You remember the nature of his language when he approached the rostra, and the
style of his behavior when he had ascended it. But when a man who is a Roman
and a consul has dared to name any one King of the Romans in the Roman Forum,
close to the rostra of liberty, in the presence of the entire people and the entire
senate, and straightway to set the diadem upon his head and further to affirm
falsely in the hearing of us all that we ourselves bade him say and do this, what
most outrageous deed will that man not dare, and from what action, however
revolting, will he refrain?' — Bk xlv, §§ 30, 31.]
205. Ferret . . . fiery eyes] Topsell, in his description of the Ferret, says:
'The eyes small but fiery, like red-hot iron, and therefore she seeth most easily in
the dark.' — p. 171. — Ed.
207. Senators] Walker (Crit., i, 244) : The interpolation of an s at the end of
a word — generally but not always a noun substantive — is remarkably frequent in
the Folio. Those who are conversant with the MSS of the Elizabethan Age may,
perhaps, be able to explain its origin. Were it not for the different degree of fre-
quency with which it occurs in different parts of the Folio — being comparatively
rare in the Comedies (except perhaps in The Winter* s Tale), appearing more fre-
quently in the Histories, and becoming quite conmion in the Tragedies — I should
be inclined to think it originated in some peciiliarity of Shakespeare's handwriting
[See also Rich, III: III, vii, 232; and Macbeth, III, i, 81, this ed., where the above
note by Walker is also given, and is here repeated on account of its interest and
importance. — Ed.]
ACT I. sc. ii.] IVLIVS C^SAR 45
Caf. Let me haue men about me, that are fat, 211
Sleeke-headed men, and fuch as fleepe a-nights :
Yond CaJJius has a leane and hungry looke.
He thinkes too much : fuch men are dangerous.
Ant. Feare him not Ccefar^ he's not dangerous, 215
He is a Noble Roman, and well giuen.
Ccb/. Would he were fatter ; But I feare him not : 217
21X-231. Mnemonic Warb. Yond^ Mai. Steev. Varr. Sing. Knt,
211. [To Ant. apart. Johns. Var. '73, Coll. Wh. i, Ktly, Hal. Huds.
Jen. 214, 215. danger o%ks\ daungerous Fa.
212. a-nights] F,, Rowe,+. a nights 217. Would] Would Warb. Johns.
FjF4. o*nights Cap. et seq. Cap. Varr. Msil. Ran. Steev. Varr. Sing.
213. Yondl Yon Cap. Varr. Ran. Knt, Coll. Wh. i, Hal. Ktly, Huds.
31 X. men . . . that are fat] 'Caesar also had Cassius in great jealousy, and
suspected him much; whereupon he said on a time to his friends, ''What will
Cassius do, think ye? I like not his pale looks.'' Another time when Caesar's
friends complained unto him of Antonius and Dolabella, that they pretended some
mischief towards him: he answered them again, "As for those fat men and smooth-
combed heads," quoth he, "I never reckon of them; but these pale-visaged and
carrion-lean people, I fear them most," meaning Brutus and Cassius. ' — Plutarch,
> Casar, p. 97, ed. Skeat. See also Ibid., Brutus, p. 1 1 1 ; and Marcus Antonius^ p. 163.
212. such as sleepe a-nights] DrSiGiSMOND(/a/rr&iM:A, xviii, p. 157): In the
Life of Marcus Cato it is said that those slaves who had had a good night's sleep
were more to Cato's liking than those who were dull from wakefulness, because he
thought the former would be in a better humor. The import of sound sleep as an
indication of a good disposition, of which Shakespeare's Caesar makes mention, does
not appear either in the Life of C<isar or Antony; it is found only in the Life of Cato.
216. well giuen] Bradley (N. E. D., s. v., given 2): Used predicatively:
Inclined, disposed, addicted, prone. 1535. Stewart: Cron, Scot., II, 692: 'How
Duncane was crounit King of Scotland and was weill gevin.'
217. W^ould he . . . feare him not] Warburton: Ben Jonson, in his Bar-
tholomews Fair, 1614, unjustly sneers at this passage, in Knockham's speech to
the Pig- woman: 'Come, there's no malice in these fat folks; I never fear thee, an I
can scape thy lean Moon-calf here.' [Page 412, ed. Gifford, where the Editor has
the following: 'This passage is adduced as another proof of Jonson 's malignity,
it being an evident sneer at those lines in Julius C<isar: "Let me have men," etc.
Who can doubt it? And when he personified Envy in the lean Macilente, it is
equally clear that he intended to ridicule those which immediately follow them:
" Yon Cassius hath a lean and hungry look," etc. It may, indeed, be urged that
Macilente appeared many years before Julius Casar; but that plea is always in-
validated in Jonson's case. Seriously, it would seem as if the commentators
thought no one before Shakespeare had discovered that fat people were com-
monly good humoured I Admitting, however, this important observation to be
beyond the reach of Jonson (though it is found in his Catiline and elsewhere),
it wiU not even then follow that he sneers at our great poet in adopting it. The
fact is, that the lines in question are taken from North's translation of Plutarch, an
author with whom Jonson was intimately acquainted, and assuredly little likely
46 THE TRACED IE OF [act i, sc. ii.
Yet if my name were lyable to feare, 218
I do not know the man I ftiould auoyd
So foone as that fpare Cajffius. He reades much, 220
He is a great Obferuer, and he lookes
Quite through the Deeds of men. He loues no Playes,
As thou doft Antony : he heares no Muficke ;
Seldome he fmiles, and fmiles in fuch a fort
As if he mockM himfelfe, and fcom'd his fpirit 225
That could be mou'd to fmile at any thing.
Such men as he, be neuer at hearts eafe, 227
218-231. Mnemonic Pope. 226. thing.] things FsF4.
to ridicule. Shakespeare has merely put the sentiment (which was familiar to
every man, woman, and child in the kingdom) into good verse [the passage from
Plutarch quoted]. We shall probably now hear no more of " old Ben's malignity "
in this instance.']
218. my name ... to feare] Craik (p. 177): In the case of Oesar the name
was even more than the representative and most precise expression of the person;
it was that in which his power chiefly resided, his renown. Every reader of Milton
will remember the magnificent passage: ' — with him enthroned Sat sable-vested
Night, eldest of things, The consort of his reign; and by them stood Oicus and
Ades, and the dreaded name Of Demogorgon.' — Paradise Lost, ii, 964. — ^Wright
quotes the foregoing and adds: ' But in this case it was the *' name '' of Demogorgon
that was dreaded, and, therefore, the ''name of Demorgogon" b something more
than a mere periphrasis.'
220-226. He reades ... at any thing] OECHELHAt^SER {EinfUkrungen^ i,
221) : The key to the correct representation of the character of Cassius lies in these
words of Caesar; they give to the actor the frame for the dramatic picture, with
which all his future words and deeds should harmonise.
221. a great Obsenier] Wright: In consistency with this, Cassius describes
himself as having carefiilly watched the bearing of Brutus towards himself.
223. he heares no Musicke] Theobald: This is not a trivial Observation, nor
does our Poet mean barely by it that Cassius was not a merry, sprightly man;
but that he had not a due Temperament of Harmony in his Composition; and
that, therefore. Natures so uncorrected are dangerous. He has finely dilated on
this Sentiment in his Merchant of Venice: 'The man, that hath no music in him-
self, And is not mov'd with concord of sweet sounds, Is fit for treasons, stratagems,
and Spoils,' V, i, 83-85. — Coleridge {Notes, p. 132): O Theobaldl what a com-
mentator wast thou, when thou woiildst affect to understand Shakespeare, instead
of contenting thyself with collating the text! The meaning here is too deep for a
line tenfold the length of thine to fathom. [At the risk of being thought presump-
tuous in criticising our greatest Shakespearean critic it may be asked, whether
the above is not too severe? All that Theobald has said is little more than a
paraphrase; and that there is a somewhat similar passage in the Mer, of Ven.
Possibly the malign influence of Pope and his followers was the cause for Coleridge's
attitude towards Theobald. It will, however, be noticed that Coleridge has not
attempted any elucidation whatever. — Ed.]
ACT I. sc. ii.] IVLIVS CjESAR 47
Whiles they behold a greater than themfelues, 228
And therefore are they very dangerous.
I rather tell thee what is to be feared, 230
Then what I feare : for alwayes I am Cafar.
Come on my right hand, for this eare is deafe,
And tell me truely, what thou think'ft of him. Sennit.
Exeunt Cafar and his Traine,
Cask. You puPd me by the cloake, would you fpeake 235
with me ?
22%, WkUes] Whilst 'Rovrt,-\-, Casca. Han. Jen. Train: Casca stays.'
233. Sennit.] Ff. Sennet. Sing, ii, Cap. Train: Casca stays behind.
Cam.+. Om. Rowe et cet. Mai. et cet.
234. Traine.] Ff. Train. Manent 235. cloake^] doak. Johns.
Brutus and Cassius: Casca to them. 236. Scene v. Pope,+ ( — Var. '73),
Theob. Warb. Johns. Varr. Ran. Jen.
Train. Manent Brutus, Cassius and
232. this eare is deafe] Wright: This, like Cicero's ferret eyes, is a touch of
Shakespeare's own. — Rossi (p. 174) : Does Caesar here pretend an actual deafness?
Certainly not. It seems to me that what he really means to say is: If you are of my
party and wish to be attended to, get on the right side of me. — Schwartzkopf (p.
315) : Caesar's deafness is not only an attribute of human frailty, but also a symbol
of that obstinacy which is deaf to all warnings; it does not wish to hear. — G.
Wherry {Notes 6* Queries ^ X, xi, 243) says in regard to Caesar's deafness: 'It is
possible that attacks of giddiness, associated with M€nidre's disease of the ear, may
have been mistaken for Epilepsy. ... It is unlikely that aural vertigo was under-
stood at that time.' — [As Wright observes, Caesar's deafness is an 'invention of
Shakespeare'; no other reference, however, to this deafness is again made. Is
there not some special reason for its mention? Does not Casca say that Caesar is
but lately recovered from an epileptic fit? A temporary deafness was recognized
in Shakespeare's day as one of the effects of an epileptic seizure: 'But we may
know whether it [an epileptic fit] come from the right or left side of the head most:
By this, either the sight of one eye is more obscured, or the hearing more thick
with the noise of the head on that side; or if the right or left side be more dull'
(Riverius, 1658, vol. i, p. 30). Hippocrates (trans. F. Adams, ii, 836) also speaks of
epilepsy affecting the right or left side; although he does not mention the auditory
nerves specifically, it may be, I think, inferred that they are also included. Finally,
in our own day, £. H. Sieveking {On Epilepsy, etc., 1858, p. 4) says: 'It has ap-
peared to me that the left side is the one most frequently affected.' — ^The italics are
mine. Shakespeare is again triumphant and stands pre-eminent as a keen ob-
server of facts; it is the left ear which, with Caesar, is temporarily deaf. — Ed.]
234. Exeunt Caesar] Hazlitt {Char, of Sh., p. 37): We know hardly any pas-
sage more expressive of the genius of Shakespeare than this [lines 195-234]. It
is as if he had been actually present, had known the different characters, and what
they thought of one another, and had taken down what he heard and saw, their
looks, words, and gestures, just as they happened.
48 THE TRACED IE OF [act i, sc. ii.
Bru. I Caska^Xs^ vs what hath chanc'd to day 237
That Ccefar lookes fo fad.
Cask. Why you were with him, were you not ?
Bru. I fhould not then aske Caska what had chanc'd. 240
Cask. Why there was a Crowne offered him; & being
offered him, he put it by with the backe of his hand thus,
and then the people fell a fhouting.
Bru. What was the fecond noife for ?
Cask. Why for that too. 245
CaJJi. They fhouted thrice: what was the laft cry for?
Cask. Why for that too.
Bru. Was the Crowne offered him thrice ?
Cask. I marry was't, and hee put it by thrice, euerie
time gentler then other; and at euery putting by, mine 250
honeft Neighbors fhowted.
CaJJi. Who offered him the Crowne ?
Cask. Why Antony.
Bru. Tell vs the manner of it,gentle Caska.
Caska. I can as well bee hanged as tell the manner of 255
240. Aarf] kaih Steev. Varr. Sing. Varr. Mai. Ran. Steev. Var. '03, Var.
CoU. Hal. ttuds. '21, Sing. Knt, Hal. Ktly, Huds.
243. a Jhouling] a' shouting Cap. <i-shouting Dyce, Cam.+) CoU. iii.
237. hath chanc'd] Compare: 'And bring us word . . . How everything is
chanc'd.' — ^V, iv, 36.
251. honest Neighbors] Wright: Casca uses the word 'honest' with a tone
of patronising contempt, as Leonato in Much AdOy addressing Dogberry: 'What
would you with me, honest neighbor?* — ^IH, v, i.
255. Caska. I can as well, etc.] Mrs Montagu (p. 256): It is not im-
probable the poet might have in his eye some person of eminence in his days who
was distinguished by such manners [as Casca's]. Many allusions and imitations
which please at the time are lost to posterity, unless they point at transactions
and persons of the first consequence. Whether we approve such a character on
the stage or not, we must allow his narration represents the designs of Caesar's
party, and the aversion of the Roman people to that royalty which he affected;
and it was right to avoid engaging the parties in more deep discourse, as Shake-
speare intended, by a sort of historical process, to show how Brutus was led on to
that act to which his nature was averse. — Verity (p. 21 i) : It is always instructive
to note how in parts where a conversational, not tragic or poetical, effect is desired,
verse gives place to prose, and vice versa; and how characters which are viewed in a
wholly tragic or poetical light normally use verse alone. Thus in this scene,
while Casca gives his description in prose, Brutus and Cassius make their com-
ments and questions in verse; and Casca himself speaks entirely in verse at his
next appearance, where the interest is purely tragic, and his own inner character
is revealed under stress of the agitation roused by the storm.
\
ACT I. sc. ii.] IVLIVS CjESAR 49
it : It was meere Foolerie, I did not marke it. I fawe 256
Marke Antony offer him a Crowne, yet 'twas not a
Crowne neyther, 'twas one of thefe Coronets : and as I
told you, hee put it by once : but for all that, to my thin-
king, he would faine haue had it. Then hee offered it to 260
him again : then hee put it by againe : but to my think-
ing, he was very loath to lay his fingers off it. And then
he offered it the third time ; hee put it the third time by, 263
256. was\ weft Ff. 262. loaiWi loth Pope,+, Cap. Varr.
Mai. Knt, Dyce, Wh. i, Huds.
^55) 256. manner of it] Deuus: Brutus uses 'manner' in the sense of way y fash-
tony but Casca, in that of proper deportmerUy polUenesSy in contrast to the following
phrase, 'mere foolery/ — [Wright thinks there is no evidence of an equivocal
use of the word 'manner' by Casca; but I am inclined to agree with Delius that
there is a double meaning, though not quite in the way in which Delius takes it.
Bradley {N, E. D,y s. v., manner 2.) thus defines the phrase: *The manner of:
the state of the case with respect to (a person, thing, or event) ; the character, dis-
position, or nature of.' Brutus asks how the offering of the crown was done,
but Casca pretends to misunderstand, and says that he can as well be hanged
as tell what were Caesar's and Antony's actual dispositions in the affair; he goes on
to say that he paid but little attention, as it was mere foolery, that is, he thought
that neither of them were really serious. Without some such explanation of
Casca's use of the word 'manner,' is not his assertion that he coiild not tell what
had actually occurred contradicted by the circumstantial account which follows?
'Manner' b used, perhaps, in this same sense by Jonson, Every Man Out of His
Humour y where Sogliardo, in attempting to describe the customary meeting of
Puntarvolo and his wife, says finally: 'Faith, I remember all, but the manner of it
b quite out of my head.' — II, i. (ed. Gifford, p. 56). — Ed.]
256. I did not marke it] J. Hunter: There b probably here a playful intro-
duction to the mention of Antony's name.
256, 257. I sawe Marke Antony, etc.] Staffer (p. 330) : Shakespeare was not
to be imposed upon by thb apparent love of the Roman people for liberty, the
shallowness of which at thb time he truly divined: his account of the scene in the
For\mi b an admirable instance of the sovereign authority with which poetry, as
Bacon has so splendidly pointed out, corrects hbtory, not by falsifying its spirit,
but by rendering it more at one with ideal truth. The wonderfully vivid account
full of grim humour, given by Casca, of Caesar's refusal of the crown lets us plainly
see that the cheering of the populace had nothing solid, nor even intelligent, about
it, and that if Caesar had been only bold enough to set the crown upon his head, the
same rabble that applauded hb respect for the law woiild have been equally ready
to applaud hb violation of it.
262. he was very loath] 'Mark Antony, his colleague in the consulship, a
man always ready for any daring deed, had excited a strong feeling against him by
placing on hb head, as he was sitting in the Rostrum at the festival of Pan, a royal
diadem, which Csesar, indeed, pushed away, but in such a manner that he did not
seem offended.' — ^Velleius Paterculus, II, Ivi. — Ed.
J
50 THE TR AGED IE OF [act i. sc. ii.
and ftill as hee refus'd it, the rabblement howted, and
clappM their chopt hands, and threw vppe their fweatie 265
Night-cappes, and vttered fuch a deale of (linking
breath, becaufe Ccefar refus'd the Crowne, that it had
(^almoft) choaked Ccefar : for he fwoonded, and fell
downe at it : And for mine owne part, I durft not laugh,
for feare of opening my Lippes, and receyuing the bad 270
Ayre.
Cajft. But foil I pray you : what, did CiBfar fwound ?
Cask. He fell downe in the Market-place,and foamM
at mouth, and was fpeechlefle*
Brut. 'Tis very like he hath the Falling fickneffe. 275
264. hmiiUS[ FaFj, houied F4, Rowe, you? What? Var. '73. you: What?
Pope, Theob. Waib. Cap. shouted Varr. Mai. Ran. Steev. Varr. Sing.
Han. Coll. Sta. hooted Johns, et cet. Knt. you. What! Coll. Wh. i, Hal.
265. chopt] chopped Mai. Steev. Varr. Ktly, Huds.
Sing. Hal. Cam.+> Huds. chapped 272. /wound] Ff, Cam.-h* swoon
Knt, Coll. Dyce, Wh. Sta. Rowe et cet.
268. Jwoonded[Yl. 5woundedCaLm.-\'. 275. like he] Yi, Coll. i, ii. like^ he
swooned Rowe et cet. Rowe, Pope. like, — he Dyce, Sta.
272. you: what^ you. What? Johns. like; he Theob. et cet. (subs.)
264. howted] Wright: This was clearly a cry of applause, as in 1. 251, and
not disapprobation. In other places where hoot occurs it is spelt sometimes hoot
and sometimes 'howt,' so that no argiunent can be derived from this. Most
probably the initial letter was broken off in the printing. [See Text, Notes,]
275. 'Tis very like he hath] The need of some sort of punctuation after the
word Mike' has been felt by the majority of editors, as will be seen by referring to
the Te:d. Notes, and while the Folio reading gives a sufficiently sensible meaning,
the separation of the two parts of the sentence by a semicolon — ^Theobald's reading —
is certainly preferable, since, as Wright says: 'This infirmity of Caesar's must have
been well known to Brutus.' — Ed.
275. Palling sicknesse] Wright: This is the rendering of the French mat
caduc of Amyot's translation which North followed. Cotgrave gives: *Epilepsie.
The falling sicknesse, or foule evill. EpiUptique, That hath the falling sicknesse.'
— Halford (p. 71): Epilepsy has this peculiarity about it, that the patient who is
afflicted, though an object of terror and of pity to those who witness his struggles
under a fit, yet, by the mercy of heaven, he himself is unconscious of the frightful
attack. He sleeps after his frame has been convulsed from head to foot, and
awakens unaware of all that has passed — 'himself again.' Repeated fits, however,
at length weaken the faculties; his memory suffers decay, his judgment becomes
unsound, derangement follows, and this alienation of mind degenerates at last into
idiocy. I do not say that this is the course of all epilepsies. Many attacks of
epilepsy are sjrmptomatic only of some irritation in the alimentary canal, or of
some eruptive disease about to declare itself, or of other occasional passing ills.
So far Julius Caesar was epileptic; and so far it has been said was Mahomet also.
. . . But the attacks were of no consequence in deteriorating his masculine mind. —
ACT I, sc. ii.] IVLIVS C^SAR 5 1
Cajfu ^OyCafar hath it not : but you, and 1 , 276
And honeft CaskUy we haue the Falling fickneffe.
Cask. I know not what you meane by that, but I am
fure Ccefar fell downe. If the tag-ragge people did not
clap him, and hiffe him, according as he pleas'd, and dif- 280
pleas'd them, as they vfe to doe the Players in the Thea-
tre, I am no true man.
Brut. What faid he, when he came vnto himfelfe ?
Cask. Marry, before he fell downe, when he perceiuM
the common Heard was glad he refusM the Crowne, he 285
pluckt me ope his Doublet, ai)d offered them his Throat
to cut : and I had beene a man of any Occupation, if I
would not haue taken him at a word, I would I might
goe to Hell among the Rogues, and fo hee fell. When
he came to himfelfe againe, hee faid. If hee had done, or 290
faid any thing amiffe, he defir^d their Worfhips to thinke
it was his iniirmitie. Three or foure Wenches where I 292
279. tag-^agge] tag rag F4. Var. '73. an I Cap. et ceL
281. vfe] used Theob.+ (—Han.). 288. at a] ai his Han.
284. Marry] Mary Fa. 290. If] Fi.
285. Heard] Herd F4. 290-292. If. ..infirmitie] As quot&tion
287, 302. and I] Ff, Rowe. if I Pope, Theob. Warb. In Italics Johns. Var.
Han. An* I Theob. Warb. Johns. '73.
C. A. SiOTH (Poet Lore, vi, 466) : The true explanation [of Shakespeare's allusion
to the falling sickness], though hitherto overlooked, lies, I am convinced, in the
nature of epilepsy itself. The Latin name for it was morbus comUialiSy so called be-
caiise of its ominous nature; the meetings of the comitia were dissolved the moment
any one was seen to fall in the throes of this dreaded disease. Here is evidently
the clew, for Shakespeare is trying to show that Caesar's fortune is waning, that
the gods as well as men have conspired against him. Thus he would have us see in
epilepsy one of those 'portentous things' that point with fatal finger to the Ides
of March and the costly blood that is then to be shed.
277. And honest Caska, etc.] Craik (p. 180): The slight interruption to
the flow of this line occasioned by the supernumerary syllable in 'Caska' adds
greatly to the effect of the emphatic 'we' that follows. It is like the swell of the
wave before it breaks.
282. no true man] Malone: That is, no honest man. The jury still are styled
good men and true.
286-292. his Doublet . . . his infirmitie] Hudson quotes, from Plutarch's
Life of Cizsar, the passage which doubtless gave to Shakespeare the hint for this
incident in Casca's description: ' — Cxsar rising departed home to his house, and
tearing open his doublet-collar, making his neck bare, he cried out aloud to his
friends, ** that his throat was ready to offer to any man that would come and cut it."
Notwithstanding it is reported, that afterwards to excuse his folly, he imputed it to
52 THE TRACED IE OF [act i. sc. ii.
ftood, cryed, Alaffe good Soule, and forgaue him with 293
all their hearts : But there's no heed to be taken of them;
if Ccefar had ftab'd their Mothers, they would haue done 295
no leffe.
Brut, And after that, he came thus fad away.
Cask. I.
Cajft. Did Cicero fay any thing ?
Cask. I , he fpoke Greeke. 300
293. Alaffe„Soule] In Italics Cap. 293. Soule, and] Ff. soul! and Cap,
Varr. Mai. Ran. Steev. Varr. Sing. Jen. soul — and Rowe et cet.
Ktly. As quotation Knt, Coll. Dyce, 295. Jlab*d\ JlabVd FaF,. Jlabb^d
Wh. Hal. Sta. Cam.+, Huds. F4.
his disease, saying, " that their wits are not perfit which have this disease of the
falling evil, when standing on their feet they speak to the common people, but are
soon troubled with a trembling of their body, and a sudden dimness or giddiness." '
(ed. Skeat, p. 95). — Wkight: No doubt on the stage Julius Caesar appeared in
doublet and hose, like an Englishman of Shakespeare's time. [North or, perhaps,
Amyot is, I think, responsible for the anachronism; the original reads: ' airayaydvra
Tov rpax^Xov rb IfidrioVf* that is, taking ojf the covering from his throat, — Ed.]
287. a man of any Occupation] Johnson: Had I been a mechanic, one of
the plebeians to whom he offered his throat. — M alone: Compare: ' — ^you that
stood so much Upon the voice of occupation.' — CorioL, IV, vi, 97. — R. G. White:
Does not 'a man of any occupation' here mean a man of action, a busy man? —
Wright: Johnson's explanation b, no doubt, part of the meaning, but not the
whole. The phrase appears to have a secondary sense: Had Casca not been an
indolent trifler, but what woiild now be called a practical man, a man of business,
prompt to seize an opportunity when it occurred. All the way through the dia-
logue he plays upon the double meaning of words, and here he seems to glance
at a meaning which may have been given to 'occupation' from its etymology.
300. he spoke Greeke] Horn (i, 116): Hardly any incident in the Roman
tragedy is so interesting as this, and perfectly intelligible is the question of Cassius:
how did Cicero behave? The answer, *he spoke Greek,' gives us in three words
the complete character of Cicero; it is, moreover, quite evident that this could
have been said only in regard to the Cicero of that period, when he was not more
advanced in years. He has not sufficient force of character jto. decide definitely,
before a change of opinion takes place; and he does not wish to express a dedded
opinion easily comprehensible, in order that he may always be free in case the
affair at first seemed more clear and easy. It is not so much timidity as an artistic
foresightedness; it is not for him now to speak with the common people, nor should
so eccentric a character as Casca understand him. If Shakespeare could have
read and studied all Cicero's collected writings in the original, never, in my opinion,
would there have offered itself a phrase more characteristic than 'he spoke Greek.'
— Skottowe (ii, 228): Casca's reply may not unfairly be ascribed to the passage
which relates that Cicero was commonly called 'the Grecian, and scholer, which
are two words which the artificers (and such base mechanicall people at Rome) have
ever at their tongue's end.' (Plutarch: Life of Cicero, p. 861). The poet has
ACT I, sc. ii.] IVLIVS CjESAR 53
Cajft. Towhateffefl? 301
Cask. Nay, and I tell you that, He ne're looke you
iW face againe . But thofe that vnderftood him, fmilM
at one another, and fhooke their heads : but for mine
owne part, it was Greeke to me. I could tell you more 305
newes too : Murrellus and Flauius, for pulling Scarffes
off Cafars Images, are put to filence. Fare you well.
There was more Foolerie yet , if I could remem-
ber it.
Cajft. Will you fuppe with me to Night, Caskal 310
Cask. No, I am promisM forth.
Cajft. Will you Dine with me to morrow ?
Cask. I, if I be aliue, and your minde hold, and your
Dinner worth the eating.
Cajft. Good, I will expeft you. 315
Cask. Doe fo : farewell both. Exit.
Brut. What a blunt fellow is this growne to be/
He was quick Mettle, when he went to Schoole. 318
303. %'iW\ Vthe Var. '78, '85, Mai. 313. your] my Walker (Crit. iii, 245).
Ran. Steev. Varr. Sing. Knt, Coll. 314. worth] be worth Rowe,+ ( — Var.
Sta. Hal. Cam.+. '73).
306. Murrellus] Murellus Ff, Cap. 318. quick Mettle] quick meUTd Cap.
Marullus Theob. et cet. conj. quick metal Walker (Crit. iii,
307. Images] Imags Fa.' 245).
judiciously enough made the unlettered Casca endeavor to convert Cicero's love
of Greek into a subject of contempt: such a reproach from the attic mind of
Brutus, or from the lips of Cassius, who ' read much/ would have been ridiculous,
to say nothing of it as a violent deviation from the spirit of his authority. — Skeat
(p. ziz.) : In Plutarch's Life of Cicero there is a passage worth notice in connection
with his speaking Greek : 'And it is reported also, that Apollonius, wanting the Latia
tongue, he did pray Cicero for exercise sake to declame in Greeke. Cicero was well
contented with it, thinking that thereby his faiilts should be the better corrected.
When he had ended his declamation, all those that were present were amazed to
heare him, and euery man praised him one after another. Howbeit Apollonius,
all the while Cicero spoke, did neuer show any glad countenance; and, when he had
ended, he stayed a great while, and said neuer a word. Cicero misliking withall,
Apollonius at length said unto him: '* As for me, Cicero, I doe not only praise thee,
but more then that I wonder at thee; and yet I am sorie for pore Grece, to see
that learning and eloquence (which were the two onely gifts and honours left vs)
are by thee obtained with vs, and caried vnto the Romaines." ' — ^p. 861, ed. 161 2.
305. it was Greeke to me] Wright: Casca's ignorance of Greek was affected,
for in the description of Cssar's assasination, Plutarch says: 'Cassar . . . cried
out in Latin: " O traitor Casca, what dost thou?" Casca, on the other side, cried in
Greeke, and called his brother to help him.' — (ed. Skeat, p. 119).
54 THE TRACE DIE OF [act i, sc. ii.
Cajft. So is he now, in execution
Of any bold, or Noble Enterprize, 320
How-euer he puts on this tardie forme :
This Rudeneffe is a Sawce to his good Wit,
Which giues men ftomacke to difgeft his words
With better Appetite.
Brut. And fo it is : 325
For this time I will leaue you :
To morrow, if you pleafe to fpeake with me,
I will come home to you : or if you will.
Come home to me, and I will wait for you.
Cajft, I will doe fo : till then, thinke of the World. 330
Exit Brutus.
Well Brutus , thou art Noble : yet I fee.
Thy Honorable Mettle may be wrought
From that it is difpos'd : therefore it is meet.
That Noble mindes keepe euer with their likes : 335
For who fo firme , that cannot be feduc'd ?
Ccsfar doth beare me hard, but he loues Brutus. 337
320. EfUerprize] Enteprize Fa. 332. thou art Noble.\.Jeet] thou art:
323. dijgeft] digeft F3F4. Noblcjee, Fa. thou art noUe:.,^u
324. Appetite] Appetites Ff, Rowe, Rowe, Pope, Han. Jen. Knt.
Pope, Han. 333. Mettle] MettaU F,. Metal F3F4.
325, 326. And,.,you] Ff, Wh. i. One 334. that] what Pope,-h ( — Han.),
line Rowe et cet. it is] Sing. Dyce, Sta. Ktly,
329. to me] with me Var. '03, *i3. Cam.+. tis Fa. */w F3F4 et cet.
difpos*d\ dispos&i to Ktly.
321. tardie forme] Wright: That is, this appearance of sloth. For this pecu-
liar use of the adjective, compare I, ii, 14: 'sterile curse*; IV, ii, 19: 'familiar in-
stances'; and : 'Thou by thy dial's shady stealth mayst know,' Sonnet, Ixxvii, 7,
where 'shady stealth' is almost equivalent to stealing shadow.
330. thinke of the World] Wright: That b, of things in general; or it may
mean think of the world in ;which we live, the present state of affairs. The ex-
pression is obscure. [May Cassius not mean, 'Think of the present situation and
do not be lost in thoughts regarding your self? This is practically the same ex-
hortation with which he begins his address; to which Brutus had answered that if
Cassius had aught towards the general good, he should impart it to him at once.
Compare: 'Thou seest the world,' — V, v, 29. — Ed.]
333) 334- Mettle . . .that it is dispos'd] Johnson: The best metal or temper
may be worked into qualities contrary to its original constitution.
334. that it is] For other examples of the omission of the relative, see, if
needful, Abbott, § 244.
337. Cesar doth beare me hard] Murray {N. E. D., s. v., bear, vb, 16):
To bear hard, heavy, or heavily (Latin, aegre ferre) : to endure with a grudge, take
ACT I, sc. ii.] IVLIVS C^SAR 55
If I were Brutus now, and he were CaJftuSy 338
He fliould not humor me. I will this Night,
339. Et,..humor\ CiEsar..Jcve Han.
(a thing) ill or amiss, have ill will to, have a resentment against; so to bear upon the
spleen. [The present line quoted. Compare II, i, 239; III, i, 180.] — J. W. Hales
(Academy, 30 June, 1877): Another instance of this phrase occurs in The Life and
Death of Thomas, Lord CromweU. Says Cromwell: 'Good morrpw to my lord of
Winchester; I know You bear me hard about the Abbey lands.* — IV, ii. [See
Appendix: Date of Composition — Fleay.]
33S» 339* If I were . . . humor me] Warbitrton: This is a reflection on
Brutus's ingratitude; which concludes, as is usual on such occasions, in an encomium
on his own better conditions. 'If I were Brutus' (says he), 'and Brutus, Cassius,
he should not cajole me as I do him.' To 'Atimour' signifies here to turn and wind
him by inflaming his passions. — Capell (i, 99): That is, should not play upon
me; work upon my affections by friendship, — the shews of it, — and so bias my
principles. The soliloquy sets out with this thought that Brutus had been ' wrought'
upon; a thing inferred by the speaker from the little 'fire' that his words had
struck out of him; then follows the sentiment about selection of company, and
to that is link'd the present assertion — that were the persons of he and Brutus
exchang'd, he had either not consorted with Caesar, or his commerce and demon-
^,^0^ strations of love had not influenc'd him. The whole passage is liable to be misap-
«0n(^>^ prehended, and thb part of it specially from uniting 'He' in these words with one
immediately next it, instead of a remoter in 1. 337, which is, in truth, its associate.
[That is, the 'He* of 1. 339 refers to Cssar; not to Brutus.] — ^Heath (p. 435):
Mr Seward, ... in his notes on Beaumont and Fletcher, vol. iv,pp. 178, 179, thus
explained this part of [the soliloquy]: If Brutus and I were to exchange situa-
tions, so that I were Brutus, and he Cassius, Caesar shoiild not, by the demonstra-
tions of his friendship and affection, cajole me out of my principles. Mr Seward's
whole note very well deserves the reader's attention. — [Dr. Johnson, without
referring to Seward, gives this same interpretation, and although the date of
Johnson's Shakespeare, 1765, is later than Seward's Beaumont and Fletcher, it
is not, I think, likely that Johnson had read all of Seward's notes. The two works
may have been written contemporaneously. — Ed.] — Craik (p. 184): Warburton's
remark that the words convey a reflection on Brutus's ingratitude, seems unfounded.
It is rather Brutus's simplicity that Cassius has in his mind. It would be more
satisfactory, however, if other examples could be produced of the use of the verb
'to humour' in the sense assumed. Johnson appears to have quite mistaken the
meaning of the passage. — J. Hunter: To make Qohnson's interpretation] ad-
missible, the text should simply have been: If I were Brutus now, he should not
humour me. Cassius means that he would continue attached to Caesar; for there
was this distinction between Brutus and Cassius, that the former hated royalty^
and the latter hated Cctsar. — Hudson: It is somewhat in doubt whether the 'He,'
I* 339) refers to Brutus or to Caesar. If to Brutus, the meaning, of course, is, he
should not play upon my humours and fancies as I do upon his. And this sense is,
I think, fairly required by the context. For the whole speech is occupied with the
speaker's success in cajoling Brutus, and with plans for cajoling and shaping him
still further. — ^Wright: Warburton's interpretation appears to be the correct
view, because Cassius is all along speaking of his own influence over Brutus, not-
4
56 THE TRACED IE OF [act i, sc. u.
In feuerall Hands, in at his Windowes throw, 340
As if they came from feuerall Citizens,
Writings , all tending to the great opinion
That Rome holds of his Name : wherein obfcurely
Ccefars Ambition fhall be glanced at.
And after this,let Ccefar feat him fure, 345
For wee will (hake him, or worfe dayes endure.
Exit. 347
342. WrU%ngs\ Writtings Fa. 344- glanced] glandd Dyce. glanc'd
343. Name:] Name. Pope. Coll. ii.
withstanding the difference of their characters, which made Cesar dislike the
one and love the other. — Verity: Cassius sees that his words have had some
effect in stirring Brutus against Caesar: he knows that Oesar is the friend of
Brutus; and he wonders that Brutus should suffer himself to be influenced against
his friend. Cassius regards things from a personal standpoint: personal friendship
or enmity is sufficient motive with him; whereas Brutus would not allow personal
feelings either for or against Caesar to affect him, if he thought that the good of
Rome required of him some service. Johnson's interpretation implies that Caesar
humours Brutus in such a way as to make him neglect his duty to his country.
But the whole drift of the play is opposed to such a conception of the character of
Brutus: he is the last man in the world *to forget principles' — ^as Cassius knew. —
Macmillan: Cassius is not as high-minded as Brutus. He is somewhat un-
scrupulous in his use of means, and his conduct is no doubt partly influenced by
personal feelings of envy. But he is not a villain conscious of his villainy like
Richard III. and lago. He really has a high opinion of his uprightness, and
regards himself as a true patriot. — Mark Hunter: I am of opinion that the
pronoun *he' must refer to Caesar. . . . The controversy, however, is practically
decided by a reference to the passage in Plutarch upon which this speech is un-
doubtedly based. Cassius's friends prayed Brutus ^to beware of Caesar's sweet
enticements, and to fly his tyrannical favours: the which they said Caesar gave him,
not to honour his virtue, but to weaken his constant mind, framing it to the bent of
his bow* (ed. Skeat, p. in). — MacCallum (p. 278): Probably Cassius is making
the worst of his own case, and is indulging that vein of self-mockery and scorn that
Caesar observed in him. (This explanation is offered with great diffidence, but it is
the only one I can suggest for what is perhaps the most perplexing passage in the
play, not even excepting the soliloquy of Brutus.) But, at any rate, the lurking
sense of unworthiness in himself and his purpose will be apt to increase in such a
man his natiiral impatience of alleged superiority in his fellows. He is jealous of
excellence, seeks to minimise it, and will not tolerate it. . . . It is now resentment of
pre-eminence that makes Cassius a malcontent. Caesar finds him 'very dan-
gerous' just because of his grudge at greatness; and his own avowal that he 'would
as lief not be as live to be in awe* of a thing like himself, merely puts a fairer colour
on the same unamiable trait. He may represent republican liberty and equality,
at least in the aristocratic acceptation, but it is on their less admihible side. —
[Capell's interpretation, that the sentence, 'He should not humor me,' etc., refers
to Caesar, is the one accepted by the present Ed.]
V
ACT I, sc. iii.] IVLIVS C^SAR 57
\Scene IIL\
Thunder^ and Lightning. Enter CaskUj i
and Cicero.
Cic. Good euerXjCaska : brought you Ccefar home?
Why are you breathleffe, and why ftare you fo ? 4
Scene m.] Cap. et seq. Scene con- Mai. Steev.
tinued. Ff, Rowe. Scene vi. Pope,+ i- Caska,] Casca with his sword
( — Var. '73), Jen. Act II, Scene i. drawn, Rowe,-f , Cap.
Warb. conj. (Nichols' Lit. niust., ii, 2. and Cicero.] and Cicero meeting
492). him. Theob. Warb. Johns. Varr. Ran.
I. Enter Caska J Enter from op- 4. breathleffe^] Ff, Rowe,+, Coll.
posite sides, Cicero and Casca, Capell, Wh. i, Hal. breaihless? Cap. et cet.
Scene III.] Daniel (Time Analysis, etc., p. 198) marks this scene, opening at
about midnight, as the beginning of the second day of the action of the Tragedy.
I, 2. Enter Caska, and Cicero] Lloyd (Essays, p. 509): There is no aid for
the character of Casca in Plutarch beyond the significant fact that he was chosen
to be the first to raise his hand against Caesar, and is scarcely heard of otherwise.
Shakespeare turns him to admirable use in the storm scene so wondrously imitative,
where he is placed at equal distance between Cicero, ambiguously contemptuous
respecting omens, as busied in thought with the business of the house he lifts his
draggled toga from the splashing street, and Cassius, baring his bosom to the
thunderstorm, and free from superstition as Cicero, yet associating the horrors of the
fiery night with the idea of his enemy and all his acts.
3. brought you Caesar home] Johnson: That is, did you attend Csesar home?
[Schmidt (Lex.) furnishes many examples of 'bring' in the sense of to accompany ,
to conduct.] — Maciollan (Inirod., xlix.): Historically there should be an interval
of a month between scenes ii. and iii. [This line], taken in connection with what
goes before, is natiurally understood to mean ' home from the Lupercalia.' Further
in the preceding scene Casca had declared himself to be engaged for supper that
night, and promised to sup on the morrow with Cassius, who, no doubt, intended to
enlist him in the conspiracy during the supper. In [this present scene] Cassius. meets
Casca and sounds him. There is no reference to their having met in the interval,
. . . and the conversation makes it almost impossible that such a meeting could have
taken place. Therefore it would appear that Casca ... is returning home from
the supper at which he had promised to be present on the night of the Lupercalia.
4. Why stare you so] Dowden (p. 291): Casca here appears with the
superficial garb of cynicism dropt. Does Shakespeare in this play mean
to signify to us unobtrusively that the philosophical creed which a man
professes grows out of his character and circumstances as far as it is really a
portion of his own being; and that as far as it is received by the intellect in the
calm of life from teachers and schools, such a philosophical creed does not adhere
very dosely to the soul of a man, and may, upon the pressure of events or of
passions, be cast aside? The Epicurean Cassius is shaken out of his philosophical
scepticism by the portents which appeared upon the march to Philippi; the Stoic
Brutus, who by the rules of his philosophy blamed Cato for a self-infiicted death,
58 THE TRACED IE OF [act i. sc. iii.
Cask, Are not you mou'd,when all the fway of Earth 5
Shakes, Hke a thing vnfirme ? O CicerOy
I haue feene Tempefts,when the fcolding Winds
Haue riu'd the knottie Oakes^and I haue feene
Th'ambitious Ocean fwell,and rage, and foame,
To be exalted with the threatning Clouds : 10
But neuer till to Night, neuer till now.
Did I goe through a Tempeft-dropping-fire.
Eyther there is a Ciuillftrife in Heauen,
Or elfe the World, too fawcie with the Gods,
Incenfes them to fend deftruflion. 15
Cic. Why, faw you any thing more wonderfull ?
Cask. A common flaue, you know him well by fight,
Held up his left Hand, which did flame and bume 18
10. threatning] Ff, Rowe,+. threat- dropping fire Rowe et seq.
wing Var. '73, Coll. Dyce, Wh. Cam.+, 13. Heauen] Heaven Rowc,+.
Huds. threatening Cap. et cet. 17. you know] you*d know Dyce conj.
13. Tempefi-dropping-fire] Tempest Huds. you knew Craik conj.
runs upon his own sword and dies. The dramatic self-consistency of the charac-
ters created by certain writers is to be noticed; we must notice in the case of Shake-
speare, as a piece of higher art, the dramatic inconsistency of his characters. In
the preceding scene, describing in his C3mical mood the ceremony at which an offer
of the crown was made to Caesar, Casca utters himself in prose; here Shakespeare
puts verse into his mouth. 'Did Cicero say anything?' Cassius inquired, and
Casca answered with curt scorn: 'Ay, he spoke Greek.' But now so moved out of
himself .is Casca by the portents of the night that he enlarges himself and grows
effusive to this very Cicero, the recollection of whom he had dismissed with such
impatient contempt.
5. sway of Earth] Johnson: That is, the whole weight or momentum of this
globe. — Craik: That is, the balanced swing of earth. — ^Wright: Compare:
'O firste moving cruel firmament. With thy diurnal swegh that croudest ay. And
hurtlest all from Est til Occident, That naturally would hold another way.' —
Chaucer: Man of Law's Tale, 1. 4716 (ed. Tyrwhitt).
8. riu'd] Wright: Shakespeare never uses the form riten for the participle.
15. Incenses] Murray (N. E. /?., vb^. 1 4)^ To incite to some action; to urge,
instigate, stir up, 'set on.'
16. any thing more wonderfull] Deuus interprets this as meaning anything
more wonderful than what you have described; Craik explains it as anything else
wonderful, and Abbott (§ 6) says: 'The comparative "more wonderful" seems to
be used, as in Latin, for "more wonderful than usual," if this line is to be at-
tributed to Cicero as in the editions.' — ^The interpretation by Delius is the best
in the opinion of the present £d.
17. 18. A common slaue . . . and bume]^ 'But Strabo the philosopher
writeth, that divers men were seen going up and down in fire: and furthermore,
that there was a slave of the soldiers that did cast a marvellous burning flame out
ACT I, sc. iii.] IVLIVS C^SAR 59
Like twentie Torches ioynM; and yet his Hand;
Not fenfible of fire,remainM vnfcorchM. 20
Befides, I ha'not fince put vp my Sword,
Againft the Capitol! I met a Lyon,
Who glazed vpon me, and went furly by, 23
21. ha^naSi Ff, Rowe,+, Cam.+, ga^'^ Johns, conj., Mai. Var. '21.
Dyce. kant noi Cap. et cet. fjiar^d Rowe ii et cet.
23. f/os'^ Ff, Rowe i, Hal. Cam. ii.
of his hand, insomuch as they that saw it thought he had been burnt; but when
the fire was out, it was found he had no hurt.' — Plutarch: Lift of Cctsar, { 43; (ed.
Skeat, p. 97).
17. you know ... by sight] Craik (p. 186): Is it to be supposed that
Casca really means to say that the common slave whom he chanced to meet was a
particular individual well known to Cicero? Of what importance could that cir-
cumstance be? Or for what purpose should Casca notice it, even supposing him
to be acquainted with the fact that Cicero knew the man well, and yet knew him
only by sight? It b impossible not to suspect some interpolation or corruption.
Perhaps the true reading may be : ' You knew him well,' meaning that anyone would
have known him at once to be but a common slave (notwithstanding the preternat-
ural appearance, as if something almost godlike, which his uplifted hand exhibited,
burning but imhurt). — ^Wright: There does not appear to be any necessity to read,
with Dyce, you*d know^ [see Text. Notes] ^ because the slaves had no distinctive dress;
or with Craik, you knew. It is simply a graphic touch. — Rolfe: This has per-
plexed some of the commentators, but it is nothing strange that both Cicero and
Casca should happen to know a particular slave by sight, and it is natural enough
that Casca, in referring to him here, should say: 'And you yourself know the man.'
18. left Hand] Another graphic touch. Plutarch does not mention either
hand pardoilarly. — Ed.
23. glaz'd vpon me] Rowe's emendation, glar^df has been accepted by a major-
ity of the editors. Steevens furnishes quotations both from Shakespeare and other
authors to corroborate his opinion that it is Shakespeare's own word. Malone,
on the other hand, adopts Johnson's conjecture, gaz'd — it is to be feared out of
perversity — and to strengthen his position gives two passages from Stowe's Ckron-
icUf 161 5, wherein the word gaze is applied to the manner in which a lion looked
upon hb adversaries in a fight held at the Tower in 1609. Steevens thus replies to
Malone: 'That glared is no modem word is sufficiently ascertained by the following
passage in Macbeth^ ''Thou hast no speculation in those eyes Which thou dost
glare with." — III, iv, 95. I, therefore, continue to repair the poet with his own
animated phraseology, rather than with the cold expression suggested by the narra-
tive of Stowe; who, having been a tailor, was undoubtedly equal to the task of
mending Shakespeare's hose, but, on poetical emergencies, must not be allowed to
patch his dialogue.' — ^Wright, in support of the Folio reading, says: 'I am in-
formed by a correspondent (Mr Knight of Tavistock) that the word "glaze" in
the sense of stare is common in some parts of Devonshire, and that "glazing like a
conger" is a familiar expression in Cornwall.' — T. Wright (Dialed Diet.) gives
several examples of 'glaze,' in the Dialect of Cornwall and Devonshire, used in the
sense of 'to stare, to gaze intently.' — £d.
6o THE TRACED IE OF [act i. sc. ui.
Without annoying me. And there were drawne
Vpon a heape,a hundred gaftly Women, 25
Transformed with their feare, who fwore they faw
Men, all in fire, walke vp and downe the ftreetes.
And yefterday , the Bird of Night did fit,
Euen at Noone-day , vpon the Market place,
Howting,and fhreeking. When thefe Prodigies 30
Doe fo conioyntly meet, let not men fay,
Thefe are their Reafons , they are Naturall :
For I beleeue,they are portentous things
Vnto the Clymate, that they point vpon.
Cic. Indeed, it is a ftrange-difpofed time : 35
25. Vpof^ Up on Ran. Hooting Johns, et cet.
26. Transformed] Transform^ Dyce, 32. are ,., Reafons] have ... seasons S.
29. Noone-day] Noone day Ff. Jervis. are. ..seasons Coll.ii (MS).Huds.
30. Howling] FaFj. Houting F4, 35. flrange-difpofed] firange difpofed
Rowe, Pope, Theob. Han. Warb. Ff , Rowe, Pope. strange-disposhd^Dyct.
25. heape] Murray {N. E. D.y s. v. 3.) : A great company (especially of persons) ;
a multitude, a host.
27. Men, all in fire] See extract from Plutarch, 1. 17.
28-30. Bird of Night . . . Howting, and shreeldng] Wright: See Pliny,
z, 12 (Holland's trans.): 'The Scritch owle betokeneth alwaies some heavie
newes, and is most execrable and accursed, and namely in the presages of public
affaires. ... In simmie, he is the verie monster of the night. . . . There fortuned
one of them to enter the very secret sanctuarie within the capitoll at Rome, in
that yeere when as Sext. Pap)eIlio Ister and L. Pedanius were Consuls: whereupon
at the Nones of March, the citie of Rome that yeere made generall processions to
appease the wrath of the gods, and was solemnly purged by sacrifices.'
30. these Prodigies] H. Coleridge (ii, 180) : To the most affecting prognostic
of Caesar's death Shakespeare has not alluded. The horses which had crossed the
Rubicon, and which ever since had been allowed to range at liberty, refused to
graze, and, Suetonius says, wept abimdantly, ubertim pleverunt.
32. These are their Reasons] Craik (p. 188): That such and such are their
reasons. It is the same form of expression that we have afterwards in II, i, 34:
'Would run to these and these extremities.' But the present line has no claim
to either a distinctive type or inverted commas. It is not as if it were 'These are
our reasons.' — ^Wright: For the sentiment, compare AlVs Welly II, iii, 1-6: 'They
say miracles are past: and we have our philosophical persons, to make modem and
familiar, things supernatural and causeless. Hence it is that we make trifles of
terrors, ensconcing ourselves into seeming knowledge, when we should submit
ourselves to unknown fear.'
34. Clymate] Craik (p. 188): The region of the earth, according to the old
geographical division of the globe into so many climates j which had no reference, or
only an accidental one, to differences of temperature.
35. Cic. Indeed, it is, etc.] Staffer (p. 367): There is nothing highly
original or daring in this remark, but its very insignificance seems to belong to
ACT I, sc. iii.] IVLIVS C^SAR 6 1
But men may conftrue things after their fafhion, 36
Cleane from the purpofe of the things themfelues.
Comes Cce/ar to the Capitol to morrow ?
Cask He doth : for he did bid Antonio
Send word to you, he would be there to morrow. 40
Cic. Good-night then, Caska:
This difturbed Skie is not to walke in.
Cask, Farewell Cicero. Exit Cicero.
Enter CaJJtus.
Caffu Who's there ? 45
Cask. A Romane.
CaJJi. Caska, by your Voyce.
Cask, Your Eare is good.
CaJftuSyyfhdX Night is this ? 49
38. to the] vp the F3F4. Rowe et seq.
39. Antonio] Ff, Rowe, Cap. Ktly. 42. difturbed] disturb^ Dycc.
Antonius Pope et cet. 43. Scene vn. Pope,-f , Jen.
41, 42. Good'night..Skie] One line 49. what Nighi] what a night Craik.
Shakespeare's conception of the character; besides which, though the Roman
orator may say nothing very important himself, he is twice mentioned in the
play in terms sufficiently explicit to make his faults and failings known.
42. is not to walke in] That is, is not fit to walk in; for other examples of a like
ellipsis see, if needful, Abbott, § 405.
49. What Night is this.'] Dyce: The Folio has an interrogation point after
these words, and the modem editors retain it, — ^most erroneously. Casca is not
putting a question, but uttering an exclamation of surprise; here 'what night is
this!' is equivalent to *what a night is this!' In such exclamations it was not
unusual to omit *a* — so in Two GetU.y * What fool is she, that knows I am a maid?'
and Twelfth Night , * What dish o' poison has she dressed him!' — ^Wright: It also
occurs in dependent clauses, as, for example, in Cymbeline: 'Jove knows what man
thou mightst have made.' — IV, iii, 207. — [Is it not too severe to characterise as
most 'erroneous' the retention of this interrogation point? Whether Casca's
remark be a question or an exclamation is a point on which the compositors of the
Folio can give us no assured help; their use of the exclamation point is too incon-
sistent. Many phrases which are there printed with an interrogation point might,
with perfect correctness, in a modem text be printed as rhetorical questions with
the exclamation point. It is, moreover, merely a matter of personal opinion
whether the present line be a simple question or an exclamation. As an illustra-
tion of futile labor, such as falls to the lot of the harmless dmdge, an editor, I
mention that I have counted the number of exclamation points which appear in
the present play as printed in the Folio and those which appear in the Cambridge
Text. In the Folio there are seventeen; in the Cambridge, one hundred and
eighty-eight. It will, moreover, be noticed that in the Folio, in nearly every
instance, this punctuation point is of a different font of type; at times it is larger
62 THE TRACED IE OF [act I, sc. iiL
Cajft. A very pleafing Night to honeft men. 50
Cask, Who euer knew the Heauens menace fo ?
CaJ/i. Thofe that haue knowne the Earth fo full of
faults.
For my part, I haue walkM about the ftreets,
Submitting me vnto the perillous Night ; 55
And thus vnbraced, Casia,2is you fee,
Haue bar*d my Bofome to the Thunder-ftone :
And when the croffe blew Lightning feemM to open
The Bred of Heauen, I did prefent my felfe
Euen in the ayme ,^and very flafh of it (uens ? 60
CasJk. But wherefore did you fo much tempt the Hea-
It is the part of men, to feare and tremble,
When the mod mightie Gods, by tokens fend
Such dreadful! Heraulds, to aftonilh vs.
COjffi. You are dull, Caska : 65
And thofe fparkes of Life, that fhould be in a Roman,
You doe want, or elfe you vfe not.
You looke pale and gaze, and put on feare,
And call your felfe in wonder, 69
51. Heauens] heaven*s Warb. seq.
56. vnbracedl unbracid Dyce. 66. thai] which Cap.
65-69. You,., wander] Four lines, end- 67. noi.] not, F1F4.
ing: Life,..want,..gaze,..wonder Rowe et 69. caft] case Wh. i, Dyce ii, iii.
than the other characters, at times it is an Italic. This perhaps suggests that
this small number of exclamation points was due not to the caprice of the com-
positor, but to an actual lack of such types in the printing office. — Ed.]
56. vnbraced] Wright: Shakespeare in matters of dress speaks of the costume
of his own time. Cassius, like Hamlet, was walking with his doublet unbuttoned.
57. Thunder-stone] Steevens: A stone fabulously supposed to be discharged
by thunder. So in Cymbeline: 'Fear no more the lightning-flash. Nor the all-
dreaded thunder-stone.' — IV, ii, 270. — [Pliny, Natural Hist., says: 'Brontea is a
stone like the head of a tortoise, which falls with thunder, it is supposed: if too,
we are to believe what is said, it has the property of quenching the fire in objects
that have been struck by lightning.' — Bk xxxvi, ch. 55. — Ed.]
69. cast your selfe in wonder] Grant White; S. Jervis (p. 22); and W. Wil-
liams (Parthenon, 7 June, 1862) proposed almost contemporaneously that this
should read *case yourself in wonder,' that is, put on as a garment, and both White
and Jervis quoted as a parallel passage: 'I am so attired in wonder.' — Much Ado,
IV, i, 146. Wright does not ^ think any change is necessary, and to "case oneself"
b rather to put on a mask. The figure suggested by putting on fear as a garment
is sustained in this expression ['cast yourself], which signifies, you hastily dress your-
self in wonder, you throw yourself into wonder as into a robe. . . . The same
ACT I, sc. iii.] IVLIVS C^SAR 63
To fee the ftrange impatience of the Heauens : 70
But if you would confider the true caufe^
Why all thefe Fires, why all thefe gliding Ghofts,
Why Birds and Beafts,from qualitie and kinde,
Why Old men, Fooles, and Children calculate, 74
74. Old men, FooleSy] old men fools, Blackstone, Var. '78, '85, Mai. Steev. Varr.
Dyce, Sta. old men fool, Lettsom (ap. Walker, Crit., i, 250), Wh. Cam.+, Dyce
u, ui.
figure is found in Lucrece: "Why art thou thus attired in discontent?" — 1. 1601.
And Macbeth: "Was the hope drunk Wherein you dressed yourself?" — I, vii, 36.*
73. Why Birds . . . and kinde] Johnson: That is, why they deviate from
quality and nature. This line might, perhaps, be more properly placed after the
next line.
74. Why Old men . . . calculate] Waiusurton: 'Calculate' here signifies
to foretell or prophesy: for the custom of foretelling fortunes by judicial astrology
(which was at that time much in vogue) being performed by a long tedious calcula-
tion, Shakespeare, with his usual liberty, employs the species (calculate) for the
genus (foretell). — ^Johnson: Shakespeare found the liberty established. To
'calculate the nativity' is the technical term. — Blackstone: There is certainly
no prodigy in old men's calculating from their past experience. The wonder is
that old men should not, and that children should. I would, therefore, point thus:
'Why old men foob, and children caloilate.' — Csak (p. 192): Blackstone's novel
pointing of this passage is ingenious; i. e., why we have all these fires, etc., why
we have old men foob. But the amendment b hardly required; or, at any rate, it
would not go far to give us a perfectly satisfactory text. Nor does there seem to be
any necessity for assigning to 'caloilate' the singular sense of prophesy. There
b probably some corruption; but the present line may be very well understood as
meaning merely, why not only old men, but even foob and children, speculate upon
the future; or, still more simply, why all persons, old and young, and the foolish
as well as the wise, take part in such prognosticating. Shakespeare may have
been so far from thinking with Blackstone, that it was something unnatural and
prodigious for old men ever to be fools, that he has even designed to classify them
with foolish persons generally, and with children, as specially disqualified for
looking with any very deep insight into the future. And so, doubtless, they are
apt to be when very old. — J. Hunter: There is perhaps some corruption of the
text in thb line; or the meaning may be: why not only men of age and wisdom, but
even foob and children, seeing these prodigies, discern them to be portentous, and
construe them as signs of heaven's dbpleasure. — [Lettsom's suggested pointing and
slight change of the noim 'fooles' to fool, the verb, brings out quite clearly the
complete reversal of those actions appropriate to old men and to children, and
seems quite in accord with the rest of the passage. — Ed.] — ^Macmillan (Appendix,
p. 169): The use of 'calculate' intransitively in the sense of ^(>^^y is so strange
and gives such unsatisfactory sense that I am tempted to conjecture that 'why'
b here an emphatic interjectional expletive, as it is in 1. 77. The meaning will then
be: . . . the significance of these prodigies is so obvious that not only old men,
but even fools and children can form an estimate of the reason why these things
act contrary to their nature. You will assuredly find that the reason is that they
64 THE TRACED IE OF [act i, sc. iii.
Why all thefe things change from their Ordinance, 75
Their Natures, and pre-formed Faculties,
To monftrous qualitie ; why you fhall finde.
That Heauen hath infus'd them with thefe Spirits,
To make them Inftruments of feare, and warning,
Vnto fome monftrous State. 80
Now could I (Caska) name to thee a man,
Moft like this dreadfull Night,
That Thunders, Lightens, opens Graues, and roares.
As doth the Lyon in the Capitoll : 84
78. Heauen] nature Cap. Steev. Var. '03, '13, Sing, i, Craik,
hath] has Theob. Warb. Johns. Huds.
Var. '73. 81. to thee] thee Cap. Huds. iii.
80-82. Vnto ... Night] Two lines, 83. roares] teares F,. tears Y^F^.
ending: Caska ... night Han. Cap. Mai. 84. Lyon in] lion, in Craik.
are intended by heaven to point to an unnatural state of affairs. ... In support
of this interpretation it may be urged that the two preceding lines refer to prodigies
already recorded, whereas the folly of old men and the prophesying of fools and
children b not among the prodigies related either by Shakespeare or Plutarch.
. . . Exception may be taken to the use of 'why' in a sense different from that in
which it is used in the lines inmiediately preceding and following, but this objec-
tion would prove too much, as it would condenm the undoubtedly expletive use of
* why' in 1. 77, where also, as in the present line, ' why' is not followed by a comma
in the Folio.
80. Vnto some monstrous State] Hudson: As Cassius is an avowed Epi-
ourean, it may seem out of character to make him speak thus. But he is here
talking for effect, his aim being to kindle and instigate Casca into the conspiracy;
and to this end he does not stick to say what he does not himself believe.
83, 84. and roares ... in the Capitoll] Craik: Many readers, I believe,
infer from this passage that Caesar is compared by Cassius to some live lion that
was kept in the Capitol. Or perhaps it may be sometimes imagined that he alludes
to the same lion which Casca (though not in his hearing) has just been telling
Cicero that he had met 'against the Capitol.' — Wright: The [conmm at 'roares*
in the Folio] is against Craik's interpretation, and though there were no lions in the
Capitol at Rome there were lions in the Tower of London, which, there is reason to
believe from indications in the play, represented the Capitol to Shakespeare's mind.
See note on II, i, 1 28, 1 39. [This is, perhaps, an example of Shakespeare's reference
to an incident which was recognised by the audience, although the character de-
scribing it could not have actually had any knowledge of the matter. As an illus-
tration of this compare the speech of Gratiano to Salerio in Mer. of Ven., m,
ii, 244, *We are the Jasons, we have won the fleece,' referring, of course, to the
success of their enterprise; but it will be recalled that Bassanio, in describing Portia
to Antonio, I, i, 169, says: 'her sunny locks Hang on her temples like a golden
fleece Which makes her house at Belmont Colchos strand, And many Jasons come
in quest of her.' Gratiano was not present when these words were said; but the
audience heard and would doubtless recall a vague idea of having heard someone
ACT I. sc. iii.] IVLIVS C^SAR 65
A man no mightier then thy felfe, or me, 85
In perfonall a6tion ; yet prodigious growne,
And fearefull, as thefe sftrange eruptions are.
Cask. 'Tis C(Efar that you meane :
Is it not, Cafftus ?
Cajfu Let it be who it is : for Romans now go
Haue Thewes, and Limbes, like to their Anceftors ;
But woe the while, our Fathers mindes are dead,
Are we are gouemM with our Mothers fpirits,
Our yoake, and fufferance, (hew vs Womanifti. 94
87. thefe ftrange] thefer ftrange Fa. 91. Thewes] Sinews FjF4.
88, 89. (hie line Rowe et seq.
refer to Portia as a bearer of locks resembling the fleece; which was all sufficient.
Again, in Richard Illy the Duchess of York sa3rs to Queen Elizabeth, IV, iv, 133:
' — in the breath of bitter words let's smother My damned son, which thy two sweet
sons smother'd.' The manner of the murder of the princes was totally imknown
to the Duchess; but Tyrrell had told it circumstantially, and the audience, of
course, knew exactly what had been the process of their death. Such instances
might easily be multiplied, but these two are, I think, enough to show that such
references were not merely accidental. — Ed.]
90. Let it be who it is] Csak (p. 193) : Not who it may be; Cassius, in his
present mood, is above that subterfuge. While he abstains from pronouncing the
name, he will not allow it to be supposed that there is any doubt about the actual
existence of the man he has been describing. — Wright: I do not think any such
refinement [as Craik suggests] was intended, and regard 'Let it be' as equivalent to
the common expression Let be, in the sense of no matter, never mind. The first 'it'
refers to the question as to ' who it is,' and not to the same subject as the second 4t.'
91. Thewes] Wright: That is, muscles, sinews; used of physical strength.
Compare 2 Hen. IV: 'Care I for the limb, the thews, the stature, bulk and big
assemblance of a man? ' — III, ii, 76. Two distinct words are confused by being spelt
alike. In the earlier usage of the language 'thews' alwa3rs denotes moral qualities
or virtues. The Anglo-Saxon theaw signifies custom, manner, and hence is derived
* thewes* or thews, which we meet with in Chaucer (Cant. Tales, 12029) and Spenser
(Faerie Queene, I, x, 3), who b affectedly archaic in his use of words. But ' thews,'
in the sense of muscles or bodily strength, must come from a different root, and is
probably connected with the Anglo-Saxon theon, to grow, thrive, and so with theoh,
thigh. Sir F. Madden, in a note to Layamon's Brut., 6361 ('monnene strengest
of maine and of theauwe of alle thissere theode,' of men strongest of main and of
thews of all this land), says: 'This is the only instance in the poem of the word
[theauwe] being applied to bodily qualities, nor has any other passage of an earlier
date than the sixteenth century been found in which it is so used. In modem
Scotch I find adj. thowles, feeble.'
92. woe the while] Craik (p. 195): This, I believe, is commonly understood
to mean, alas for the present time; but may not the meaning, here at least, rather
be, alas for what hath come to pass in the meanwhile, or in the interval that has
elapsed since the better days of our heroic ancestors?
S
66 THE TRACED IE OF [act i, sc. iii.
Cask. Indeed^ they fay, the Senators to morrow 95
Meane to eilablifh CtB/ar as a King :
And he (hall weare his Crowne by Sea, and Land,
In euery place, faue here in Italy»
Cajft. I know where I will weare this Dagger then ;
Cajfms from Bondage will deliuer Cajftus : 100
Therein, yee Gods, you make the weake moft ftrong ;
99-110. Mnemonic Pope, Warb. 99. Dagger] dagger ^ Craik.
96-98. Caesar . . . here in Italy] 'Dedus Brutus . . . reproved Caesar, say-
ing .. . that they [the Senators] were ready willingly to grant him all things, and
to proclaim him king of all his provinces of the Empire of Rome out of Italy, and
that he should wear his diadem in all other places both by sea and land.' — Plutarch,
Life of Casar, { 44 (ed. Skeat, p. 99).
99. CassL I know where, etc.] Skottowe (ii, 222): Shakespeare has very
artfully contrived to present a more favorable portrait of Cassius than that which
the page of history warrants without, however, so misrepresenting him as to de-
stroy the identity of his character. With reference to dramatic efifect, indeed,
some change was necessary. Brutus could only, with propriety, be associated, in
private friendship and in public undertakings, with a man who, in outward appear-
ance at least, possessed some claim to equality with him. The poet, therefore,
suppressed the vindictiveness, cruelty, and tjrranny of Cassius, and gave the utmost
effect to the fire and energy which characterised him, and particularly marked his
abhorrence from living under the control of an arbitrary monarch. Shakespeare
has made Cassius's hatred of Caesar sufficiently apparent; but so repeatedly is his
love of liberty enforced that the patriot, rather than the malignant avenger of his
own wrongs, appears to strike against the tjrrant.
99. Dagger then] Craik (p. 195) : The true meaning of this line is ruined by its
being printed, as it b in the old and also in most of the modem editions, without
the comma [after ' Dagger ']. Cassius does not intend to be understood as intimating
that he is prepared to plimge his dagger into his heart at that Umef but in that case.
— Delius: Wenn CUsar die Krone trUgt, will Cassius den Dolch in seiner Brust
tragen, sich den Dolch in's Herz stossen. — [I have given Delius's own words, as I
think possibly his meaning has been misunderstood by Wright, who sa3rs: 'Delius
sees in this his intention to kill Caesar, but such an interpretation is contrary to the
whole tenor of the speech. Besides, a man cannot be said to "wear" a dagger
which he plants in the heart of his enemy.' — In the phrase 'sich den Dolch . . .
stossen,' *sich' b used reflexively and refers to the subject of the verb. — Ed.]
100. Cassius . . . will deliuer Cassius] There is a curious resemblance
between this passage and one in Cornelia^ translated by Kyd from the French of
Gamier, 1594; the interlocutors are Bmtus and Cassius; to the latter is given the
following lines: 'But know, while Cassius hath one drop of blood To feed this
worthless body that you see. What reck I death to do so many good? In spite of
Caesar, Cassius will be free.* — Act IV. (ed. Dodsley, p. 224). — This thought is
the invention of both dramatists; Plutarch does not ascribe such sentiments to
Cassius. — Ed.
loi. yee . . . jrou] Abbott (§ 236): In the original form of the language
ACT I, sc. iii.] IVLIVS CjESAR 67
Therein, yee Gods, you Tyrants doe defeat. 102
Not Stonie Tower, nor walls of beaten BrafTe,
Nor ayre-lefle Dungeon, nor ftrong Linkes of Iron,
Can be retentiue to the ftrength of fpirit : 105
But Life being wearie of thefe worldly Barres,
Neuer lacks power to difmifle it felfe .
If I know this, know all the World befides,
That part of Tyrannic that I doe beare,
I can (hake off at pleafure. Thunder JlilL 1 10
Cask* So can I :
So euery Bond-man in his owne hand beares
The power to cancel! his Captiuitie.
Cajft. And why fhould C(Bfar be a Tyrant then ?
Poore man, I know he would not be a Wolfe, 115
But that he fees the Romans are but Sheepe :
He were no Lyon, were not Romans Hindes.
Thofe that with hafle will make a mightie fire.
Begin it with weake Strawes. What trafh is Rome ? 119
no. Thunder ftill.] Ff, Knt, Coll. 119, 120, 122. Rome?,„OffaUf...
Dycc, Sta. Hal. Cam.-f , Wh. Craik, Caefar.] Ff, Rowe, Theob. Warb.
Huds. Thunders. Ktly, Om. Rowe et Rome,.,.Offaly,..C9S3ai? Han. et cet.
cct.
'ye' is nommative; 'you/ accusative. This distinction, however, though observed
in our version of the Bible, was disregarded by Elizabethan authors, and 'ye'
seems to be generally used in questions, entreaties, and rhetorical appeals. Ben
Jonson: 'The second person plural is for reverence sake to some singular thing.'
He quotes, 'O good father dear, Why make ye this heavy cheer?'
1 12, X13. Bond-man ... to cancell] It is, perhaps, too much to say that
Shakespeare was fond of the thought that life was like a bond or a security en-
trusted to us, and that death was the cancelling agent; at all events he has used this
simfle in three other passages, as others have before pointed out, viz.: 'Cancel
and tear to pieces that great bond Which keeps me pale.' — Macbeth j III, ii, 49;
'Cancel his bond of life, dear God I pray.* — Rich. Ill: IV, iv, 77; 'Take this life
And cancel these cold bonds.' — Cytnb.y V, iv, 28. — Ed.
115, 116. a Wolfe . . . Romans are but Sheepe] Percy Simpson (ap. Maiuc
Huntek)' compares Bamabe Rich, The Irish Hubbub y 161 7, p. 6: 'But I will come
ouer these fellowes with a prouerbe that many yeeres agoe I brought out of France^
and thus followes the text: He that wHl make himself e a sheepe ^ Uisno matter though
the Wolues doe eat him.' 'The proverb,' adds Simpson, 'is "Qui se fait brebis, le
loup le mange," and is still current.'
117. Hindes] Is there possibly here a play upon the word 'hind' in its other
sense of domestic servanty peasant? — Ed.
119. What trash is Rome] Hudson: The idea seems to be that as men
start a huge fire with worthless straws or shavings, so Cassar is using the degenerate
68 THE TRACED IE OF [act i, sc. iiL
What Rubbifh^ and what Offall ? when it ferues 1 20
For the bafe matter, to illuminate
So vile a thing as Ccefar. But oh Griefe,
Where haft thou led me ? I (perhaps j fpeake this
Before a willing Bond-man : then I know
My anfwere muft be made. But I am armM, 125
And dangers are to me indifferent.
Cask. You fpeake to CaskUj and to fuch a man,
That is no flearing Tell-tale. Hold, my Hand :
Be fa6lious for redreffe of all thefe Griefes,
And I will fet this foot of mine as farre, 1 30
As who goes fartheft.
Cajfu There's a Bargaine made.
Now know you, CaskUy I haue mouM already
Some certaine of the Nobleft minded Romans
To vnder.goe, with me, an Enterprize, 1 35
Of Honorable dangerous confequence ;
And I doe know by this, they flay for me
In Pompeyes Porch : for now this fearefuU Night,
There is no ftirre, or walking in the ftreetes ; 1 39
122. Grief ei\ grief/ F4. 136. Honorable dangerous] Ff,
128. Holdy] Ff, Rowe, Pope, Coll. Rowe,+, Jen. honourahUy dangerous
Dyce, Hal. Wh. Craik, Huds. Holdy — Coll. ii. honourable-dangerous Cap. et
Sing. Ktly. Hold Theob. et cet. cet.
Romans of the time to set the whole world ablaze with his own glory. Cassius's
enthusiastic hatred of Hhe mightiest Julius' is irresistibly delightful. For 'a
good hater' is the next best thing to a true friend; and Cassius's honest gushing
malice is far better than Brutus's stabbing sentimentalism.
125. My answere must be made] Johnson: That is, I shall be called to
account, and must answer as for seditious words.
128. Hold, my Hand] Johnson: That is. Here's my hand.
129. factious] Johnson: This seems here Xx> meaiXi active, — M alone: It means,
I apprehend, embody a party or faction. — Steevens: Perhaps Dr Johnson's
explanation is the true one. Menenius, in Coriol.y says: 'I have been always
factionary on the part of your general,' — V, ii, 30; and the speaker, who is describing
himself, would scarce have employed the word in its common and unfavourable
sense. — Coleridge (Notes ^ etc., p. 132): I understand it thus, *You have spoken
as a conspirator; be so in fact, and I will join you. Act on your principles, and
realize them in a fact.'
129. Griefes] That is, grievances, causes of complaint. Compare HI, ii, 223;
IV, ii, 50.
135. vnder-goe] For other examples of undergo in the sense of to undertake, to
take upon oneself, see Schmidt (Lex,), 3.
ACT I. SC. iii.] IVLIVS CjESAR 69
And the Complexion of the Element 140
Is Fauors, like the Worke we haue in hand,
140. Element] elements Warb. Glo.+* Is havicurs, Hen:. lU-favoured
141. Is PauorSf] Ff. Is feavWotUy Elzc. In*s favor's, F. C. B. Terry. Is
Rowe, Pope, Theob. Han. Warb. Jen. fenxms, R. R. (N. & Q., 21 Aug., 1880).
Ran. Is favour* d Cap. Mai. Steev. His favour's Perring (p. 358). Infa-
Var. '03, '13. It favours, Var. '73. // vour's, Johns, et cct.
favours Var. '78, ^85. In favour's Cam.
140. Complexion of the Element] Warburton: We find from the preceding
relation (11. 7-12) that it was not one Element only which was disturbed, but all;
being told that all the sway of Earth shook like a thing infirm; that Winds rived the
knotty oaks; that the Ocean raged and foamed; and that there was a tempest
dropping Fire. So that all the four Elements appeared to be disordered. We
should read therefore: 'the complexion of the Elements' which is confirmed by
the following line: 'Most bloody, fiery, and most terrible.' B^oot/y referring to the
Water; Fiery, to the Air and Fire; and Terrible, to the Earthquakes. — Heath:
There was not the least occasion to alter the ancient reading 'element' [see Text.
Notes], which in common acceptation more particularly denotes the air. Lightning
and ghosts seem to be the only extraordinary appearances of that fearful night
of which Cassius is speaking; and these appearances may very well be referred to the
air alone. ... As to what Casca adds, of 'all the sway of the earth shaking like a
thing infirm,' it needs not be interpreted of an actual earthquake, which if the poet
had had in his view, he would have expressed himself with greater propriety and
certainty. It means only that the agitations in the heavens were so violent
that they seemed even to portend that the earth itself would fall back into its
original chaos. It is remarkable that the poet does not say the earth shook, but all
the 'sway of earth shook,' which may very well be understood of the element which
every way surrounds and embraces it, and in consequence may be supposed to have
a very great share in bringing on any changes that may happen to it. Thus
Warburton's most accurate distribution of the three epithets, in the next line,
among the four elements appears to be absolutely without foundation. — Edwards
(p. 215): There is not the least reason to think that anything is here alluded to
but some extraordinary meteors in the air. But Mr W[arburton], having laid hands
on a speech of Casca where the words Earth, Winds, Ocean, and Fire happen all
to occur, he immediately falls to his work; and, stirring them together with his
uncreative paw, he brews us up this horrid Chaos of the Elements. And from the
midst of all this turmoil of his own raising comes staring out and tells us that
* Bloody refers to the Water, Fiery to the Air and Fire, and Terrible to the Earth-
quakes.' As well as I can conjecture, for these reasons: Bloody to the Water,
because No mention is made of water in the passage: Fiery to the Air and Fire,
because the Air was on Fire, and 'tis hard if a thing may not refer to itself; and,
lastly, as for Terrible to the Earthquakes; when Mr W[arburton] gives us any
reason, why Terrible must refer to Earthquakes rather than to any other objects
of terror; except because Terra is Latin for the Earth; I promise to take this off
his hands again.
Z41. Is Fauors, like] Craik (p. 199): To say that the complexion of a thing is
either featured like or in feature like to something else is very like tautology. I
should be strongly inclined to adopt Rowe's ingenious conjecture, feverous. . . .
70 THE TRACED IE OF [act i, sc. iu.
Moft bloodie, fierie^ and mod terrible. 142
Enter Cinna.
Caska. Stand clofe a while ^ for heere comes one in
hafte. 14s
Cajft. 'Tis Cinna^ I doe know him by his Gate,
He is a friend. Ctnna, where hafle you fo ?
Cinna. To finde out you : Who's that, Metellus
Cymber}
Cajft. No, it is Caska^ one incorporate 150
To our Attempts. Am I not ftay'd for, Cinna ?
Cinna. I am glad on't.
What a fearefuU Night is this ? 153
142, bloodie, fierie] bloody-fiery 152, 153. One line Roweetseq.
Walker (Crit., i, 33), Dyce ii, iii, 152. / am] Fm Pope.
Huds. iii. iS3* ^ this?] Om. Ff. is Qns! Ran.
151. Attempts] attempt Wh. i, Dyce ii, Sing. Knt, Coll. Dyce.
iii, Coll. iii.
Feverous is exactly the sort of word that, if it were not distinctly written, would
be apt to puzzle and be mistaken by a compositor. It may perhaps count, too, for
something, though not very much, against both favour*s like and faooured like
that a very decided conmia separates the two words in the Folio. — ^Wright:
Johnson's emendation pin favour's like'] is to be preferred. The comparison
is between the bloody nature of the work which the conspirators had in hand
and the fiery exhalations in the sky; and the word 'complexion' in the previous
line suits better with 'favour's' than with feverous y for it refers to the aspect of
the heavens only and not to any other prodigies, as, for instance, an earthquake,
which might be likened to the symptoms of a fever. — p[n The Athetueum for 27th
December, 1879, Browning proposed to read: Is Mavors, like — explaining the word
'Mavors ' as the full form of name of which Mars is the contraction. The sugges-
tion has not yet met with much commendation. Is there, however, need of any
change in the Folio text? Cassius says: The complexion of the element b bloody
and terrible favors; a construction much the same as 'The wages of sin is death.'
Johnson's emendation is, of course, more easily comprehended, and perhaps, there-
fore, has been generally accepted. But the old scholastic rule, durior lectio , etc.,
is a safe one to follow, especially when applied to Shakespeare; that the Folio read-
ing is here to be preferred is the opinion of the present Ed.]
142. Most bloodie, fierie] Walker {Crit.j i, 23): Read 'bloody-fiery.'
aifi6^7^, as a Greek tragedian might have expressed it, or, in Latin poetical
language, sanguineum ardens; covered over with fiery meteors of a blood-red
colour. [Dyce adopts Walker's suggestion.]
148. To finde out jrou] Abbott (§ 240): 'Find out' is here treated as a single
word. So, 'To belch-up you.' — Temp,, III, iii, 56; 'And leave-out thee.' —
Rich. Ill: I, iii, 216. [Wright compares 'Groped I to find out them.' — Hamlei,
V, ii, 16.]
ACT I, sc. iii.]
IVLIVS C^SAR
There's two or three of vs haue feene ftrange fights.
Caffu Am I not ftayM for ? tell me.
Cinna. Yes, you are. O CaJftuSj
If you could but wirnie the Noble Brutus
To our party
Cajft. Be you content Good Cinna, take this Paper,
And looke you lay it in the Pretors Chayre,
Where Brutus may but finde it : and throw this
In at his Window ; fet this vp with Waxe
Vpon old Brutus Statue : all this done,
Repaire to Pompeyes Porch, where you (hall finde vs.
Is Decius Brutus and Trebonius there ?
Cinna. All, but Metellus Cymber, and hee's gone
To feeke you at your houfe. Well, I will hie.
And fo beftow thefe Papers as you bad me.
CaJft. That done, repayre to Pompeyes Theater.
Exit Cinna.
Come Caska^ you and I will yet,ere day.
See Brutus at his houfe : three parts of him
Is ours alreadie, and the man entire
Vpon the next encounter, yeelds him ours.
71
iSS
160
i6s
170
174
155. fia'^d forf] stayd for, Cinnaf
Cap. Stecv. Varr.
i56»i57- Fe5...aw/<fl One line Johns.
CoU. ii.
156-158. you are„.party\ Two lines,
ending: winnc.party Cap. Varr. Mai.
Ran. Steev. Varr. Huds. Lines end:
arc.xould... party. Walker (Vers. 290),
Sing, ii, Craik, Dyce, Sta. Cam.+*
iS^i 157* 0 Ca(nus...Brutus] One
line Rowe, Pope, Theob. Han. Warb.
Jen. Sing, i, Rnt, Coll. i, iii, Wh. i, Hal.
157, 158. One line Ktly.
157. If,„hut] could you Pope, Theob.
Han. Warb.
160. Pretors] Praiors F4.
161. hut] best Craik conj.
165. Decius] Decimus Han.
167. Jeeke] fecke Fj.
173. Is] Are Han.
156-158. Yes, you are . . . our party] Craik (p. 200): I cannot doubt that,
whatever we arc to do with *Yes, you are,' — whether we make these compara-
tively unimportant words the completion of the line of which Cassius's question
forms the beginning, or take them along with what follows, which would give us a
line wanting only the first syllable (and deriving, perhaps, from that mutilation an
abruptness suitable to the occasion), — the close of the rhythmic flow must be as
follows: 'O Cassius, if you could But win the noble Brutus to our party.'
160. Pretors Chayre] 'His [Brutus's] tribunal or chair, where he gave audience
during the time he was Praetor, was full of such bills: "Brutus, thou art asleep, and
art not Brutus mdeed."' — Plutarch, Life of Brutus ^ § 6; (ed. Skeat, p. 112).
168. bad me] Wright: I am inclined to think that bid \s the proper reading here,
as Cinna had but just received his instructions from Cassius.
72 THE TRACED IE OF [act ll. sc. i.
Cask. O, he fits high in all the Peoples hearts : 175
And that which would appeare Offence in vs,
His Countenance, like richeft Alchymie,
Will change to Vertue, and to Worthineffe.
CaJJt. Him, and his worth, and our great need of him.
You haue right well conceited : let vs goe, 180
For it is after Mid-night, and ere day.
We will awake him, and be fure of him.
ExeunU 183
A6lus Secundus.
[Scene /.]
Enter Brutus in his Orchard. 2
a. £nter...Orchard.] A Garden. Enter Brutus. Rowe, Pope. Brutus's Garden.
Enter Brutus. Theob.+, Cap. Jen. Brutus's Orchard. Enter Brutus. Mai. et seq.
(subs.)
177. Countenance] That is, aulhorUy, credit j patronage. For other examples
see Schmidt {Lex,, s, v. 4).
179, 180. Him, and his worth . . . right well conceited] Lloyd (ap. Singer,
vili, 509): The surrender by Cassius of the leading voice in the enterprise,
which he originated, is the homage of vice to virtue, at least of personal to lofty
principle. Not unconscious of the faulty motive of his own passion, he has greater
confidence in the influence of Brutus's character and reputation than any other
chance in favor of success; moreover, he not only respects, but loves him, even
while he is deceiving him, and is raised by the feeling far above the level of the
mere intriguer, and remains, with all his faults, a noble Roman. His interest in the
affection of Brutus strengthens as the consciousness of a desperate cause, — desperate
through the incongruity of the alliance of personal and patriotic motive, — induces a
melancholy that only invades hearts of great natural sensibility.
2. Enter . . . Orchard] Craik (p. 203) : Assuming that Brutus was probably
not possessed of what we now call distinctively an orchard (which may have been
the case), the early editors took upon them to change 'Orchard' into Garden.
But this is to carry the work of rectification (even if we should admit it to be such)
beyond what is warrantable. To deprive Brutus in this way of his orchard was to
mutilate or alter Shakespeare's conception. It is probable that the words 'Or-
chard' and garden were commonly understood in the early part of the seventeenth
century in the senses which they now bear; but there is nothing in their etymology
to support the manner in which they have come to be distinguished. In Much
Ado, n, iii, although the scene is headed Leonalo^s Garden, Benedick, sending the
Boy for a book from his chamber- window, says: 'Bring it hither to me in the
orchard.' A Garden (or yard, as it is still called in Scotland) means merely a piece
of ground girded in, or enclosed; and an Orchard (properly Ortyard) is, literally,
such an enclosure for worts, or herbs. — OECHELHAtJsER (EinfUhrungen, i, 234):
This scene in Brutus's garden, by moonlight^ requires special careful attention. On
ACT II. sc. i.] IVLIVS C^SAR 73
BruU What LticiuSy hoe ? 3
I cannotyby the progreffe of the Starres,
Giue gueffe how neere to dsLy-^LuciuSy I fay ? 5
I would it were my fault to fleepe fo foundly.
When Lucius J when ? awake^ I fay: what Lucius ?
Enter Lucius.
Luc. CallM you, my Lord ?
Brut. Get me a Tapor in my Study, Zz/rw/^; 10
When it is lighted, come and call me here.
Luc. I will, my Lord. Exit.
Brut. It muft be by his death : and for my part, 13
10. Tapor\ F,.
the right, half concealed by the shrubbery, is a semidrcular marble bench, on
which, at the rising of the curtain, Brutus is seated in deep thought. On the left
is seen the entrance to Brutus's house, showing a vestibule with columns, dimly
illuminated by a hanging lamp. The whole backgroimd filled in with high bushes,
from the shade of which the conspirators cautiously emerge.
13. It must be by his death, etc.] Coleridge {Notts ^ p. 132): This speech
is singular; at least, I do not at present see into Shakesi)eare's motive, his rationale^
or in what point of view he meant Brutus's character to ap[)ear. For surely —
(this, I mean, is what I say to m3rself , with my present quantum of insight, only
modified by my experience in how many instances I had ripened into a perception
of beauties, where I had before descried faults) — surely, nothing can seem more
discordant with our historical preconceptions of Brutus, or more lowering to the
intellect of the Stoico-Platonic tyrannicide, than the tenets here attributed to him —
to him, the stem Roman republican; namely, that he would have no objection to a
king, or to Caesar, a monarch in Rome, would but Caesar be as good a monarch as he
now seems disposed to be! How, too, could Brutus say that he foimd no personal
cause — none in Caesar's past conduct as a man? Had he not passed the Rubicon?
Had he not entered Rome as a conqueror? Had he not placed his Gauls in the
Senate? Shakespeare, it may be said, has not brought these things forward —
True; — and this is just the ground of my perplexity. What character did Shake-
speare mean his Brutus to be? — Courtenay (ii, 263) : Brutus says that he will kill
Caesar because he is powerful and may abuse his power; and the passages of his
life, to which Coleridge refers, gave Brutus no personal cause of ofifence, though
much 'for the general.' — Knight (Studies, p. 413): Brutus has a terror of con-
spiracy. He has been 'with himself at war,' speculating, we doubt not, upon the
strides of Caesar towards absolute power, but unprepared to resist them. Of Caesar
he has said, 'I love him well'; he now says: 'I know no personal cause to spurn at
him.' As a trimnvir, a dictator, Brutus had no personal cause against Caesar;
but the name of king, which Cassius poured into his ear, rouses all his speculative
republicanism. . . . We must bear in mind that Brut\is is not yet committed to the
conspiracy. The character that Shakespeare meant his Brutus to be is not yet fully
developed. He is yet irresolute; and his reasonings are, therefore, to a certain
74 '^f^^ TRACE DIE OF [act n, sc. i.
[13. It must be by his death, etc.]
extent, inconsequential. He b instigated from without; the principles associated
with the name of Brutus stir him from within. — Dowden (p. 293) : Shakespeare
wishes to show upon what groimds the political idealist acts. Brutus resolves that
Csesar shall die by his hand as the conclusion of a series of sorites of abstract prin-
ciples about ambition, and power, and reason, and affection; finally, a profound
suspicion of Csesar is engendered, and his death is decreed. — ^Hudson: Upon the
supposal that Shakespeare meant Brutus for a wise and good man, the speech
seems to me utterly unintelligible. But the Poet, I think, must have regarded
him simply as a well-meaning, but conceited and shallow idealist; and such men are
always cheating and puffing themselves with the thinnest of sophisms; feeding on
air, and conceiving themselves inspired; or, as Gibbon puts it: 'mistaking the
giddiness of the head for the illmnination of the Spirit.' — Staffer (p. 344) : One
is inclined to speculate whether in this strange meditation on the dangerous efifect
the crown might have on Caesar's nature, Shakespeare intended to show the subject-
ive tendency of Brutus's mind, and his habit of scrutinising things below the sur-
face; or whether it may not be an illustration of the hold that his affectionate and
gentle disposition had over him. It would almost seem that, in his love for Cesar,
he could suffer his acceptance of the crown, if only he were sure that Caesar would
not abuse his power. He weighs calmly and impartially the considerations on
either >ide*->But the stem republican fibre of his nature checks this confidence
r'^and makes him dread the possible consequences to the liberty of the people, and
in the end triumphs over all hesitation. According to thb view, we see him in-
dulging, indeed, to a certain extent the psychological bent of his mind, but it is di-
rected towards practical ends. The acquisition of kingly power may change
Csesar's nature, and if so what would be the effect on the nation? The chances
are that it would be of the most disastrous kind, therefore kill him in the shell. —
Verity: The point of this speech seems to me to lie in the fact that it expresses
the extreme, almost pedantic, horror which Brutus feels for kingship and the mere
name of ' king' and all its associations, and increased in his case by family tradition.
Practically Csesar was king already; could it really make much difference to Rome
if he assumed the name when he possessed the reality? He had wielded inunense
power for years, and was then a man of fifty-six; would the assmnption of royalty be
likely to make any change in his character? Brutus says ' yes' ; if Csesar were made
'king,' all the evil in him would be developed, so that Rome would find herself in
the hands of a tyrant without 'remorse.' Brutus speaks as if the bare fact of
'crowning' Caesar would 'change his nature,' a change fraught with 'danger' to
Rome. Here, as ever, 'Rome' is his first consideration. — ^Tolican believes that
Shakespeare wishes here to present the experience of one who would be startled by
considerations distinctly set forth, and, therefore, these words are intended to repre-
sent the 'unexpressed thought of Brutus.' — ^J. L. Etty (Macmillan's Maga,, March,
1903; p. 354) : A man who could argue thus was a politician of the most dangerous
type, one who would wreck his own side as well as that of his adversaries. And so
it proved; the obstinate refusal of Brutus to let Antony share Caesar's fate, and
his folly in allowing him to speak publicly to the people, completely spoiled what-
ever chance of success the conspirators ever had. — H. Hodge (Harper's Maga,,
Feb., 1906; p. 367): The whole soliloquy is the sophistic device of a man squaring
his moral character with his intention. The situation is clinched by the eagerness
with which Brutus snatches at the papers thrown in through the window. Then
ACT II. sc. i.] IVLIVS CuESAJR 75
[13. It must be by his death, etc.]
comes the melodramatic apostrophe, with himself as audience. What true man,
unusually philosophic too in temper, could be influenced in a tremendous enterprise,
to which public necessity drove him against his will, by an anonymous scrawl thrown
in at the window? Cassius knew his man. — F. Harris (p. 255) : When speaking of
himself, on the plains of Philippi, Shakespeare's Brutus explicitly contradicts the
false reasoning [in the present passage]: ' — I do find it cowardly and vile For fear
of what might fall, so to prevent the term of life.' It would seem, therefore, that
Brutus did not kill Oesar, as one crushes a serpent's egg, to prevent evil conse-
quences. It is equally manifest that he did not do it for 'the general,' for if ever
the general were shown to be despicable and worthless it is in thb very play,
where the citizens murder Cinna, the poet, because he has the same name as Cinna,
the conspirator, and the lower classes are despised as the 'rabblement.' — Goll (p.
52) : The argument which Brutus finally accepts or, rather, the image which finally
carries conviction to Brutus's mind is Caesar as the serpent's egg. . . . Apparently,
there is much theoretical scholasticism in the whole of this argument; and it is
evident it never would have succeeded in convincing Brutus had not Cassius's
incitements been still actively working in his mind. But, as little as this argument
could have arisen without these incitements, as little could they or any other
instigations have succeeded in influencing Brutus to commit the murder had he
not been able to justify it to his reason. This is precisely the nature of the pro-
nounced theorist. His train of ideas amounts almost to a rubric. He cannot con-
cur in anything tmless it is founded on a theory, a principle, a syllogism. He
fancies his resolution is based on his theory because he believes he is pushing all
personal feelings into the background. In reality, of course, the feelings produce
the theory and the theory the resolution. Cassius's play on the inherited instincts of
Brutus, namely, a Brutus's duties towards an autocrat, finds him so responsive that
he is able to delude himself into the idea that he has no personal duties towards
Caesar; that these, on the contrary, are unfair to all other persons; and, from the
moment this theory, artificial and perverted as it is, has come into existence, Brutus
dares to follow the impulses of his heart. ... If the theory lead him to outrage all
human feelings, so much the more is it his duty to follow it and to conquer senti-
ment.— MacCallum (p. 204) : Perhaps Shakespeare thought no more of Caesar's
crossing the Rubicon [as mentioned by Coleridge], to suppress Pompey and put
an end to the disorders of Rome, than of Richmond's crossing the channel to sup-
press Richard HI, and put end to the Wars of the Roses. At any rate, he makes
no mention of these and similar grounds of offence, though all or most of them were
set down in his authority. It may be noted, however, that Plutarch says nothing
about the Gauls [in the senate, also referred to by Coleridge]. If Shakespeare had
known of it, it would probably have seemed to him no worse than the presence of the
Bretons, 'those overweening rags of France,' as Richard HI. calls them, in the
army of the patriotic and virtuous Richmond. — Macmillan (ItUrod., xxxiii.):
lago's soliloquy in I, iii, has been called by Coleridge 'the motive-hunting of a
motive-less malignity.' The soliloquy of Brutus might almost be described as the
motive-hunting of a motive-less benignity. Yet one would think that Brutus had a
distinct enough motive for killing Caesar. He was a republican, and Caesar had
overthrown the republic. . . . Brutus might well have concluded his soliloquy in
the words of lago: * I know not if 't be true. But I for mere suspicion in that kind
Will do as if for surety.'
76 THE TRACED IE OF [act n. sc. L
I know no perfonall caufe^to fpume at him^
But for the generall. He would be crownM : 15
How that might change his nature^ there's the queftion?
It is the bright day^that brings forth the Adder,
And that craues warie walking : Crowne him that,
And then I graunt we put a Sting in him.
That at his will he may doe danger with. 20
Th'abufe of Greatneffe,is,when it dis-ioynes
Remorfe from Power : And to fpeake truth of Ca/ar^
I haue not knowne,when his AffefHons fway'd
More then his Reafon. But 'tis a common proofe, 24
15. crown* d:\ crowned — Rowe,+ 18. Crowne him thai^ Crown him —
( — ^Johns.)> Jen. Var. '78, Mai. Steev. thai — Rowe,+, Jen. Crown kimt
Van. Sing. Craik, Dyce, Sta. Thai; Cap. Crown kim!-~thaU J. D.
16-22. Mnemonic Warb. (N. & Q., V, viii, 263). Crown himt —
16. queftion?] question^ Rowe,+, thai; — Var. '73 et cet.
Cap. Jen. 21. dis^oynes] disjoynes ¥^¥4.
z8. Crowne him that] Peeking (p. 361): The best sign to mark the pause
which the speaker makes after * Crown him ' is a hyphen. After ' that ' at the end of
the line are a semicolon and a hyphen [in the Globe edition], which would lead us to
8iq>pose that the words to be supplied are 'craves wary walking'; nothing would
be more incorrect. 'That/ which is tantamount to a repetUion of ^ Crown him*
and is full of Republican animus, is in dose connexion with the line thai follows, and
should be separated from it only by a conuna — ' Crown him' — do Uhaij* allow that,
grant that, 'and then . . . actum est de republica* We have precisely the same
phraseology, save that the verb is expressed, and the same pimctuation, in m, i,
X2o: 'Grant that, and then is death a benefit.* — O. F. Adams {Notes fir Queries,
23 July, 1892; p. 63): My belief is that the pimctuation of the Folio is correct.
We have probably here a late use, in the oblique case, of he that, or he emphatic.
The phrase was, no doubt, obsolete in the literary language of Shakespeare's day,
but it may have survived in the rustic speech of his native coimty. After the
reference to the adder, a little emphasis in reverting to Caesar is natural.
22-24. Remorse from Power . . . his Reason] Hudson: Some obscurity
here, owing to the use of certain words in imcommon senses. ' Remorse,' in Shake-
speare, conunonly means pity or compassion; here it means conscience or con-
scientiousness. So in Othello J 'Let him command, And to obey shall be in me
remorse.' — III, iii, 467. The possession of dictatorial power is apt to stifle or sear
the conscience, so as to make a man literally remorseless. 'Affections' again here
stands for passions, as in several other instances. Finally, 'reason' is here used
in the same sense as 'remorse.' So the context clearly points out; and the con-
science is, in a philosophical sense, the moral reason.
24. common proofe] Johnson: That is, a common experiment. — ^M. Mason:
'Common proof means a matter proved by common experience. With great
deference to Johnson, I cannot think that the word experiment will bear that
meaning.
ACT II. sc. i.] IVLIVS C^SAR jj
That Lowlyneffe is young Ambitions Ladder, 25
Whereto the Climber vpward tumes his Face :
But when he once attaines the vpmoft Round,
He then vnto the Ladder tumes his Backe,
Lookes in the Clouds, fcoming the bafe degrees
By which he did afcend : fo Cafar may ; 30
Then leaft he may,preuent. And fmce the Quarrell
Will beare no colour, for the thing he is,
Fafhion it thus ; that what he is, augmented.
Would runne to thefe,and thefe extremities :
And therefore thinke him as a Serpents egge, 35
Which hatchM, would as his kinde grow mifchieuous;
And kill him in the fhell.
Enter Lucius.
Luc. The Taper bumeth in your Clofet,Sir :
Searching the Window for a Flint, I found 40
25-30. Mnemonic Pope. Warb. topmost Anon. ap. Cam.
26. Climber vpward[ Ff, Rowe. Pope, 28. Backer] Backe. Ff.
Theob. Han. Craik. climber-upward 30. afcend:] ascend. Johns. Var. '73,
Warb. et cet. Coll. Hal. Wh. i, Huds.
27. vpmoft] utmost Rnt (misprint). 31. Uaft] left Ff.
26. Climber vpward tumes] Delius suggests that 'upward' b here connected
with 'turns' more nattmdly than by the hyphen first inserted by Warburton (see
Text. Notes). The suggestion has not thus far met with much approval. — Ed.
29. degrees] Murray (N. E. D.j s.v. 1.): A step in an ascent or descent; one
of a flight of steps; a step or nmg of a ladder. [The present line quoted.]
31. least he may, preuent] J. Hunter: That b, be beforehand with him;
stop his further progress. Observe how he delicately represents the temper of
Brutus by avoiding any pronominal reference to the agent who is to prevent; he
does not say 'let me prevent/ but uses the imperative indefinitely. Compare the
subsequent imperatives, 'fashion/ 'think/ 'kill.' — ^Wright: The construction does
not connect 'lest' with 'prevent/ as if it were prevent lest he may, but as in King
Lear: 'Lest it see more, prevent it. Out, vile jelly! ' — HI, vii, 83.
31. QuarreU] Craigie (N.E.D.,s.v. f i.): A complaint; especially a complaint
against a person; hence in Law: an accusation or charge; an action or suit. Obsolete.
36. as his kinde] Johnson: That is, according to his nature. — Steevens:
Compare, 'You must think this, look you, that the worm will do his kind.' — Ant.
& Cleo.f V, ii, 263. — M. Mason: 'As his kind' does not mean according to his
nature, as Johnson asserts, but, like the rest of his species. [Wright agrees with
Johnson, but, since the passage quoted by Steevens is not a parallelism, that
Mason's is the better interpretation is the opinion of the present Ed.]
37. And kill . . . shell] Craik (p. 129): It is impossible not to fed the
expressive effect of the hemistich here. The line itself is, as it were, killed in the
shelL
yS THE TRACED IE OF [act ll. sc. i.
This Paper, thus feaPd vp,and I am fure 41
It did not lye there when I went to Bed.
Giues liitn tfie Letter.
Brut. Get you to Bed againe^it is not day :
Is not to morrow (Boy ^ the firft of March ? 45
Luc. I know not, Sir.
Brut. Looke in the Calender, and bring me word. 47
45. firfi] Ides Theob. et seq. 47. Calender] Kalendar F4.
45. first of March] Theobald was the first to notice here, what he termed, a
* palpable blunder/ that is, the date should be the Ides of Margh. Theobald gener-
ously acknowledged that his 'friend Mr WarburtOn likewise started this very
emendation, and conmiunicated' it to him by letter. That friend was, however,
silent in regard to Theobald when he wrote his own note on this passage. Theobald
gave as a hypothetical cause for the misprint that Ides in the MS was written j', and
thus confused by the compositors with the old symbol for z*S although 'the
Players knew the word well enough in the contraction.' He thus concludes his
note: 'That the Poet wrote Ides^ we have this in confirmation: Brutus makes the
enquiry on the dawn of the very day in which Cssar was killed in the Capitol.
Now 'tis very well known that this was on the 15th day, which is the Ides of March.'
— ^Warburton: We can never suppose the speaker to have lost fourteen days in his
account. He is here plainly ruminating on what the Soothsayer told Cssar in his
presence. — ^J. Hunter: If ' the first of March ' be the genuine reading, Shakespeare
must either have inadvertently quoted from a passage in Plutarch, not applicable
here, but which refers to Cassius asking Brutus if he intended to be in the senate-
house on the first of March, or else the poet must have meant to represent Brutus
as exceedingly oblivious, and even Lucius as rather too unobservant of time's
progress. [The passage to which Himter refers is as follows: 'Cassius asked him
[Brutus] if he were determined to be in the senate-house the first day of the month
of March, because he heard say that Caesar's friends should move the coimcil that
day, that Caesar ^ould be called king by the Senate.' — Life of BnUus, § 7 (ed.
Skeat, p. 113). — Ed.]— Joseph Hunter (New Illustrations, etc., ii, 150): Whatever
opinion may be formed of Shakespeare's scholarship, it cannot be placed so low as
that he was not so far acquainted with the Roman calendar; but he had the in-
formation before his eyes in the very book which he used, in which occurs this
passage: ' Furthermore there was a certain soothsayer that had given Caesar warning
long time afore, to take heed of the Ides of March (which is the fifteenth of the
month), for on that day he should be in great danger,' and it is manifest that the-
passage had attracted his attention by his having given the same explanation which
Sir Thomas North had thought it necessary to give in his parenthesis, for he makes
Brutus ask the day of the month, and Lucius replies that 'March is wasted fifteen
days.' The old reading 'fifteen* might be justified. — ^Wright: Ides is, no doubt,
what Shakespeare ought to have written. . . . But I have as little doubt that what
he actually wrote was what stands in the Folio. It is quite possible that from the
passage [in North's Plutarch, cited by J. Himter] the first of March fixed itself in
Shakes[)eare's mind, although Brutus was thinking of the Ides which he had heard
the soothsayer warn Caesar against.
ACT II, sc. i.] IVLIVS C^SAR yg
Luc. I will, Sir. £xiL 48
Brut. The exhalations, whizzing in the ayre,
Giue fo much light, that I may reade by them. 50
Opens tlu Letter yund reades.
Brutus tliou Jlceffjl ; awake ^ and fee thy f elf e :
Sliall Romey &c. fpeake Jlrike , redrejfe.
Brutus, thou Jleefjl : awake.
Such infligations haue beene often dropt, 55
Where I haue tooke them vp :
Sfiall Romej&c. Thus muft I piece it out :
Shall Rome fland vnder one mans awe ? What Rome ?
My Anceftors did from the ftreetes of Rome
The Tarquin driue, when he was callM a King. 60
Speake Jlrike^ redrejfe. Am I entreated
S3> 57- Rome, &c.] Ff, Steev. Varr. 59. AnujUifs\ ancestor Dyce ii, iii.
Sing. Knt, Coll. Dyce, Sta. Hal. Wh. 61. Speake...en/fea/e(/] Two lines, the
Cam.-f. Rome, — Rowe et cet first ending: redrejfe. Craik.
54-56. 6rutus...9^] Two lines, end- entreated\ entreated then Pope,
ing: inftigaiions,„vp Ktly. Theob. Han. Warb. Steev. Var. '03,
58. What Rome?] What, Rome? Rowe '13, Ktly.
et seq.
49. exhalations] That is, meteors; frequently thus called by Shakespeare and
others of his time.
53. speake, strike, etc.] Capell (i, loi): The mode of printing this line in
former copies may mislead the pronouncer; the paper is drop'd at that time, and
the reflections upon it begim by a repetition of part of it; the other repeated words
in that speech require a rais'd hand and other looks at the paper; the words that
follow the last of them have a foolish then added to them in the four latter modems.
58. Shall Rome . . . vnder one mans awe] MacCallxth (p. 203): This
certainly has somewhat of the republican ring. It breathes the same spirit as
Cassius's own avowal: 'I had as lief not be, as live to be In awe of such a thing as
I myself'; except that Cassius feels Caesar's predominance to be a personal affront,
while Brutus characteristically extends his view to the whole community. But
here Brutus is speaking imder the excitement of Cassius's 'instigation,' and making
himself Cassius's mouthpiece to fill in the blanks. Assuredly the declaration is not
on that accoimt the less personal to himself; nevertheless in it Brutus, no longer
attempting to square his action with his theory, falls back on the blind impulses of
blood that he shares with the other aristocrats of Rome. And in this, the most
republican and the only republican sentiment that falls from his lips, which for the
rest is so little republican that it might be echoed by the loyal subject of a limited
monarchy, it is only the negative of the matter and the public amour propre that
are considered. Of the positive essence of republicanism, of enthusiasm for a state
in which all the lawful authority is derived from the whole body of fully qualified
citizens, there is, despite Brutus's talk of freemen, and slaves, and Caesar's ambition,
no trace whatever in any of his utterances from first to last.
8o THE TRACED IE OF [act ii, sc. i.
To fpeake,and ftrike? O Rome, I make thee promife, 62
If the redreffe will follow, thou receiueft
Thy full Petition at the hand of Brutus.
Enter Lucius. 65
Luc. Sir, March is wafted fifteene dayes.
Knocke within.
Brut. 'Tis good. Go to the Gate, fome body knocks :
Since CaJJius firft did whet me againft Cc^far^
I haue not flept. ^0
Betweene the afling of a dreadfull thing,
And the firft motion, all the Interim is
Like a Phanta/mayOr a hideous Dreame : 73
62. thee] the FaF,. 6S-70. Go to„.flept] Two lines, cnd-
66. fifteene] Ff, Rowe, Pope, Ktly. ing: firfi„.Jlept Ktly.
fourteen Theob. ct cet. 70. Jlept.] slept— Pope, Theob. Han.
68. [Exit Luc. Theob. et seq. Warb.
71-77. Mnemonic Pope, Warb.
66. fifteene dayes] Theobald: March was wasted but fourteen days; this
was the dawn of the fifteenth when the boy makes his report.
68. 'Tis good] J. Hunter: This expression may be merely a mannerly ac-
knowledgment of the servant's attention; or perhaps the pronoun 'it' refers to the
fact announced, and Brutus may be here welcoming the near termination of that
hideous interim to which he presently refers.
69. Since Cassius . . . Cssar] Theobald: Some Readers might, perhaps,
imagine that (because Brutus, in his last scene with Cassius, said that he would
on the morrow stay at home for Cassius, and because Cassius here comes home to
him) this was the day immediately succeeding that on which Cassius open'd the
secret of the Conspiracy to him. But, however any circumstances in any preced-
ing lines may countenance such an opinion, it would be a great diminution of the
sedate character of Brutus to be let into a plot of such serious moment one day,
and to be ready to put it in execution on the next. The Poet intended no such
rash conduct. We are to observe, from the first Act, that Cassius opened the plot
to him on the feast of the Lupercalia, which solemnity was held in February, and
Caesar was not assassin'd till the middle of March. Some of the critics, with
what certainty I dare not pretend to say, fix down this feast to XV^ before the
Calends of March (f. f., the 15th of February); if so, the interval betwixt that
and the time when Csesar was murther'd is twenty-nine days. — Daniel {Sh,
Soc. Trans,, 1877-79, p. 198): [These words] give a sound as of a long period of
mental agony; and, to come to more definite evidence, his remark on the sealed
paper which his boy Lucius has found thrown in at the window, ' Such instigations
have been often dropped,' is only intelligible on the supposition of a considerable
interval between this present scene and Act I, sc. ii. This paper which Lucius
now finds must be that which Cassius confides to Cinna (I, iii, 161), and must
not be confounded with those Cassius talks of at the end of Act I, sc. ii, in
Day No. i. — [Macmillan (Introd.y Ii.) cites this as the only passage in the present
play wherein there is a 'dear instance of long and short time side by side.']
ACT II, sc. i.] IVLIVS C^SAR 8 1
The GeniuSySnd the mortall Inftruments 74
71-73. Betweene the acting ... a hideous Dreame] Warbuston, in a
letter to Concanen in 1726, makes an elaborate comparison between this passage
and one in Addison's CatOj wherein the time between the birth of a plot and its
'fatal period' is characterised as a 'dreadful interval of time, Filled up with horror
all, and big with de^^th.' The greater part of Warburton's note is actnally a criti-
cism of Addison more than Shakesi)eare, though he thus concludes: 'Comparing
the troubled mind of a cQUspirator to a state of anarchy b just and beautiful; but
the inlerim or interval, to. a hideous vision or a frightful dreamy holds something
so wonderfully of truth, and lays the soul so open, that one can hardly think it pos-
sible for any man, who had not some time or other been engaged in a conspiracy,
to give such force of coloring to nature.' — Steevens is our authority for the state-
ment that 'the foregoing was perhaps among the earliest notes written by War-
burton on Shakespeare. Though it was not inserted by him in Theobald's edi-
tions, 1732 and 1740, but was reserved for his own in 1747.' — Goll (p. 59): Cold
fanatic as the revolutionary of theory becomes, he shrinks from no action when
it is demanded, as a consequence of his principles; and, idealist as he is, he cannot
be moved to any action which does not accord with his ideal. In contrast to the
practical man, to whom the action is the central object, which requires the most
carefiil preparations, the id^ is the reality to the theorist, the action merely an
external drcmnstance, an unpleasant, almost imnecessary delay, retarding the
onward flight of the mind, which must, therefore, be got rid of with all possible
despatch. That is why the interval between the thought and its execution is to
Brutus 'Like a phantasma or a hideous dream,' which disturbs the clear thought,
not exactly because it creates a doubt of the rightness of the thought, but because
it retards its progress. To profoundest conviction all hesitation is but torture.
74. Genius . . . mortall Instruments] Warburton, in connection with his com-
parison of Addison and Shakespeare, 11. 71-73, asserts that the 'genius' here meant
is that which in Pagan theology was supposed to preside over kingdoms, and might
be either good or bad, here represented 'with the most daring stretch of fancy, as
sitting in consultation with the conspirators,' who are here called the 'mortal in-
struments.'— Johnson, after declaring that Warburton's pompous criticism
'might well have been shortened,' adds that 'the "genius" is not the genius of a
kingdom, nor are the "instnmients" conspirators, Shakespeare is describing what
passes in a single bosom, the insurrection which a conspirator feels agitating the
little kingdom of his own mind; when the "genius," or power that watches for
his protection, and the "mortal instnmients," the passions which excite him to a
deed of honour and danger, are in council and debate.' — Grey (ii, 175) proposes
that we read instrument for 'instruments,' and thus explains the passage: 'The
'* genius," i. f ., the soul or spirit, which should govern; and the '^mortal instrument,"
f . e.f the man, with all his earthly passions, are then in coimdl, the soul and rational
powers dissuading, and the man with his bodily passions pushing on to the horrid
deed, whereby the state of man suffers the nature of an insurrection, the inferior
powers rising and rebelling against the superior. Compare Macbeth, " My thought,
whose murder yet is but fantastical Shakes so my single state of man that fimction
Is smother'd in surmise, and nothing is But what is not," — I, iii, 139.' Grey's
Notes were published in 1754, nine years before Johnson's edition; chronologically,
therefore, Grey's explanation should precede Johnson's, but the latter does not
refer to Grey, and as his note is mainly a comment upon Warburton's, I have
6
82 THE TRACED IE OF [act ii. sc. i.
Are then in councell ; and the ftate of a man^ 75
75. counceill conflict Huds. iii, conj. 75. a man] Fi, Mai. Var. '21, Rnt,
Coll. man Ff et cet.
herein followed the arrangement of the notes m the Variorum of 182 1, m which
Grey's suggestion and note are, however, omitted. — ^Heath (p. 439) and Capell
(i, loi) understand the 'mortal instruments' to refer to the human passions, and
not, as does Warburton, to the conspirators themselves. — M. Mason compares:
' — imagined worth Holds in his blood such swoln and hot discoiurse That 'twizt his
mental and his active parts Kingdom'd Achilles in commotion rages.' — Tro. &
Cress,, n, iii, 182; and, in confirmation of Johnson's interpretation of 'instruments,'
quotes as parallel a passage from Macbeth, whose mind was, at the time, in the
very state which Brutus is here describing: ' — ^I am settled and bend up Each
corporal agent to thb terrible feat.' — ^I, vii, 79. — Malone prefers to limit the
meaning of the word 'mortal' to deadly; 'the "mortal instruments" then are the
deadly passions.' — Blakeway agrees with Malone that 'mortal' here means
deadly, but dissents from the 'mortal instruments' being taken for the 'deadly
passions'; 'the passions,' adds Blakeway, 'are rather the motives exciting us to
use our instruments, by which I understand our bodily powers, as Othello calls
his eyes and hands his ^'speculative and active instruments," I, iii, 271; and Mene-
nius, in CorioL, " — cranks and offices of man The strongest nerves and small
inferior veins." ' — [Compare also: ' — the other instruments did see and hear, devise,
instruct, walk, feel' — ^Ibid., I, i, 105.] — Craik quotes, as a passage throwing
light on the present one, the words of Brutus: 'Let our hearts, as subtle masters
do. Stir up their servants to an act of rage And after seem to chide 'em,' 1. 195.
'The "servants" here,' addsCraik, 'maybe taken to be the same with the "in-
struments" in the passage before us. It is not obvious how the bodily powers or
organs could be said to hold consultation with the genius or mind. Neither could
they in the other passage be so fitly said to be stirred up by the heart.' — [Does not
the 'their' preceding 'servants' refer to the 'masters' and not to 'hearts'?] —
£. B. Tylor (ii, 184) gives the following accoimt of 'Genius' as it is used in this
passage: 'In the Roman world the doctrine [of a man's guardian spirit] came to
be accepted as a philosophy of human life. Each man had hb "genius natalis"
associated with him from birth to death, influencing his action and his fate. . . .
The demon or genius was, as it were, the man's companion soul, a second spiritual
ego. The Egyptian astrologer warned Antonius to keep far from the yoimg Oc*
tavius, "for thy demon," said he, ** is in fear of his." . . . The doctrine which could
thus personify the character and fate of the individual man, proved capable of a
yet further development. Converting into animistic entities the inmost operations
of the human mind, a dualistic philosophy conceived as attached to every mortal
a good and an evil genius, whose efforts through life drew him backward and for-
ward toward virtue and vice, happiness and misery. It was the kakodsemon of
Brutus which appeared to him by night in his tent: "I am thy evil genius," it said,
"we meet again at Philippi."' — [Shakespeare alludes to this belief in the following
passages, to which those who are interested may, if they so choose, refer: Tempest,
IV, i, 27; Com. of Errors, V, i, 332; Twelfth Night, III, iv, 142; Tro. fir Cress., IV,
iv, 52; Macb,, HI, i, 56; and for a further statement of the doctrine, see Baynes,
p. 272, an article which appealed in the Edinburgh Review for July, 1869. — Ed.]
75. state of a man] Malone: I have adhered to the reading of the Folio.
ACT 11, sc. i.] IVLIVS CjESAR 83
Like to a little Eingdome^fuHers then 76
Shakespeare is here speaking of the individual, in whose mind the genius and
the mortal instruments hold a coimcil, not of man or mankind, in general. . . .
The editor of the Second Folio omitted the article, probably from a mistaken notion
concerning the metre. . . . Many words of two syllables are used by Shakespeare
as taking up the time of only one, as whether, either, brother, etc., and I suppose
'council' is so used here. The Folio reading is supported by a passage in Handel:
' What a piece of work is a man.' — Steevens: I persist in following the Second Folio,
as our author, on this occasion, meant to write verse instead of prose. The instance
from Hamlet can have little weight; the article a, which is injurious to the metre in
question, being quite innocent in a speech decidedly prosaic. — Ritson (Cursory
Rem,, p. 81) : Neither our author, nor any other author in the world, ever used
such words as either, brother, etc., as monosyllables; and though whether is some-
times so contracted, the old copies on that occasion usually print where. It is, in
short, morally impossible that tufo should be no more than one, — [Ritson's dogmatic
assertion is to some extent refuted by a niunber of examples from Shakespeare
and other authors collected by Walker (Vers,, p. 103), who says: * Either, neither,
whether, mother, brother, and some other disyllables in which the final ther is pre-
ceded by a vowel — perhaps in some measure, all words in ther — are frequently used
either as monosyllables or as so nearly such that, in a metrical point of view, they
may be regarded as monosyllables. . . . This usage b more frequent in some
words than in others, e, g,, in whether than in hither, whither, &c. Either occurs
not infrequently even in the unaccented places (locis ohliquis).^ See also Ibid.,
Crit,, i, 90. — Ed.]
7S, 76. man. Like to a little Kingdome] M alone: The little kmgdom of man
is a notion that Shakespeare seems to have been fond of. King Richard II, speak-
ing of himself, says: 'And these same thoughts people this little world.' — Rich, II:
V, V, 9; again in Lear: 'Strives in his little world of man to out-scorn The to-and-
fro conflicting wind and rain.' — ^III, i, 10; again in King John: * — in the body
of this fleshly land. This kingdom.' — IV, ii, 245. — [References and allusions to the
body of man as a microcosm or world in little are foimd in many of the writers
contemporary with Shakespeare and those before him. The idea is very ancient.
Sir Walter Raleigh (Historie of the World, 1614) says: 'Zanchius laboureth to
prove, that man was formed after the image of God. . . . The body of man (saith
he) b the image of the world, and called, therefore, Microcosmus . . .' (ed. 1652,
Bk i, ch. 2, § i; p. 20). And further: 'Therefore (saith Gregory Nazianzene), . . .
Man is the bond and chaine which tyeth together both natures; and because in the little
frame of man's body there is a representation of the Universal; and (by allusion)
a kinde of participation of all the parts there, therefore was man called Micro-
cosmos, or the little World. . . . Cod therefore placed in the Earth the man he had
made, as it were another World; the great and large World in the small and little World.*
— ^Ibid.j p. 25. Montaigne (Apology for Raimond de Sebonde), referring to the
confused idea which man has of himself, observes: 'It is not to heaven only that
philosophy sends her ropes, engines, and wheels; let us 'consider a little what she
says of ourselves and our contexture. There is not more retrogradation, trepida-
tion, accession, recession, and rapture in the stars and celestial bodies, than they
have feigned in thb poor little human body. In truth, they have good reason upon
that very account to call it a microcosm, or little world, so many views and parts
have they employed to erect and build it.' — (ed. Coste, ii, 284). In 1628 appeared a
84 THE TR AG ED IE OF [act il. sc. i.
The nature of an Infurreftion. tj
Enter Lucius.
Luc. Sir/tis your Brother CaJJius at the Doore,
Who doth defire to fee you. 80
Brut. Is he alone f
Laic. No, Sir, there are moe with him.
Brut. Doe you know them ?
Luc. No, Sir, their Hats are pluckt about their E^ires,
And halfe their Faces buried in their Cloakes, 85
That by no meanes I may difcouer them.
By any marke of fauour.
Brut. Let *em enter :
They are the Faftion. O Confpiracie, 89
82. m^e] Ff, Craik. more Rowe et F3F4, Rowe, Pope, doaks Theob. et seq.
cet. 88. 'em\ FaF„ Jen. Craik, Dyce,
85. Cloakts\ Cloathes F4. ClocUhs Sta. Wh. i, Cam.+. them F4 et cet.
series of Essays, attributed to John Earle, a fellow of Merton College, Oxford, en-
titled MicrosmogrophUy or a Peece of the World, these dealt with various characters
of men, such as 'A grave Divine'; 'An Alderman,' etc. The work was exceedingly
popular and ran through at least seven editions. It is included among the Early
English reprints edited by Edward Arber. In the moral mask entitled Micro-
cosmuSf written by Thomas Nabbes in 1637, the Dramatis PersoruB are the five
senses, the elements and the four hmnours, besides such others as *Bellanima, the
Soul'; 'Bonus Genius, an angel'; 'Malus Genius, a devil'; 'Nature,' etc. 'Phys-
ander, a perfect grown man,' is the hero. The mask is written in blank verse in
five short acts and follows much the same plan of the older moralities in its symbolic
treatment of the characters. — Ed.]
79. Brother Cassius] Cassius had married Brutus's sister, Tertia.
83. moe] Skeat (Diet., s, v, more): The modem English more does duty for two
Middle English words which were, generally, well distinguished, viz.: 'mo' and
more, the former relating to number, the latter to size. [Compare V, iii, 114.]
84. Hats] Cambridge Edd. {Note II, p. 252): In both the editions of Pope this
line is ludicrously printed thus: 'No, Sir, their are pluckt about their ears.'
He seems to have thought that 'hat' was an intolerable anachronism, for in Coriol,,
n, iii, 95 and 164, he has substituted 'cap.' In this passage it would seem that
he could not make up his mind, and left a blank accordingly. It is noticed in one
of Theobald's letters to Warburton (Nichols, ii, 493).
86. may] For other examples wherein 'may' is equivalent to to be able, see, if
needful, Abbott, § 307.
89. They arc the Faction, etc.] Sidgwick (p. 98): This is a fine outburst,
but it does not seem very appropriate to the actual moment when the conspirator's
colleagues are being let in; and at first one is disposed to think that Shakespeare
in introducing it has aimed at theatrical effect rather than dramatic propriety.
And perhaps Shakespeare would have felt this later on in his career. Still, reflection
will show that it has a larger dramatic meaning. He has just shown us Brutus
ACT n. sc. i.] IVLIVS C^SAR 85
Sham'ft thou to (hew thy dangerous Brow by Night, 90
When euills are moft freef O then, by day
Where wilt thou finde a Caueme darke enough,
To maske thy monftrous Vifage? Seek none Confpiracie,
Hide it in Smiles^and AHabilitie :
For if thou path thy natiue femblance on, 95
94. U »»] in it Var. '03, '21. on W. Sawyer (N. & Q., 22 April, 1865).
95. path thy...ant] F,F4, Var. '73, '03, parte tky.,.on Nicholson (N. & Q., 10
Sing, hath thy.^on, Quarto, 1691 (ap. Feb., 1866). pass thy..,on Cartwright,
Cam.). march thy,..on, Pope, Han. Huds. iii. thy path,„ovm Bulloch.
put thy,, ..on. Southern (MS), Qvuncy passed thy.^an Macmillan conj. path,
(MS), Coleridge, Dyce ii, iii. walk thy.,. thy..um, Fa et cet.
convincing himself, by a dry unemotional process of reasoning, that Caesar must
be killed; he wants to show us that, while stoically determined to act for the general
good by the dry light of reason alone, Brutus is no cold passionless pedant: he
feels intensely the moral repugnance that a fine nature must feel to the dreadful
deed. This passage . . . may also . . . illustrate the change in versification . . .
as we pass from the first to the second manner. The blank verse of the earliest
period too much resembles rhymed verse in its structure. ... In the versification
of Jul. C(Bs. . . . adequate variety and flexibility is introduced by varying the
pauses, allowing the sense to run over from one line to another, and introducing
extra syllables not only at the end of lines, but sometimes even in the middle:
'To mask thy monstrous visage? Seek none conspiracy. ' I do not think you will
find a line like that in a play earlier than Jul. Cos. [Abbott (§ 494) classes the line
quoted by Sidgwick among 'apparent Alexandrines,' in which 'the last foot con-
tains, instead of one extra syllable, two extra syllables, one of which is slurred.'
Among other such lines Abbott gives three from Rich. Ill, which is, by many
critics, considered as one of Shakespeare's early plays. — Ed.]
90. Sham'st thou] For other examples of 'shame' used in this intransitive sense,
see, if needful, Schmidt {Lex., s. v. verb. 2). As a possible explanation of its use
here it may be suggested that the word 'thou' thus receives the accent metrically.
Art *shamed would have suited the rest of the sentence quite as well. — £d.
95. path] Johnson: That is, if thou walk in thy true form. — Steevens: The
same verb is used by Drayton in Polyolhion: 'Where from the neighboring hills,
her passage Wey doth path.' — Song ii; again in his Epbtle from Duke Himiphrey
to Elinor Cobham: 'Pathing young Henry's unadvised ways,' — ^p. no, ed. 1748. —
Coleridge (Notes, p. 133): Surely, there need be no scruple in treating thb
'path ' as a mere misprint or mis-script for put. In what place does Shakespeare —
where does any writer of the same age — use ' path ' as a verb for walk? [* Aliquando
dormitat/ etc. — Ed.] — ^Walker {Crit., iii, 245) gives the two passages quoted by
Steevens, and adds: 'It is quite clear that neither of them is to the point,' since in
the line from the Polyolhion 'path' evidently means 'to track.' — Walker agrees
with Coleridge that put b here the correct reading. — R. G. White {Sh. Scholar,
p. 397): The Quarto of 1691 reads, 'hath thy,' etc. I do not mean to say that
h^Uh is the word; but neither do I believe that it is a mere misprint in the Quarto.
Hath b very frequently used by Shakesi)eare and his contemporaries for have; and
in his time, and long after, the bow of the letter k was short, while the second
86 THE TRACED IE OF [act ii, sc. i.
Not Erebus it felfe were dimme enough, 96
To hide thee from preuention.
Enter the Confpiratars^ Caffius^ CaskUy Decius^
Cinna^ MeteUus^and Trebonius,
Caff. I thinke we are too bold vpon your Reft : lOO
Good morrow Brutus ^do^ we trouble you ?
Brut. I haue beene vp this howre, awake all Night :
Know I thefe men, that come along with you ?
Caff. Yes, euery man of them ; and no man here
But honors you : and euery one doth wifli, 105
98. Scene n. Popc,H-, Jen. 103. [Aside. Rowe,+.
stroke was broiight far below the line. Three examples occur on the fac-simile
page of Collier's second Folio, published with his Notes 6* EmeHdatians. [In his
edition of Shakespeare which appeared a few years later White suggests that 'path '
is a misprint for hadsi. — Ed.] — ^Singer {N<^es 6* Queries , 10 April, 1858, p. 289)
thinks that the passage required ' the verb to be in the conditional future, and that
we must read: "if thou put'st/" etc., and that this fairly accounts 'for the mis-
print, as it would satisfy the ducttis lUerarum.* ... He adds: 'I have since found
in a very neat and accurate MS transcript of the play, made in the reign of Charles
n, the difficulty got over by writing the line thus: "For should thou ^.'" —
Hekaud (p. 369) : To me it is clear that the line contains two errors. It should
have run: 'For if thou pall thy native semblance o'er.' Shakespeare had already
used the verb to pall in the same sense in Macbeth: 'And pall thee in the dunnest
smoke of hell.' ... It is to [the statement of Lucius, 'their faces buried in their
cloaks'], that Brutus refers in the line in question, which simply means that if con-
spirators come [thus] their conspiracy will be suspected — that the true mode of
concealment is to let their naked faces be seen, and only to 'hide' the 'monstrous
visage'of conspiracy 'in smiles and affability.' . . . The faces ^riof in their cloaks
suggest the imag« of the paU, and this again the allusion to Erebus. [Murray (N, E.
D.t s. V. Path) gives as an example of its use as a verb, besides the present line,
another from Dra3rton : ' This river did so strangely path itself that the f oote seemed
to touch the head.' — Epistle^ Rosamund to Henry II. (Notes), Poems, 1605. — Ed.)
96. Erebus] Hudson: Of the five divisions of Hades, Erebus was, probably, the
third. Shakespeare, however, seems to identify it with Tartarus, the lowest deep
of the infernal world, the horrible pit where Dante locates Brutus and Cassius, along
with Judas Iscariot. [See note by Staffer, V, v, 60; Shakespeare alludes to
Erebus, as typical of darkness, in two other passages: 'His affections dark as Ere-
bus.'— Mer. of Ven., V, i, 87; ' — the infernal deep, with Erebus and tortures vile
also.' — 2 Hen. IV: H, iv, 171. — Ed.]
100. too bold vpon] Wright: That is, in intruding upon your rest. The
same construction is found in Bacon's Advancement of Learning: 'Here is noted,
that whereas men in wronging their best friends use to extenuate their fault,
as if they mought presume or be bold upon them, it doth contrariwise indeed aggra-
vate their fault.' — 11, 23, 6; (ed. Wright, p. 223).
ACT II. sc. i.] iVLivs cje:sar 87
You had but that opinion of your felfe, 106
Which euery Noble Roman beares of you.
This is Trebontus.
Brut He is welcome hither.
Cajf. This, Decius Brutus. 1 10
Brut. He is welcome too.
Cajf. This, Caska ; this, Cinna ; and this, Metellus
Cyfnber.
Brut, They are all welcome.
What watchfull Cares doe interpofe themfelues 115
Betwixt your Eyes, and Night?
Caff. Shall I entreat a word ? TJuy whifper.
Decius. Here lyes the Eaft : doth not the Day breake
heere ? 1 19
112. this, Cinna] Cinna, this Cap. ...Cymber. Rowe,+» Van. Mai. Ran.
ani /A»f J ani this our friend, Steev. Varr. Sing, i, Coll. Wh. i.
Wordsworth. 115. tkem/dues] Om. Steev. conj.,
1 12, 113. As two lines, ending: Cinna ending line with Betwixt,
112. this, Cinnm . . . this, MeteUus] John Hxtnter: The line would read bet-
ter by omitting the word 'this' before 'Cinna' and 'Metellus Cimber,' and sup-
posing Cassius to point out these persons by some indication of the hand.
118. Here lyes the Bast] Rymer (p. 152): One may note that all our author's
Senators and his orators had their learning and education at the same school, be
they Venetians, black-amoors, ottomites, or noble Romans. Brutus, here, may
cap sentences with Brabantio, and the Doge of Venice, or any magnifico of them
all. . . . Here the Roman Senators the midnight before Caesar's death (met in the
garden of Brutus . . .) are gazing up to the stars, and have no more in their heads
than to wrangle about which is the East and West. This is directly, as Bayes tells
us, to show the world a pattern here, how men should talk of business. But it would
be a wrong to the Poet not to inform the reader that, on the stage, the spec-
tators see Brutus and Cassius all this while at whisper together. That is the
importance, that deserves all the attention. But the grand question would be:
Does the Audience hear *em whisper? — ^Theobald: I cannot help having the ut-
most contempt for this poor ill-judg'd Sneer [by Rymer]. It shows the height of
good manners and politeness in the conspirators, while Brutus and Cassius whisper,
to start any occasional topic, and talk extempore; rather than seem to listen to, or
be desirous of overhearing, what Cassius draws Brutus aside for. And, if I am not
mistaken, there is a piece of art shewn in this whisper which our Caviller either did
not, or would not, see into. The audience are already apprized of the subject on
which the faction meet; and, therefore, this whisper is an artifice, to prevent the
preliminaries, of what they knew beforehand, being formally repeated. — Knigkt
(Studies, p. 413) : Other poets would have made the inferior men exchange oaths,
and cross swords, and whisper, and ejaculate. He makes everything depend upon
the determination of Brutus and Cassius. . . . Is this nature? The truest and most
profound natiire. The minds of all men thus disencumber themselves, in the
88 ^^-^ TRACED IE OF [act ii, sc. i.
Cask. No. 1 20
Cin. O pardon, Sir, it doth ; and yon grey Lines,
That fret the Clouds, are Meffengers of Day. 122
121. y<wil yonff Coll. yorC Wh. i.
moments of the most anxious suspense, from the pressure of an overwhelming
thought. There is a real relief if some accidental circumstance . . . can produce
this disposition of the mind to go out of itself for an instant or two of forgetfulness.
— ^Mark Hunter: Thus Hamlet, waiting on the castle platform for the appearance
of his father's spirit, speaks first of the coldness of the night, and then falls to
moralise on Danish customs which are 'more honoured in the breach than the
observance.'
122. fret the Clouds] In the Shakspere Society Transactions for 1877-78,
p. 410, appears a letter from Ruskin to Furnivall on the meaning of ' fret' in this
line; after a few remarks — characteristically depreciatory of human intelligence
in the nineteenth century — Ruskin sajrs: 'The root of thf whole matter is, first,
that the reader should have seen what he has often heard of, but probably not
seen twice in his life — "Daybreak." Next, it is needful he should think what
"break" means in that word — what is broken, namely, and by what. That is ta
say, the cloud of night b Broken up, as a city is broken up (Jerusalem, when
Zedekiah fled), as a school breaks up, as a constitution, or a ship is broken up; in
every cajse with a not inconsiderable change of idea, and in addition to the central
word. The breaking up is done by the Day, which breaks — otdf as a man breaks,
or biursts outf from his restraint in a passion; breaks tUnm in tears; or breaks in,
as from heaven to earth — with a breach in the cloud wall of it; or breaks otU —
with sense of outwards — as the sun — out and out, farther and farther, after rain.
Well; next, the thing that the day breaks up is partly a garment, rent, more than
broken; a mantle, the day itself "in russet mantle clad" — the blanket of the dark,
torn to be peeped through — whereon instantly you get into a whole host of new
ideas; fretting, as a moth frets a garment; unravelling at the edge, afterwards;
thence you get into fringe, which is an entirely double word, meaning i>artly a
thing that guards, and partly a thing that is worn away on the ground; the French
Frange has, I believe, a reminiscence of ^paaau in it — our fringe runs partly to-
wards frico and friction — both are essentially connected with frango, and the
fringe of breakers at the shores of all seas, and the breaking of the ripples and foam
all over them — but this is wholly different in a northern mind, which has only seen
the sea "Break, break, break on its cold gray stones" — and a southern, which has
seen a hot sea on hot sand break into lightning of phosphor flame — ^half a mile of
fire in an instant — following in time, like the flash of minute guns. Then come
the great new ideas of order and time, and — "I did but tell her she mistook her
frets," — and so the timely succession of either ball, flower, or lentil, in architec-
ture: but this, again, going off to a totally different and still lovely idea, the main
one in the word aurifrigium . . . going back, nobody knows how far, but to the
Temple of the Dew of Athens, and gold of Mycenae, anyhow; and in Etruria to the
Deluge, I suppose. Well then, the notion of the music of morning comes in — with
strings of lyre (or frets of Katharine's instrument, whatever it was) and stops of
various quills; which gets us into another group beginning with plectrum, going aside
again into plico and plight, and Milton's "Play in the plighted clouds," . . . and
so on into the plight of folded drapery, — and roimd again to our blanket. I think
ACT II, sc. i.] IVLIVS C^SAR 89
Cask. You fhall confeffe,that you are both deceiuM : 123
Heere,as I point my Sword, the Sunne arifes,
Which is a great way growing on the South, 1 25
Weighing the youthful! Seafon of the yeare.
Some two moneths hence, vp higher toward the North
He firft prefents his fire, and the high Eaft
Stands as the CapitoU, dire6lly heere. 1 29
127. moneths] months F4.
that is enoiigh to sketch out the compass of the word. Of course, the real power
of it in any place depends on the writer's grasp of it, and use of the facet he wants to
cut with.'
122. Messengers of Day] The Cowden-Clarkes {Sh, Key, p. 176): By
keeping well before the spectator the presence of night, supervening upon after-
noon and evening, and then the gradual approach of dawn, of morning, and of day,
the dramatist has magically contrived to bring on the date of Caesar's death in Act
m, even while linking it subtly with the very date the dictator was offered and
refused the crown of Rome in Act I.; so that a whole month b iUusorily passed,
while but the passing from one day to the next is actually accounted for. [Dowden
(p. 295) also calls attention to this device of Shakespeare to mark 'the passage of
time up to the moment of Caesar's death.']
124. as I point my Sword] Abbott ({ 112): [In this sentence] 'as' is used for
where.
125. Which is a great way, etc.] Craik (p. 215): The conmientators, who
flood us with their explanations of many easier passages, have not a word to say
upon this. Casca means that the point of sunrise is as yet far to the south (of east),
weighing (that is, taking into account or on account of) the unadvanced period of
the year.
125. growing on the South] O. F. Adams: It is curious that no commentator
has noted that on the 15^^ of March, or previous to the vernal equinox, the sun
would not rise at all to the south of the true east, but a little to the northward of
that point. — F. A. Marshall: It should be noted that during this and the pre-
ceding speech the change from night to early dawn is supposed to take place; but
even in Italy, in the middle of March it would not be light at three o'clock in the
morning. [See I. 215.]
129. Stands as the CapitoU] Wright: It is worth remarking that the Tower,
which would be the building in London most resembling the Capitol to Shake-
speare's mind, was as nearly as possible due east of the Globe Theatre on Bank-
side. There is no reason to suppose that he troubled himself about the relative
positions of Brutus's house and the Capitol, even if the site of the former were
known. — ^Mark Hunter sajrs, in reference to the foregoing note by Wright, 'It
is a doubtful question whether Jul. Cos, was first acted at the Globe Theatre or at
either of the Bankside theatres. Between 1595 and 1599 Shakespeare's company
occupied the stages of the Curtain and of the Theatre in Shoreditch. The
Globe was built in 1599. Jul, Cces. seems to have been acted about that time, and
possibly before the completion of the Globe. But wherever the players may have
been, the conspirators, whom they represented, when they met in the house of
go THE TR AG ED IE OF [act n, sc. i.
Bru. Giue me your hands all ouer^one by one. 130
Caf. And let vs fweare our Refolution.
Brut. No, not an Oath : if not the Face of men, 132
130. [He takes their hands. Coll. Han. ifthat,„faU Waib. Sing, ii, Ktly.
132-154. Mnemonic Waib. if not.„faUhs Mai. conj. if not...fears
1 $2. if noL..Face] if th(U„.f ace Theob, Cartwright. if nol„.yoke Herr,
Brutus were, in the imagination of every spectator, far away from London, near the
Tiber, not the Thames.'
132. if not the Face of men] Warburton: What is 'the face of men?
Did he mean they had honest lodLS? This was a poor and low observation un-
worthy of Brutus, and the occasion, and the grandeur of his speech. Besides, it is
foreign to the motives he enumerates; . . . but 'the face of men,' not being one of
these motives, must needs be a corrupt reading. Shakespeare, without question,
wrote: the fate cf men^ or of mankind, which, in the ideas of a Roman, was in-
volved in the fate of their Republic. — ^Theobald, in a letter to Waiburton, dated
Z4^ Feb., 1749, sajrs: 'If Brutus meant by this, gentlemen^ you have very good faces
(as you expound it), this would be a very bad motive. But I look upon this to be
the sense: if that dejection which appears in your countenances, that insuppressive
sorrow which you cannot hide, joined to the sufferance of your souls, &c., be weak
motives, &c. And this, I think, makes a true climax: and the progression from
face to soul seems to heighten the dignity of the passion' (Nichob, ii,.494). — Heath
(p. 440) : 'The face of men,' that is. If that the face of our fellow citizens, which we
should never for the futiire be able to look up to without the most insupportable
confusion, after having, by our treachery, defeated an enterprize, <m the success
of which the preservation of our conunon liberties and the very existence of the
republic absolutely depends, is a weak motive, insufficient to secure our fidelity
to our engagement, etc. — ^Johnson: That is, the countenance, the regard, the esteem
of the public; or 'the face of men' may mean: the dejected look of the people, — Capell
(i, 102): The suspension of voice at 'abuse' shows that something is wanting, and
directs to that something; which is also conveyed in the words that follow, not
direct but obliquely; giving us what we see instead of — if these be not sufficiently
strong, its right connection with *not.' The enumeration itself proceeds rightly,
in a progress from strong to stronger; the topic it opens with is enforced again with
great energy at the speech's conclusion, which shews its weight with the speaker. —
Steevens: So Tully, In CatUinam, 'Nihil horum ora vultusque moverunt?'
[Oratio, i, 1. 7]. Shakespeare formed this speech on the following passage in North's
Plutarch: [The conspirators] 'having never taken oaths together, nor taken or
given any caution or assurance, nor binding themselves together by any religious
oaths,' [ed. Skeat, p. 114.] — M. Mason believes that we should read faith of men,
because of what Brutus says in lines 142-158, 'which prove,' says Mason, 'that
Brutus considered the faith of men as their firmest security in each other.' — Malone
observes that Shakespeare 'perhaps imitates the abruptness and inaccuracy of
discourse,' and has constructed 'the latter part of the sentence without any
regard to the beginning.' Referring to Mason's proposal faith, he adds that
'faiths is more likely to have been the word from confusion by the ear.' — Craik
(p. 125): There seems to be no great difficulty in the old reading, understood as
meaning the looks of men. It is preferable, at any rate, to an3rthing which it has
been proposed to substitute. — Dowden (p. 295) : It is characteristic of Brutus that
ACT II, sc. i.] IVLIVS CjESAR. qI
The fufferance of our Soules^ the times Abufe ; 133
If thefe be Motiues weake, breake off betimes^
And euery man hence, to his idle bed : 1 35
So let high-fighted-Tyranny range on,
Till each man drop by Lottery. But if thefe
(As I am fure they do) beare fire enough
To kindle Cowards, and to fteele with valour
The melting Spirits of women. Then Countrymen, 140
What neede we any fpurre, but our owne caufe.
To pricke vs to redreffe ? What other Bond,
Then fecret Romans, that haue fpoke the word,
And will not palter ? And what other Oath, 144
136. kigh-fighted] kigh-sieged Warb. 140. women. Then] women; Then Ft,
conj. (withdrawn), high-seated Thech. Rowe,+.
conj.
he will allow no oath to be taken by the conspirators. He who has been all his life
cultivating reliance on the will apart from external props, cannot now fall back for
support upon the objective bond of a vow or pledge. — ^Verity accepts Heath's
interpretation of 'face/ i. e., the shame which each would feel from the reproach-
ful looks of the world, if he were a traitor to the cause; and adds: ' The imsuspi-
cious character of Brutus, who thinks others as noble-minded as himself, b clearly
brought out in this speech.'
133. the times Abuse;] Pekcy Simpson {Sh. Punctuation, p. 61): The semi-
colon serves to mark a sudden pause, or a break in the construction.
134. If . . . Motiues weake] Wright: [The negative required in this sen-
tence is contained in] the negative idea put into the word 'weak' instead of being
directly expressed.
136. high-sighted-Tyranny] Wright: That is, tyranny with lofty looks.
There seems to be an implied comparison of tyranny to an eagle or bird of prey,
whose keen eye discovers its victim from the highest pitch of its flight. We have
the same figure in I, i, 82-84, and although the primary meaning of 'high-sighted'
may be proud, supercilious, there is a secondary meaning in keeping with the
comparison of tyranny to a bird of prey. That this comparison seems to be in-
tended appears to me to be confirmed by the occurrence of the word 'range,' which
is technically used of hawks and falcons flying in search of game. Turberville
(Booke of Falconrie) says of eagles: 'In like sort they take other beastes, and
sundry times doe roue and range abroad to beat and seaze on Goates, Kiddes, and
Fawnes.' — p. 23.
137. Till each ... by Lottery] Steevens: Perhaps the poet alluded to the
custom of decimation, i. e,, the selection by lot of every tenth soldier, in a general
mutiny, for pimishment. He speaks of this in Coriol., 'By decimation and a
tithed death. Take thou thy fate.' — [John Hunter corrects Steevens's reference;
the line quoted is from Timon, V, v, 31; he adds that 'the allusion to decimation
does not seem sufficiently warranted,' which is likewise the opinion of the present
Ed.]
144. palter] Murray {N, E. D., s. v, verb, H, 3) : To shift, shuffle, equivocate.
92 THE TRACED IE OF [act ii, sc. L
Then Honefty to Honefty ingag'd, 145
That this fhall be, or we will fall for it.
Sweare Priefts and Cowards, and men Cautelous
Old feeble Carrions, and fuch fuffering Soules
That welcome wrongs : Vnto bad caufes, fweare
Such Creatures as men doubt; but do not (laine 150
146. %t\ it? Theob. et seq. 150. ftaine] strain Warb. conj.
147. CauUlous] Cautelous, FjF4.
prevaricate in statement or dealing; to deal crookedly or evasively; to play fast
and loose, use trickery. [The present line quoted as earliest use.]
147. Cautelous] Both Steevens and M alone interpret 'cautelous/ as here
used, in the sense of cautious, wary, circumspect. — Murray (N. E. D,) furnishes
examples, as does Steevens also, of this meaning, but Murray likewise gives others
wherein 'cautelous' means crafty, full of deceit; and Wright thus interprets it,
remarking that 'the transition from caution to suspicion, and from suspicion to
craft and deceit is not very abrupt.' — In corroboration of this interpretation we
may take what Brutus says, 'Unto bad causes swear Such creatures as men
doubt,' which would not apply to men who are cautious and circumspect. — ^Ed.
15&-154. do not staine . . . neede an Oath] Warburton: The opinion that
the cause or actors wanted an oath to hold them together cannot be called a
stain, because it doth not necessarily imply a suspicion of the honesty of either;
or if such an opinion did necessarily imply such a suspicion, yet such suspicion
could not stain the honesty of either, as an oath is no unjust means of union; for
it b only an unjust means used for a good end that can be said to stain that end.
Admitting such an opinion might be called a stain, yet the metaphor here em-
ployed will not allow the use of the term. For the expression of 'insuppressive
mettle' alludes to the elastic quality of steel, which, being beyond its tone, loses
its spring, and thereby becomes incapable of keeping that machine in motion
which it is designed to actuate. We must, therefore, read, 'do not strain,' that is,
beyond its natural and proper tone; the consequence of which will be the stopping
the motion of the whole machine. — Heath (p. 440) : Nothing can be plainer than
the sense of this passage, the expression of which, as well as the sentiment, is ex-
tremely fine. ... If the reader hath a mind to divert himself with a most remark-
able instance of a man ensnared in the nets of his own subtilty, and puzzled to
that degree that he neither knows where he is, what he is about, nor what he says,
I would reconmiend to him Warburton's note on this place. ... He is to prove
that the suspicion of want of honesty could not stain the honesty of the cause or
the actors, and he labours only to prove that it could not stain the end the actors
proposed to themselves. And how doth he prove it? By asserting that the means
towards attaining that end were not unjust; as if no means that were not strictly
speaking unjust, whatever meanness of spirit they might betray, could imprint a
stain. But what have we to do with means or end? The question is simply,
Whether an avowed distrust of a man's honesty doth not reflect an imputation on it?
and, Whether that imputation may not properly be called a stain upon it? Com-
mon sense and common language concur in avouching that it may. For though
no suspicion or imputation can alter the real nature of things, they may greatly
alter their external appearance, and, like a spot on a garment, lessen their estimation
ACT II, sc. i.] IVLIVS C^SAR 93
The euen vertue of our Enterprize, 1 5 1
Nor th'infuppreffiue Mettle of our Spirits,
To thinke^that or our Caufe,or our Performance
Did neede an Oath. When euery drop of blood 154
154. Didi Doih Han. 154. Oaih. When] oath; when Cap.
et seq.
in the eye of the world. . . . One would think it scarce possible to crowd so many
absurdities and inconsbtendes into so narrow a compass [as in the last paragraph
of his note]. First, he confounds 'mettle/ that is, vigour, activity, with metal, and
mistakes the one for the other. Next, he interprets 'insuppressive' to signify the
same as elastic, what is easily bent and kept down, though it will recover itself as
soon as the force that kept it down is removed, and not before; whereas, in truth,
it signifies the direct contrary, what is not to be bent or kept under by any force
whatever. Then this insuppressive mettle is become all on a sudden so exceedingly
suppressive, that if you clog it only with the addition of an oath, it is overstrained,
its spring is lost, its power destroyed, and it is reduced to a state utterly unactive
and useless. Lastly, for it is time to have done, the interpretation resulting from
this admirable reasoning is perfectly of a piece with it. Whereas Shakespeare
contented himself with saying. That to suppose their union needed an oath, to
secure their fidelity and steadiness in the prosecution of their enterprize, would
be to tarnish the lustre, both of the cause they were engaged in, and of that un-
daunted courage which prompted them to imdertake it; Warburton makes him
say: That their courage was such, that while they continued unsworn it could
not fail of supporting them, but the moment they added to it the artificial bond
of an oath, that oath would infallibly overstrain that courage, and by so doing de-
stroy its virtue and efficacy, and render the whole motion of their enterprize
motionless and ineffectual. Is there any one sentiment of Mr Bayes in The Re-
hearsal which comes up to this for sublimity of nonsense? — Heraud (p. 372):
Here is apparent the weakness of Brutus in having associated with minds so much
beneath his own; and this weakness soon shows itself constitutional in his objecting
to admit the participation of a superior or equal mind. He will not take Cicero
into his counsel. Nor will he go all lengths with his confederates, but insists on
sparing Antony, and by so doing ruins his cause. ... As it is, the catastrophe of the
tragedy grows out of the failings of Brutus, which though * they leaned to virtue's
side,' were still failings, and fatal both to his friends and his coimtry.
151. euen . . . Enterprize] M alone: That is, the cahn, equable, temperate
spirit that actuates us.
152. insuppressiue] John Hunter: 'Insuppressive' ought to mean not having
a tendency to suppress; and such may be the meaning here; the mettle of our spirits
not at all disposed to restrain us from deeds 'of honourable dangerous conse-
quence.' When *or' is used for either [as in the next line], it should be pronounced
more emphatically than the 'or' following. 'Our cause' has reference to the 'even
virtue,' and 'our performance' has reference to the 'insuppressive metal.' [For
examples of adjectives ending in ive, used in a passive sense, see Walker, Crit,, i,
179J
154. Did neede an Oath.] Percy Simpson {Sh, Punctuation, p. 79) : The colon
and semicolon served for heavier stopping in a run of commas; and on the same
principle, if these had been already employed and it was necessary to mark a
94 THE TRACED IE OF [act ii, sc. i.
That euery Roman beares, and Nobly beares 155
Is guilty of a feuerall Baftardie^
If he do breake the fmalleft Particle
Of any promife that hath pad from him.
Caf. But what of Cicero ? Shall we found him ?
I thinke he will (land very ftrong with vs. 160
Cask. Let vs not leaue him out.
Cyn. No, by no meanes.
MeteL O let vs haue him, for his Siluer haires
Will purchafe vs a good opinion :
And buy mens voyces, to commend our deeds : 165
It (hall be fayd, his iudgement rul'd our hands.
Our youths,and wildene(re, (hall no whit appeare,
But all be buried in his Grauity.
Bru. O name him not ; let vs not breake with him,
For he will neuer follow any thing 1 70
That other men begin.
157. io[ doth F4, Rowe,+* 169. with him,] with him. FjF4.
164. opinion:] opinion, FjF4.
stronger pause, a full stop could be used even for an unfinished sentence. In such
cases the sense was a sufficient guide. [Compare V, iii, 34, and note.]
161. Cask. Let vs not, etc.] Mask Hunter {Inlrod,, p. cxliii.): Casca's
pretended self-dependence is the last quality that can be ascribed to him. No one
could more quickly adopt the sentiments and enthusiasms of others. [Here, for
example,] Cassius diffidently suggests that Cicero should be sounded. 'Let us not
leave him out, * Casca chimes in. Cassius abandons his proposal in deference to
Bnitus's opinion. 'Indeed, he is not fit,' is Casca's emphatic comment.
163. his Siluer haires] John Hunter: Cicero was bom in the same year as
Pompey, viz., 104 B. C; he was now, therefore, about sixty 3rears old. Observe the
play of words between 'silver' and the following verbs, 'purchase' and 'buy.'
168. buried in his Grauity] Is there here, not exactly a play upon words, so
much as an association of ideas, suggested by the words bury and grave? — Ed.
169. breake with him] Murray (N, E. D., s. v. Verbf 22): To break one's
mind (heart) : to deliver or reveal what is in one's mind. To break news, a matter ,
a secret: to make it known, disclose, divulge it; now implying caution and delicacy,
[b.] Hence, intransitive to break with (rarely to a person) of or concerning (a thing).
Two Gent,: 'I am to breake with thee of some afifaires.' — HI, i, 59.
Z70, 171. he will neuer . . . other men begin] Plutarch is, I think, Shake-
speare's authority for this trait in the character of Cicero; he says: 'And now
when Cicero, full of expectation, was again bent upon political affairs, a certain
oracle blunted the edge of his inclination; for consulting the god of Delphi how he
should attain most glory, the Pythoness answered, by making his own genius and
not the opinion of the people the guide of his life.' — (Life of Cicero, { 5). Niebuhr,
referring to this passage from Plutarch, remarks: 'If this is an invention, it was
ACT II, sc. i.] IVLIVS CjESAR 95
Caf. Then leaue him out. 172
Cask. Indeed^ he is not fit.
Decius. Shall no man elfe be toucht^but onely Ccefart
Caf. Decius well vrgfd : I thinke it is not meet, 175
Marke Antony^ fo well belouM of Ccefary
Should out-liue Ccefar^ we shall finde of him
A fhrew'd Contriuer. And you know, his meanes
If he improue them, may well ftretch fo farre
As to annoy vs all : which to preuent, 180
Let Antony and Ccefar fall together.
Bru. Our courfe will feeme too bloody, Caius Ca/siuSj 182
i73f 1 74* Cask. Indeed„.'Ded}ja. 175. Decius] Decimus Han.
SkaU..,\ Dec. Indeed... Shall,,, Hanmer. 178. Jkrew*d] fltrewd F^F^.
174. taucfU] touch*d ¥4.
certainly made by one who saw very deeply, and perceived the real cause of all
Cicero's sufferings. If the Pythia did give such an answer, then this is one of the
oracles which might tempt us to believe in an actual inspiration of the priestess/ —
(iii, 31). Merivale (iii, 150) says of Cicero: 'When we read the vehement claims
which Cicero put forth to the honour of association, however tardy, with the
glories and dangers of Cxsar's assassins, we should deem the conspirators guilty
of a monstrous oversight in having neglected to enlist him in their design were we
not assured that he was not to be trusted as a confederate either for good or for
evO.'— Ed.
177. of him] For other examples of 'of ' thus used for in, see, if needful, Abbott,
§172.
178. Contriuer] Murray (N. E. D., s. v, i): One who ingeniously or artfully
devises the effecting of anything; one who effects by plotting or scheming; a
schemer, plotter. [The present line quoted.]
179. improue] Murray {N. E. D.,s. v. 2. e): To make good use of, to turn to
good accoimt (an action, occurrence, event, season, time; now usually with occasion^
opportunity t or the like). [Murray, among other examples, quotes, 'How doth the
little busy bee Improve each shining hour.' — Watts, Divine Songs t xx.]
182. Our course . . .'too bloody] Ferrero (ii, 349): It was not Brutus,
with his scruples against the shedding of Roman blood, that saved him [Antony],
but more probably the reflection that the simultaneous disappearance of the two
Consuls would have prevented the immediate restoration of the old constitution.
No doubt they also hoped that so recent a convert to the party of tyranny would
return to his old allies on the death of the Dictator. — [Cicero in his letters, ed.
Shuckburgh, refers to this mistake of the conspirators in sparing Antony. For
example, writing to Atticus from Arpinum, 24 May, B. C. 44, he says: 'Antony's
policy — as you describe it — is revolutionary, and I hope he will carry it out by
popular vote rather than by decree of the Senate! I think he will do so. . . .
You say you don't know what our men are to do. Well, that difficulty has been
troubling me all along. Accordingly, I was a fool, I now see, to be consoled by the
Ides of March. The fact is, we showed the courage of men, the prudence of children.
The tree was felled, but not cut up by the roots. Accordingly, you see how it is
96 THE TRACED IE OF [act ii. sc. L
To cut the Head ofT, and then hacke the Limbes : 183
Like Wrath in death, and Enuy afterwards :
For Antony J is but a Limbe of Cce/ar. 1 85
Let's be Sacrificers, but not Butchers Caius :
We all ftand vp againft the fpirit of Cafary
And in the Spirit of men, there is no blood :
O that we then could come by Ccefars Spirit,
And not difmember Ccsfar ! But (alas) 1 90
Ccefar muft bleed for it. And gentle Friends,
Let's kill him Boldly, but not Wrathfully :
Let's carue him, as a Difli fit for the Gods ,
Not hew him as a Carkaffe fit for Hounds: 194
186. lM's\ Ff, Rowe, Dyce, Sta. Pope, Han.
Ld us Pope et cet. 188. men] man Pope,-|-.
not] no Var. '03, '13. 189. Spirit] Spirits Ff, Rowe.
Caius] Cassius Rowe. Om. 191-197. Mnemonic Warb.
sprouting up/ — Letter 731, vol. iv, p. 55. Again, writing to C. Cassius, from
Rome, between the 2 and p*** of October in the same year, Cicero says: ' — that
madman [Antony] asserts that I was the head and front of that most glorious
deed of yours. Would that I had been I He would not have been troubling us now.
But it is you and yoiu: fellows who are responsible for this: and since it is past
and done with, I only wish I had some advice to give you.' — Letter 738, iv, 55.
In another letter to C. Cassius, written from Rome on the 2*^^ of February, in the
next year, B. C. 43, Cicero sajrs: 'I could wish that you had invited me to the
banquet of the Ides of March; there would have been nothing left over I As it is,
your leavings give me much trouble — yes, me more than anybody.* He repeats
almost these same words in his letter to Trebonius written on the same day. —
Letters 815 and 816, iv, 174, 175. — Ed.]
189. O that . . . Caesars Spirit] Genee (p. 343): This is, however, a bad
piece of sophistry with which Brutus dooms the deed itself. The sequel shows
that the spirit of Caesar was imassailable by the swords of his opponents. It
proved worst of all for Brutus; and what caused his downfall before all the others
was the disunion in his own well-conditioned nature, a disunion which laid him
open to inconsistencies and political mistakes.
191. Caesar must bleed] Malone: Lord Stirling has the same thought.
Brutus, remonstrating against the taking of Antony, says: 'Ah! Ah! we must but
too much murder see, That without doing evil cannot do good; And would the
gods that Rome could be made free. Without the effusion of one drop of blood.'
193. fit for the Gods] Walker (Crit.^ i, 294): Is 'fit' here the past participle,
». q. fitted? So in Tarn, of Shr,y Ind., i, 87: ' — but sure, that part Was aptly fit,
and naturally performed,' not fitted.
194. Not hew him, etc.] Malone: Compare Plutarch, 'Caesar turned himseife
no where but he was stricken at by some, and still had naked swords in his face,
and was hacked and mangled among them, as a wild beast taken of himters,' [ed.
Skeat, p. loi]. — ^Macmillan: Brutus's idea of killing Caesar reverently was not
realised.
ACT II, sc. i.] IVLIVS C^SAR gy
And let our Hearts, as fubtle Mafters do, 195
Stirre vp their Seruants to an a£le of Rage,
And after feeme to chide 'em. This (hall make
Our purpofe Neceffary,and not Enuious.
Which fo appearing to the common eyes.
We (hall be call'd Purgers, not Murderers. 200
And for Marke Antonyythinkc not of him :
For he can do no more then Cce/ars Arme,
When CcEifars head is oflT.
Caf. Yet I feare him,*
For in the ingrafted loue he beares to Ccefar, 205
197. '«»] Fa, Coll. Craik, Dyce, Sta. 204. / /ear«] / io Jear Pope,-f .
Wh. Hal. Cam.-f , Huds. em F,. them ( — ^Var. '73), Cap. Steev. Varr. Sing, i,
F4 et cet. Craik, Ktly.
make] mark Coll ii. (MS), Craik, 204, 205. /»m, For] him For Leo.
Huds. iii. 205. in] Om. Pope, Han.
200. caU'd Purgers] purgers called StSL. the] th' Theob. Warb. Johns,
conj. Caefar.] Caesar — Rowe et seq.
202, 203. Oefars] C«far*s F4.
195. as subtle Masters do] Hudson cites the scene wherein King John blames
Hubert for his too hasty obedience in putting Arthur to death (King John, IV, ii,
208 et seq.). — Vemty, beside this scene from King John^ cites also those in Rich. II,
wherein Bolingbroke 'rebukes Exton for murdering Richard, after having insti-
gated him to the deed ' (V, iv. and vi.) . He adds also that ' Elizabeth has been cred-
ited with an attempt to pursue the same policy in regard to Mary Queen of Scots.'
197. This shall make] Craik (p. 226): The old reading . . . is sense, if at all,
only on the assumption that 'make' is here equivalent to m4ike to seem. — ^John
Hunter: Observe the force of 'shall'; it is not simply reference to futurity which
Brutus expresses, for in that case will should have been the auxiliary; there is an
idea of planning or intending involved, as if he had said, 'Let this be our procedure
in order to make,' etc. The next assertion, ' we shall be called,' is simple anticipa-
tion, for which 'shall' in the first person is appropriate. Compare the use of
'shall' in the speech of Metellus, 1. 166, 'It shall be said' means let us have it said.
198. Enuious] That is, malignant^ spiteful. Compare 'See what a rent the
envious Casca made.' — HI, ii, 185; and for other examples see, if needful, Schmidt
(Lex.f s. V. i).
199. so appearing to the common eyes] Marshall: This is very charac-
teristic advice, and shows that Brutus was quite fit to be the leader of a political
party which claimed to be the 'popular' one. But it ap{)ears that all the great
actors who played the part of Brutus and, naturally enough, sought to make
him a sympathetic character, have always omitted this passage on the stage; as
well they might, considering their object.
204. Yet I feare him] Knight: The pause, which naturally occurs before
Cassius offers an answer to the impassioned argimient of Brutus, would be most
decidedly marked by a proper reader or actor; yet Pope and other editors read
do fear, to make out the metre.
305. For in ... to Caesar] Crak (p. 227): The manner in which this line is
7
gS THE TRACED IE OF [act ii. sc. i.
Bru. Alas^good CafsiuSy do not thinke of him : 206
If he loue Cafary all that he can do
Is to himfelfe; take thought, and dye for Cafary
And that were much he (hould : for he is giuen
To fports, to wildeneffe, and much company. 210
Treb. There is no feare in him; let him not dye,
208. hmjdfe; take] kitnfelfe, take F,F4, Rowe, Theob. Han. Craik. himself
take Pope, himself , — take Knt, Dyce, Sta.
given in the Folio shows that the printer, or so-called editor, had no notion of what
the words meant, or whether they had any meaning, in his exhibition of them;
with a full point after 'Cssar,' they have none. — [May it not be that 'in' is here
due to the compositor's anticipating the first syllable of 'ingrafted/ the next word
but one? Its omission makes the line metrically correct. — Ed.]
208. uke thought, and dye] Steevens compares 'What shall we do, Eno-
barbus? Eno, Think and die.' — Ant. 6* Cleo,y III, xiii, i, 2. On this line in Ant. br
Cleo. ToLLET observes that the expression of taking thought^ in our old English
writers, is equivalent to the being anxious or solicitous, or laying a thing much to
heart. — Craik (p. 227) : To think j or to ' take thought, ' seems to have been formerly
used in the sense of to give way to sorrow and despondency. [In the notes on the
line quoted from Ant, & Cleo. in the New Variorum Edition, the Editor, after
giving the foregoing observation by Craik, remarks: 'Possibly, our most familiar
quotation is, "Take no thought for the morrow." — Matthew, vi, 34.' — Ed.] —
MacCallum (p. 248) quotes a passage from Plutarch's lAfe of Brutus (ed. Skeat,
p. 119), wherein is given Brutus's argument against the slajring of Antony, that
there was a hope of reformation in him and that 'when he should knowe that
Caesar was dead [he] would willingly helpe his countrie to recover her libertie.'
'In this hope,' adds MacCallum, 'of converting a rus^ libertine like Antony, there
is no doubt a hint of idealism, but it is not so marked as in the high-pitched mag-
nanimity of Shakespeare's Brutus, who denies a man's powers of mischief because
his life is loose.' — [Brutus's argimient is, I think, not that Antony is harmless on
account of his loose morals, but that, since he is such a man, it would be too much
to expect that he would 'take thought and die for Caesar.' — Ed.]
209. much] Bradley (iV. jE. D., s. v. g.) : Used predicatively. To be much: to be
a great thing, an important point, matter, etc. Temp., I, ii, 252: 'Thou . . .
thinkst it much to tread the ooze of the salt deepe.'
209, 210. he is giuen To sports] ' — the noblemen (as Cicero saith) did not only
mislike him, but also hate him for his naughty life: for they did abhor his banquets
and dnmken feasts he made at unseasonable times, and his extreme wasteful ex-
penses upon vain light huswives.* — Plutarch, Life of Antony, § 5; ed. Skeat, p. 161.
211. no feare in him] Wright: That is, no cause of fear, nothing formidable.
In Plutarch, Trebonius is represented as averse to the proposal that Antony should
be admitted into the confidence of the conspirators, but it is Brutus who will not
consent to kill him. — Macmillan: Trebonius was a friend of Antony's. He
therefore wishes to save his life, and is employed to keep him out of the way at
the time of the assassination. . . . The prophecy of Trebonius is fulfilled, but
not in the way that he intended. No doubt Antonius afterwards laughed at the
folly of the conspirators in sparing him, who was to be Csesar's avenger.
ACT II, sc. i.] IVLIVS CjESAR 99
For he will liue, and laugh at this heereafter. 212
Clocke Jlrikes.
Bru. Peace, count the Clocke.
Caf. The Clocke hath ftricken three. 215
Treb. ^Tis time to part.
Caff But it is doubtfull yet,
Whether Ccefar will come forth to day, or no :
For he is Superflitious growne of late, 219
215. Jlnckeu] struckm Var. '78, '85, '73). WheW Cap. Var. '78, '85, Mai.
Ran. Ran. Steev. Varr. Sing. i.
218. Wkaher] If Popc,+ (—Var.
213. Clocke strikes] John Hunter: This is one of Shakespeare's anachronistic
licences or inadvertencies: the use of clocks and watches was unknown to the
Romans; but they had sun dials and clepsydne at the time to which this play refers.
219. he is Superstitious g^wne] De Quincy (p. 24) : No mob could be more
abjectly servile than was that of Rome to the superstition of portents, prodigies,
and omens. Thus far, in conunon with his order and in this sense, Julius Oesar
was naturally a despiser of superstition. Mere strength of understanding would,
perhaps, have made him such in any age, and apart from the circumstances of his
personal history. But this natural tendency would doubtless receive a further
bias in the same direction from the office of Pontifex Maximus, which he held at an
early stage of his public career. This office, by letting him too much behind the
curtain, and ezposmg too entirely the base machinery of ropes and pulleys, which
sustained the miserable jugglery played off upon the popular credulity, impressed
him perhaps even unduly with contempt for those who could be its dupes. ... We
find that though sincerely a despiser of superstition, and with a frankness which
must sometimes have been hazardous in that age, Caesar was himself also super-
stitious. No man could have been otherwise who lived and conversed with that
generation and people. But if superstitious, he was so after a mode of his own. . . .
That he placed some confidence in dreams, for instance, is certain; because had
he slighted them unreservedly he would not have dwelt upon them afterwards, or
have troubled himself to recall their circim:istances. Here we trace his human
weakness. Yet again we are reminded that it was the weakness of Caesar; for
the dreams were noble in their imagery, and Caesarean (so to speak) in their tone
of moral feeling. Thus, for example, the night before he was assassinated he
dreamt at intervals that he was soaring above the clouds on wings, and that he
placed his hand within the right hand of Jove. . . . We are told that Calpumia
dreamed on the same night, and to the same ominous result. The circumstances
of her dream are less striking, because less figurative; but on that account its import
was less open to doubt. . . . Laying all these omens together, Caesar would have
been more or less than human had he continued utterly undepressed by them.
And if so much superstition as even this implies must be taken to argue some little
weakness, on the other hand, let it not be forgotten that this very weakness does
but the more illustrate the imusual force of mind, and the heroic will, which ob-
stinately laid aside these concurring prefigurations of impending destruction.
[On the subject of Caesar^s superstition see also Merivale, ii, 353. De Quincy has,
I think, obtained his information from Suetonius, who mentions both Caesar's and
100 THE TRACED IE OF [act ii, sc. i.
Quite from the maine Opinion he held once, 220
Of Fantafie, of Dreames, and Ceremonies :
It may be, thefe apparant Prodigies,
The vnaccuftomM Terror of this night.
And the perfwafion of his Augurers,
May hold him from the Capitoll to day. 225
Dedus, Neuer feare that : If he be fo refoluM,
I can ore-fway him : For he loues to heare.
That Vnicomes may be betrayed with Trees,
And Beares with Glaffes, Elephants with Holes, 229
220. maine] mean M. Mason. 227. ore-fway] oWe-Jway F4.
221, Fantafie] fantasies Han. 22'j-2$2, For,.,flattered\ Mnemonic
223. Terror] terrors Coll. MS (ap. Warb.
Cam.).
Calpumia's dreams {Casar^ ch. 81); Plutarch, the earliest historian, mentions
Calpumia's only {Caesar j ch. 43); as likewise does Appian; Dion Cassius ascribes
both dreams to Calpumia (Bk, xliv, ch. 17). — Ed.]
220. maine Opinion] Johnson: That is, leading fixed ^ predominant opinion.
221. Pantasie] Murray (N, E. Z?., s. v. 4): Imagination; the process or the
faculty of forming mental representations of things not actually present. Also
personified. . . . In early use not clearly distinguished from [delusive imagination);
an exercise of poetic imagination being conventionally regarded as accompanied
by belief in the reality of what is imagined. [Compare also 1. 257 and III, iii, 3.]
aai. Ceremonies] Murray (N. E, Z?., 5. v. 5) : A portent, omen (drawn from the
performance of some rite). [The present line and II, ii, 18 are quoted as examples
of this use of 'ceremony.']
227. I can ore-sway him] Verity calls attention to a reference in Bacon's
Essay, Of Friendship^ to this power of Decimus Brutus to o'ersway Caesar. [It
is, perhaps, also worth noting that this Essay appeared first in the edition of 1607;
but when entirely rewritten for the edition of 1625 this paragraph, with many
others, was added (Arber, Harmony of the Essays ^ p. 169) perhaps on account of
the increasing popularity of the story of Julius Casar. — Ed.]
228. That Vnicomes may be, etc.] Steevens: So in Spenser, 'Like as a lyon,
whose imperial! powre A prowd rebellious Unicom defyes, T'avoide the rash
assault and wrathful stowre Of his fiers foe, him to a tree applyes, And when
him ronning in full course he spyes, He slips aside; the whiles that furious beast
His precious home, sought of his enimyes, Strikes in the stocke, ne thence can be
releast. But to the mighty Victor yields a bounteous feast.* — Bk, ii, canto v, verse
10. [Steevens also quotes a passage from Chapman's Bussy D'Amhois (ed. Pearson,
ii, 25), wherein is described the captiure of a unicorn by a jeweller who used this
same method. — ^Ed.]
229. Beares with Glasses] Steevens: Bears are reported to have been sur-
prised by means of a mirror, which they would gaze on, affording their pursuers
an opportunity of taking the surer aim. — Grey (ii, 176) quotes the following com-
munication from Mr. Smith: ^Glais or glas in French signifies classicum; by only
changing "holes" into stoles ^ and then making it change places with "trees,"
ACT II. SC. i.] IVLIVS CjESAR IOi''
Lyons with Toyles, and men with Flatterers. 230
But y when I tell him, he hates Flatterers,
He fayesyhe does; being then mod flattered.
Let me worke :
For I can giue his humour the true bent ;
And I will bring him to the CapitoU. 235
Caf. Nay, we will all of vs, be there to fetch him,
Bru. By the eight houre, is that the vttermoft?
Cin. Be that the vttermofl, and faile not then.
Met^ Caius Ligarius doth beare Cafar hard,
Who rated him for fpeaking well of Pompey ; 240
I wonder none of you haue thought of him.
Bru. Now good Metellus go along by him :
He loues me well, and I haue giuen him Reafons, 243
231. Flatterers f] flatteries Warb. MS Let me alone to work Wordsworth,
(ap. Cam.), flatterers; Craik. flatterers: 237. eight] eighth F4.
Pope et cet. 239. hard\ hatred Fi, Rowe, Pope,
232. flattered] flatter^ Dyce. Han. Cap.
2$$. Let me] Leave me to VopCfV job. 242, by] to Pope,+i Cap. Varr.
Han. Warb. Let me to Steev. conj. Ran.
with the alteration of ''glasses" to glas, we shall probably have it as Shakespeare
wrote it.' Grey adds: 'Had Shakespeare wrote pards instead of "bears," the
image would have been more just with regard to "glasses." The manner of taking
them is beautifully described by the ingenious Mr Somervile, Chace, Bk, iii, II.
294 et seq.' — Wkight: Compare Batman vppon Bartholome (ed. 1582, fol. 384 b,
of the bear) , ' And when he is taken he is made blinde with a bright basin, and boimd
with chaynes, and compelled to playe.' This, however, probably refers to the
actual blinding of the bear. The original Latin has 'pelvis ardentis aspectu
excecatur.'
229. Elephants with Holes] 'In Africa they take them [elephants] in pit-falls;
but as soon as an elephant gets into one, the others inmiediately collect boughs of
trees and pile up heaps of earth, so as to form a moimd, and then endeavor with
all their might to drag it out.* — Pliny, Nat. HisL^ Bk, viii, ch. 8.
231. But, when I tell him] Craik (p. 230) : The import of the 'For,' with which
Decius introduces his statement, is not seen till we come to his 'But when,' etc.,
which, therefore, ought not, as is commonly done, to be separated from what pre-
cedes by as strong a point as the colon — the substitute of the modem editors for
the full stop of the Folio.
236. there] Wright: 'There' must mean at Caesar's house.
239. Caius Ligarius] Verity: His praenomen was Quintus, not 'Caius.'
In the Life of M, Brutus Plutarch calls him ' Caius,' but Quintus in the Life of
Octamus, Ligarius had taken Pompey's side against Caesar, and after the battle
of Pharsalia was banished from Italy.
239. beare Cflesar hard] See I, ii, 337, for a note on the meaning of this phrase.
242. by him] Malone: That is, by his house. Make that your way home.
243. Reasons] Walker {Crit,^ i, 250) gives this as an example of the interpola-
• •
••^
I02 THE TRACED IE OF [act ii, sc. i.
•••
;*•• * Send him but hither, and He falhion him.
;••./•• Caf. The morning comes vpon's : 245
Wee'l leaue you Brutus^
And Friends difperfe your felues; but all remember
What you haue faid, and (hew your felues true Romans.
Bru. Good Gentlemen, looke frefh and merrily,
Let not our lookes put on our purpofes, 250
But beare it as our Roman A£lors do,
With vntyr'd Spirits, and formall Conftancie,
And fo good morrow to you euery one. Exeunt.
Manet Bruttis.
Boy : Lucius : Faft afleepe ? It is no matter, 255
Enioy the hony-heauy-Dew of Slumber :
345, 246. One line Rowe et seq. Pope, honey heauy dew Johns. Dyce.
245. vpan's] upon us Cap. Varr. Mai. heavy honey-dew CoU. ii, iii. (MS) , Craik,
Steev. Varr. Sing. ELnt, Ktly. Dyce ii, iii. honey-hemy dew Tlieob. et
356. hony-heauy-Dew] Ff, Rowe, cet.
tion of a final 5 in the Folio, which 'enx>r, ' says Walker, 'is frequent in this play.' —
Dyce, in his second edition, adopts Walker's correction, remarking that 'here
assuredly the old reading is not to be defended by a later passage: "you shall give
me reasons Why and wherein Caesar was dangerous." — ^m, i, 246.' — ^Hxtdson,
in his second and third editions, also follows Walker's correction; which, at least in
the present line, seems quite unnecessary; 'reasons' is a more forcible expression
than the mention of only one cause for the good will of Ligarius. — Ed.
249. fresh and merrily] For examples of this construction, wherein but one of
two adverbs has the adverbial termination, see, if needful, Abbott, § 397.
250. Let not . . . our purposes] Craik (p. 231): That is, such expression as
would betray our purposes. Compare 'To beguile the time Look like the time
. . . look like the innocent flower, But be the serpent imder it.' — Macheih^ I, v,
64-67. Also: 'Away and mock the time with fairest show. False face must hide
what the false heart doth know.' — Ibid., I, vii, 81. — ^Wright: Brutus himself fol-
lowed the counsel which he gave to others. 'When he was out of his house, he did
so frame and fashion his coimtenance and looks that no man could discern he had
anything to trouble his mind.' — Plutarch, Brutus ^ ed. Skeat, p. 115. Compare 'So
is he now, in Execution Of any bold, or noble enterprize. However he puts on this
tardy form.' — ^I, ii, 319.
256. hony-heauy-Dew] Collier (EmendaiionSf etc., p. 425) : The compound
unquestionably is not 'honey-heavy,' but honey-dew ^ a well-known glutinous de-
posit upon the leaves of trees, etc.; the compositor was guilty of a transposition,
and ought to have printed the line in this form: 'heavy honey-dew.* Such is the
manuscript emendation. — [Crak (p. 231) thinks the two hyphens in the Folio
are evidence of some confusion or indistinctness in the original manuscript, 'periiaps
occasioned by an interlineation.' — Dyce explains 'honey heavy' as that which is
both 'honeyed and heavy'; and Grant White explains it as 'slumber which is as
refreshing as dew, and whose heaviness is sweet.' — Rolfe (ap. Craik, p. 232) quotes,
ACT II, sc. i.] IVLIVS CjESAR IO3
Thou haft no Figures, nor no Fantafies, 257
Which bufie care drawes, in the braines of men ;
Therefore thou fleep'ft fo found.
Enter Portia. 260
Par. BrtituSy my Lord.
Bru. Portia: What meane you? wherfore rife you now?
It IS not for your health, thus to commit
Your weake condition, to the raw cold morning.
Por. Nor for yours neither. Y^haue vngently Brutus 265
Stole from my bed : and yeftemight at Supper
You fodainly arofe , and walkM about,
Mufing, and fighing, with your armes a-crofle :
And when I askM you what the matter was,
You ftar^d vpon me, with vngentle lookes. 270
I vrg'd you further, then you fratchM your head,
260. Scene m. Pope,-f , Jen. 265-279. Mnemonic Warb.
Portial Porcia Theob. Warb. 265. Thaue] Ff. You*ve Rowc,-f ,
Johns. Dyce, Craik, Su. Wh. Cam.+. You
264. raw cold\ raw-cold Steev. Varr. have Var. '73 et cct.
Sing. Km, Ktly, Dyce ii, iii, Huds. 266. Stole] stolen Johns. Var. '73.
Coll. iii. 267. fodainly] Suddenly Y1Y4.
271. further] farther Coll. Hal. Wh.
in support of Collier's MS, a passage from Titus And., Ill, i, 112, wherein the
words 'honey-dew' appear. — Ed.)
257. Figures] Murray {N,E. D,, s.v. II, 9. b): An imaginary form, a phan-
tasm. Merry Wives, IV, ii, 231: 'To scrape the figures out of your husbands
braines.'
257. Fantasies] See line 221, above; also III, iii, 3.
265. Y'haue vngently, etc.] Mrs Jameson (ii, 239) : The situation is exactly
similar [here to that between Hotspur and Lady Percy in i Hen, IV: II, iii, 76-
120]; the topics of remonstrance are nearly the same; the sentiments and the style
as opposite as are the characters of the two women. Lady Percy is evidently
accustomed to win more from her fiery lord by caresses than by reason; he loves
her in his rough way, 'as Harry Percy's wife,' but she has no real influence over
him; he has no confidence in her. . . . Lady Percy has no character, properly so
called; whereas that of Portia is very distinctly and faithfully drawn from the
outline furnished by Plutarch. Lady Percy's fond upbraidings, and her half-
playful, half-pouting entreaties, scarcely gain her husband's attention. Portia, with
true matronly dignity and tenderness, pleads her right to share her husband's
thoughts and proves it too. [Dowden (Mind and Art, p. 298) also contrasts these
two scenes, remarking that 'the relation of husband and wife, as conceived in the
historical plays, dififers throughout from that relation as conceived in the tragedies.']
266. Stole] The only other instance of Shakespeare's use of this form of the
participle b in Macbeth, II, iii, 73: ' — sacriligious murder hath broke ope The
lord's anointed temple and stole thence The life of the building.' — Ed.
I04 THE TRACED IE OF [act ii. sc. i.
And too impatiently flampt with your foote ; 272
Yet I infifted, yet you anfwer'd not,
But with an angry wafter of your hand
Gaue figne for me to leaue you : So I did, 275
Fearing to ftrengthen that impatience
Which feem'd too much inkindled ; and withall.
Hoping it was but an effe6l of Humor,
Which fometime hath his houre with euery man.
It will not let you eate, nor talke, nor fleepe ; 280
And could it worke fo much vpon your fhape.
As it hath much preuayPd on your Condition,
I (hould not know you Bmtus. Deare my Lord,
Make me acquainted with your caufe of greefe.
Bru. I am not well in health, and that is all. 285
Par. Brutus is wife, and were he not in health,
He would embrace the meanes to come by it.
Bru, Why fo I do : good Portia go to bed.
Por. Is Brutus ficke? And is it Phyficall
To walke vnbraced, and fucke vp the humours 290
Of the danke Morning ? What, is Brutus ficke?
And will he fteale out of his wholfome bed
To dare the vile contagion of the Night ?
And tempt the Rhewmy,and vnpurged Ayre, 294
274. wafler] wafturc Rowe et seq. sick; Var. '73 et cet.
283. you Bmtus] Fi. you Brutus 290. vnbraced] unbradd Dyce.
FaFj. youj Brutus F4. 291. danke] darke or dark Ff.
289-291. ficke?. ..ficke?] Ff, Rowe, 293. Night?] nighty Knt, Coll. Dyce,
Pope, Theob. Warb. Johns, sickj... Sta. Wh. Hal. Cam. ii. night
sicky Han. Coll. Dyce, Sta. Wh. Hal. Cam. i.
Cam.-f. sick;...sick; Cap. Jen. sick?.., 294. vnpurged] unpurgld Dyce.
274. wafter] Wright compares, for this spelling of the Folios, rounder for
'roimdure,' in King John^ II, i, 259; in both cases it is, possibly, phonetic.
279. his] Any discussion on this use of the personal possessive pronoun, and the
gradual adoption of the neuter form its, belongs to the history of the language rather
than to Shakespearean usage; the student is, therefore, referred to Murray {N. E,
D., s.v. Its). — Ed.
282. Condition] Murray (N. E. Z>., s. v. ii): Mental disposition, cast of mind;
character, moral nature; disposition, temper. [Schmidt (Lex.) furnishes nimierous
examples of this use of 'condition.']
287. come by it] Compare ' But how I caught it, foimd it, or came by it . . .
I am to learn.' — Mer. of Ven.^ I, i, 3.
294. Rhewmy] Craigie (N. E. Z>., s. v. 3): Moist, damp, wet; especially of the
air. [The present line quoted as earliest use of the word. Craigie compares the
ACT II, sc. i.] IVLIVS CjESAR 105
To adde vnto hit fickneffe ? No my Brutus ^ 295
You haue fome ficke Offence within your minde,
Which by the Right and Vertue of my place
I ought to know of : And vpon my knees,
I charme you, by my once commended Beauty,
By all your vowes of Loue, and that great Vow 300
Which did incorporate and make vs one.
That you vnfold to me, your felfe; your halfe
Why you are heauy : and what men to night
Haue had refort to you : for heere haue beene
Some fixe or feuen, who did hide their faces 305
Euen from darkneffe.
Bru. Kneele not gentle Portia.
Por, I (hould not neede, if you were gentle Brutus.
Within tho Bond of Marriage, tell me Brutus,
Is it excepted, I fhould know no Secrets 310
That appertaine to you ? Am I your Selfe,
295. hit] Fi. 302. yourfelfe] Ff, +1 Cap. yourself
299. charme] charge Pope, Han. Johns, et cet.
once commended] onu-com- 307. [Raising her. Capell.
mended Pope,+i Dyce. 309. tho] Fx.
adjective rheumatic as applied to 'weather, places: Inducing or having a tendency
to produce (a) catarrhal affections, (6) rheumatism.']
299. I charme you] Steevems, in defence of this reading [see Text, Notes],
compares ' — tis your graces That from my mutest conscience to my tongue
Qiarms this report out.*— Cyi»A«/»»«, I, vi, 117. — Craik (p. 235), referring to this
comparison, says: 'This b merely the common application of the verb to charm in
the sense of to produce any kind of effect, as it were, by incantation. "Charm" is
ham carmen, as incantation or enchantment is from cano. In the passage before us,
"I charm you" (if such be the reading) must mean I adjure or conjure you.' —
Murray (N. E, D., s, v, verb. 6) : To conjure, entreat (a person) in some potent
name, quotes the present line; also: '1599. T. M[oufet] SUkewormes 16, She Pyram
drencht and then thus charmes: Speake loue, O speake, how hapned this to thee?'
—Ed.
302. your selfe] The later mode of printing 'your self as one word seems to me
wrong; it makes Portia ask Brutus, and not another person, to tell her why he is
heavy, but is not 'self' here in apposition to 'me'? Does she not mean that she is
his self, just as she goes on to say that she is his 'half,' and as, indeed, she does call
herself in 1. 311?: 'Am I your self?' — ^Ed.
308. gentle Brutus] Staunton's comma after 'gentle' detracts somewhat from
the force of Portia's reply. Brutus has called her 'gentle Portia,' and she answers
that she would not have to kneel if he were gentle also. — Wright likewise calls
attention to this change in punctuation. — Ed.
I06 THE TRACED IE OF [act ii. sc. i.
But as it were in fort, or limitation ? 312
To keepe with you at Meales, comfort your Bed,
And talke to you fometimes? Dwell I but in the Suburbs 314
312. limitation?] Ff, Rowe, Pope, Johns.
Theob. Han. Warb. Ktly. limitation, 314. to you] t*you Walker (Crit. i,
Johns. Dyce, Sta. Cam.H-. limitation; 221).
Cap. et cet. fometimes] Om. Pope, Han.
313. comfort] consort Theob. Han. in the] i*tk* Walker (Crit. i, 221).
312. in sort, or limitation] Schmidt (Lex., s. v. sort, subst. 5): In a certain
manner and with restrictions.
313. To keepe with you, etc.] Malone calls attention to a passage in Lord
Stirling's Play, Julius Cttsar, wherein both the author and Shakespeare follow
North's Plutarch in this scene; likewise at 1. 324 we find that Stirling paraphrases
Plutarch as does Shakespeare, and again in the scene between Ligarius and Brutus,
346 et seq. Any similarity of thought is, of coiu^e, accounted for by the fact
that both were using the same authority. — Ed.
313. comfort] Murray (N. E, Z>., s, v. verb. 5): To minister delight or pleasure
to; to gladden, cheer, please, entertain. [The present line quoted.]
314. And talke . . . the Suburbs] Walker {Crit., i, 221) suggests that 'to
you' and 'in the' be read t'you and iW and the accent placed on the second syllable
of 'sometimes,' in order that this line be metrically correct. — Craik, independently
of Walker, proposes the same elisions. Prosodically, this line is obviously wrong;
the rhythm is, however, really smooth, and rather than mutilate it, would it not be
better to divide the line into two impassioned sentences? And 3ret, after all, in the
mouth of an accomplished actress it could be uttered musically and no discord
felt.— Ed.
314. in the Suburbs] Steevens: Perhaps here is an allusion to the place in
which the harlots of Shakespeare's age resided. So, in Beaumont and Fletcher's
Monsieur Thomas: 'Get a new mistress. Some suburb saint, that sixpence, and
some oaths, Will draw to parley,' [II, i; ed. Dyce, p. 335]. — ^Nares {s, v. Suburbs):
The general resort of disorderly persons in fortified towns, and in London also. . . .
We find in the classics that it was the same in ancient times. See Beaumont and
Fletcher, Humorous Lieutenant, I, i; Massinger's Emperor of the East, where the
Mignion of the Suburbs is a prominent character (I, ii.). . . . This will sufficiently
explain the question of Portia to Brutus in Jul Cits. — Wright: Portia claims the
freedom of one who is a full citizen. . . . Gosson (Schoole of A buse) says: 'They [har-
lots] either couch them selves in Allyes, or blind Lanes, or take sanctuary in f ryeries,
or Hue a mile from the Cittie like Venus nunnes in a Cloyster at Newington, Rat-
liffe, Islington, Hogsdon, or some such place.* — ed. Arber, p. 36. [The whole phrase,
'Dwell I but in the suburbs Of your good pleasure,' may be compared to the fol-
lowing from Sidney's Arcadia: ' — then she listed no longer stay in the suburbs
of her foolish desires, but directly entred upon them,' Bk ii, ch. 20; ed. 1590, p.
192. This refers to the attempts of Andromana to get Pyrocles into her power, by
fair means or foul, and the metaphor is taken from an army's advance upon a city or
town. Whiter, in his excellent study of the association of ideas, shows that fre-
quently, with Shakespeare, a word is sufficient to suggest a new train of thought;
in the present passage we have, I think, an example: 'Harlot' is the word which
ACT II. sc. i.] IVLIVS CJBSAR 107
Of your good pleafure ? If it be no more, 315
Portia is Brutus Harlot, not his Wife.
Bru. You are my true and honourable Wife,
As deere to me, as are the ruddy droppes
That vifit my fad heart. 319
Plutarch puts in the mouth of Portia in this scene; their usual place of resort was
the outlying districts, as has been shown, hence the word 'suburbs.' The phrase
quoted from the Arcadia shows, moreover, that the idea is not as extraordinary as
at first it might seem, and may be used without the slightest reference to dissolute
Ifie.— EdJ
317. You are my . . • Wife] Boas (p. 467): This absolute communion of
80ul is in designed contrast to the shallow relation of Cesar and Calpumia. The
dictator treats his wife as a child to be humoured or not according to his caprice,
but Portia assumes that, 'by the right and virtue of her place,' she is entitled to
share her husband's inmost thoughts. Brutus discloses to her the secret which lies
80 heavily upon his breast, and we know that this secret is inviolably safe in her
keeping.
318, 319. ruddy droppes . . . my sad heart] T. Ndcmo, in a communication
to the Shakespeare Society, dated 16 June, 1844, calls attention to this passage,
wherein, he thinks, there b ' a distinct reference to the circulation of the blood, which
was not announced to the world until after the death of Shakespeare. Harvey,'
continues Ninmio, 'is supposed to have brought forward his views ... in 1618,
but their actual publication . . . was in 1628. There is, however, a MS in the
British Museum, entitled Dt AmUome Universali, dated April, 1616, ... in which
the germ of his great discovery is to be found.' Nimmo considers that this may help
to establish the date of composition of Jul. Cas,^ which would thus be made later
than 1603 — the generally accepted date. ' Harvey's ideas on [the circulation of the
blood],' Nimmo says, 'had their origin while he was a student at Padua from
i599toi6o2, when he returned to England. Is it then impossible that Harvey . . .
may have acquainted Shakespeare with these great ideas? . . . There appears to me
to run through the whole play a more medical spirit than is to be found in any other
of his works; as if he had been discoursing with Harvey. ... It is really surprising,
too, how often the blood is referred to in the course of the play.* — ^T. J. Pettigrew
wrote a reply to the foregoing communication, in the course of which he takes
exception to some of the statements by Nimmo; in particular in regard to the MS
dated 1616 and said to be in the British Museiun, which, Pettigrew says, diligent
search both by himself and Sir Frederick Madden has thus far failed to produce.
'The only volume at all like that referred to is one in the Sloane Collection, No. 486,
entitled Ohseroaiiones AnatamuMy and dated 1627; but the notes are upon the
muscles and nerves, not upon the blood-vessels.' He adds: 'Having gone through
the whole of the MS, I can affirm that there is not a single passage in it which relates
to the circulation. . . . Other anatomists appear to have been on the confines of
the discovery, but not to have developed it. To Harvey alone is due the discovery.
. . . Servetus [whose Christianismi RestUutic appeared in 1553] certainly knew
the nature of the pulmonic circulation, and he was well acquainted with the manner
in which the blood passed from one ventricle of the heart to the other before it
went through the general circulation. These being the opinions with regard to the
distribution of the blood in the time of Shakespeare are sufficient to account for the
I08 THE TRACED IE OF [act ii, sc. L
[318, 319. ruddy droppes That visit my sad heart]
allusions . . . referred to by Nimmo. There is no evidence given that Shakespeare
knew Harvey; and as Shakespeare died in 1616, when the first ideas of Harvey
upon the subject were promulgated at the college, he could not, through that
medium, have been acquainted with it; but if the date 1603 [for the composition
of /«/. C(is\ be the correct one, it is quite cle^r that Shakespeare could not have
then known Harvey, for he must at that time have been abroad; and . . . there
are no traces in any of his writings to show that he had then entertained any par-
ticular views upon the nature of the circulation/ {Sh, Soc, Papers ^ pt ii, pp. 109*
113.) — BncKNUJ. {Med. Knowledge, etc., p. 215): There are several passages in
the plays in which the presence of blood in the heart is quite as distinctly referred
to as in this speech of Brutus, [and these] prove that Shakespeare entertained the
Galenical doctrine . . . that although the right side of the heart was visited by
the blood, the function of the heart and its proper vessels, the arteries, was the
distribution of the vital spirits. Shakespeare believed, indeed, in the flow of the
blood, . . . but he considered that it was the liver, and not the heart, which was
the cause of the flow. There is not, in my opinion, in Shakespeare a trace of any
knowledge of the circulation of the blood. [In corroboration of the foregoing note
by Bucknill, in regard to the knowledge of the flow of the blood, among the writers
contemporary with Shakespeare, the following from Marlowe's Tamburlaine, tks
Great, 1590, seems apposite: 'A deadly bullet, gliding through my side. Lies heavy
on my heart; I cannot live. I feel my liver pierced, and all my veins, That there
begin and nourish every part. Mangled and torn, and all my entrails bathed In
blood that straineth from their orifex.* — Pt ii, HI, iv, 4-9. — Ed.] — Da Costa (p. 37)
gives the following accoimt of the steps which led Harvey to his discovery and
just what that discovery was in regard to the motion of the blood: 'He [Harvey]
finds, contrary to the opinions commonly received, that the heart when it contracts
is emptied. He sees that as it becomes tense the blood is expelled; he observes
that as it receives blood. Every time the heart contracts the pulse is felt. When
the right ventricle contracts and propels its charge of blood, the pulmonary is
distended simultaneously with the other arteries of the body. He notices that the
auricle on the right side of the heart contracts at the same time as that on the
left, and that subsequently both ventricles contract. Why should both ventricles
contract for the sole purpose of nourishing the limgs? asks his intelligence. It is
against every evidence of design in nature to be so wasteful of structure and force.
Why, too, is there a great artery taking its origin from the left heart? It can but
be for the complete distribution of the blood to all parts of the body. Light has
dawned. The heart is the propelling engine; the right ventricle is made for the
sake of the lungs chiefly, the left, for the general circulation. Good anatomist as he
is, he knows that channels of communication between the right and left heart,
through the heart walls, are mere fanciful assumptions. He thinks of the valves
of the heart; of the valves in the veins, which his old teacher Fabricius has pointed
out to him. He knows that an artery differs in the strength and thickness of its
coats from a vein. He finds evidence in all this of regulating flow; of preventing
return; of sustaining the shock of the impelling heart and streaming blood. He
makes experiments by tying the aorta at the base of the heart and opening the
carotids; they are empty, the veins are full. The arteries receive, then, no blood
except by transmission through the heart, is his conclusion. The left heart, he has
found, gets its changed nutritive blood after the blood has passed through the
ACT 11, sc. i.] IVLIVS C^SAR lOg
Par. If this were true, then fhould I know this|fecret. 320
I graunt I am a Woman; but withall,
A Woman that Lord Brutus tooke to Wife :
I graunt I am a Woman ; but withall,
A Woman well reputed iCatc^s Daughter.
Thinke you, I am no ftronger then my Sex 325
Being fo Fathered, and fo Husbanded ?
Tell me your Counfels, I will not difclose 'em :
I haue made ftrong proofe of my Conftancie,
Giuing my felfe a voluntary wound
Heere,in the Thigh : Can I beare that with patience, 330
324. reputed: Cato*s] reputed Cato's 327. *em] Jen. Dyce, Craik. em Fj.
Warb. Johns. Var. '73, Coll. i, Sta. them F4 et cet.
lungs, "the workshop of its last perfection.*' The blood is thrown with each con-
traction of the left ventricle into the arterial system, and as the contractions are so
frequent a large quantity is passed on in a short space of time. The veins would
be drained; the ingested aliment could never rapidly and efficiently enough supply
them with blood, which goes on so quickly into the arteries. These, strong as they
arc, would burst unless relieved. "There must be motion, as it were, in a circle."
The circulation is discovered. . . . The old fabric of fanciful hypothesis has been
shivered; a great, simple truth has been established.' Da Costa quotes several
passages from Shakespeare (among them the present line) which 'seem to prove
that Shakespeare imderstood the circulation of the blood in advance of Harvey';
he arrives, however, at the same conclusion as does Bucknill, given above, that these
passages simply show Shakespeare's knowledge of the pulmonary circulation, and
to the prestmied movement of the blood in the veins. And that there is nothing
'which can be twisted to make it clear that he knew anything of the real circula-
tion,— of the circuit of the blood.' The passages quoted 'certainly prove Shake-
speare,' says Da Costa, ' to have been as far-seeing a physiologist as any of his age,
with the single exception of Harvey.'
324. well reputed : Gate's Daughter] Capell (Notes, p. 103) : The words that
follow this compound are declarative of thd sense 'tis confined to, giving it in the
way that is most pleasing, namely, by implication; the speaker was 'well-reputed'
for qualities she might be thought to inherit, and that fitted her to be partaker of
what she solicited; general goodness was neither thought of nor should be; though
that turn is given it by a contender for removing the comma, the last modem,
[Warburton] a removal the Poet seems to have guarded against by using a greater
stop than was necessary, — a full colon, — if that stop be from him. — Henley: By
the expression 'well-reputed' she refers to the estimation in which she was held
as being the wife of Brutus; whilst the addition, Cato's daughter, implies that
she might be expected to inherit the patriotic virtues of her father. It is with propriety,
therefore, that she inmiediately asks: 'Think you, I am no stronger than my sex.
Being so father'd, and so husbanded?' — Craik: (p. 238) It is interesting to note
what we have here in the Mer, of Ven,, 'Her name is Portia; nothing undervalued
To Cato's daughter, Brutus' Portia.' — I, i, 165. The Mer. of Ven, had certainly
been written by 1598.
no THE TRACED IE OF [act ii. sc. i.
And not my Husbands Secrets ? 331
Bru. O ye Gods !
Render me worthy of this Noble Wife. Knocke.
Harke^harke^one knockes : Portia go in a while,
And by and by thy bofome (hall partake 335
The fecrets of my Heart.
All my engagements, I will conftrue to thee,
All the Charraftery of my fad browes :
Leaue me with haft. Exit Portia.
Enter Lucius and Ligarius. 340
LuciuSy who's that knockes. ^
Luc, Heere is a ficke man that would fpeak with you.
Bru. Caius LigariuSy that Metellus fpake of.
Boy, ftand afide. Caius LigariuSy how ?
Cai. Vouchfafe good morrow from a feeble tongue. 345
331. Stcrets\ secret Cap. conj. Sing. Huds. who is that, Mai. Varr.
341. who*s that] who* there thai Pope, Coll. Hal. Wh. i. who is't that Ran.
-f. who^s that that Cap. Walker (Crit. 343. [Aside. Cap.
ill, 246). who is that Var. '73, '78, '85, 344. [Exit Luc. Cap.
333. Render me . . . this Noble Wife] MacCallum (p. 326): What insight
Shakespeare shows even in his omissions I This is the prayer of Plutarch's Brutus
too, but he lifts up his hands and beseeches the gods that he may 'bring his enter-
prise to so goode passe that he mighte be founde a husband worthy of so noble a
wife as Porcia.' Shakespeare's Brutus does not view his worthiness as connected
with any material success. And these words are also an evidence of his himible-
mindedness. However aggressive and overbearing he may appear in certain rela-
tions, we never fail to see hjs essential modesty. If he interferes, as often enough
he does, to bow others to his wiU, it is not because he is self -conceited, but because
he is convinced that a particular course is right; and where right is concerned a man
must come forward to enforce it.
338. Cbarractery] Musbay (N, E. Z>., s, v.): Expression of thought by symbols
or characters; the characters or symbols collectively. [The present line quoted.]
339-341. Leaue me . . . that knockes] Craik (p. 239): It is imnecessary
to suppose that the two broken lines were intended to make a whole between them.
They are best regarded as distinct hemistichs.
341. who's that knockes] For other examples of the omission of the relative,
see, if needful, Abbott, § 244. At the same time it is not impossible, I think,
that there is here, perhaps, an absorption of the words is '/ that may accoimt for
this omission. — Ed.
345. Vouchsafe good morrow] Abbott (§ 382) quotes the present line as an
illustration of an ellipsis of the words to receive; according to Skeat (Diet., s, v.)
the original meaning of 'vouchsafe' is 'sanction or allow without danger, conde-
scend to grant.' He quotes: '"Vowche sauf that his sone hire wedde," Will, 0/
Palerne, 1449.' The ellipsis is, therefore, only apparent. — Ed.
ACT II, sc. i.] IVLIVS C^SAR 1 1 1
Bru. O what a time haue you chofe out braue Caius. 346
To weare a Kerchiefe ? Would you were not ficke.
Cau I am not ficke, if Brutus haue in hand
Any exploit worthy the name of Honor.
Bru. Such an exploit haue I in hand Ligarius^ 350
Had you a healthfull eare to heare of it.
Cau By all the Gods that Romans bow before,
I heere difcard my fickneffe. Soule of Rome,
Braue Sonne, deriuM from Honourable Loines,
Thou like an Exorcift, haft coniur'd vp 355
My mortified Spirit. Now bid me runne.
And I will ftriue with things impofTible,! 357
347. W<mld\ Would Warb. Johns. 352. that] the Rowe ii,-f .
Cap. Varr. Mai. Ran. Steev. Sing. Knt, 353. [Throwing away his bandage.
Wh. i, Klly. Coll. ii.
351. a] an F4, Rowe,-f . 356. mortified] mortify Dyce.
346-356. O what a time . . . My mortified Spirit] In Plutarch's account
it is Brutus who visits Ligarius, but in other respects Shakespeare closely follows
his authority. '[Brutus] said imto him, "Ligarius, in what a time art thou sick?"
Ligarius, rising up in his bed and taking him by the right hand, said imto him,
"Brutus," said he, "if thou hast any great enterprise in hand worthy of thyself,
I am whde."* — Life of BnUus, § 7; (ed. Skeat, p. 113).
347. To weare a Kerchiefe] Malone: It was a common practice in England
for those who were sick to wear a kerchief on their heads, and still continues
among the common people in many places. 'If,' says Fuller, ' this county [Cheshire]
hath bred no writers in that faculty [physic], the wonder is the less, if it be true what
I read, that if any here be sick, " they make him a posset, and tie a kerchief on his
head; and if that will not mend him, then God be merciful to him!" But be this
understood of the common people, the gentry having the help (no doubt) of the
learned in that profession.' — Worthies: Cheshire^ p. 180, [Ed. Nuttall, i, 276; in a
foot-note the editor gives as the reference for Fuller's quotation: William Smith,
Vale Royal, p. 16. — Ed.]
355. Exorcist] Murray (N, E. Z>., s. v, 2) : One who calls, or pretends to call,
up spirits by magical rites. [The present line quoted; also. Burton, Anat. of
Melancholy, 'The knavish impostures of Juglers, Exorcists, Mass-Priests and
Mountebanks,' I, iii. III. ed., 1651, where 'Exorcist,' from its connection with
'mass-priests,' may possibly mean, as given by Murray under i, b, *the third
of one of the four lesser orders in the Roman Catholic Church. Shakespeare uses
this word, as well as exerciser and exorcism, with the same meaning of raising, not
laying spirits. — ^M. Mason, in a note on the present line, remarks that he believes
Shakespeare to be 'singular in his acceptation of it.' — Ed.]
356. mortified] Bradley (N. E, D., s. v. 3): Deadened, numb, insensible.
[The present line quoted.] — ^Walker (Crit,, II, 35) gives several examples of other
verbs ending in fied, wherein, for th^ sake of the metre, the final ed is pronounced
as a separate syllable.
112 THE TRACED IE OF [act ii. sc. i.
Yea get the better of them. What's to do ? 358
Bru, A peece of worke,
That will make ficke men whole. 360
Cai. But are not fome whole, that we muft make ficke?
Bru. That muft we alfo. What it is my Cuius,
I (hall vnfold to thee , as we are going,
To whom it muft be done.
Cat. Set on your foote, 365
And with a heart new-fir'd, I follow you,
To do I know not what : but it fufficeth
That Brutus leads me on. TJiunder.
Bru. Follow me then. Exeunt 369
358. FealK«/Roweii,-f(— Var.'73). 363, 364. going. To whom] going To
3S9i 360. One line Rowe et seq. whom Cap. Var. '78, '8$, Mai. Steev.
362. muft we] we must Theob. ii,+. Varr. Knt.
Z^Zi 364. going. To whom] Ckaik (p. 240) : That is, while we are on our way
to those whom it must be done to. The ellipsis is the same as in 'From that it is
disposed/ I, ii, 334. I do not understand how the words are to be interpreted if
we are to separate 'going' from what follows by a comma, as in the Folio. [Sec
Text, Notes.] — Wright: As we had in 1. 341 an instance of the relative absorbed
in the demonstrative, [which, be it remembered, was somewhat doubtful,] we have
here an example of the contrary. ... If the Folio reading be retained, we must
take 'To whom it must be done' as a repetition of 'What it is?' in 1. 362. — ^Vewty:
By the ellipsis Brutus purposely leaves Ligarius in doubt whether to him or to
them 'to whom' is meant to refer; the latter would be untrue, while the former
would show at once that Caesar was meant. [Are not the words 'as we are going'
parenthetical?. Another example occxurs in the present play in V, v, 57, where
Brutus says to Strato, 'Hold then my sword, and tume away thy face. While
I do run upon it,' which, if taken in its literal construction, presents an extra-
ordinary picture of Brutus's intention. — Ed.]
365. Set on your foote] Wright compares 'I will set this foot of mine as far
As who goes farthest,' — I, iii, 130; and also a passage from North's Plutarch,
wherein Martins is mentioned as ' being ever the foremost that did set out feet to
fight.' — Life of Coriokmus, § 9; ed. Skeat, p. 15. — Ed.
366. new-fir'd] Murray (N, E. Z>., s. v. firey vb. 3) : Fig. To set (a person) on
fire; to inspire with passion or strong feeling or desire; to inflame, heat, animate.
Also, to kindle or inflame (a passion, etc.).
368, 369. Thunder . . . Exeunt] Mark Hunter: This seems a not ineffective bit
of stage business, as symbolical of the desperate and fatal undertaking on which Bru-
tus had set out. The First Folio was printed from a stage copy, and the direction
was perhaps only a player's insertion; but it is not on that account without interest.
369. Exeunt] E. Whitney (NewEnglander Maga., Oct., 1886, p. 867) suggests the
following divisions of Acts in place of those as given in the Folio: 'The First Act
should terminate at the end of the first scene of the Second Act; the Second Act,
at the end of the first scene of the Third Act; the third Act, at the end of the Third
Act of the common editions. The Fourth and Fifth Acts should remain as they are.'
ACT II. sc. u.] IVLIVS CjESAR
"3
\Scene II.'\
Thunder & Lightning, I
Enter lulius Ca/ar in his Night-gawne.
Cce/ar, Nor Heauen, nor Earth,
Haue beene at peace to night :
Thrice hath Calphumia^ in her fleepe cryed out, 5
Helpe, ho : They murther Ca/ar. Who's within ?
Enter a Seruant,
Ser. My Lord.
Ca/. Go bid the Priefts do prefent Sacrifice,
And bring me their opinions of Succeffe. ID
Ser. I will my Lord. Exit
Enter Calphumia.
CW.What mean you Ca/ar} Think you to walk forth ?
You (hall not ftirre out of your houfe to day.
Ca/. Ccefar (hall forth; the things that threaten^ me, 1 5
Ne're lookM but on my backe : When they (hall fee
The fece of Cce/ar^ they are vaniflied. 17
Scene n.Rowe. Scene iv. Pope, +» 3* Heauen] heaven Rowe,+«
Jen. 5. Calphumia] Calpurnia. Wh. i,
Caesar's Palace. Rowe,+- A Room Craik, Glo. Cam.+y Rolfe (through-
in Caesar's Palace. Cap. et seq. (subs.) out).
2. in his Night-gowne] Om. Pope,H-f 1$, threaten* d\ tkreatned Rowe,+*
Cap. threaten Walker (Crit . iii, 246) , Huds. iii.
3, 4. One line Rowe et seq. 16. look*d\ look Huds. iii.
3, 4. Nor Heauen, nor Earth, Haue] Craik (p. 241) : The strict grammatical
principle would, of coiu^e, require has been; but where, as here, the two singular
substantives are looked at together by the mind, it is more natural to regard them
as making a plurality, and to use the plural verb, notwithstanding the disjunctive
conjunction (as it is sometimes oddly designated). — Wright: In other cases where
'Nor . . . nor* is equivalent to neither . . . nor, they are followed by a singular
verb. For instance: *Nor God, nor I, delights in perjured men.' — Lave*s Labour's,
V, ii, 346; 'But since Nor brass nor stone nor parchment bears not one.* — Winter's
Tale, I, ii, 360. 'Sith nor the exterior nor the inward man Resembles what it
was.' — Hamlet, II, ii, 6. On the other hand, the plural occurs in Sonnet cxli, 7:
'Nor tender feeling, to base touches prone, Nor taste nor smell desire to be invited.'
10. Successe] Wright: Here, and in V, iii, 73, 'success' denotes good fortune;
but in many cases it is a colourless word, signif3ring merely issue, result, which has
to be qualified by some adjective, as good or ill.
15, 17. Caesar . . . Caesar] RthfELiN (p. 11) is of the opinion that Shake-
speare is somewhat at fault in thus making Caesar refer to himself in the third
8
114 THE TR AGED IE OF [act li, sc. iL
Calp, Cafar^ I neuer flood on Ceremonies, i8
Yet now they fright me : There is one within,
Befides the things that we haue heard and feene, 20
Recounts moft horrid fights feene by the Watch,
A LionneiTe hath whelped in the flreets,
And Graues haue yawn'd, and yeelded vp their dead ;
Fierce fiery Warriours fight vpon the Clouds 24
32. whdpedl whdpid Dyce. 24. figki] fought Wh. i, Dyce ii, iii,
CoU. iii. did fight KUy.
person. — To this view Schone (p. 16, foot-note) dissents, remarking that: 'In no
better way could the poet have indicated the pride and self-confidence oi the
man aspiring to royalty, and he has thus devised a suitable means of introducing
the name of Cesar as a title. As such it will be used later in the play, in order
to show that the Csesarean idea is dominant. ''He shall be Cesar!" cries the
Third Citizen after Brutus's oration. "There was a Cesar, when comes such
another!" says Antony to the citizens.' — Ed.
18. I neuer . . . Ceremonies] ' — ^it seemed that Cesar likewise did fear
or suspect somewhat, because his wife Calpumia until that time was never given
to any fear and superstition.' — Plutarch: disar, i 43; (ed. Skeat, p. 98). — ^For
Shakespeare's use of 'ceremonies' as applied to superstition, see note oa 11, i,
221. — Ed.
21. the Watch] Wright remarks that 'night-watchmen were not established
[in Rome] before the time of Augustus.'
22. A Lionnesse hath whelped] Mark Hunter: As illustrative of popular
feeling in Shakespeare's time Percy Simpson cites passages from Stowe's Amtales
in which Stowe records how 'a Lionesse named Elizabeth, in the Tower of London,
brought forth a lion's whelp' (5^ August, 1604); and how on 'the 26*^ of February
(1605) was an other Lion whelped, in the Tower of London by the foresaid Lionesse.
. . . Thus much of these whelpes have I observed, and put in memory, for that I
have not read of any the like in this land before this present year.'
23. And Graues . . . their dead] Capell (i, 104) compares: 'Graves
yawn, and 3rield your dead.' — Much Ado, V, iii, 19; and also: 'A little ere the
mightiest Julius fell, The graves stood tenantless, and the sheeted dead Did squeak
and gibber in the Roman streets.'— Ham/rf, I, i, 113.— Malone likewise quotes
the foregoing passages.
24. Fierce fiery . . . vpon the Clouds] Steevens: So in Tacitus: 'Visae
per coelum concurrere ades, rutulantia arma & subito nubium igne collucere.' —
History^ Bk v, [ch. 13]. — Malone also quotes a passage from Tamburlaine (ed.
Bullen, Pt ii; IV, ii, 125-130), in which allusion is made to this phenomenon or
appearance as of a line of armed men in the clouds. — Ed.] — ^Verity: Milton prob-
ably had these lines in mind when he wrote: 'As when, to warn proud dties, war
appears Waged in the troubled sky, and armies rush To battle in the clouds.' —
Paradise Lost, II, 533-535-
24. fight] Wright: [This] may have been so written by Shakespeare; Cal-
pumia realising what had been reported to her as if it were then present to her
mind. Compare Tempest^ I, ii, 148, for a similar change from a past tense to a
present. I quote from the Folio: 'A rotten carkasse of a Butt, not rigg'd. Nor
ACT II. sc. u.] IVLIVS CjESAR II5
In Rankes and Squadrons^ and right forme of Warre 25
Which drizelM blood vpon the Capitol! :
The noife of Battell hurtled in the Ayre :
Horfles do neigh, and dying men did grone,
And Ghofts did flirieke and fqueale about the ftreets.
O Ca/ary thefe things are beyond all vfe, 30
And I do feare them.
Caf. What can be auoyded
Whofe end is purposM by the mighty Gods ?
Yet Cafar ftiall go forth : for thefe Predi6lions
Are to the world in generall, as to Cafar. 35
Calp. When Beggers dye, there are no Comets feen,
The Heauens themfelues blaze forth the death of Princes 37
27. huril€d[ hurried Ff, Rowe. did Ff et cet.
28. do] MaL Var. '21, Knt, Coll. i. 29. Ghofis] Ghofi F4.
tackle, sayle, nor mast, the very rats Instinctiuely haue quit it.' [In a note on this
passage in the Tempest^ Wright also cites as examples of a like change, Ibid., I, ii,
205, and WitU. Talct V, ii, 83. See likewise 1. 28, below. — Ed.]
27. hurtled] Murray (N, E, Z>., s, v. kurtle, verb): Apparently a dimmutive
and iterative of hurt, in its original sense of 'strike with a shock.' Sometimes con-
fused with hurl; but the essential notion in 'hurtle' is that of forcible projection;
if, however, I hurl a javelin at a shield and strike it, I also hurtle the one against
the other; hence the contact of sense. — [Under 'II, 5. To emit a soimd of collision;
to clatter,' etc. Murray quotes the present line. — Ed.]
28. do neigh . . . did grone] Craik (p. 243): No degree of mental agitation
ever expressed itself ... in such a jumble and confusion of tenses as this, — not
even insanity or drunkenness. The 'fight' in I. 24 is not a case in point. It is
perfectly natural in animated narrative or description to rise occasionally from the
past tense to the present; but who ever heard of two facts or ciraunstances equally
past, stnmg together, as here, with an 'and' and enimdated in the same breath,
being presented the one as now going on, the other as only having taken place?
[See note on 1. 24, above.]
29. And Ghosts . . . about the streets] Craik (p. 244) quotes the passage
from Handel, I, i, 113, which is quoted also by Capell at 1. 23, and on this Craik
remarks: 'It is rare to find Shakespeare coming so near upon the same words in
two places as he does here and in Hamlet. The passage [in Hamlet] is foimd, how-
ever, only in the Quarto editions and is omitted in all the Folios.'
29. squeale] Wright: That ghosts had thin and squeaking voices was a belief
in the time of Homer, who compares the noise of the souls of the suitors, whom
Hermes conducted to Hades, to the noise of a string of bats when disturbed in a
cave (Odyssey, xxiv, [6, 7]). Compare Horace: 'Quo pacto altema loquentes
Umbrae cum Sagana resonarint triste et acutum.' — Sat,, i, 8, 41. And Virgil, of
the shades which i£neas saw: 'Pars tollere vocem Exiguam.' — ySneid, vi, 491.
37. The Heauens . . . the death of Princes] M alone: Compare: 'Let us
look into the nature of a comet, by the face of whiqfi it is supposed that the same
Il6 THE TRAGEDIE OF [act ii, sc. ii.
Caf. Cowards dye many times before their deaths, 38
The valiant neuer tafte of death but once :
Of all the Wonders that I yet haue heard,
It feemes to me moft ftrange that men (hould feare, 41
38-43. Mnemonic Pope.
should portend plague, famine, warre, or the death of potentates.' — H. Howard,
DefenscUive against the Poison of supposed Prophecies, 1583. — Douce (p. 364):
This might have been suggested by what Suetonius has related of the blazing star
which appeared for seven days together, during the celebration of games instituted
by Augustus in honour of Julius.
37. btaze forth] MusjiAY (N, E. D., s. v. blaze, v'. 2.): To proclaim (as with a
trumpet), to publish, divulge, make known, [s, v. Ibid., b, 'with abroad (forth,
about). The prevalent use,' Murray quotes the present line.]
38. Cowards . . . before their deaths] 'When some of his friends did
coimsel him to have a guard for the safety of his person, and some also did offer
themselves to serve him, he would never consent to it, but said: ''It was better to
die once, than always to be afraid of death."' — Plutarch: Ccssar, § 39; (ed. Skeat,
p. 92). — Malone: So in Marston, Insatiate Countess, 1613: 'Fear is my vassal;
when I frown, he flies, A hundred times in life a coward dies.' — [ed. Bullen, IV, iii,
98.] Lord Essex, probably before either of these writers, made the same remark.
In a letter to Lord Rutland, he observes: 'that as he which dieth nobly, doth
live for ever, so that he that doth live in fear, doth die continually.' [W. B. Devereux :
Litfes and Letters of the Devereux, vol. i, p. 325; this letter is to be foimd in the Hari.
MSS, 4888, 16. — Ed.] — Boswell: As a specimen of Stecvens's love of mischief,
I may mention, that by putting the quotation from Plutarch first, and changing the
words 'either of these writers,' f. e., Shakespeare or Marston, to 'any of these,'
etc., he made Malone appear to write nonsense. — [This refers to the note as printed
in Steevens's own edition of 1793; Malone's note appears in his edition of 1790. —
Eo.j — Pr£SCX)t (ii, 290): Seneca writes: 'quid timoris dementissimi pactio? diu
mori.' Or again: 'quid est timere? diu mori.' The rest is all from Arrian, who
says: 'death? let it come, when it will.' The philosopher dictates to each 'to bear
death as men*: at very distant pages, again and again argues it out of nature and
a wonder not to do so. Whence is to be observed with what propriety, proceeding
from looking over Arrian, the exclamation: 'Of all the wonders I yet have heard,'
comes forth, collected from different colunms of the author.
40, 41. Of all . . . men should feare] MacCallum (p. 221): Caesar's courage,
of course, is beyond question; but is there not a hint of the theatrical in this over-
strained amazement, in this statement that fear is the most unaccoimtable thing
in all his experience? . . . We see and know that he is the bravest of the brave,
but if anything could make us suspicious, it would be his constant harping on his
flawless valour. So, too, he says of Cassius: 'I fear him not,' etc. Why should
he labour the point? If he has not fears, he has at least misgivings in regard to
Cassius, that come very much to the same thing. His anxiety is obvious, as he calls
Antony to his side to catechise him on his opinions of the danger. — Mark Hunter:
It cannot be said that Cssar in this scene, or elsewhere in the play, justifies Cassius's
account of his having grown superstitious. He called the soothsayer a dreamer,
and later on twits him on (as he supposes) the non-fulfilment of his prophecy;
ACT 11. sc. ii.] IVLIVS CjESAR. II7
Seeing that deaths a neceflaiy end 42
Will come^ when it will come.
Enter a Seruant.
What fay the Augurers ? 45
Ser. They would not haue you to ftirre forth to day.
Plucking the i'ntrailes of an Offering forth^
They could not iinde a heart within the bead.
Caf. The Gods do this in fliame of Cowardice:
Cafar fhould be a Beaft without a heart 50
If he fhould flay at home to day for feare :
No Ccefar fhall not; Danger knowes full well
That Ccefar is more dangerous then he. 53
45. Augvirefs\ augurs Pope, Theob. 46. to ftirre] flir F4.
Han. Warb. 52-56. In margin Pope, Han.
if he consults the auguries, that is nothing more than a compliance with custom,
for he will not suffer his purpose to be shaken by their forebodings. If he for a
moment consents to remain at home, that is merely to humour Calpumia's fears;
and if he seems to accept the dream as ezpoimded by Dedus as having a direct
reference to himself, he does so with a good-humoured smile at Dedus's ingenuity.
Finally, so little effect have the dream and prodigies upon him that to the last
'his wisdom is consumed in confidence'; he entertains no smallest suspidon, and he
deliberately rejects Artemidorus's petition.
43. death, a necessary end, etc.] Johnson: This is a sentence derived from
the stoical doctrine of predestination, and is, therefore, improper in the mouth of
43. Win come, when it wiU come] Compare, Hatnkt: 'If it be now, 'tis not
to come; if it be not to come it will be now; if it be not now, yet it will come: the
readiness is all: since no man has aught of what he leaves, what is't to leave be-
times.'— ^V, ii, 231-235. — Ed.
45. Augurers] Walker {Crit,, ii, 49): It seems possible that in this passage
'augurers' may be an erratum for augures, as 'augurs' is spelt in Macbeth, HI, iv,
fol. p. 143, col. 2: 'Augures and vnderstood Rdations.' Perhaps, too, the flow
of Jul. Cos, requires augurs, [For instances of this kind of erratum (helpers for
hdpes, etc.) see Ibid., p. 52 et seq.]
50, 51. should . . . should] For other examples of this use of 'should,' where
modem usage has would in the first clause, see Abbott, § 322.
50. without a heart] Johnson: The andents did not place courage, but
wisdom, in the heart. [Douce (ii, 83), commenting on the foregoing, remarks
that Johnson has 'strangdy forgotten his classics,' and thereupon gives seven
quotations from Virgil and from Ovid wherein the heart or the breast is referred
to as the seat of bravery. — Ed.]
52. Danger] John Hunter: [This perhaps signifies] the life of exposure to
danger through which Caesar had safdy passed; there may be here also some
allusion to Caesar bdng a relative of Marius, and, therefore, in his youth exposed to
the danger of being put to death by Sylla.
Il8 THE TRACE DIE OF [act ii, sc. iL
We heare two Lyons littered in one day,
And I the elder and more terrible, 55
And Cafar (hall go foortlu
Ccdp. Alas my Lord,
Your wifedome is confumM in confidence :
Do not go forth to day : Call it my feare,
That keepes you in the houfe, and not your owne. 60
Wee'l fend Mark Antony to the Senate houfe,
And he (hall fay, vou are not well to day :
Let me vpon my knee,preuaile in this.
Caf. Mark Antony (hall fay I am not well,
And for thy humor, I will (lay at home. 65
Enter Decius.
Heere^s Decius Brutus, he (hall tell them fo.
Deci. Ca/ar^dXl haile : Good morrow worthy Ca/ar^ 68
54. heart] Fa. hear FjF4. heard Cap. et cet.
Rowe, Pope, were Theob.+, Var. 62. JkaU\ wiU Rowe ii, Pope,+ •
'78, Steev. Varr. Sing. Knt, Coll. i, 66. Scene v. Pope,-f i Jen.
Huds. / and he are (pronounced Vnd 66, 67, 74, 79. Dedus] Decimus
he*re) Macmillan conj. are Upton, Han. Rim.
54. We heare . . . one day] The Text, Notes show that opinion between Theo-
bald's emendation, We were\ and Upton's, We are^ is about evenly divided. Refer-
ring to his own reading, Theobald says: 'The sentiment will neither be unworthy
of Shakespeare, nor the boast too extravagant for Cxsar in vein of vanity to
utter: that he and danger were two twin whelps of a lion, and he the elder and more
terrible of the two.' — ^Malone follows l/pton's suggestion, yet acknowledges that
Theobald's reading is, perhaps, the more Shakespearean of the two. 'It may
mean,' adds Malone, 'the same as if he had written: We two lions were littered in
one day.' — Steevens compares the thought to the boast of Otho: * Experti invicem
sumus. Ego ac Fortuna.' — ^Tacitus, [History j Bk ii, ch. 47]. — R. G. White gives as a
reason for preferring Upton's reading that ^are pronounced air, and "heare"
pronoimced hair (see " this vn-heard sawcinesse," King John, Folio; p. 19, col. b.)
might easily have been confounded in Shakespeare's time, especially by a com-
positor or a transcriber who "exhaspirated his haitches.'"
56. Csesar . . . foorth] Boswell: There cannot be a stronger proof of Shake-
speare's deficiency in classical knowledge than the boastful language he has put
in the mouth of the most accomplished man of all antiquity, who was not more
admirable for his achievements than for the dignified simplicity with which he has
recorded them. — Hazlitt (p. 22): We do not much admire the representation
here given of Julius Csesar, nor do we think it answers the portrait given of him in
his Commentaries. He makes several vapouring and rather pedantic speeches, and
does nothing. Indeed, he has nothing to do. So far, the fault of the charatter
is the fault of the plot. — Ayres (p. 197) compares Tro. 6* Cress,, V, iii, where
'Hector insists on rushing to his doom in spite of Andromche's dreams: "You
train me to offend you, get you gone. By all the everlasting gods; I'll go, " 11. 4, 5.'
ACT II. sc. ii.] IVLIVS CjESAR 1 19
I come to fetch you to the Senate houfe.
Caf. And you are come in very happy time, 70
To beare my greeting to the Senators,
And tell them that I will not come to day :
Cannot, is falfe : and that I dare not, falfer :
I will not come to day, tell them fo Deems.
Calp. Say he is ficke. 75
Caf Shall Ca/ar fend a Lye ?
Haue I in Conqueft ftretcht mine Arme fo farre,
To be afear'd to tell Gray-beards the truth ;
DeciuSy go tell them,C^?/2aJr will not come.
Deci. Moft mighty Ca/ar y\&t me know fome caufe, 80
Left I be laught at when I tell them fo.
Ca/. The caufe is in my Will, I will not come,
That is enough to fatisfie the Senate.
But for your priuate fatisfaflion,
Becaufe I loue you, I will let you know. 85
Calphumia heere my wife, ftayes me at home :
She dreampt to night, (he faw my Statue, 87
75. ht is\ he's F4. 87. dreampt] dreamU F«Fj. dreamt
78. afear'd] afraid F4, Rowc,-f-. F4.
87, 88. She,.,Wkich] One line Han. to night] to nigh F.. last night
Mai. • Rowc,+.
87-92. She..Amminent] Lines end: Statue] statue, Decius Cap.
which..sun..xame.,Jhese...portents...im' statua Steev. Var. '03, '13, Sing. Dyce,
minent Mai. conj. Sta. Wh. i, Hal. status Ktly, Cam.+.
86. stajres me] For other examples of this causative use of 'stay/ see Schmidt
(Lex,, s. «./.).
87-89. She dreampt . . . run pure blood] Grey (ii, 182) says that Valerius
Maximus also makes mention of this dream, and in a foot-note quotes a passage
in which occurs the following: 'Audiverat enim . . . uxorem Calpumiam nocte
. . . vidisse multis eum confectum vulneribus in suo sinu iacentem.' — De Somniis
(lib. i, cap. 3). Plutarch likewise gives this version of the dream, but says that
it was discredited by many, amongst them Titus Livius, who gave the following
as the authentic account: 'The senate having set upon the top of Caesar's house,
for an ornament and setting forth of the same, a certain pinnacle, Calpumia
dreamed that she saw it broken down, and that she thought she lamented and
wept for it.' — Julius Casar, §43. Suetonius says: 'Calpumia fancied in her
sleq> that the roof of the house was tumbling down.' — Cctsar, § xliii. Either of
these might presage disaster; the cause for Calpumia's anxiety is, however, to be
found possibly in Florus, who says (Bk iv, ch. 3) that among the honors decreed
by the senate to Cesar after his victory in Spain was the erection of a fastigium
on the front of his house. The fastigium is the pediment which is to be found only
on temples; it is emphatically the sign of a building dedicated to a god, or the
I20 THE TRACED IE OF [act ii, sc. iL
Which like a Fountaine^with an hundred fpouts 88
88. like a] likt to a Han. Mai. Steev. Varr. Sing. Knt, Coll.
an] a Cap. Jen. Var. '78, '85, Wh. i, Ktly.
house of the chief governor of the state. Its fall would, therefore, signify the de-
struction of Cssar as chief magistrate. When Cicero, m the second PkiUippiCf
chap, xliii, alludes twice to a temple dedicated to Caesar, he probably refers to this
addition of a sacred sjrmbol to the house. — ^Miss Porter notes that the dream of the
statue of Caesar is an invention of Shakespeare. It was, perhaps, suggested by
Plutarch's description of Pompey's statue, which, at the time of Caesar's assassina-
tion, he says, 'ran all of a gore blood.' — Ed.]
87. Statue] I. Reed, in a note on 'My substance should be statue in thy
stead,' Two Gentlemen, IV, iv, 206, says: Alterations have often been improperly
made in the text of Shakespeare by supposing 'statue' to be intended by him for a
disyllable. . . . From authors of the times it would not be difficult to fill whole
pages with instances to prove this. Many authors spell it sUUua. On so clear a
point the first proof which occurs is enough. Take the following from Bacon:
'It is not possible to have the true pictures or statuaes of Cyrus, Alexander, Caesar,'
etc. — Adv, of Learning, ed. 1663, p. 88, [Bk I, ch. 8, § 6; Clar. ed., p. 72]. Again:
' — without which the history of the world seemeth [to me] to be as the statua of
Polyphemus with his eye out.' — [Ibid., Clar. ed., p. 8$.] — ^Steevens, in a note on
this same line in Two Gentlemen, remarks: 'some Latin words which were admitted
into the English language still retained their Roman pronunciation. Thus heroe
and heroes are constantly used for trisyllables.' — ^Nares (j. 9. Statua) gives as a
reason for this pronimdation that 'the word "statue" was often applied to a
picture. Thus in Massinger: The City Madam [i6^2]i "Your nieces crave humbly
. . . they may take leave Of their late suitors statues. " — ^V, iii.' , Gifford, in his
note on this passage, says that ' Massinger, like his contemporaries, confuses " statue "
with picture* — Craik (p. 246): 'Statue' is of frequent occurrence in Shakespeare;
and in general it is only a disyllable. In the present Play, for example, [1. 95, below.
Also, I, iii, 163; III, ii, 53]. Only in one line, 'But like dumb statues or breathing
stones,' Rich, III: III, vii, 25, is it absolutely necessary that it should be regarded
as of three syllables. ... In that passage also, however, the word in the First
FoHo is printed simply statues, exactly as it always is in the English which we now
write and speak. . . . The only other lines in Shakespeare in which it [may be
trisyllabic are: 'My substance should be statue in thy stead.' — Two Gentlemen, IV,
iv, 206]; the present line, and III, ii, 198, 'Even at the base of Pompejr's statue.'
... In both these the supposed trisyllable concludes the verse. . . . After all,
Shakespeare's word may really have been statua, . . . Perhaps the best way would
be [thus] to print it in all cases, and to assume that this was the form which Shake-
speare always wrote. Statua would have the prosodical value either of a disyllable
or of a trisyllable according to circimistances, just as 'Mantua,' for instance, has
throughout Rom, 6* Jul, — Coleridge (Notes, etc., p. 133): No doubt it should be
statua, A modem tragic poet would have written: ' — that she my statue saw.'
But Shakespeare never avails himself of the supposed license of transposition
merely for the metre. There is always some logic either of thought or passion to
justify it. — Wright: It appears that at the beginning of the seventeenth century
the spelling statua was a novelty, and it may have been introduced, as Nares
suggests, because 'statue' was frequently used for picture, — [In Fynes Moryson's
ACT II, sc. ii.] IVLIVS CjESAR 12 i
Did run pure blood : and many lufty Romans
Came fmiling, & did bathe their hands in it : 90
And thefe does (he apply, for warnings and portents,
And euils imminent ; and on her knee
Hath begg'd, that I (hall ftay at home to day.
Deci. This Dreame is all amiffe interpreted,
It was a vifion, faire and fortunate : 95
Your Statue fpouting blood in many pipes.
In which fo many fmiling Romans bathM,
Signifies, that from you great Rome (hall fucke
Reuiuing blood, and that great men (hall prefTe
For Tinftu res, Straines, Reliques, and Cognifance. 1 00
90. hQihe\ bath F,. 92. And tuils] Of evUs Han. Warb.
gi. And thefe] As separate line Cap. Ran. Coll. ii. (MS), Craik, Huds.
Dyce u, lu. lu.
And thefe^.warnings and\ As one 98. great] our Cap. conj.
line Craik conj. 99. prejfe] Warb. marks omission of
And..Mpply] These she applies several lines following.
Popc,-f- (And these does apply Var. 100. Cognifance] cognisances Han.
'73). And these she plies Wordsworth. Ktly. cognisance^ Walker (Vers. 259),
and] Om. Cap. Ran. Steev. Dyce ii, iii.
Var. '03, '13.
Itinerary f 161 7, the word statua is used constantly to designate an image, also with
the plural form, staiuaeSj see, for example, his description of the Strasburg Clock,
Part I, ch. i, i 31; ed. MacLehose, vol. i, p. 64. See Walker, Vers.f p. 295, for other
examples. — Ed.]
91. and portents] Wright: Capell's omission of 'and' would throw the accent
on the first syllable of 'portents,' whereas in Shakespeare it is always on the last.
92. And] Henley thinks that the alteration of the word 'and' to 0/, proposed by
Edwards, is not only needless, but tends 'to weaken the force of the expressions,
which form, as they now stand, a regular climax.'
ICO. For Tinctures, Staines, etc.] Wakbxthton: This line must needs be in
way of similitude only; and if so, it appears that some lines are wanting; which
want should, for the future, be marked with asterisks. The sense of them is not
difficult to recover, and, with it, the propriety of the line in question, . . . [which]
can bear no other sense than as an allusion to the blood of the mart3Ts, and the
superstition of some Churches with regard to it. — ^Johnson: This speech, which is
intentionally pompous, is somewhat confused. There are two allusions: one to
coats armorial, to which princes make additions, or give new * tinctures,^ and new
marks of * cognisance'; the other to martyrs, whose 'reliques' are preserved with
veneration. — ^M alone: I believe 'tinctures' has no relation to heraldry, but
means merely linen tinged with blood. Bullokar, Expository 1616, [s. v. Tincture:]
has 'a dipping, colouring, or staining of a thing.' Compare HI, ii, 143: 'And
dip their napkins in his sacred blood.* — Steevens says that at the execution of
several of our ancient nobility handkerchiefs were stained with their blood and
preserved as memorials. — Cbaik (p. 255): Does [Malone's interpretation] not
122 THE TRACED IE OF [act ii, sc. ii.
This by Calphumia^s Dreame is figniiied. loi
Caf. And this way haue you well expounded it.
Deci. I haue, when you haue heard what I can (ay :
And know it now^ the Senate haue concluded
To giue this day^a Crowne to mighty Cce/ar. 105
If you (hall fend them word you will not come,
Their mindes may change. Befides,it were a mocke
Apt to be rendered, for fome one to fay,
Breake vp the Senate, till another time :
When Ca/ars wife fhall meete with better Dreames. 1 10
If Ca/ar hide himfelfe, (hall they not whifper
Loe Ca/ar is afTraid ?
Pardon me Cce/ary for my deere deere loue
To your proceeding, bids me tell you this : 1 14
make the speaker assign to Caesar by implication the very kind of death Calpumia's
apprehensions of which he professes to regard as visionary? ... Do we refine too
much in supposing that this inconsistency between the purpose and the language
of Decius is intended by the poet, and that in thb brief dialogue between him and
Caesar, in which the latter suffers himself to be so easily won over, — persuaded and
relieved by the very words that ought naturally to have confirmed his fears, — ^we
are to feel the presence of an unseen power driving on both the imconsdous prophet
and the blinded victim?
100. Cognisance] Walker {Vers., p. 359) says 'surely cognizance* is meant';
and on p. 243 he gives examples wherein the plurals of words ending in 5, 55, or ce
are foimd without the usual addition of s or es — in pronunciation at least.
no. Caesars wife . . . better Dreames] ' — if any man should tell them from
him they should depart for that present time, and return again when Calpumia
should have better dreams, what would his enemies and ill-willers say?' — Plutarch:
Cctsaff i 44; ed. Skeat, p. 99. — Malone quotes a passage from Lord Sterline's
Julius CiBsaff in which the same thought is expressed; and Wright quotes from
Bacon's Essay of Friendship: 'This Man lifted him gently by the Anne, out of his
Chaire, telling him, he hoped he would not dismisse the Senate, till his wife had
dreamt a better Dreame.' — [This verbal similarity in all three authors is, doubtless,
due to the common source, Plutarch. The whole passage from Bacon's Essay is
one of the many additions made to it, when entirely rewritten for the edition of
1625. (See Arber: Harmony of the Essays^ p. 169). — Ed.]
114. To your proceeding] Warbxtrton understands this as meaning to your
advancementt and is therein followed by Craik, who gives as an example of this
use of 'proceeding': 'Be opposite all planets of good luck To my proceeding.' —
Rich. Ill: IV, iv, 402. [In this example, however, 'proceeding' may quite as
well mean course of conduct^ and the reading of all the Quartos is proceedings, which
seems to indicate that this is the meaning intended.] — Murray (N. E. Z>., s. v.
proceedings 4.) : The action of going on with something already begun; continuance
of action; advance, progress, advancement. — Delius considers the phrase 'to
your proceeding' dependent upon 'tell you this,' and therefore interprets it SLsfor
ACT II. sc. ii.] IVLIVS CjESAR 1 23
And reafon to my loue is liable. 1 15
Cdj/lHow foolKh do your fears feeme now Calphurnial
I am afhamed I did yeeld to them.
Giue me my Robe, for I will go.
Enter Brutus^ Ligarius^ MetelluSy Caska^ Trebo-
nius, Cynna^and Publius. 120
And looke where PuMius is come to fetch me.
Pud. Good morrow Ca/ar.
Caf. Welcome Publius.
What Brutus^zx^ you ftirr'd fo earely too ? 124
XX7, 1x8. / am...Gff<e me] One line xiS-z2z. Criiie mcAnd looke] As
Ktly. one line Johns.
117. a^medlaskaiMDycc. asham'd zi8. [To an Att. Capell.
Ktly. xig. Scene vi. Pope,+ (— Var. '73).
your advantage; and Weight understands it as your course of condudj your career ^
which interpretation is that also of the present Ed.
1x5. And reason . . . liable] Johnson: That b, propriety of conduct and
language is subordinate to my love. — Ceaik (p. 256): That is, if I have acted
wrong in telling you, my excuse is that my reason, where you are concerned, is
subject to and overborne by my affection.
119. Enter Brutus] Conead (p. 477) calls attention to the fact that, from
the moment when Cassius acquaints Brutus with the hour for the assassination,
no time is given wherein Brutus may pause sufficiently to deliberate upon the
deed. As thus: Ligarius enters immediately after the scene with Portia, and
Brutus starts at once for Caesar's house, where he joins the rest of the faction.
This lack of opportunity for reflection, Conrad says, was doubtless designed by
Shake^jeare in order to fiunish a mitigating circimistance for the crime which
Brutus is to commit. — ^Maek Huntee (Introd.y cxxxviii.): Cassius is, indeed,
honourably distinguished from the others in one respect. He is at least an open
enemy. He makes no pretence of love for his victim, but at once distrusts and is
distrusted. It is significant that he separates himself from the final act of treachery
to which even Brutus stoops, and is the only conspirator who does not present him-
self at Caesar's house on the morning of the Ides to partake of his hospitality,
'like a friend,' and then lead him forth to the slaughter. — P. Simpson (ap. Mark
Hunter): In the revival of Jul. Cas. at Her Majesty's Theatre, [under the direc-
tion of H. Beerbohm Tree, 6 Sep., 1900, when the conspirators entered to escort
Caesar to the Senate House] Cassius entered immediately after the aged Publius,
and in front of Brutus. Caesar greeted Publius, and then, catching sight of Brutus,
pressed forward affectionately to greet him, and in his eagerness overlooked Cassius,
who stepped aside with flashing eyes. Brutus, touched with remorse, shrank be-
hind the others, and delivered with deep feeling the lines: 'That every like is not
the same,' etc. Finally, as the conspirators went in to 'taste some wine,' Brutus
still hung back, but Caesar waited for him, and they passed in together, arm in
arm, -'like friends.' ... In the printed acting copy of the 1898 performance the
entry of Cassius is not marked.
124 ^^^ TRACED IE OF [act ii, sc. ii.
Good morrow Caska : Caius LigariuSy 125
Ccefar was ne^re fo much your enemy,
As that fame Ague which hath made you leane.
What is't a Clocke ?
Bru. Ccefar^^^s ftrucken eight.
Caf. I thanke you for your paines and curtefie. 1 30
Enter Antony.
See, Antony that Reuels long a-nights
Is notwithftanding vp. Grood morrow Antony.
Ant. So to moft Noble Ccefar
CaJ. Bid them prepare within : 135
I am too blame to be thus waited for.
Now CynnUy now Metellus : what Trebonius^
I haue an houres talke in (lore for you :
Remember that you call on me to day ;
Be neere me, that I may remember you. 140
Treb. Cafar I will : and fo neere will I be.
That your beft Friends (hall wifli I had beene further.
CafSjooA Friends go in, and tafte fome wine with me
And we (like Friends) will ftraight way go together,
Bru. That euery like is not the fame, O Cafar ^ 145
The heart of Brutus eames to thinke vpon. Exeunt
135. Caius] Oht Caius Han. 138. howes[ hoiirs Ktly.
za8. a Clocke] o'clock Theob. et seq. 141. [Aside. Rowe et seq.
X29. ftrucken]5iricken}ohns,Co\.^a\, 142. further] farther Coll. Wh. i.
132. a-nights] o'nights Theob. et seq. 145. [Aside. Pope, Theob. Han.
X33» X34. Good,„Oti9x] One line Warb. Cap. Dyce, Craik, Sta. Wh.
Stecv. Var. '03, '13, Sing, i, Craik. Ktly, Cam.-f-.
135. [To an Att. Capell. 146. earnes] yems Theob. -f- Varr.
136. too l^me] to blame ¥^¥4 et seq. Ran. yearns Cap. et seq.
126. Csesar was nc're, etc.] Davies (ii, 228): There is scarcely any part of
Caesar's character so well understood and so happily expressed by Shakespeare
as the great urbanity of his manners, and the ease and affability of his conversa-
tion. If Cssar was the greatest soldier, he seems likewise to have been the best-
bred man of all antiquity. In this short scene his address varies with the character
of the person to whom he speaks. The compliment he pays to Caius Ligarius is a
happy mixtiu^ of politeness and humanity.
136. too blame] Wright: It appears that 'to blame,' being regarded as equiv-
alent to the adjective blameworthy ^ it is frequently spelt 'too blame,' especially
when preceded by muchy and this led to the strange compoimd in i Hen. IV:
ni, i, 177: * — you are too wilful blame.'
146. eames] Skeat (Dict.y s. v. yearns (2).): This verb . . . occurs several
times in Shakespeare; and it is remarkable that he never uses yearn in the sense to
ACT II, sc. iii.] IVLIVS C^SAR 1 25
[Scene IIL\
Enter Artemidorus. I
Ca/ar^ beware of Brutus y take luede of Cafsius ; conte not
neere Caska , haue an eye to Cynnay trujl not Trebonius , marke
well Metellus Cymber^ Decius Brutus hues thee not ; Thou
hafl wronged Caius Ligarius . There is but one minde in all 5
thefe men , and it is bent againjl Cafar : If thou beejl not Int"
Scene continued. Ff. Scene vn. i. Artemidonis.] Artemidonis read-
Pope,4-. Scene v. Jen. Scene ra. ing a Paper. Rowe et seq.
Rowe et cet. 6. beeft] be'st Johns. Cap. (Errata),
The Street, Rowe, Pope, Han. A Varr. Mai. Ran. Steev. Varr. Sing, i.
Street near the Capitol. Theob. et cet. Coll. Craik, Wh. i, Hal. Huds.
long for. It is often spelt earn or em in old editions. The proper sense is intransi-
tive, to grieve, to mourn, . . . Em is the true word, whilst yem is a form due to the
Anglo-Saxon prefix ge-. Again, ern is certainly a corruption of Middle English
ermen, to grieve, occurring in Cant, Tales, 12,246. [Pardoner's Tale; prologue,] '
A later instance is in the following: 'Thenne departed he fro the kynge so heuyly
that many of them ermed.* — Caxton: Reynard the Fox, ed. Arber, p. 48, 1. 6.
[MuxsAY {N, E, D.) quotes these remarks by Skeat.]
• X. Artemidonis] See Dram, Person,, 1. 15.
2-9. Cssar, beware . . . Artemidonis] Walker (Crit. i, 12): [This passage]
b, if I mistake not, in verse: 'Cesar, beware of Brutus; take heed of Cassius; |
Come not near Casca; have an eye to Cinna; | Trust not Trebonius; mark well
Metellus Cimber; | Decius Brutus loves thee not; th' hast wrong'd | Caius Ligarius.
There's but one mind | In all these men, and it is bent 'gainst Cssar. | If thou
be'st not immortal, look about you; | Security gives way to conspiracy. | The
mighty Gods defend thee. | (The last three words are extra metrum.) — [Is this not
an example of that which is found in other passages — metric prose? In the eight
other instances wherein a letter appears the text of the written words is in this
form, although there may be verse both before and after it. It may, I think,
therefore be said to be an invariable custom, at least with Shakespeare. Secondly,
are the lines as divided by Walker metrically correct? It is to be feared that he
himself would have been the first to suggest many additions and omissions had
this passage been printed in the form which he suggests. For other letters, thus
read aloud, compare: Hamlet, II, ii, 120; IV, vi, 12; IV, vii, 42; Lear, I, ii, 48;
Cymbdine, HI, ii, 40; IH, iv, 21; Mer, of Ven., IH, ii, 317; Macbeth, 1, v, i. — Ed.]
6. beest] Craik (p. 342) : This is not to be confoimded with the subjunctive 6e;
it is bist, byst, the 2^^ person singular present indicative of beSn, to be. It is now
obsolete, but is also used by Milton in a famous passage: 'If thou beest he; but oh,
how fallen! how changed,' etc. — Paradise Lost, i, 84. — [Compare also: 'Render
therefore unto Caesar the things which be Caesar's, and unto God the things which
be God's.' — Luke, xx, 25. The incident which provoked this reply is also related by
St Mark, but he gives the sentence: 'Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar's,
and to God the things that are God's.' — xii, 17. — Ed.]
126 THE TRACED IE OF [act li. sc. ir.
mortally looke about you : Security giues way to Con/piracie . 7
The mighty Gods defend thee.
Thy Louer, Artemidorus.
Heere will I Hand, till Cafar paffe along, lO
And as a Sutor will I giue him this :
My heart laments, that Vertue cannot liue
Out of the teeth of Emulation.
If thou reade this, O Cafar ^ thou mayeft liue;
If not, the Fates with Traitors do contriue. Exit. 15
\Scene IK]
Enter Portia and Lucius. i
7. you] theeRowe,+ (Var. '73), Jen. Scene continued. Ff, Rowe,4-.
14. mayeff[ Ff, Craik. maysi Dyce, Scene vi. Jen. Scene iv. Cap. ct cet.
Coll. ii, Sta. Cam.+. may* si Rowe et Another part of the same Street be-
cet. fore Brutus's House. Cap.
7. looke about you] Abbott (§ 335) : In this short scene Cesar is six times
addressed by the soothsayer in the solemn and prophetic ihou and iku^ but once,
as above, y<m, I can only suggest that 'look about you' may mean: look about
you and yow jr tends. — [May it not be that 'Look about you' was a catch phrase
of the day? A play with this title was popular in 1600. See HazlittVDodsley,
vii, p. 384.-— Ed.]
7. Security] That is, imguardedness, false confidence; for other examples of
this use of the word, see Shakespeare passim,
13. Emulation] Mxthray (N. E. D., s. v. 3.): Grudge against the superiority
of others; dislike, or tendency to disparagement, of those who are superior.
15. Fates ... do contriue] Johnson: That is, the fates jc^n with traitors
in contriving thy destruction.
Scene IV.] Vebity: Such side-scenes as this give us the impressions of those
who are watching the course of events from a little distance, and we seem to join
them as spectators; here, for instance, we cannot help feeling something of Portia's
anxiety as she waits for news and suddenly thinks that she hears a sound from
the direction of the Capitol. Compare the scene in Rich, II, (III, iv), where the
gardeners and servants talk about the unhappy state of England; as we hear their
comments on contemporary events, those events appear much nearer to us and
more vivid; we slip insensibly into the feelings of an onlooker.
z. Enter Portia] Wright: Since the first Scene of this Act Brutus has told the
secret to his wife, who is now agitated by possessing what she desired. Portia is
no Lady Macbeth. — MacCallum (p. 273): This scene . . . serves the function in
the main story of heightening our excitement by means of Portia's, in expectation
of what will presently be enacted at the Capitol; but it is even more important for
the light it throws on her character. Shemay well confess: 'I have a man's heart,
but a woman's might.' Her feverish anxiety quite overmasters her throughout,
and makes her do and say things which do not disclose the plot only because the
ACT II, sc. iv.] IVLIVS CjESAR 1 27
Par. I prythee Boy,run to the Senate-houfe, 2
Stay not to anfwer me, but get thee gone.
Why doeft thou ftay ?
Luc. To know thy errand Madam. 5
Par. I would haue had thee there and heere agen
Ere I can tell thee what thou fhould'ft do there :
0 Conftancie, be flrong vpon my fide,
Set a huge Mountaine 'tweene my Heart and Tongue :
1 haue a mans minde, but a womans might : 10
How hard it is for women to keepe counfell.
Art thou heere yet ?
Luc. Madam, what fliould I do ?
Run to the CapitoU, and nothing elfe ?
And fo retume to you, and nothing elfe ? 15
8-xx. [Aside Cap. 10. might] heart Cap.
bystanders are faithful or unobservant. . . . For her, as for Brutus, the burden of
a duty which she assumes by her own choice, but which one of her nature must
assume, is too heavy. And in the after consequences, for which she is not directly
responsible, but which none the less flow from the deed that she has encouraged and
approved, it is the same inability to bear suspense, along with her craving for her
husband's presence and success, that drives her through madness to death.
3. get thee gone] Craik (p. 261): An idiom; that is to say, a peculiar form of
expression, the principle of which cannot be carried out beyond the particular
instance. Thus we cannot say either: Make thee gone or He got him gone. —
R. G. White: [In reference to the preceeding] Is this true? We do not; but can we
not? f . «., in accordance with the laws of thought and the principles of our language.
... Is there any objection but lack of usage against * Make thee gone' or 'He got
him gone? Of course, lack of usage is the only objection. In saying that ' we
cannot f* Craik means merely that usage forbids us to say 'Make thee gone.*
4. Why doest thou stay] Steevens: Shakespeare has expressed the perturba-
tion of King Richard the Third's mind by the same incident: 'Dull unmindful
villain! Why stay'st thou here, and go*st not to the Duke.* — [Rich, III: IV, iv,
444. It is, perhaps, worth remarking that throughout this present scene a distinc-
tion is uniformly made in the mode of address between Portia, Lucius, and the
Soothsayer. Portia addresses each of them with ' thou ' and ' thee,* while they both
use the more respectful you, — Ed.]
8. Constancie] CitAiK (p. 201): Not exactly our present 'constancy*; rather
what we should now call firmness or resolution. In the same sense Brutus says:
'Cassius be constant.* — ^III, i, 30.
II. How hard . . . keepe counsell] Brandes (i, 378): This reflection is evi-
dently not Portia's, but an utterance of Shakespeare*s own philosophy of life,
which he has not cared to keep to himself. In Plutarch she even falls down as
though dead, and the news of her death surprises Brutus just before the time ap-
pointed for the murder of Desar, so that he needs all his self<ontrol to save him-
self from breaking down.
128 THE TRACED IE OF [act li. sc. iv.
Por. Yes, bring me word Boy, if thy Lord look well, i6
For he went fickly forth : and take good note
What Ccefar doth, what Sutors preffe to him,
Hearke Boy, what noyfe is that ?
Luc. I heare none Madam. 20
Por. Prythee liften well :
I heard a bufsling Rumor like a Fray,
And the winde brings it from the Capitoll.
Luc. Sooth Madam, I heare nothing.
Enter the Soothfayer. 25
Par. Come hither Fellow, which way haft thou bin ?
Sooth. At mine owne houfe, good Lady.
Por. What is^t a clocke ?
Sooth. About the ninth houre Lady.
Por. Is Ccefar yet gone to the Capitoll ? 30
Sooth. Madam not yet, I go to take my ftand.
To fee him paffe on to the Capitoll.
Por. Thou haft fome fuite to Ccefar y haft thou not?
Sooth. That I haue Lady, if it will pleafe Ccefar
To be fo good to Ccefar ^ds to heare me : 35
I (hall befeech him to befriend himfelfe.
16. Boy] Om. F4. 36. Come. ..thou bin?] As two liaes,
22. hcMrd] hear Knt (Nat. Ed.), ap. the first ending Fellow Cap.
Cam. 28. a clocke] Ff, Rowe, Pope, Han.
2$. Soothsayer] Artemidorus Rowe, o'clock Theob. et cet.
-f-, Dyce i, Wh. i. (throughout). 36. befriend] defend Rowe ii, Pope,
Han.
25. the Soothsayer] Tyrwhttt: The introduction of the Soothsayer here b
unnecessary and, I think, improper. All that he is made to say should be given
to Artemidorus, who is seen and accosted by Portia in his passage from his first
stand to one more convenient. [See Text. Notes.] — O. F. Adams: At the beginning
of the next scene we have speeches assigned to [Artemidorus and the Soothsayer]
in immediate succession, and in the heading of that scene the Folio also gives:
•Enter Artemidorus, Publius, and the Soothsayer.* It is, therefore, improbable
that there is any misprint or corruption in the original text; and under the circum-
stances we are not justified in making any alteration.
26. Come hither Fellow] Capell and the subsequent Editors, except Craix,
divide this line, making these first three words complete 1. 24, and the latter half
supply the necessary syllables for 1. 26. On this arrangement Craik remarks:
'"Which way hast thou been" is not a possible commencement of a verse, unless
we were to lay an emphasis on "thou," which would be absurd.' — ^Ed.
36. I shall beseech, etc.] Fersero (ii, sso^ foot-note): I believe that there is a
great deal of exaggeration in the ancient stories of warnings given to Cssar. If
ACT II. sc. iv.] IVLIVS C^SAR
129
Por. Why know'ft thou any harme^s intended to- 37
wards him ?
Sooth. None that I know will be,
Much that I feare may chance : 40
Good morrow to you : here the ftreet is narrow :
The throng that followes Cafar at the heeles,
Of Senators, of Praetors, common Sutors,
Will crowd a feeble man ( almoft ) to death :
He get me to a place more voyd, and there 45
Speake to great Cafar as he comes along. Exit
Por. I muft go in :
Aye me / How weake a thing
The heart of woman is ? O BrutuSy
The Heauens fpeede thee in thine enterprize. 50
Sure the Boy heard me : Brutus hath a fuite
That Ccefar will not grant. O, I grow faint :
Run Lticiusy and commend me to my Lord, 53
37. hafmt's\ harm Pope,+. 48. Ay^ Ah Johns. Var. '73, Mai.
39,40. One line, omitting ma^f cAanre Steev. Varr. Sing. Knt, Coll. Wh.
Popc,+ (—Var. 'n)' As one line Cap. Hal. Huds. Coll. iu.
«t scq. 48-51- [Aside. Cap.
41. you : heere] you. Here Rowe et 49. O Bnitiis] O Brutus, Brutus
scq. Popc,+, Cap. Ktly. As separate line
47, 48. One line Rowe ct seq. Craik. Brutus mine/ Wordsworth.
the conspiracy had been so well known it would have come to the ears of Antony,
Lepidus, and other faithful friends, which would have been enough to stop it. It
was not necessary that Caesar himself should be warned. It is probable that during
these days he received imaginary revelations of a conspiracy such as he had often
received before, like all the heads of a government. The only real piece of evidence
for a betrayal of the secret seems to me to be that of Popilius Lena in Plutarch's
Brutus, §12. The conspirators, after all, were Senators and aristocrats, and it
b not surprising that they could keep their own coimsel.
39,40. None that . . . may chance] Craik (p. 264): If [the metrical arrange-
ment of these two lines as one, see Text. Notes ,] be accepted, it is better, perhaps, to
consider it as a prolonged verse. In this somewhat doubtful instance the rhythm
will be certainly that of an Alexandrine. Let the three words *know will be,* and
also the three *fear may chance,^ at any rate, be each and all emphatically enunci-
ated.
48. Aye me] Craik (p. 264), in support of this form of the exclamation, quotes
several passages from Milton wherein the phrase is thus given; he adds: *Akmeia
a form Milton nowhere uses.'
51. Brutus hath a suite] M alone: These words Portia addresses to Ludus, to
deceive him, by assigning a false cause for her present perturbation.
53. Run Lucius] MacCallum (p. 200) : Shakespeare may, perhaps, have been
unwilling to introduce anything into the assassination scene that might distract
I30 THE TRAGEDIE OF [act m, sc L
Say I am merry ; Come to me againe^
And bring me word what he doth (ay to thee. Exeunt 5 5
A6lus Tertius.
[Scene /.]
Flaurijh*
Enter Ccefar^ Brutus ^ CaJJiuSy Caska^ Decius, Metellus^ Tre-
bonius , Cynnay Antony ^LepiduSj Artimedarus Pub-
lius , and the Sooth/ay er. 5
55. Exeunt] Om. Ff, Cap. Exeunt sayer. Cap. et seq. (subs.)
severally. The6b.+. 3* Artimedonis] Artemidonis Rowe.
Scene i. Rowe. 4» 5- Publius] Pc^ilius Ff. and
The Capitol. Rowe,+. Street lead- Pc^ilius Rowe i. Popilius, Publius
ing to the Capitol. Jen. Senate sitting. Tlieob.4-*
In the Entrance and amid a Throng of 5. and the Soothsayer] Om. Rowe L
People, Artemidonis and the Sooth- and the Soothsayers Rowe ii, P<^.
attention from the decisive business on hand, but the alteration is chiefly due to
another cause. These, the last words we hear Portia utter, were no doubt intended
to bring out her forgetfulness of herself and her thought of Brutus even in the
climax of her ph3rsical distress. This, of course, does not affect our general estimate
of Portia; but Shakespeare has no scruple about creating an entirely new character
for a minor personage, and, in the process, disregarding the hints that he found and
asserting quite the reverse.
Scene I.) Capell (i, 105): If ever [a stage direction] were wanted, it is in this
scene, which b rendered difficult many ways, but chiefly by its much action, and
that action's uncommonness, all the first part of it passing while the train is in
moving, and this accounts for the expressions of Cassius: his 'street' is the Capitol's
entrance and his 'capitol, the Senate's assembly; as is further insinuated by the
first of the new directions that follow. — ^Jennens: I have presumed to make what
is done without and within the Capitol two distinct scenes, as I believe Shakespeare
intended. Nor is it necessary to fix the first scene close to the Capitol, but, rather
more consonant with several passages in the foregoing act, that it should be at some
distance. [Jennens concludes the first scene with 1. 18. — R. G. White also suggests
the advisability of a change of locality after this line. — Ed.] — ^von Maltzahn
(Jakrhucky vii, p. 58) suggests the following scenic arrangement of the preceding
Act and first scene of this Act: Since the three scenes of Act II, namely, Brutus's
Garden; A Room in Caesar's House; A Street, do not require a great depth of stage
for what takes place in each, they may be represented by means of three curtains
to be raised successively. Preparation can thus be made for the opening scene of
Act III, wherein the Senate is discovered in session by the raising of the last
curtain, and need not be further back than the depth of one scene from this curtain.
Though Maltzahn does not mention the fact, yet it is apparent that for such an
ACT III, sc. i.] IVLIVS CJSSAR 131
Caf. The Ides of March are come. 6
Sooth. I Ca/ar^ but not gone.
Art. Haile Cafar : Read this Scedule.
Deci. Trebonius doth defire you to ore-read
(At your beft leyfure) this his humble fuite. 10
Art. O Cafar y reade mine firft : for mine's a fuite
That 'touches Ccdfar neerer. Read it great Cafar.
Caf. What touches vs our felfe,ftiall be laft feruM.
Art. Delay not Cafar ^ read it inftantly.
Caf. What, is the fellow mad ? 15
Pub. Sirra, giue place.
Cafji. What,vrge you your Petitions in the ftreet? 17
8. SudviUi ScheduU F,F4. (MS), Craik. Whai ... us? CoU. iii.
Z2. ireal] Om. Pope, Han. (misprint?).
13. What ... vs] Thai ... us? Coll. ii. 16. Sirra] Sirrah F4.
arrangement the first eighteen lines of Act III. mxist be joined to the last scene of
Act II. The act-drop mxist also be lowered before the raising of the last scenic
curtain, otherwise Acts II. and III. form one continuoxis act; which is, dramatically,
undesirable. — Ed.
7. but not gone] Moulton {Sh, as Dram. ArL, p. 196): Such words seem to
measure out a narrow area of time in which the crisb is to work itself out. There is,
however, no distinct break between different stages of a dramatic movement like
that in the present play; and two short incidents have preceded this scene which
have served as emotional devices to bring about a distinct advance in the intensi-
fication of the strain. . . . Our sympathy has thus been tossed from side to side,
although in its general direction it still moves on the side of the conspirators.
13. What touches . . . last seru'd] Csaik follows the reading of Collier's MS
corrector (see Text, Notes), and thus justifies it: *To "serve," or attend to, a person
is a familiar form of expression; to speak of a thing as "served," in the sense of
attended to, would, it is apprehended, be imexampled. The " us ourself ," how-
ever, would be imobjectionable.' — Staunton, commenting on Craik's note, says:
'There is nothing imcommon or improper in speaking of a dinner or of a dish
as served, and it is in this sense, we believe, the verb is used in the present
case.' — R. G. Whtte considers the reading given by the MS corrector as 'specious,
but entirely needless.* — ^John Hunter: That is, last attended to or promoted.
This is designed to represent Csesax as avoiding all appearance of eagerness to
receive those honours which he has been lead to expect on this occasion, and as
evidently having no suspicion of anything imfavourable. The pronoim 'what,'
in relation to 'served,' may be regarded as implying reference to the object or
purpose of the paper. — ^Wright: That is, presented. A siunmons is still said to be
'served.' Compare: 'The deep vexation of his inward soul Hath served a dumb
arrest upon his tongue.' — Rape of Luc., 1. 1780. — ^Herpord: Shakespeare gives
Oesar the plural of modem royalty; unknown even to the Emperors of Rome. —
Verity: This is one of the few utterances in the play that seem worthy of the great
Dictator. It is not suggested by anything in Plutarch's account of the incident.
132 THE TRACED IE OF [act hi, sc. i.
Come to the CapitoU. 18
JPopil. I wifh your enterprize to day may thriue.
CaJ/i. What enterprize Popillius ?
20
18. [Artemidorus is pushed back. ters the Capitol, the rest following.
Caesar, and the rest, enter the Senate: Var. '73, '78, '85. C£sar...the rest fol-
The Senate rises. Popilins presses lowing. All the Senators rise. Mai. et
forward to speak to Caesar; and pass- seq. (subs.)
ing Cassius^says,... Capell. Csesar en- 19. [Aside to Cas. Jennens.
18. the Capitoll] Malone (Chron, Order; Var., 1821, ii, 448): Shakespeare's
making the Capitol the scene of Caesar's murder, contrary to the truth of history, is
easily accounted for in Hamlet, [III, ii, 100], where it afforded an opportunity for
introducing a quibble; but it is not easy to conjecture why in Jut, Ccts, he should
have departed from Plutarch, where it is expressly said that Julius was killed in
Pompey's portico, whose statue was placed in the centre. I suspect he was led into
this deviation from history by some former play on the subject, the frequent
repetition of which before his own play was written probably induced him to insert
the following: * — How many ages hence Shall this our lofty scene be acted o'er,
In states unborn, and accents yet imknown!* [11. 128-130, below]. *The accents
yet unknown' could not allude to Dr Eedes's Latin play exhibited in 1582, and, there-
fore, may be fairly urged as presumptive proof that there had been some English
play on this subject previous to that of Shakespeare. Hence, I suppose it was
that in his earlier performance he makes Polonius say that in his youth he had
enacted the part of the Roman Dictator, and had been killed by Brutus in the
Capitol; a scenic exhibition which was then probably familiar to the greater part
of the audience. — Miss L. A. Fisher (Modern Language Notes, June, 1907, p. 177)
has collected a number of quotations, beginning at the thirteenth century and ex-
tending past the time of Shakespeare, wherein the Capitol is identified as the scene
of Caesar's assassination; and, as a possible source of this tradition, offers the follow-
ing: 'About the time that the attempt was made in the twelfth century to restore
the Senate to Rome, a guide book was put forth for the use of pilgrims to the
Eternal City. It was a compilation by some one imknown, and was entitled
Mirabilia Urbis Romae: the earliest extant copy is of the twelfth century, and is in
the Vatican library. It proved immensely popular, going through many editions
and translations in the succeeding centuries, and, of course, losing no whit of its
wonderfulness at the hands of monkish copyists. A MS of the thirteenth or four-
teenth century, with additions, omissions, and rearrangements, is in the Laurentian
library at Florence, and, being entitled Grapkia, Aurea Urbis Romae, is ordinarily
distinguished as the Graphia, [The author of the Mirabilia says:] ''The Capitol
is so called because it was the head of the world, where consuls and senators abode
to govern the earth. ... On the other side of the Capitol, over Cannapara, was
the temple of Juno. Fast by the public market-place the temple of Hercules.
In the Tarpeian hill, the temple of Asilis where Julius Caesar was slain of the
Senate." — (Tr. F. M. Nicholls, 1889.) * Miss Fisher also shows the influence of
the Mirabilia upon English Literature through the Polychronicon of Ralph Higden,
c. 1327, whereof 'there are more than one hundred Latin MSS extant, besides
translations into English of the fourteenth, fifteenth, and sixteenth centuries.
It was printed by Caxton, 1482, and by de Worde, 1495.' ^^ contains a descrip-
tion of Rome which is taken almost directly from the Mirabilia,
ACT III, sc. i.] IVLIVS CjESAR 133
Popil. Fare you well. 21
Bru. What faid Popillius Lena ?
CaJJi. He wifht to day our enterprize might thriue :
I feare our purpofe is difcouered.
Bru. Looke how he makes to C<sfar\ marke him. 25
CaJJi. Caska be fodaine, for we feare preuention.
Brutus what (hall be done? If this be knowne,
Caffius or Ccsfar neuer (hall tume backe, 28
21. [Leaves him and joins Caesar. 26. be.,.preuention] One line Walker,
Cap. Follows Caesar. Jennens. Dyce ii, Hi, Cam.
22. [Aside to Cas. Jennens. Jodaine] Judden ¥^¥4.
24. difcouered\ discovered Dyce. 28. or] on Mai. conj., Craik, Wh. i,
25. marke kim] mark him well John Hunter, for (= instead of) Siev-
Steev. conj. ers (ed. iii.).
26. Caska . . . preuention] Walker {Cril,, i, 269) thinks this line has not a
'Shakespearean flow/ and suggests that the word 'Caska' be given to 1. 25, and
that 'prevention' be then pronoimced preventi-on.
28. Cassius or Cesar . . . tume backe] M alone: I believe Shakespeare
wrote 'Cassius on Cxsar/ etc. The next line strongly supports this conjecture.
If the conspiracy was discovered, and the assassination of Caesar rendered imprac-
ticable by prevention, . . . Cassius could have no hope of being able to prevent
Caesar from turning back (allowing *lum back' to be used for relurn back); and in
all events this conspirator's slaying himself could not prevent that efifect. . . .
Cassius now declares that [if the plot be discovered] he will not endeavor to save
himself by flight, . . . but instantly put an end to his own life. [In support of his
emendation Malone quotes the following from Plutarch's Life of Brutus y § 12]:
'It was easie to see that they were all of a minde, that it was no tarrying for them
till they were apprehended, but rather that they should kill themselves with their
own handes.' — [ed. Skeat, p. 118.] . . . Shakespeare was induced to give this
sentiment to Cassius as being exactly agreeable to his character, and to that
spirit which has appeared in a former scene: 'I know where I will wear this dagger
then; Cassius from bondage will deliver Cassius.' — I, iii, 99, ico. — Riison: The
disjimctive is right, and the sense apparent. Cassius says, If our purpose is dis-
covered, either Caesar or I shall never return alive; for, if we cannot kill him, I will
certainly slay myself. The conspirators were nimierous and resolute, and had
they been betrayed, the confusion that must have arisen might have afforded des-
perate men an opportunity to despatch the tyrant. — Craik adopts Malone's emen-
dation and, in answer to the foregoing note by Ritson, sajrs: 'To "turn back"
cannot mean to return alive, or to return in any way. The most it could mean
would be to make a movement towards returning; which is so far from being the
same thing with the accomplished return, which this translation would have it
imply, that it may almost be said to be the very opposite.' — Delius considers that
the meaning here is not either Caesar or Cassius will perish, but that neither of
them shall escape alive; in which case the words 'or' and 'never' are equivalent
to i«w and ever, and neither is to be understood before * Cassius.' — ^John Hunter
follows Malone's conjecture, remarking, '"be," [1. 27], is the present indicative.
If this purpose of ours is discovered, Cassius shall never be a fugitive from Caesar's
134 '^^^ TRAGEDIE OF [act ni, sc. L
For I will flay my felfe.
Bru. Cajfius be conftant. 30
Popillius Lena fpeakes not of our purpofes,
For looke he fmiles, and Cafar doth not change.
CaJJi. Trebonius knowes his time : for look you Brutus
He drawes Mark Antony out of the way,
Decu Where is Metellus Cimber^ let him go, 35
And prefently preferre his fuite to Cafar.
Bru. He is addreft : prejGTe neere, and fecond him.
Cin. Caska^ you are the firfl that reares your hand. 38
29. [Cesar being arrived at his seat, 34. Exeunt Antony and TM)onius,
Popilius whispers him and smUes. Cesar and the Senators take their
Jennens. seats. Mai.
31. purpofes] purpose Theob. ii,+» 38. rtfar^f] rear Han. Cap. Varr. Ran.
Walker (Crit., 141), Dyce ii, iii. your] Ins Tyrwhitt.
wrath.' The old reading . . . makes ' turn back ' signify return home, a sense quite
unwarranted, we believe, by any of the other instances of the phrase in Shakespeare.
— ^Wright follows Ritson's interpretation, that is, either Cassius or Caesar shall
never return alive, for I will kill him or slay myself. 'This,' adds Wright, 'seems
the obvious meaning.' Which is the opinion also of the present Ed.
30. Cassius be constant] Lloyd (ap. Singer, viii, 509) : Nothing can be more
remote from the process by which Brutus deliberately advances to his resolution
than the passion of pique and fury which Shakespeare has expanded from Plutarch's
hint of the bearing of Cassius at the great crisis, as one almost beside himself.
Engrossed by present animosity he looks but little forward, and even leans, at an
emergency, on the suggestions of others, as when alarmed at the words and be-
haviour of Popilius Lena. Least of all has he a preconcerted plan for keeping the
main direction of the enterprise in a sense and intention of his own; he remon-
strates, truly, but does not assert and exercise the high hand that would support
remonstrance or render it unnecessary.
33. Trebonius] In Plutarch's Life of Casar it b Dedus Brutus who 'enter-
tained' Antony out of the Senate House (ed. Skeat, p. ico); but in the Life of
BrutuSf which Shakespeare is here evidently following, this duty is given to Tre-
bonius (op. cit., p. 118). That this last is the correct account we have Cicero's
testimony in confirmation; writing to Trebonius on February 2, B. C. 43, he says:
'. . . the magnificent service which you men did the state [by the murder of
Cssar] leaves room for some grumbling. In fact, for Antony's having been taken
out of the way by you — the best of men — and that it was by your kindness that
this pest still survives, I sometimes do feel, though perhaps I have no right to do so,
a little angry with you.' — (ed. Shuckburgh, iv, 175.) — ^A letter, by the way, which
the imfortunate Trebonius may have never received; it was written on the same
date as that of his cruel murder by Dolabella. — Ed.
34. out of the way] Walker {Crit., ii, 171): Pronounce out 6f (or at least lay
the stronger accent on *of' ), which removes the harshness.
37. addrest] Murray (N. E. Z>., 5. v. address. 3.): To order or arrange for any
purpose; to prepare, make ready.
ACT III, sc. i.] IVLIVS CjESAR 1 35
Caf. Are we all ready? What is now amifle,
That Ca/ar and his Senate muft redreffe ? 40
Metel. Moft high,moft mighty, and moft puifant Cafar
Metellus Cymber throwes before thy Seate
An humble heart.
Caf* I muft preuent thee Cymber :
Thefe couchings, and thefe lowly courtefies 45
Might fire the blood of ordinary men,
And tume pre-Ordinance,and firft Decreel
Into the lane of Children. Be not fond,
To thinke that Cafar beares fuch Rebell blood 49
39. Aft.,stady[ Continued to Cinna. 46. fir^ ftir Warb. Ktly conj.
Ritson. Assigned to Casca. Coll. ii» iii. 47. firfi\ fixt Craik conj.
(MS), Dyce, Craik, Sta. Wh. i, Huds. 48. lane] law Johns, conj., Mai. Ran.
we] you Han. ii. Steev. Varr. Sing. Knt, Coll. Dyce,
45. couchings] crouchings Han. Coll. Craik, Sta. Wh. Hal. Ktly, Cam.+.
MS. line Steevens conj. ^y Mason conj.
courtefies] curtefies Fj. curifies Huds. ill. plaie Singer conj. (N. & Q.,
F4, Rowe. 10 Ap., 1858). vane Bailey (i, 106).
38. you are . . . reares jrour] Malone: According to the rules of grammar
Shakespeare should certainly have written his hand; but he is often thxis inac-
curate. Compare: * — all his faults observed Set in a note-book, leam'd and conn'd
by rote To cast into my teeth.' — IV, iii, 107. — Steevens: As this and similar
offences against grammar might have originated only from the ignorance of the
players, or their printers, I cannot concur in representing such mistakes as the
positive inaccuracies of Shakespeare. According to this mode of reasoning the false
spellings of the First Folio, as often as they are exampled by corresponding false
spellings in the same book, may also be charged upon our author. — ^Abbott (§ 247)
gives other examples of thb construction, and adds: '. . . taking all these, we are,
I think, justified in saying that the relative was often regarded like a noim, by
nature third person singular, and, therefore, iminfluenced by the antecedent.'
41. puisant] Craik (p. 271): 'Puissant' and the substantive form puissance
are, I believe, always disyllables in Milton; with Shakespeare they generally are
so (as here), but not always.
47. pre-Ordinance] Warburton: That is, ordinance already established. —
Wright: Caesar speaks as if his ordinances and decrees were those of a deity. —
[Note also the arrogance indicated by the phrase 'his Senate,' in 1. 40. — Ed.]
48. lane of Children] Johnson's emendation laWy and his interpretation, that
fixed decree will be changed into such slight determinations as every start of will
would alter, have been almost universally accepted (see Text, Notes). — Steevens,
in support of the Folio, quotes: 'A narrow-minded man! my thoughts do dwell All
in a lane.* — Staple of News, [V, i; ed. Gifford, p. 292]. *The "lane of children"
will then mean,' he remarks, 'the narrow conceits of children, which must change
as their minds grow more enlarged.'
49. Rebell] Craigie (N, E. Z>., s. v, A. adjective. 2.): Disobedient to a supe-
rior or to some higher power; contumacious, refractory.
136 THE TRACED IE OF [act hi, sc. i.
That will be thawed from the true quality 50
With that which melteth Fooles, I meane fweet words,
Low-crooked-curtfies, and base Spaniell fawning :
Thy Brother by decree is baniflied :
If thou doeft bend, and pray, and fawne for him,
I fpume thee like a Curre out of my way : 55
Know, Ca/ar doth not wrong, nor without caufe
Will he be fatisfied. 57
53. Law-crooked-curtfies] F£, Rowe, iii. (MS), Craik. louhcrookei<urt*sies
Pope, louhcrooked curtsies Theob. Han. et cet.
Coll. i, Sta. Wh. Huds. law crooked 52. Spaniell fawning] spanid-fawn^
curtsies Knt. Unihcrooktd curtesies ing Johns. Var. '73.
Dyce. lew-crouched courtesies Coll. il, 53. banijhed\ banishid Dyce.
50. the true quality] Wright: For the use of the definite article where we should
expect the possessive pronoun, compare Bacon, Advancement of Learning: Tor we
see that it is the manner of men to scandalize and deprave that which retameth
the state and virtue, by taking advantage upon that which is corrupt and degener-
ate.'— Bk i, § 4; (Clar. ed., p. 27). Again, Hamlet: *Ere yet the salt of most im-
righteous tears Had left the flushing in her galled eyes.'— I, ii, 155; where, how-
ever, the Quarto of 1603 reads 'their flushing.'
56, 57. Know, Cesar ... be satisfied] These lines have been the occa-
sion of much comment from the time of Pope down to the present, chiefly
on account of two passages in the writings of Ben Johson. In the Induction
to The Staple of News, first acted in 1625, Prologue sajrs to Gossip Expectation^
'Cry you mercy, you never did wrong but with just cause' — (ed. Gifford,
p. 162). This of itself would hardly be sufficient evidence that Jonson was
ridioiling the present passage in Jui. C<es. were there not, as corroboration, the
following in his Discoveries first printed in the Folio of 1641: *De Shakspeare
nostrat. — Augustus in Hat. — I remember, the players have often mentioned
it as an honour to Shakespeare, that in his writing (whatsoever he penned) he
never blotted out a line. My answer hath been, Would he had blotted a thou-
sand. Which they thought a malevolent speech. I had not told posterity this,
but for their ignorance, who chose that circumstance to commend their friend by,
wherein he most faulted; and to justify mine own candour: for I loved the man,
and do honour his memory, on this side idolatry, as much as any. He was (indeed)
honest, and of an open and free nature; had an excellent phantasy, brave notions,
and gentle expressions; wherein he flowed with that facility, that sometimes it was
necessary he should be stopped: Suffiaminandus erai, as Augustus said of Haterius.
His wit was in his own power, would the rule of it had been so too. Many times he
fell into those things, could not escape laughter: as when he said in the person of
Caesar, one speaking to him, "Csesar thou dost me wrong." He replied, "Caesar
did never wrong but with just cause," and such like; which were ridiculous. But
he redeemed his vices with his virtues. There was ever more in him to be praised
than to be pardoned.'— Ed. Gifford, p. 175.— Pope, in a note on III, ii, 120, *C«sar
has had great wrong,* adds a line, CcRsar had never wrong hut with just cause^ remark-
ing: 'If ever there was such a line written by Shakespeare, I should fancy it might
have its place here, and very humourously in the mouth of a Plebeian. One might
ACT III, sc. i.] IVLIVS C^SAR 1 37
[56, 57. Know, Cesar doth not wrong, . . . cause Will he be satisfied]
believe Ben Johnson's \su^ remark [as quoted above] was made upon no better
credit than some blunder of an actor in speaking that verse near the beginning of
the Third Act [the present line]. But the verse as dted by Jonson does not con-
nect with "Will he be satisfied." Perhi^ this play was never printed in Ben
Jonson's time, and so he had nothing to judge by, but as the actor was pleased to
speak it.' — ^Theobald quotes the passages from Jonson, already given, but to
which Pope has merely referred. 'I can't pretend to guess,' continues Theobald,
'for what reason Ben has left this sarcasm upon our author; when there is no room
for it from any of the printed copies.' — Pope's attempted explanation of Jonson's
misquotation we may charitably ascribe to carelessness rather than ignorance; he
could hardly have been so imfamiliar with the Folios as not to have known that
Jonson was the author of both the Address to the Reader and some commendatory
lines in the First Folio; we, in these dajrs, have no spur to prick the sides of our
intent, but Theobald would have been more than human had he let slip this oppor-
tunity for a home thrust, with an imbated foil, the point envenomed too. 'I
should not,' he says, 'have thought it worth while to revive the memory of such a
remark [as Jonson's], had not Mr Pope purposely deviated into a criticism upon the
affair. There is a sort of fatality attends some people when they aim at being
hypercritical. ... I don't know how this gentleman's head was employ'd when
he made this profoimd observation; for he could not but know that B. Jonson liv'd
to the year 1637, fourteen years before which the Players had put out their edition
of all Shakespeare's genuine plays in Folio. The surly Laureate, therefore, cannot
stand excus'd, from any blunder of an actor, for woimding the memory of a Poet,
when the absurdity reflected on is not to be found in his works.' — ^Tyrwhitt is of
the opinion that the defect in the metre and the turn of the sentence in these two
lines are indications that possibly Jonson did not misquote, and that originally the
passage stood thus: 'Know Csesar doth not wrong, but with just cause; Nor without
cause will he be satisfied.' Tyrwhitt suggests as a reason for the present reading
that Shakespeare, 'overawed by so great an authority, withdrew the words in
question.' * In poetical language,' he continues, * " wrong " may be very well under-
stood to mean only harm or hurt, what the law calls damnum sine injuria; ... in
this sense there is nothing absurd in Caesar's saying that he doth not wrong (i. e.,
doth not inflict any evil or pimishment) but with just cause. . . . The excep-
tionable words were undoubtedly left out when the play was printed [in
the Folio], and, therefore, what are we to think of the malignant pleasure
with which Jonson continued to ridicule his deceased friend for a slip, of which
posterity, without his information, would have been totally ignorant.' — Steevens
dtes the passage from Jonson's Discoveries and quotes that from the Induction to
the Staple of News, but makes no comment other than that Jonson here quoted
'imfaithfully,' and M alone quotes, in support of Tyrwhitt 's interpretation of
'wrong,' 'Time's glory is ... To wrong the wronger, till he render right.' — Rape
of Luc. J 942; and Schmidt (Lex.) furnishes many other similar interpretations. —
Gifford's note on the line in the Induction to The Staple of News is much to the
purpose: 'The attacks on Jonson for this quotation, which are multiplied beyond
credibility, are founded on two charges, first, that he has falsified the passage, and
secondly that he was actuated by malignity in adverting to it at all. I cannot be-
lieve that the passage is "quoted " (as Steevens says) "unfaithfully." It is sufl^cient
to look at it in the printed copy to be convinced that it never came in this form from
138 THE TRACED IE OF [act hi, sc. L
[S^r 57- Know, Cesar doth not wrong, . . . cause Will he be satisfied]
the pen of Shakespeare. One of the conspirators . . . kneels at the feet of Cesar,
with this short address: "Metellus Cimber throws before thy seat, An humble
heart." And what is Caesar's reply? "Know Cesar doth not wrong, nor without
cause will he be satisfied." How satisfied, and of what? Here b no congruity,
and the poetry b as mean as the sense. In Jonson it stands thus: ''ife^. Caesar,
ihou dost me wrong. Cos. Caesar did never wrongs but with just cause." Here is,
at least, a reference to something. The fact seems to be that thb verse, which
closely borders upon absurdity without being absolutely absurd, escaped the poet
in the heat of composition, and being unluckily one of those quaint slips which are
readily remembered became a jocular and familiar phrase ... of the day. To
suppose, with Steevens and Malone, that Jonson derived all his knowledge of
Shakespeare's works from the printed copy b not a little ridiculous: those gentle-
men choose to forget that he [Jonson] passed hb life among play-houses and players,
and that he must have frequently seen Jul, Cos. on the stage. There he undoubt-
edly heard the expression he has quoted. He telb us himself that, till he was past
the age of forty, he could repeat everything that he had written. Hb memory,
therefore, was most retentive, and as hb veracity was never called in question, but
by the duumvirate just mentioned, I cannot but believe that he has given the words
as they were uttered. When The Staple of News was written cannot be told, but
it was acted in 1625, nine years after the death of Shakespeare; it seems, however,
not to have been published imtil 1641, when the author himself had long been dead;
though the title-page bears date 1631. Jul. Cos. was printed in 1623; but it does
not necessarily follow from this that Jonson consulted the players' copy. He had
no occasion to look into it for what he already knew; and if he had opened it at all,
the probability b that he would have paid no attention to their botchery (for
theirs I am pursuaded it was) when the genuine words were so familiar to him.
He wrote and spoke at a time when he might easily have been put to shame if hb
quotation had been imfaithful. . . . After relieving Jonson from the heaviest part
of the charge — that of sophbticating a line ** for the gratification of hb malignity" —
I have no desire to push the matter further, or seek, in any way, to exonerate him
from the crime of having produced it at all. Valeal quod valeal. Whether it be a
satiret as Whalley, a sneer ^ as Malone, a scoffs as Steevens, a piece of wanton malice,
as Tyrwhitt calb it, or all of them together, as others say, the reader may determine
at his pleasure. I would only remind him that thb b the first place in Jonson's
works in which I have found any expression that could be construed (whether
fairly or not) into an attack on Shakespeare, and that a small part of the tender-
ness that is felt for this great poet would not be altogether cast away on Marlowe,
Lyly, Kyd, and others of some note in their day, whom he incessantly ridicules
without stint and without mercy, though he had obligations to some of them, and
had received provocation from none.* — Collier: It is very evident that Jonson was
only speaking from memory, 'shaken' (as he himself confesses in the same work)
'with age now and sloth,' because Metellus had not said, 'Caesar thou dost me
wrong' nor anjrthing like it, though that might have been the upshot of hb com-
plaint. We have little doubt that the Folio represents the passage as written by
Shakespeare, and that it was never, in fact, liable to the criticism of Jonson. [Has
not Collier referred Jonson's criticism to a period later than its original utterance?
The greater number of the Remarks in the Discoveries were, according to Gifford,
made subsequently to 1630. Thb remark was not, however, made when Jonson
ACT III, sc i.] IVLIVS CjESAR 1 39
[5^1 57* Know, Cesar doth not wrong, . . . cause Will he be satisfied]
was ' shaken with age/ but at the time when Jul, Cess, was a popular play in the
early part of z6oo, and in his Discoveries Jonson is quoting what he himself had
said in his younger days — see his own words as given above. — Ed.]. — Craik (p.
274) thinks that as these two affirmations do not 'hang very well together/ and
their meaning is not ' effectively expressed/ that, therefore, the lines are presimip-
tively wrong — that they are actually wrong he finds evidence in the passage from
Jonscm's Discoveries; because Jonson gives the lines as they stood originally, and
he had evidently heard of no alteration of them. ' After all,' adds Craik, ' Caesar's
declaring that he never did wrong but with just cause would differ little from what
Bassanio says: "Wrest once the law to your authority: To do a great right, do a
little wrong."— Jftff. of Ven., IV, i, 215.'— -Walker {Crit., iii, 246) asks, if the true
reading be as Jonson gives it, whether light is thrown on this by: 'He never did fall
off, my soverdgn liege. But by the chance of war? — i Hen. IV: I, iii, 94. [Not a
ray. — Ed.] — ^Haixiwell, in reference to the present lines, queries: *How satisfied,
and of what? Take Jonson's words as literally true [Caesar, thou dost me wrong.
C<es. Caesar did never wrong, but with just cause], and the whole becomes clear;
not dear, indeed, as to Shakespeare's meaning, but it imfolds a dialogue not more
obscure than many others in his plajrs; and without such an arrangement the only
alternative is to accuse Jonson of wilful misrepresentation for the sake of a jest
against a deceased friend, a theory, I should imagine, the wildest critic would
hardly venture to adopt. — Cambridge Edd. {Note IV.): Surely the first twelve
lines of Caesar's reply, to which Gifford makes no allusion, cannot have been written
by any other hand than Shakespeare's. On the whole, it seems more probable that
Jonson, quoting from memory, quoted wrong than that the passage was altered in
consequence of his censure, which was first made, publicly, in 1625 [when The Staple
of Ntws was first acted.] — Ingleby (Still Lion, p. 152): Where was the blunder?
We say it was Jonson's and his fellow censors': that the line they laughed at
[' Csesar did never wrong, but with just cause'] was and is unimpeachable good sense,
and that it is the editor's duty to use Jonson's censure for the purpose of correcting
the Folio reading, and restoring the passage to that form in which, as we believe,
it flowed from the pen of Shakespeare. — Wright {Clarendon Ed,) : I am not con-
vinced that any change is necessary. Caesar claims infallibility in his judgements,
'and a fimmess of temper resisting appeals to his vanity. ... If it had not been for
Jonson's story, no one would have suspected any corruption in the passage. The
question is, whether his authority is sufficient to warrant a change. . . . The
supposition [that the lines originally stood as Jonson quotes them] is not probable,
because if his remarks are hypercritical, and the lines yield a tolerable sense,
Shakespeare would have been aware of this as well as any of hb commentators, and
b not likely to have made a change which is, confessedly, imnecessary. On the
other hand, if the players introduced the change it b not easy to see why they
should have left out the words which Jonson puts in the mouth of Metellus, ' Caesar,
thou dost me wrong'; nor why they should have written, 'Know, Caesar doth not
wrong' instead of 'Caesar did never wrong.' The argument that the passage b
obviously corrupt because it ends with an imperfect line is of no weight, because it
would equally apply to the proposed restoration, in which another imperfect line
b introduced. On the whole, I am dbposed to believe that Jonson loved his jest
/better than hb friend, and repeated a dbtorted version of the passage without
troubling himself about its accuracy, because it afforded him an opportunity of
140 1^^^ TRACED IE OF [act hi, sc. L
Metel.ls there no voyce more worthy then my owne, 58
To found more fweetly in great Ccefars eare,
For the repealing of my banifliM Brother ? 60
Bru. I kiffe thy hand, but not in flattery Ca/ar :
Defiring thee, that Publius Cymber may 62
giving a hit at Shakespeare. It is worth while to remark that for Metellus to inter-
rupt Caesar with the petulant exclamation, 'Caesar, thou dost me wrong/ is out of
character with the tone of his speeches before and after, which is that of abject
flattery. — ^Hudson (Ed. iii, wherein Jonson's quotation is substituted for the Folio
reading) asks: ' How came the passage to be as the Folio gives it? ' and thus answers:
'As Jonson had some hand in getting up the Folio, it is nowise imlikely that he may
have made the alteration; though it would seem as if he might have seen that the
change just spoilt the poet's dramatic logic. Or it may well be that the Editors,
not imderstanding the two senses of " wrong" [as given by Tyrwhitt above], struck
out the words hui with just causCj and then altered the language at other points
in order to salve the metre. Either of these is, I think, much more probable than
that Shakespeare himself made the change in order to "escape laughter." At all
events, Jonson is better authority as to how Shakespeare wrote the passage than
the Folio is that Shakespeare himself made the change.' — [See Appendix: Fleay
on Date of Composition, where the present passage, with several others, is used to
show that Jul. Ctts, is the joint work of Jonson and Shakespeare. Those editors
who opine that the passage stood as quoted twice by Jonson have undoubtedly
presented a goodly array of reasons in justification; but, on the other hand, we have
the direct evidence of the Folio that such is not the case; Wright's remark, that we
have here an instance of 'Jonson's preferring his jest to his friend,' is a further
corroboration when it is recalled that this very trait is one of those given by Drum-
mond in an analysis of Jonson's character after the memorable visit to him in 1619.
Under date of January 19 Drummond writes in his journal: 'He is a great lover
and praiser of himself; a contemner and scomer of others; given rather to losse a
friend than a jest; jealous of every word and action of those about him (espedallie
after drink, which is one of the elements in which he liveth).' — ed. Laing, p. 40,
Sh. Soc. Papers. — Even had the line been as Jonson quotes it his words would have
been none the less malicious. 'Would he had blotted a thousand [lines],' and then
but one example given, which, as has been shown, is quite in keeping with other
grandiloquent speeches of Caesar, even if it were originally as Jonson has quoted
it.— Ed.]
57. satisfied] W. W. [Wiluams (Parthenon, 2"** Aug., 1862, p. 442): Upon
comparing the line in Meas,for Meas,, 'Do not satisfy your resolution with hopes
that are fallible,' III, i, 170, with the present passage, we find the same word
['satisfy'] used apparently in the same sense, and translatable only by the same
modem equivalent, [i, e., unsettle]. What precise shade of meaning Shakespeare
may have attached to it is another matter; but we must pause before tampering
with either passage, when each is so confirmatory of the other.
60. repealing] Craigie (N. E. Z>., s. v. repeal, vb, 3 b.): To recall (a person)
from exile. [Among examples from other writers the two following, from Shake-
speare, are given: * The banish *d Bullingbrooke repeales himselfe.' — Rich. II: II, ii,
49; 'This healthfull hand whose banisht sence Thou hast repeal 'd.' — All's Well, II,
w>, 55.
ACT III, sc. i.] IVLIVS C^SAR I41
Haue an immediate freedome of repeale. 63
C<Bf. What Brutus ?
CaJJi. Pardon Cafar : Cafar pardon : 65
As lowe as to thy foote doth Coffins fall,
To begge infranchifement for Publius Cymber.
Caf. I could be well mou'd, if I were as you,
If I could pray to mooue. Prayers would mooue me ;
But I am conftant as the Northeme Starre, 70
Of whofe true fixt, and refting quality.
There is no fellow in the Firmament.
The Skies are painted with vnnumbred fparkes, 73
64. Brutus?] Brutus/ — Rowe et seq. Jen. true-fixi Cap. Var. '78, '85, Ran.
66. lawe] hue Fa. true-fix*d Mai. Steev. Varr. Sing. Knt.
70-79. la margin Pope, Han. Dyce, Sta. Wh. Ktly, Cam.-|-. true,
71. true fixt] true, fixt Rowc,+, fix*d Coll. Hal.
62. Publius Cymber] Sykes: Plutarch does not mention this brother's name.
There is here possibly an echo of the Cataline conspiracy, 63 B. C, and Publius
Gabinius Cimber, for whose banishment Caesar pleaded; but Gabinius was put to
death.
63. freedome of repeale] Crak (p. 276) : That is, a free unconditional recall.
This application of the term ' freedom ' is a little peculiar. It is apparently imitated
from the expression freedom of a city. As that is otherwise called the municipal
franchise, so this is called 'enfranchisement' in 1. 67. — ^Wright interprets thus:
'Liberty to be recalled from banishment.* — [May not *of* here be equivalent to
resulting from, as a consequence of, as in, * We were dead of sleep.* — Temp., V, i, 221?
— Abbott, § 168, gives other examples of this use. The sentence will thus mean
that Cimber may be granted immediate freedom in consequence of his recall from
exile. — Ed.]
65. Pardon Cesar : Cesar pardon] Possibly the reason for this form of repe-
tition is that each word may receive a passionate emphasis. First on one, then on
the other, thus: * Pardon, Csesar; Ccssar, pardon.* — Ed.
69. If I could pray to mooue, etc.] Wright suggests that Shakespeare may
have taken the hint for this speech from Pliitarch*s description of the character of
Brutus: 'For as Brutus*s gravity and constant mind would not grant all men their
requests that sued imto him, but, being moved with reason and discretion, did
alway incline to that which was good and honest: even so, when it was moved to
follow any matter, he used a kind of forcible and vehement persuasion, that calmed
not until he had obtained hb desire. For by flattering of him a man could never
obtain anything at his hands, nor make him do that which was imjxist. Further,
he thought it not meet for a man of calling and estimation to yield imto the requests
and entreaties of a shameless and importunate suitor, requesting things unmeet:
the which notwithstanding some men do for shame, because they dare deny noth-
ing.'— Life of Brutus, § 4; ed. Skeat, pp. 109, no.
73. painted] For this use of 'paint,* in the sense of decorate, compare: 'And
cuckoo-buds of yellow hue Do paint the meadows with delight.' — Love*s Labour*s,
V, ii, 907. — Schmidt (Lex., s. v. 3.) also compares: 'Pluck the wings from painted
#
142 THE TRAGEDIE OF [act hi, sc. i.
They are all Fire, and euery one doth fhine :
But, there's but one in all doth hold his place. 75
So, in the World ; 'Tis furnifh'd well with Men,
And M|in are Flefli and Blood, and apprehenfiue ;
Yet in the number, I do know but One'
That vnaffayleable holds on his Ranke,
Vnfhak'd of Motion : and that I am he, 80
Let me a little fhew it, euen in this :
That I was conftant Cymber fhould be banifh'd.
And conftant do remaine to keepe him fo.
Cinna. O Cafar.
Caf. Hence : Wilt thou lift vp Olympus ? 85
Decius. Great Ccefar.
Caf. Doth not Brutus bootlefle kneele ? 87
80. Motion] noium Upton (Obs. p. 87. Doth] Do Ft, Rowe, Pope,
234). Han.
84. Cinna.] Cim. Rowe,+ ( — ^Han.). kneele?] kneel. Rowe, Pope.
butterflies/ — Mid. N. Dreamt III, i, 175, but this is not, I think, quite the same;
the wing of a butterfly might properly be said to be minted; to paint a meadow with
what causes delight or to paint the sky with sparks is not only far more poetical,
but is in one case subjective; in the other, objective. — Ed.
77. apprebensiue] Mursay (N. E. D., s. v. 4.): Of intelligent beings: In the
habit, or capable of grasping with the mind, perceptive; hence, quick to learn, intelli-
gent, 'sharp.' [Compare: 'In apprehension how like a god.* — Hamlet, U, ii, 319.]
79. holds on his Ranke] Johnson: Perhaps, 'holds on his race*; continues his
course. We commonly say: To hold a rank, and to hold on a course or VHiy. — M.
Mason: That is, continues to hold it. [Johnson's proposal] race would but ill agree
with unshak*d of motion, or with the comparison to the polar star. 'Holds on his
rank,' in one part of the comparison, has precisely the same import with 'hold his
place' in the other.
80. Vnshak'd of Motion] Malone: 'That is, unshaken by suit or solicitation,
of which the object is to move the person addressed. — Craik (p. 376) suggests as
another interpretation, 'unshaken in his motion, or with perfectly steady move-
ment.'
83. And constant do remaine, etc.] Hudson: All through this scene Csesar is
made to speak quite out of character, and in a strain of hateful arrogance, in order,
apparently, to soften the enormity of his murder, and to grind the daggers of the
assassins to a sharper point. Perhaps, also, it is a part of the irony which so marks
this play, to put the haughtiest words in Caesar's mouth just before his fall.
87. Doth not Brutus] Johnson conjectures that this should read Do not — the
reading of the Second Folio, of which Johnson was apparently unaware — but
Steevens rightly, I think, decides that the present text is preferable, and thus inter-
prets the line: 'See you not my own Brutus kneeling in vain? What success can
you expect to your solicitations, when his are ineffectual? ' Steevens also compares
the passage from Homer (which Johnson quotes in his preface) wherein Achilles
AM
ACT III, sc. i.] IVLIVS CjESAM 143
Cask. Speake hands for me. 88
Caf. Et Tu Bruti? Then fall Ccd^ Dyes , 90
88. [Stabbing him in the Neck. other conspirators, and JfUbsX. by
Oesar rises, catches at the Dagger, and Marcus Brutus. Mai. et seq. (subs.)
straggles with him: defends himself, 90. Dyes] Om. Ff. He submits;
for a time, against him, and against muffles up his face in his Mantle; falls
the other Conspirators; but, stab'd by and dies. Senate in confusion. Cap.
Bratus,... Capdl. Casca stabs Cesar Dies. The Senators and people retire in
in the neck. Cesar catches hold of his confusion Mai. Steev. Varr.
arm. He is then stabb'd by several
addressing his captive [Hector] says: 'When so great a man as Patroclus has fallen
before thee, dost thou complain of the conmion lot of himianity?'-;-[//iaJ, xxii,
331-333.] — Malone: By 'Brutus' here Shakespeare certainly meant Marcus
Brutus, because he has confoimded him with Decimus (or Decius, as he calls him);
and imagined that Marcus Brutus was the peailiar favorite of Caesar. [See note
on this name, I, ii, i.]
90. Bt Tu Brut^ ?] Malone: Suetonius says, ' — with three and twenty wounds
he [Cesar] was stabbed, during which time he gave but one groan (without any
word uttered), and that was at the first thrust; though some have written that, as
Marcus Brutus came nmning upon him, he said, Kdl av Tixvov, and thou my
Sonne.* — ^Holland's Translation; [ed. Henley, i, 75]. . . . Plutarch [North's trans-
lation] says that, on receiving his first woimd from Casca, 'he caught hold of
Casca's sword, and held it hard; and they both cried out, Cxsar in Latin, 0 vile
traitor t Casca; what doest thou? and Casca in Greek to his brother, Brother, help me.*
. . . Neither of these writers, therefore, we see, furnished Shakespeare with this
exclamation. His authority appears to have been a line in The True Tragedie of
Rickarde Duke of Yorke, 1600, on which he formed his 3 Henry VI: *Et Tu, Brute?
Wilt thou stab Cesar too?' — [Cambridge Edd., V, i, 53.]. This line Shakespeare
rejected, . . . but it appears it had made an impression on his memory. The
same line is also found in Nicholson's Acolastus, his Afterwitie, z6oo. So, in C(tsar*s
Legend: Mirror for Magistrates , 1587: 'O this, quoth I, is violence; then Cassius
pierc'd my breast; And Brutus thou, my sonne, quoth I, whom erst I loved best.'
— [ed. Haslewood, i, 274]. The Latin words probably appeared originally in the
old Latin play. See notes on I, i, i. — ^Thomson (p. 6$, foot-note): The words koX oO
tIkvov are not in the Salmasian copy [of Suetonius's Lives], and I am strongly
inclined to reject their authority. It is extremely improbable that Cesar, who had
never before avowed Brutus to be his son, should make so unnecessary an acknowl-
edgement at the moment of his death. Exclxisive of this objection, the apostrophe
seems too verbose, both for the suddenness and the celerity of the occasion. But
this is not all. Can we suppose that Cesar, though a perfect master of the Greek,
would at such a time have expressed himself in that language rather than the Latin,
. . . which he spoke with peculiar elegance? Upon the whole, the probability
is that the words uttered by Cesar were Et tu, Brute/ which, while equally express-
ive of astonishment with the other, and even of tenderness, are both more natural
and more emphatic. — [Dion Cassius, who wrote at least one hundred years later than
Suetonius, says: 'Thereupon they attacked him [Caesar] from many sides at once
and wounded him to death, so that by reason of their niunbers Cesar was unable
144 ^^^ TRACED IE OF [act hi, sc. i.
Cin. Liberty, Freedome ; Tyranny is dead, 91
Run hence, proclaime, cry it about the Streets.
CaJJi. Some to the common Pulpits, and cry out
Liberty, Freedome, and Enfranchifement.
Bru. People and Senators, be not aflTrighted : 95
Fly not,ftand (till : Ambitions debt is paid.
Cask. Go to the Pulpit Brutus.
Dec. And CaJJius too.
Bru. Where's Publius ?
Cin. Heere, quite confounded with this mutiny. lOO
Met. Stand faft together, lead fome Friend of Ccsfars
Should chance
Bru. Talke not of (landing. Publius good cheere,
There is no harme intended to your perfon.
Nor to no Roman elfe : fo tell them Publius. 105
CaJJi. And leaue vs Publius^ leaft that the people
Rufhing on vs, (hould do your Age fome mifchiefe. 107
loi. Friend] friends Pope ii, Theob. 105. to no] ot no F4.
Warb. Johns. Var. *7$.
to say or do anything, but, veiling his face, was slain with many wounds. This is
the truest account. In times past some have made a declaration like thb, that to
Brutus who struck him severely he said: **Thou, too, my child?"* — Bk, xliv, § 19.
— Ed.] — Ferrero (ii, 353, /<?o^mite): Caesar's words to Brutus, as he wrapped
himself in his toga, are certainly a myth. How could he wrap himself in his toga
with his assassins striking at him from all sides? As for the invocation to Brutus
(tu quoquey Brute j fili mi), it is merely a piece of sentiment tacked on to the fantastic
legend which makes Brutus the child of Caesar.
97. Cask. Go to . . . Brutus] Steevens: We have now taken leave of Casca.
Shakespeare for once knew that he had a sufficient number of heroes on his hands,
and was glad to lose an individual in the crowd. It may be added that the singu-
larity of Casca's manners would have appeared to little advantage amidst the
succeeding varieties of tumult and war. [Steevens is, however, here following
Pope's assignment of speeches. The Folios give 11. 118, 119 to Casca; Pope, in his
second edition, gives them to Cassius, see Text, Notes and Comments, ad loc. — Ed.]
103. cheere] Murray (N. E, Z>., s, v. subst. 3.): Disposition, frame of mind,
mood, especially as showing itself by external demeanor, etc. Usually with quali-
fication, as 'good,' 'glad,' 'joyful,* etc. [Murray gives as its derivation the old
French word chiere, chere^ face.]
105. Nor . . . no] For other examples of double or triple negatives for emphasis,
see, if needful, Abbott, § 406.
107. your Age] Wright: Publius is here represented as an old man, and can,
therefore, hardly be the same as Antony's sister's son, mentioned in IV, i. Shake-
speare seems to have taken Publius as a convenient and familiar name for any
Roman. See above, 1. 67.
ACT III, sc. i.] IVLIVS CjESAR 1 45
Bru. Do fOy and let no man abide this deede, 108
But we the Doers.
Enter Trebonius. no
CaJJi. Where is ^w/^w;'?
Treb. Fled to his Houfe amazM:
Men, Wiues,and Children, ftare, cry out, and run.
As it were Doomefday.
Bru. Fates,we will know your pleafures : 115
That we (hall dye we know, 'tis but the time
And drawing dayes out, that men (land vpon.
Cask. Why he that cuts oflF twenty yeares of life.
Cuts off fo many yeares of fearing death.
Bru. Grant that, and then is Death a Bene(it : 120
So are we Ccefars Friends, that haue abridged
His time of fearing death. Stoope Romans, (loope, 122
no. Scene n. Pope,+ (— Var. *73). Dyce i, Craik, Wh. Ktly, Cam.-f ,
III. Where U\ Where's Pope, Han. Huds. Cass. Pope et cet.
Cap. Steev. Varr. Sing, i, Coll. Craik, 119. off] of F4,
Wh. i, Dyce ii, iii, Huds. 122-127. Sioope Romans ... Liberty]
115. will] well Sta. conj. Case. Stoop Romans. ^Liberty Pope,
118. Cask.J Ff, Rowe, Knt, Coll. Warb.
108. abide] Murray {N, E. Z)., s. v. verb. 17. H.): Through confusion of form
with Abye [to pay the penalty , to alone for], when that verb was becoming archaic,
and through association of sense between abye (pay for) a deed, and abide the
consequences of a deed, 'abide' has been erroneously used for abye, [Compare,
for another example of this use, IH, ii, 124.]
11$. we will know] Deighton: That is, we desire to know, etc. — Mark
Hunter: This [interpretation] seems inconsistent with what immediately follows,
and with Brutus's philosophy. Brutus seems to mean. What destiny has in store
for us shall be known one day; meantime we know we have to die. Compare what
Brutus says before Philippi: 'But it sufficeth that the day will end And then the
end is known.* — V, i, 142.
117. stand vpon] Nares: To stand upon to anyone, to be of great importance
to him. [So, also, Dyce (Gloss.).]
118, 119. Cask. Why he . . . fearing death] Wright, who follows Pope's
assignment (see Text. Notes), says: 'This speech . . . belongs to Cassius, who b
a stoic' — Hudson (ed. iii, p. 199) : Surely [this speech] is more characteristic of
Casca than of Cassius. And I am the more unwilling to take it from Casca, as it
b the last he utters.
122. Stoope Romans, stoope] Pope says, in reference to his assignment of
this speech to Casca: 'In all the editions this speech is ascribed to Brutus, than
which nothing is more inconsistent with his mild and philosophical character.
But (as I often find speeches in the later editions put into wrong mouths, different
from the first published by the author) I think this liberty not unreasonable.* —
[It will be remembered that it is Pope who says, in his Preface, that, were the names
10
146 THE TR AGED IE OF [act in, sc. i.
And let vs bathe our hands in Ccefars blood 123
Vp to the Elbowes^ and befmeare our Swords :
Then walke we forth^ euen to the Market place^ 125
And wauing our red Weapons o're our heads.
Let's all cry Peace, Freedome, and Liberty.
Cajfu Stoop then, and wafh . How many Ages hence 128
123. haih^ bath F4, Cap.
to be omitted from the speeches in any play, it would not be difficult to place
them correctly, so distinctly consistent are the characters to their utterances.
Possibly this thought prompted him to this change and its justification. — Ed,] —
Theobald (Letter to Warburton; Nichols, II, 495): In this [change of speech] I
think [Pope] has been more nice than wise. Brutus esteemed the death of Cesar
a sacrifice to liberty; and as such gloried in his heading the enterprize. Besides,
our author is strictly copying history. * Brutus and his followers, being yet hot with
the murder, marched in a body from the Senate-house to the Capitol with their
drawn swords, with an air of confidence and assurance.' — Plutarch, C(Bsar, § 45.
And: 'Brutus and his party betook themselves to the Capitol, and in their way
shewing their hands all bloody, and their naked swords, proclaiming liberty to the
people.' — ^Ibid., Brutus, § 13. — [This note, with one or two slight changes, appears
also in Theobald's edition, 1733. The passages from Plutarch contain, however,
in both instances many verbal differences from North's translation. — £d.]
123. bathe our . . . blood] Upton (p. 90): This was agreeable to an ancient
and religious custom. So in ^schylus we read that the seven captains, who
came against Thebes, sacrificed a bull, and dipped their hands in the gore, invoking
at the same time the gods of war, and binding themselves with an oath to revenge
the cause of Eteocles (Seven Against Thebes, v, 42). . . . By this solemn action
Brutus gives the assassination of Cassar a religious air and turn. — Capell (i, 105) :
For the action which is ushered in by these words we have seen a preparative [in
that passage] where the same speaker opposes shedding any more blood but only
Caesar's, which, in his idea, was an offering to the goddess he worshipped most —
public liberty; and from this idea results the action proposed by him; such action
having many examples in ancient sacrifices, the more solemn particularly, as this
is thought, by the speaker. [See Appendix: Source of Plot; Paton.]
127. Let's all cry Peace] Knight (Studies, p. 416): We have seen the stoic
Brutus . . . gradually warm up to the great enterprise of asserting his principles
by one terrible blow, for triumph or for extinction. The blow is given. The
excitement which succeeds is wondrously painted by the poet, without a hint from
the historian. The calm of the gentle Brutus is lifted up, for the moment, into an
attitude of terrible sublimity. It is he who says: 'Stoop, Romans, stoop. . . .
Let's all cry. Peace, Freedom, and Liberty!' Frorfi that moment the character
flags; the calmness returns; something also of the irresolution ^mes back. Brutus
is too high-minded for his position.
128. wash] M. Mason: That is, wash over, as we say, washed with gold; Cassius
means that they should steep their hands in the blood of Caesar.
128. How many Ages hence, etc.] MacCallum (p. 2S0, foot-note): What a
strange effect these words are apt to produce on auditor and reader! 'How true!'
we say, *The prophecy is fulfilled. This is happening now.' And then the reflec-
ACT III, sc. i.] IVLIVS CjESAR 147
Shall this our lofty Scene be a£led ouer^
In State vnbome, and Accents yet vnknowne ? 130
Bru. How many times (hall Cafar bleed in fport^
That now on Pompeyes Bafis lye along^
No worthier then the dull ?
CaJfL So oft as that (hall be^
So often fhall the knot of vs be call'd^ 135
129. (Dipping their swords in Cae- 131. Bru.] Case. Pope, Han.
sar's Blood. Rowe,+, Jen. 132. ly^ lyes Fa. lies F,F4.
ouer] o^er Pope,+, Walker 134. Caifi.] Bru. Pope, Han.
(Crit. iii, 247), Dyce ii, iii, Huds. iii. Jkall be] Om. Steev. conj.
130. State] Mai. States Ff et cet.
tion comes that just because that is the case, there is no prophecy and no truth in
the scene; the whole is being enacted in sport. We experience a kind of vertigo,
in which we cannot distinguish the real and the illusory, and yet are conscious of
both in their highest potence. And this is characterisic of all poetry, though it is
not always brought so clearly before the mind. . . . Compare the reference to
the 'squeaking Cleopatra' in Ant. &r Cleo.y which is almost exactly parallel; com-
pare, too, Shakespeare's favorite device of the play within the play, when we
see the actors of a few minutes ago sitting like ourselves as auditors; and thus,
on the one hand, their own performance seems comparatively real, but, on the other,
there is the constant reminder that we are in their position, and the whole is merely
spectacular.
130. State] Malone is the only editor who retains this reading of the Folio, and
thus interprets it: 'In theatric pomp yet undisplayed.' To this Steevens replies:
'But surely by "unborn states" our author must have meant conmiunities which
as yet have no existence.' — Wright thinks the present reading an example of 'one
of the conmionest misprints in the First Folio'; viz.: the omission or insertion of an
5 at the end of words, for which see Walker, CrU,f i, 233. Wright also calls atten-
tion to another omission of the final 5 in the word Mye', 1. 132; this last may, how-
ever, be due to the plural by attraction from the two words directly preceding
'lye.'— Ed.
134. So oft as that, etc.] Hudson: This [and the two preceding speeches],
vain-gloriously anticipating the stage celebrity of the deed, are very strange;
and unless there be a shrewd irony lurking in them, I am at a loss to understand
the purpose of them. Their effect on my mind has long been to give a very ambi-
tious air to the work of these professional patriots, and to cast a highly theatrical
colour on their alleged virtue; as if they had sought to immortalize themselves by
'striking the foremost man of all this world.' — [Hudson is here, I think, a victim
to the 'vertigo' mentioned by MacCallum in his note on 1. 128 above. Has it,
however, been noticed that although Shakespeare has here undoubtedly produced
a novel effect, yet it is done at the expense of making his heroes theatrical patriots;
this will possibly also account for a like tone in the speeches of Brutus, notably
that one beginning 'Fates, we will know your pleasures.' — ^£d.]
135. knot] Murray {N. E. D.y s. v. substant,, HI, 18.): A small group, cluster,
band, or company of persons or things (gathered together in one place, or associ-
ated in any way). [The present line quoted.]
1^8 THE TR AGED IE OF [act hi, sc. L
The Men that gaue their Country liberty. 136
Dec. What, (hall we forth ?
CaJJi. I,euery man away.
Brutus (hall leade, and we will grace his heeles
With the mod boldefl^and befl hearts of Rome. 140
Enter a Seruant.
Bru. Soft, who comes heere? A friend oi Antonies.
Ser. Thus Brutus did my Mafter bid me kneele ;
Thus did Mark Antony bid me fall downe.
And being proftrate, thus he bad me fay : 145
Brutus is Noble, Wife, Valiant, and Honeft;
Cafar was Mighty, Bold, Royall, and Louing : 147
136. /Aetr] owr Steev. Van*. Sing. i. 141. Enter...] After heerty 1. 142
137. WhaX\ What^ what Rowe. Dyce, Sta.
138. man away] man: Away/ Cap. 142. i4...Antonies] Given to Servant
conj. Pope, Han.
140. bddefty and beft] bold, and the 143. [Kneeling. Pope.
best Rowe, Pope, Han. 147. Bold, Royall\ royal, bold Pope
Theob. Han. Warb.
140. most boldest] For another example of this double superlative compare:
'most xmklndest/ HI, ii, 193; and see, if needful, Abbott, § 11. — Csaik (p. 281)
Calls attention to the form the most Highest, in the old version of the Psalms.
'Nor is there,* he continues, 'an3rthing intrinsically absurd in such a mode of ex-
pression. If we are not satisfied to consider it as merely an intensified superlative,
we may say that "the most boldest" should mean those who are boldest among the
boldest. ... In most cases, however, the double superlative must be regarded as
intended merely to express the extreme degree more emphatically.'
141. Enter a Seruant] Moulton {Sh. as Dram. Artist, p. 198): This simple
stage-direction is the 'catastrophe,' the turning round of the whole action; the
arch has reached its apex and the Reaction has begun. So instantaneous is the
change, that though it is only the servant of Antony who speaks, yet the first words
of his message ring with the tone of subtly-poised sentences which are inseparably
associated with Antony's eloquence; it is like the first announcement of that which
is to be a final theme in music, and from this point this tone dominates the scene to
the very end. ... In the whole Shakespearean Drama there is nowhere such a
swift swinging round of a dramatic action as is here marked by this sudden up-
springing of the suppressed individuality in Antony's character, hitherto so colour-
less that he has been spared by the conspirators as a mere limb of Cssar. The tone
of exultant triumph in the conspirators has in an instant given place to Cassius's
' misgiving ' as Brutus grants Antony an audience; and when Antony enters, Brutus's
first words to him fall into the form of an apology. — [That this is the turning point
is quite true; but is there anything but the light of our knowledge of what is to
follow to indicate it directly? The whole tone of Antony's message is completely
submissive; and the apologetic tone of Brutus's first speech to him is no more so
than his words to Publius directly after the murder. Cassius, it will be recalled,
also had misgivings in regard to Antony from the first. — Ed.]
ACT III, sc. i.] IVLIVS C^SAR I^g
Say, I loue BrutuSy and I honour him ; 148
Say, I fear'd Cae/ary honoured him, and louM him.
\i Brutus will vpuchfafe, that Antony 1 50
May fafely come to him, and be refoIuM
How Ccefar hath deferuM to lye in death,
Mark Antony y fhall not loue CcefaritisA
So well as Brutus liuing ; but will follow
The Fortunes and Affayres of Noble BrutuSy • 155
Thorough the hazards of this vntrod State,
With all true Faith. So fayes my Mailer Antony.
Bru. Thy Mafler is a Wife and Valiant Romane,
I neuer thought him worfe :
Tell him, fo pleafe him come vnto this place 160
He fhall be fatisfied : and by my Honor
Depart vntouch'd.
Ser. He fetch him prefently. Exit Seruant.
Bru. I know that we fhall haue him well to Friend.
CaJJi. I wifh we may : But yet haue I a minde 165
That feares him much : and my mifgiuing flill
Falles fhrewdly to the purpofe.
Enter Antony.
Bru. But heere comes Antony :
Welcome Mark Antony. 170
Ant. O mighty C€B/ar\ Dofl thou lye fo lowe?
156. Thorough] Through Vopt, 169, 170. Bti/...Antony] One line
165. haue /] / have Pope ii. Pope et seq.
168. Enter Antony] After Antony, 1. 171. [Kneeling over the body. Coll.
169 Dyce, Sta. ii. (MS).
Scene in. Pope,-f ( — ^Var. '73).
160. so please him come] That is, if ii may so please him io come; see, for this
use of 'so,' Abbott, § 133; and for examples of the omission of to in the infinitive.
Ibid., § 349.— Ed.]
164. to Friend] That is, /or a friend; see, if needful, Abbott, § 189.
166. my misgiuing, etc.] Wright: That is, my presentment of evil always
turns out to be very much to the purpose, and is, therefore, to be regarded. . . •
'Shrewdly,' which literally means mischievously, is used as an intensive adverb.
171. O mighty Caesar] Davies (ii, 242): Wilks, ... as soon as he entered
the stage, without taking any notice of the conspirators, walked swiftly up to the
dead body of Caesar and knelt down: he paused some time before he spoke; and,
after surveying the corpse with manifest tokens of the deepest sorrow, he addressed
it in a most affecting and pathetic manner. [A stage-direction in Collier's (MS)
calls for this action on the part of Antony; and further that at 1. 177 he should rise
I50 THE TRACED IE OF [act m. sa L
Are all thy Conquefts, Glories, Triumphes,Spo3es, 172
Shninke to this little Meafure ? Fare thee welL
I know not Gentlemen what you intend.
Who elfe mud be let blood, who dfe is ranke : 175
If I my felfe, there is no houre fo fit
As Cafars deaths houre ; nor no Inftniment
Of halfe that worth, as thofe your Swords ; made rich
A^th the mod Noble blood of all this World.
I do befeech yee, if you beare me hard, 180
Now, whil'ft your purpled hands do reeke and (moake.
Fulfill your pleafure. Liue a thouiand yeeres,
I (hall not finde my felfe fo apt to dye. * 183
180. j€^ you Sing. Ktly, Huds. x8o. ytn^ ye Tbeob. n.
and address the assassins. — Ed.] — ^Wright: By apostrophising Cesar's body An-
tony avoids the embarrassment of first meeting the cxnspiratocs.
175. most be let blood] Compare: 'Hb ancient knot of dangeroos adver-
saries To-morrow are let blood at Pomfret Castle.' — Rich. Ill: m, i, 183.
175. ranke] Wright: That is, diseased from repletion. For sudi disocders
blood-letting was the old remedy.
177. deaths houre] Wright: The Globe EdUUmy I believe by an oversi^t, has
death hour, as Collier also printed it in his one-volume edition. It stands 'death's
hour' in the Folios, and we have the analogy of deaths man, althou^, on the other
hand, Shakespeare uses deaih-bed everywhere except where he makes hb Welsh
Parson Evans say 'upon his death's-bed.' — Merry Wives, I, i, 53. In Gosson's
Schcole of Abuse we find 'death's wound.' — p. 61.
180. beseech yee, if you] For this use of 'ye' and 'you,' compare: 'Therein,
ye gods, you make the weak most strong.' — ^I, iii, loi.
180. beare me hard] Compare: 'Caius Ligarius doth bear Csesar hard,' II, i,
339; also, I, ii, 337, and note.
181. reeke and smoake[ Craigie {N. E. D., s. v. reek, verb, i.) : To emit smoke.
(2) To emit hot vapour or steam; to smoke with heat; to exhale vapour (or fog),
(c) of blood freshly shed, or of things smeared with this. — [Under this last division
Craigie quotes the present line. — It is evident that originally the verbs 'to reek*
and 'to smoke' were synonymous; then as that which emits vapour is itself moist
the cause and its effect were merged. For a survival of the older word compare
the local name for Edinburgh, 'Auld Reekie.* — Ed.]
182. Liue a thousand yeeres] Craik (p. 284) : That is, Suppose I live; If I live;
Should I live. But, although the suppression of the conditional conjunction is
common and legitimate enough, that of the pronoun, or nominative to the verb,
is hardly so defensible. The feeling probably was that the 'I' in the next
line might serve for both verbs. — Wright compares: 'Live thou, I live.' — Mer,
of Ven., Ill, ii, 61; and also the elliptical phrase: ' — so please him come.* — ^1. 160,
above.
183. apt] Murray (N. E. D., s. r. adj. 2. b.): Fit, prepared, ready. — [The
present line quoted. — Wright compares: ' Besides it were a mock Apt to be render'd,
ACT III. sc. i.] IVLIVS CjESAR 1 5 1
No place will pleafe me fo, no meane of death,
As heere by Ccsfarj and by you cut off, 185
The Choice and Mafler Spirits of this Age.
Bru. O Antony \ Begge not your death of vs :
Though now we muft appeare bloody and cruell,
As by our hands, and this our prefent A6le
You fee we do : Yet fee you but our hands, 190
And this, the bleeding bufmeffe they haue done:
Our hearts you fee not, they are pittifuU :
And pitty to the generall wrong of Rome,
As fire driues out fire, fo pitty, pitty
Hath done this deed on Ccefar. For your part, 195
To you, our Swords haue leaden points Marke Antony :
184-186. Mnemonic Warb. 1S4. meane] means P(^, Han.
for some one to say, Break up the senate, till another time.' But is this a parallel
use? Dedus means, I think, not that the mock would hefiUingf but that it would
be likely; which last meaning of 'apt' Murray gives under 4. a. — Ed.]
184. meane] Schmidt (Lex., s. v. subsi. 4) gives numerous examples of 'mean'
in the sense of that which is used to effect a purpose; it is, however, oftener used in
the plural, as Schmidt remarks. — Ed. •
185. by Caesar, and by you] That is, here beside Ceesar, and at your hands.
186. The Choice and Master Spirits] Craik (p. 284): 'Choice' here may be
understood either in the substantive sense as the Slite, or, better perhaps, as an ad-
jective in concord with spirits. — [Schmidt (Lex.^ s. v. Choice^ 5. The best part,
select assemblage) quotes: ' — a braver choice of dauntless spirits Than now the
English bottoms have waft o'er Did never float upon the swelling tide.' — King
John, n, i, 72; and Mxtrray, N. E, D., likewise quotes these lines from King John
as the only example of 'choice' used as a substantive as suggested above by Craik.
His alternative interpretation that this word is better taken as an adjective in
concord with spirits is the 'choice' of the present Ed.]
194. As fire . . . fire] Malone: So in Coriol.y 'One fire drives out one fire;
one nail one nail.' — IV, vii, 54. — Steevens: Again in Two Gentlemen: 'Even as
one heat another heat expels, Or as one nail by strength drives out another.' — ^11,
iv, 192. — Craik remarks that this illustration is a favorite one with Shakespeare,
and, besides the two passages quoted by Malone and Steevens, gives: 'Tut, man,
one fire bums out, another's burning.' — Rom. fir /m/., I, ii, 46; and says: 'This is
probably also the thought which we have in the heroic Bastard's exhortation to
his uncle in King John: "Be stirring as the time; be fire with fire; Threaten the
threatener." — ^V, i, 48.' — Delius adds another passage from King John: 'And
falsehood falsehood aires, as fire cures fire Within the scorched veins of one new
biuna'd.' — ^m, i, 277.
194. fire] For other examples wherein words ending in -dre and -our are at times
either monosyllabic or disyllabic for metrical reasons, see Walker, Vers., 136, or
Abbott, § 475.
152 THE TR AGED IE OF [act hi, sc. i.
Our Armes in ftrength of malice^ and our Hearts 197
197. in ftrength of malice^] exempt in strength of welcome, Coll. ii. (MS),
from malice, Pope,+ ( — ^Var. '73). Craik. in strength of manhood, CoW. iu»
no strength of malice; Cap. Jen. Sing, ii, tn strength of justice, Cartwright. un-
Ktly, Huds. in strength of amity, Sing. fraught of malice Anon. ap. Cam. For-
(N. & Q., 24 Jan., 1857), Huds. iii. spent of malice Anon. ap. Cam.
tn strength of friendship Ktly conj.
197. Our Armes in strength of malice] Steevens: To you (say^ Brutus)
our swords have leaden points; our arms, strong in the deed of malice they have
just performed, and our hearts imited like those of brothers in the action, are yet
open to receive you with all possible regard. The supposition that Brutiis meant
their hearts were of brothers' temper in respect of Antony seems to have misled
those who have commented on this passage before. — [Who are these commentators
to whom Steevens here refers? I£s note appears for the first time in the Variorum
of 1773, and Capell's Notes were not published until 1779, so it is impossible that
Steevens could have seen them. He proposes, 'if alteration were necessary,' to
read: 'our arms no strength of malice'; but this is the reading in Capell's text
which appeared about 1761 or 1762. Steevens does not, however, call attention
to the fact that this emendation rightfully belongs to a predecessor; and the absence
of Capell's name throughout the other Variorum editions seems to indicate an inten-
tional neglect. — ^£d.] — Capell (i, xo6): 'Strength of malice' is strength proceed-
ing from malice, strength set on work by it; and the ^>eaker purges his arm, and
the arms of his company, from imputation of any such strength to guide the
'swords' that he talks of, or any other: and this sense is procured for us by means
simple, and critical, and with it a flow becoming an orator. — Badham (p. 287):
'No strength of malice' [as Capell's text reads] would imply that there was malice,
but that it was of an impotent kind. Besides, there is great awkwardness of con-
struction in having three clauses of which the first and the last have each its ap-
propriate verb, 'have' and 'receive in,' while the middle one is obliged to borrow
from its neighbor. [In order to overcome this difficulty Badham proposes: Our
arms unstring their malice.] — Singer (Notes & Queries, 24 Jan., 1857, p. 61): We
may be disposed to ask [Dr Badham] what arms are to unstring their malice? I
regret exceedingly that I did not give this passage the attention I have done since,
when I printed the play; I have since thought it certain that we should find a solu-
tion of the difficulty from some parallel passage in the poet, and I have not been
disappointed. In Ant. & Cleo., when Mark Antony is leaving Octavius, he says
on embracing him : * Come, Sir, come, I'll wrestle with you in my strength of love.' —
III, ii, 61. Who can doubt, therefore, that we should read: 'Our arms in strength of
amity*? Here all is congruous. The metaphorical antithesis is palpable between the
leaden points of the swords — weak and unlempered — ^and the transference of the
qualities of strength and temper to the arms of amity and hearts of brothers. — [Singer,
in defence of his emendation, says that the word was likely written amitie in the
MS, as sometimes it is so printed in the Folio, and might thus be easily mistaken by
the compositor for 'malice.' In Notes & Queries, 10 April, 1858, he repeated this
suggested change, without referring to his former note, and added in corroboration
another quotation from Ant, &• Cleo.: 'that which is the strength of their amity
shall prove the immediate author of their variance.* — II, vi, 137. — ^Ed.] — Grant
White: That is, our arms, even in the intensity of their hate to Caesar's tyranny,
and our hearts, in their brotherly love to all Romans, do receive you in. — ^John
ACT III, sc. i.] IVLIVS CjESAR 1 5 3
Of Brothers temper, do receiue you in, 198
With all kinde loue, good thoughts, and reuerence.
CaJJi Your voyce (hall be as ftrong as any mans, 200
In the difpofmg of new Dignities.
Bru. Onely be patient, till we haue appeas'd
The Multitude, befide themfelues with feare.
And then, we will deliuer you the caufe.
Why I, that did loue Ca/ar when I ftrooke him, 205
Haue thus proceeded.
Ant. I doubt not of your Wifedome : 207
198. in] in them Ktly. ao6. Haue ikus proceeded] Proceeded
205. ftrooke] struck Cap. thus Pope,-f (— Var. '73).
207. Wi/edome] wi/dom ¥^¥4,
Hunter: Our arms with strength like that of malice, and, at the same time, our
hearts fuU of brotherly affection, embrace and wekome you. . . . Brutus alludes
to Antony's saying: 'if you bear me hard.' Observe also what is said a little farther
(HI about 'ingratitude more strong than traitors' arms.' — Wright: That is, strong,
as if nerved in malice against you, the death grip of enemies being stronger than
the most loving embrace. The same apparently contradictory figure is used in
Bamlet: 'The friends thou hast, and their adoption tried. Grapple them to thy soul
with hoops of steel.' — I, iil, 63; where 'grapple' naturally describes a hostile and
not a friendly act. ... If any change be necessary. Singer's [see Text. Notes] is the
best that has been proposed, 'malice' and amitie being words which might be con-
founded by a printer. But it gives a rather feeble sense, and I prefer to leave the
text as it stands, although the figure may be a violent one. — ^Macmillan: Brutus
means that towards him they had no more malice than brothers have towards one
another. 'Of brothers' temper' is an adjectival phrase qualifying 'arms' and
'hearts,' and itself modified by the adverbial phrase 'in strength of malice.' The
disorder in the arrangement of the sentence is probably due to 'and our hearts'
being added as an after thought in the middle of the sentence. Compare: 'And
my heart too.* — IV, iii, 130. For ' strength,' such a small amount of strength that it
is equivalent to weakness, compare Hecuba^ 227, where ahd^ means powerless-
ness. Compare also Cymbdine, where 'malice' expresses absence of malice: 'The
power that I have on you is to spare you; The malice towards you to forgive you:
live.' — ^V, V, 419.
2CO, 201. Your voyce . . . new Dignities] Boswell: Here, as Blakeway ob-
serves, Shakespeare has maintained the consistency of Cassius's character, who,
being selfish and greedy himself, endeavors to influence Antony by similar motives.
Brutus, on the other hand, is invariably represented as disinterested and generous,
and is adorned by the poet with so many good qualities that we are almost tempted
to forget that he was an assassin. — Mark Hunter: It is significant that Brutus,
90 scrupulous not to stain the honesty of his cause by the imposition of an oath,
should suffer such an utterance as this of Cassius to pass without protest, and with
apparent approval. He either cannot or will not see the true character of his
associates, and the punishment which waits on a blindness, at once intellectual and
moral, is near at hand.
154 ^^^ TRACED IE OF [act hi, sc L
Let each man render me his bloody hand. 208
Flrft Marcus Brutus will I fhake with you ;
Next Ccdus Caffius do I take your hand ; 210
Now Decius Brutus yours ; now yours MeteUus ;
Yours Cinna \ and my valiant Ow^^, yours ;
Though laft, not lead in loue, yours good Trebonius
Gentlemen all : Alas, what fhall I fay,
My credit now (lands on fuch flippery ground, 215
That one of two bad wayes you muft conceit me,
Either a Coward, or a Flatterer.
That I did loue thee Ccefar^ O 'tis true :
If then thy Spirit looke vpon vs now.
Shall it not greeue thee deerer then thy death, 220
To fee thy Antony making his peace,
Shaking the bloody fingers of thy Foes ?
Mod Noble, in the prefence of thy Coarfe, 223
208. [Taking them one after the 218. [Turning to the body and bend-
other. Coll. ii. (MS). ing over it. Coll. ii. (MS).
214. a//;] aUr— Rowe et seq. 222, 223. Foes?..,Coarfe^foeSf„xor5^
216. wayts] waits Fj. Rowe et seq.
208. Let each man render me his bloody hand] Moulton {Sh, as Dram.
Artist, p. 198): The quick subtlety of Antony's intellect has grasped the whole
situation, and with irresistible force he slowly feels his way towards using the con-
spirators' aid for crushing themselves and avenging their victim. The bewilder-
ment of the conspirators in the presence of this unlooked-for force is seen in Cassius's
unavailing attempt to bring Antony to the point, as to what compact he will make
with them. Antony, on the contrary, reads his men with such nicety that he can
indulge himself in sailing close to the wind, and grasps fervently the hands of the
assassins while he pours out a flood of bitter grief over the corpse. It is not hy-
pocrisy nor a trick to gain time, this conciliation of his enemies. Steeped in the
political spirit of the age, Antony knows, as no other man, the mob which governs
Rome, and is conscious of the mighty engine he possesses in his oratory to sway that
mob in what direction he pleases; when his bold plan has succeeded, and his ad-
versaries have consented to meet him in contest of oratory, then ironical concilia-
tion becomes the natural relief to his pent-up passion: 'Friends am I with you all
and love you all.' It is as he feels the sense of innate oratorical power and of the
opportunity his enemies have given to that power that he exaggerates his tem-
porary amity with the men he is about to crush; it is the executioner arranging his
victim comfortably on the wrack before he proceeds to apply the levers.
213. last, not least in loue] Malone: So in Lear: 'Although the last, not
least in our dear love.'— I, i, 8$. [The Quarto reading.]
220. deerer] For examples of 'dear' thus used intensively, see Schmidt (Lex.),
or Shakespeare passim,
222, 223. Foes? . . . Coarse,] TmsELXON (p. 25): The exquisite rhetoric of
ACT III. sc. i.] IVUVS CjESAR 1 55
Had I as many eyes, as thou haft wounds,
Weeping as fafl as they (Ireame forth thy blood, 225
It would become me better, then to clofe
In tearmes of Friendfhip with thine enemies.
Pardon me luliuSy heere was't thou bay'd braue Hart,
Heere did'ft thou fall,and heere thy Hunters (land
SignM in thy Spoyle,and CrimfonM in thy Lethee. 230
228. Hart] Heart Ff, Craik. Theob. Han. Craik, Coll. iii. slaughter
230. Lethee] Lethe F4. death Pope, Kinnear. earth Hen. Lethe F^iCtctt.
this passage is murdered by the rude hands of our modem 'improvers/ who make
the note of interrogation after 'foes' and the conmia after 'coarse' change places
[see Text. Notes]. The slightest attention to the careful Folio punctuation would
have disclosed the obvious fact that the passage is composed of two sets of five
lines each, in which each line in order of the second set is adjusted so as to balance
each line in order of the first set. ... It might also have occurred to those who
had overlooked this that the presence of Caesar's corpse would hardly aggravate the
grief of Caesar's spirit, while it would clearly increase Antony's sense of the un-
becomingness of the occasion chosen for making terms with Caesar's enemies.
228. bay'd] Wright: Cotgrave gives: 'Abbayer, to barke, or ba3rt at'; and
*Abbois: m. barkings, hayings.' Under the last he has the phrase: 'Auz demiers
abbob, at his last gaspe, or, breathing his last; also, put to his last shifts,* driuen to
vse his last helper: A metaphor from hunting; wherein a Stag is sayd, Rendre les
abbois, when wearie of running he tumes vpon the hounds, and holds them at, or
puts them to, a bay.'
229. heere . . . stand] Wright: This was probably suggested by the ex-
pression in North's Plutarch, where Caesar is described as 'hackled and mangled
among them, as a wild beast taken of hunters.' — (ed. Skeat, p. loi).
230. Crimson'd in thy Lethee] Capell {Glossary , s. v. lethe) says that this is a
'Term us'd by hunters, to signify the blood shed by a deer at its fall, with which
it is still a custom to mark those who come in at the death.' — ^This explanation has
been accepted, and repeated, by subsequent editors; I have been unable, however,
to verify this use of the word by any other example. Turbervile, Markham, and the
Duke of York in their detailed and explicit directions for the hunting of the Hart
do not give the smearing of the hunters with blood, as one of the proper ceremonials
connected therewith; nor does the word 'lethe' appear in their Glossaries of hunting
terms. — W. A. Baillie-Grohman, the able co-editor of the modem reissue of the
Duke of York's book. The Master of Game, is my authority that 'the word "lethe"
is not in use, nor does it appear in any of the old accounts of deer-hunting.' — In a
sketch by John Leech {Punch; Almanac, 1861), Mr Briggs, having killed his first
stag on the Scottish moors, is shown with the chief huntsman smearing the face
of the successful hunter with the blood of the deer as a sign that he has won the
'Freedom of the Forest.' From this we may infer that this signing of the hunter
was, at that time, a local custom; how much older it may be I am unable to say. —
Steevens, in support of his statement that 'lethe' is used by the old translators of
'novels ' for death, quotes: 'The proudest nation that great Asia nurst Is now extinct
in lethe.' — Hejrwood; Iron Age, Pt ii. (ed. Pearson, vol. iii, p. 394); but, as Craik
shows, in this line by Heywood, 'lethe' may plainly be taken in its proper and
156 THE TRACED IE OF [act hi, sc L
O World ! thou waft the Forreft to this Hart, 231
And this indeed, O World, the Hart of thee.
How like a Deere, ftroken by many Princes,
Doft thou heere lye ?
CaJJi. Mark Antony. 235
AnU Pardon me Caius CaJJius:
The Enemies of Ca/ar (hall fay this : 237
331-234. In margin Pope, Han. Cam.+. ftricken Ff et cet.
232. Hart] heart Theob. et seq. 235. Antony] Antony — Rowe et
233. ftroken] strooken Cap. strucken seq. (subs.)
Var. '78, *8s, Ran. Dyce, Craik, Sta.
usual sense of forgetfulnesSj obtivion. * No other example/ he adds, ' is produced by
the Commentators. Shakespeare, too, repeatedly uses " lethe," and nowhere,
unless it be in the present passage, in any other than its proper sense. If, however,
'Methe" and lethum or letum, — which may, or may not, be connected, — were really
sometimes confounded by the popular writers of the early part of the seventeenth
century, they are kept in countenance by the commentators of the eighteenth.' —
Both the Rev. John Hxtnter and Wright suggest that ' lethe' may be here used
in a derivative sense from the Latin word lethum, meaning deaih or destruction, —
R. G. White declares that, in spite of Steevens's assertion that ' lethe' is used for
death and that Theobald and Collier's MS thus read, he b reluctant to abandon
the apprehension that Methe' here means 'the stream which bears thee to oblivion.'
— Deuus says: * Since Shakespeare has shown in other passages that he imderstood
the word "lethe" to be the name of a river of the infernal regions, «. e., of death;
so here, by a transferred application, the word is used for the blood, the stream c^
death.' — If any explicit explanation of the use of the word be needed, do we not at
once imderstand it to be a poetic name for life-blood? The foregoing note, by Delius,
is quite sufficient. As one of the other infernal rivers was Cocytus, a river of blood,
Shakespeare may have here confused it with Lethe, which caused oblivion. — Ed.
231, 232. O World . . . Hart of thee] Coleridge (p. 134): I doubt the
genuineness of these two lines; not because they are vile, but, first, on account of
the rh3rthm, which is not Shakespearean, but just the very tune of some old play,
from which the actor might have interpolated them; and secondly, because they
interrupt not only the sense and connection, but likewise the flow both of the
passion and (what is with me still more decisive) of the Shakespearean link of
association. As with many another parenthesis or gloss slipt into the text, we
have only to read the passage without it to see that it never was in it. I venture to
say there is no instance in Shakespeare fairly like this. Conceits he has, but they
not only rise out of some word in the line before, but also lead to the thought in the
line following. Here the conceit is a mere alien: Antony forgets an image when
he is even touching it, and then recollects it when the thought last in his mind must
have led him away from it.
237. shall say this] Craik (p. 295): By 'shall' Shakespeare here meant no
more than would now be expressed by wiU; yet to us the 'shall' elevates the ex-
pression beyond its original import, giving it something, if not quite of a prophetic,
yet of an impassioned, rapt, and, as it were, vision-seeing character. [See also 1.
247, below.]
ACT III, sc. i.] IVLIVS CjESAR 1 57
Then, in a Friend, it is cold Modeftie. 238
Caffi. I blame you not for praifmg Cafar fo.
But what compafl meane you to haue with vs ? 240
Will you be prick'd in number of our Friends,
Or (hall we on, and not depend on you?
Ant. Therefore I tooke your hands ,but was indeed
Sway'd from the point, by looking downe on Cafar.
Friends am I with you all, and loue you all, 245
Vpon this hope, that you (hall giue me Reafons,
Why, and wherein, Cafar was dangerous.
Bru, Or elfe were this a fauage Speftacle :
Our Reafons are fo full of good regard.
That were you Antony ^ the Sonn6 of Cafar^ 250
You (hould be fatisfied.
Ant. That^s all I feeke.
And am moreouer futor, that I may
Produce his body to the Market-place,
And in the Pulpit as becomes a Friend, 255
Speake in the Order of his Funerall.
248. were this] this were Pope ii, 250. you AntonyJ you Antony FjF4,
Theob. Warb. Johns. Var. '73. Rowe,Pope. yotf,i4n/imy,Theob.etseq.
238. cold Modestie] That is, moderation. Compare Bassanio's admonition to
Gratiano: 'Pray thee take pain To allay with some cold drops of modesty Thy
skipping spirit.' — Mer. of Ven., II, ii, 194. — Ed.
241. prick'd] That is, nominated ^ as by a puncture opposite the name. Com-
pare rV, i, where this word is used three times in this sense within the first twenty
lines.
245. Friends am I] Compare: 'I would be friends with you and have your
love.' — Mer, of Ven,y I, iii, 139.
249. Reasons . . . good regard] Goll (p. 64): Brutus murders Cssar with
firm faith in his reasons, and their power to convince others as they have convinced
him. He does not even know that his own convictions are drawn from entirely
di£ferent sources than these good, well-considered reasons, neither does he recognise
the scant power of these good reasons to convince others. From his own need of
reason as a support for his action, he concludes that, by giving this same support
to others, he will be able to govern their actions. He does not see that he merely
needed to look into his own soul to imderstand clearly that it is deep emotion
stored through generations, and personal interests, which decide actions, not ' rea-
sonings' which these emotions or interests accidentally create — reasonings gener-
ally of value only to him who originates them.
256. Order] John Hunter: * Order* here meajos formal arrangement or cere-
mony ^ and has reference to the liturgical word for a prescribed religious service, as
'The Order for the Burial of the Dead.*
158
THE TRACED IE OF
[act III, sc. L
Bru. You (hall Marke Antony.
CaJJi. Brutus j2l. word with you :
You know not what you do ; Do not confent
That Antony fpeake in his Funerall :
Know you how much the people may be mouM
By that which he will vtter.
Bru. By your pardon :
I will my felfe into the Pulpit firft,
And (hew the reafon of our Ccefars death.
What Antony (hall fpeake, I will proteft
He fpeakes by leaue,and by permifsion :
And that we are contented Ccefar (hall
Haue all true Rites, and lawfuU "Ceremonies,
It (hall aduantage more, then do vs wrong.
CaJJi. I know not what may fall, I like it not.
Bru. Mark Antony^ heere take you Cafars body :
257
260
265
270
272
258. wiih you] Om. Steev. conj.
259. [Aside. Rowe et seq.
260. fpeake] shall speak Han.
262. vUer.] uUer, F4.
263-271. Marked as aside Cap.
269. true] due Pope,-f , Walker (Crit.
ii> 239) » Coll. iii. (MS), Huds. iii.
272. you] your Pope.
259. Do not consent] F. Gentleman: The real patriot is finely distin-
guished here from the pretended one; Brutus, conscious that he struck for
liberty alone, suspects no ill consequences from Antony's having the rostrum;
while Cassius, who acted from malevolence and ambition, justly forebodes the
real event.
264. I will . . . the Pulpit first] Hudson: Note the high self-appreciation of
Brutus here in supposing that if he can have a chance to speak to the people, and
to air his wisdom before them, all will go right. Here, again, he overbears Cassius,
who now begins to find the effects of having stuffed him with flatteries, and served
as a mirror to *tum his hidden worthiness into his eye.' — MacCallum (p. 251):
The infatuation is almost incredible, and it springs not only from generosity to
Antony and Caesar, but from the fatal assumption of the justice of his cause, and
the Quixotic exaltation the assumption brings with it. For were it ever so just,
could this be brought home to the Roman populace? Brutus, who is never an ex-
pert in facts, has been misled by the inventions of Cassius, which he mistakes for
the general voice of Rome. Here, too, Shakespeare departs from his authority to
make the duping of his hero more conspicuous. For in Plutarch these commimica-
tions are the quite spontaneous incitements of the public, not the contrivances of
one dissatisfied aristocrat.
269. Ceremonies] For examples where 'ceremony* is pronoimced as a trisyl-
lable, falsely, I think, see Walker, Cril., ii, 73; compare also H, i, 221.
270. aduantage] Wright compares: 'What advantageth it me if the dead rise
not?* — I Corinthians y xv, 32. — Murray {N. E. D.y s. v. Advantage, verb, 4. To be of
benefit or profit) quotes this same passage from St Paul's Epistle,
ACT III, SC. i.]
IVLIVS C^SAR
159
You (hall not in your Funerall fpeech blame vs, 273
But fpeake all good you can deuife of CaJaVy
And fay you doo't by our permifsion .• 275
Elfe fhall you not haue any hand at all
About his Funerall. And you fliall fpeake
In the fame Pulpit whereto I am going,
After my fpeech is ended.
Ant. Be it fo : 280
I do defire no more.
Bru. Prepare the body then^and follow vs. Exeunt.
Manet Antony.
O pardon me, thou bleeding peece of Earth :
That I am meeke and gentle with thefe Butchers. 285
Thou art the Ruines of the Nobleft man
That euer liued in the Tide of Times.
Woe to the hand that (hed this coftly Blood.
Ouer thy wounds, now do I Prophefie,
(Which like dumbe mouthes do ope their Ruby lips, 290
To begge the voyce and vtterance of my Tongue)
A curie (hall light vpon the limbes of men ; 292
276. BX]t.,Moi\ Else you shall not
Rowe ii. You shall not else Pope, Han.
382. Exeunt.] Ff. Exeunt Con-
^irators. Theob.-f, Van*. Ran. Ex-
eunt all but Antony. Cap. et cet.
283. Scene rv. Pope.
284. bleeding...Earth] piece of bleeding
earth Var. '03, '13, *2i, Sing. i.
288. hand\ hands Wh. i, Huds. iil.
292. limbes of\ kind of Han. line of
Warb. times <?/ Walker (Crit. iii, 247).
loins of Coll. ii. (MS), Craik. lives of
Hal. tombs of Sta. conj. minds of
Jervis, Dyce ii, iii, Cartwright conj.
souls of Huds. iii. (conj.). heads of
John Hunter conj. Herr, Kinnear.
bonds of Joicey (N. & Q., 25 July,
1891).
273. blame vs] Craik (p. 297) points out that both 'sense and prosody' make
the emphasis here fall on *us.*
282. Exeunt] T. R. Gould (p. 152): After Csesar had been encompassed and
stabbed by the conspirators, and lay extended on the floor of the Senate-house,
J. B. Booth [as Cassius] strode right across the dead body, and out of the scene, in
silent and disdainful triumph.
292. limbes of men] Johnson: I think it should be * lives of men'; unless we
read lymms, that is, these bloodhounds of men. The imcommonness of the word
lymm easily made the change. — Capell (i, 297): The Poet's idea and that he
meant to excite by the word * limbs,* is — that of woimds and dismemberings, con-
sequences of the 'curse' here intended, the ciu'se of war; prophetically denounc'd
by the speaker, not on man universally, as the corrections import, but on some
men, members of Caesar's empire, agreeable to what immediately follows concern-
ing * Italy.* Both the readings [of Hanmer and Warburton, see Text. Notes] create
a great anticlimax; and in one of them the alliterative beauty is lost that occa-
l6o THE TRACED IE OF [act hi, sc. i.
Domefticke Fury, and fierce Ciuill|ftrife, 293
Shall cumber all the parts of Italy :
Blood and deflruflion (hall be fo in vfe, 295
And dreadfull Obiefts fo familiar,
That Mothers (hall but fmile,when they behold
Their Infants quartered with the hands of Warre:
All pitty choak'd with cuftome of fell deeds,
And Ccefars Spirit ranging for Reuenge, 300
With Ate by his fide, come hot from Hell,
298. u^A] 63^ Pope, Theob. Han. Warb. 301. Ate] Atd Theob. et seq.
sion'd 'limbs.' — Steevens: Antony means that a future curse shall commence in
distempers seizing on the limbs of men, and be succeeded by commotion, cruelty,
and desolation over Italy. So in Phaer's y£neid: 'The skies corrupted were,
that trees and come destroyed to nought. And limmes of men consuming rottes.' —
Bk, iii. Sig. E. 1. ed. 1596. — ^M alone: By men Antony means not mankind in
general, but those Ramans whose attachment to the cause of the con^irators, or
wish to revenge Caesar's death, would expose them to wounds in the civil wan
which Antony supposes that event would give rise to. The generality of the curse
here predicted is limited by the subsequent words, 'the parts of Italy' and 'in
these confines.' — Collier, in his second edition, adopts the emendation of the
MS, * loins of men,' and says: 'That is, the generations of mankind. There can
be no doubt among impartial readers that we have here recovered the true word
of the poet.' — Craik pronounces this as 'one of the most satisfactory and valuable
emendations which have ever been made.' — Dyce, on the other hand, declares it
to be 'vile.' — R. G. White: I am almost sure that Shakespeare wrote thefonnes of
men. — Wright: Is any change necessary? Lear's curses were certainly levelled
at his daughter's limbs. Compare the curse which Timon invokes upon Athens:
'Thou cold sciatica Cripple our senators, that their limbs may halt As lamely as
their manners!' — Timon, IV, i, 21. — From bodily plagues Antony rises to the
quarrels of families, and reaches a climax in fierce civil strife. — [Are Lear's curses
levelled at his daughter's limbs? He exclaims: ' Strike her young bones You taking
airs with lameness.' — II, iv, 165; but, as Wright himself explains in the Clarendon
Edition f this refers to her 'unborn infant.' — Ed.] — Perring (p. 366) compares
Rich. Ill: II, i, where Lady Anne invokes a curse on the hands, the heart, and the
blood of the murderer of her husband and of her husband's father. — F. Adams
(N. &r Q., 23 July, 1892, p. 63) : What is implied by the curse [on the limbs] may be
their perversion into instruments of 'Domestic fury and fierce civil strife.' Limbs
working such internecine carnage as Antony pictures may not inaptly be deemed
curse-smitten. The fine figure of 'infants quartered with the hands of war' seems
to point to the interpretation I suggest.
299. choak'd] Wright: That is, being choked. — Mark Hunter: Perhaps it is
better to imderstand shall be, in which case this line is connected with what follows,
rather than what goes before, and the comma after 'deeds' should exchange places
with the colon after ' Warre.'
301. Ate] Craik (p. 299): This Homeric goddess had taken a strong hold of
Shakespeare's imagination. In Much Ado, Benedick, inveighing to Don Pedro
against Beatrice, says: 'You shall find her the infernal Ate in good apparel.' — ^11, i.
ACT III, sc. i.] IVLIVS C^SAR l6l
Shall in thefe Confines, with a Monarkes voyce, 302
Cry hauocke^ and let flip the Dogges of Warre,
363. In King John, Elinor is described by Chatellon as 'an Ate stirring him [John]
to blood and strife.' — ^11, i, 63. And in Lovers Labourist Biron, at the representation
of the Nine Worthies, calls out, 'More Ates, more Ates; stir them on! stir them onl'
— V, ii, 694. Where did Shakespeare get acquainted with this divinity, whose name
does not occur, I believe, even in any Latin author? — [The following passage from
Chapman's Homer, Iliad, zix, 91-94, may perhaps have furnished Shakespeare
with his knowledge of * Ate': * And more; all things are done by strife; that ancient
seed of Jove, Ate, that hurts all, perfects all, her feet are soft, and move Not on the
earth, they bear her still aloft men's heads, and there She harmful hurts them.'—
Ed. Hooper, ii, 159. — Ed.]
302, 303. with a Monarkes voyce, Cry hauocke] Johnson: Sir William
Blackstone has informed me that, in the military operations of old times, havock
was the word by which declaration was made that no quarter should be given. In
a tract entitied The Office of the Constable and Mareschall in the Tyme of Went,
contained in The Black Book of Admiralty, there is the following chapter: 'The peyn
of hym that crieth havock and of them that foUoweth hjrm, etit. V. Item: Si quis
inventus fuerit qui clamorem inceperit qui vocatur Hawk. Also that no man be so
hardy to crye Havok upon peyne that he that is begynner shall be deede therefore:
& the remanent that doo the same or folow, shall lose their horse & hameis: and
the persones of such as foloweth and escrien shall be under arrest of the Conestable
and Mareschall warde unto tyme that they have made fyn; and foimd suretie no
morr toofifende; and his body in prison at the Kyng will — ' — ^M. H. (Gentlemen*s
Maga., April, 1790; p. 307) opines that 'For havock should be substituted Ha!
90US, which Shakespeare collected from Manwood's Forest Laws, published in the
reign of James I, where it is ordained that "none shall let slip his greyhound till
the huntsman has cried, 'Ha/ vous.'"* — [It is, I think, evident, though Johnson
does not call attention to it, that to 'cry Havoc' was the prerogative of the
Monarch; which explains Antonjr's particular use of the words 'with a monarch's
voice.' — Malone cites Coriol., IH, i, 275: 'Do not cry havoc where you should but
hunt With modest warrant.' — 'A passage,' says Wright, 'which well illustrates the
present line.' — ^Murray {N. E. D., s, v. Havoc, i.) gives as a partial explanation
of the origin that it is from the 'Anglo French havok, altered in some way from
Old French havot (c. 11 50 in Du Cange havo), used in same sense, especially in
phrase crier havot. Probably of Teutonic origin.' A careful search of the five
hundred pages of Manwood's Treatise of the Lowes of the Forrest, ed. 1615, and
also of that of 1598, has failed in locating the phrase to which M. H. refers. — Ed.]
303. let slip] Malone: To 'let slip a dog' at a deer was the technical phrase of
Shakespeare's time.
303. the Dogges of Warre] Steele (Taller, No. 137, February 23, 1709)
compares the departure of the Duke of Marlborough from Harwich to that
of Henry V. from Southampton and quotes: 'Then should the warlike Harry,
like himself. Assume the part of Mars, and at his heels, Leashed in like hoimds,
should famine, sword, and fire Crouch for employments.' — Hen. V: Prologue, 1. 5.
'Shakespeare,' says Steele, 'understood the force of this particular allegory so well
that he had it in his thoughts in another passage, which is altogether as daring and
sublime as the former.' He then quotes the present line. Toilet, who contributed
IX
l62 THE TRAGEDIE OF [act hi, sc. i.
That this foule deede^ (hall fmell aboue the earth
With Carrion men, groaning for Buriall. 305
Enter 0£laui<fs Seruant.
You ferue OSlauius Ccefary do you not ?
Ser. I do Marke Antony^
Ant. CcBsar did write for him to come to Rome.
Ser. He did receiue his Letters, and is comming, 310
And bid me fay to you by word of mouth
O Ccefar!
Ant. Thy heart is bigge : get thee a-part and weepe :
Pafsion I fee is catching from mine eyes.
Seeing thofe Beads of forrow (land in thine, 315
Began to water. Is thy Mafter comming ?
Ser. He lies to night within feuen Leagues of Rome.
Ant. Poll backe with fpeede.
And tell him what hath chanc'd :
Heere is a mourning Rome, a dangerous Rome, 320
306. Octauio's] Ff. Octaviiis's 314. catching from] catching, for Ff,
Rowc,+ ( — Var. '73). A Capell et Rowe et seq.
seq. 315. Beads] beds Pope.
309. for] to Cap. 316. Began] Begin Han. Jen. Dyce ii,
to Rome] Rome F». iii, Coll. iii, Huds. iii.
311. [Seeing the body. Rowe,+. 319, 320. One line Rowe et seq.
sundry notes and observations to Johnson and Steevens's edition of 1773, may
possibly not have read this passage in the Taller, but he notes the similarity in
thought and remarks that in this passage Shakespeare doubtless intended that
Famine, Sword, and Fire were to be typified as the *Dogs of War.' — ^Malone
quotes Toilet and cites only the number of the Taller. — Craik (p. 301): To this
[passage from Henry V.] we might add what Talbot says to the Captains of the
French forces before Bordeaux: 'You tempt the fury of my three attendants.
Lean Famine, quartering Steel, and climbing Fire.' — i Henry VI: IV, ii, 10. In
illustration of the former passage Steevens quotes what Holinshed makes Henry V.
to have said to the people of Rouen: 'He declared that the Goddess of Battle,
called Bellona, had three handmaidens ever of necessity attending upon her, as
Blood, Fire, and Famine.' And at that from i Henry VL Malone gives the fol-
lowing from Hall's Chronicle: 'The Goddess of War, called Bellona, . . . hath
these three hand-maids ever of necessity attending on her: Blood, Fire, and Famine.*
... It might, perhaps, be questioned whether the words ' And let slip the dogs of
war' ought not to be considered as also part of the exclamation of Caesar's spirit.
305. groaning for Buriall] Wright: It is not an uncommon thing in some
parts of the country still to say of a corpse which begins to show signs of decom-
position that 'it calls out loudly for the earth.'
306. Octauio's] For this form compare V, ii, 6 and I, ii, 8.
314. Passion ... is catching] Douce (p. 366) compares: 'Mine eyes even
sociable to the shew of thine Fall fellowly drops.' — Temp., V, i, ^3.
ACT III, sc. ii.]
IVLIVS CjESAR
No Rome of fafety for Q^rndus yet,
Hie hence, and tell him fo. Yet ftay a-while,
Thou (halt not backe, till I haue borne this courfe
Into the Market place : There (hall I try
In my Oration, how the People take
The cruell iffue of thefe bloody men.
According to the which, thou (halt difcourfe
To yong OSlauius^ of the ftate of things*
Lend me your hand.
163
321
32s
Exeunt 329
\Scene II.\
Enter Brutus and goes into the Pulpit ^and Cafft" i
usy with the Plebeians.
He. We will be fatisfied : let vs be fatisfied.
Bru. Then follow me, and giue me Audience friends.
Cajftus go you into the other ftreete, 5
322. a-i&M«]Fa. ai&Jbi^ F4, Ent, Sta.
Dyce, Cam.+. a whiU Fj et cet.
323. home[ bom ¥^¥4.
courfe] Coarje ¥^¥4, Rowc.
corse Pope et seq.
328. yong] young Ff.
329. Exeunt] Exeunt with Caesar's
body. Rowe et seq. (subs.)
Scene continued. Ff. Scene v.
Popc,+. Scene m. Jen. Scene n.
Rowe et cet.
The Forum.
I, 2. Enter...Plebeians.] Enter a
Throng of Citizens, tumultuoiisly ; Bru-
tus and Cassius. Cap. Enter Brutus
and Cassius with Plebeians. Var. '73,
'78. Enter Brutus and Cassius with
throng of Citizens. Mai. et seq.
I. goes...Pulpit] mounts the Rostra
Pope,-h.
3. Pie.] Cit. Capell et seq. (through-
out).
321. Rome of safety] For this play on the word in accordance with the similarity
in pronunciation between Room and 'Rome/ see I, ii, 172.
328. the state of things] ^pian (jCiv, Wars; Bk, ii, ch. xvii, {{ 120 et seq) gives
a drqumstantial account of the incidents following Caesar's .murder. It is, as his
translator Horace White notes, 'a very strong picture of the corruption of Roman
Society at that time, and of its incapacity for self-government.' — ^Ed.
2. the Plebeians] Staffer (p. 313): Shakespeare has portrayed his Romans
truthfully, in so far as they are Englishmen, — so far goes his historical escactitude,
and no further. As to the incongruous details with which these plays abound, I
attach no importance to them whatever, but the case is very different when it
comes to confusing, as he has done, the early days of the Republic with those of
the Empire, and no greater mistake could be made than to confound the proud,
brave Plebeians of Rome, at the beginning of her greatness, with the degraded
populace of the Rome of later times.
l64 THE TRAGEDIE OF [act hi. sc. il
And part the Numbers : 6
Thofe that will heare me fpeake, let 'em (lay heere;
Thofe that will follow Cajftus^^o with him,
And publike Reafons (hall be rendred
Of Cafars death. 10
I. Pie. I will heare Brutus fpeake.
2. I will heare CaJJiuSy and compare their Reafons,
When feuerally we heare them rendred.
3. The Noble Brutus is afcended: Silence.
Bru. Be patient till the laft. 15
7. m£i my Rowe ii. Brutus goes into the Rostrum. Cap. et
9. [Exit Cassias with some of the seq.
Plebeians. Rowe (Exeunt... Rowe ii,+). 9, 13. rendredl Ff, Rowe. rendeM
Exit Cassius with some of the Citizens. Dyce. rendered Pope et cet.
13. feuerally] sev'rally Popc,+.
9. rendred] Craik (p. 303) : It may be observed that in the Folio, where the
elision of the e in the verbal affix -ed is usually marked, the spdling is here 'rendred';
but this may leave it still doubtful whether the word was intended to be rqiresented
as of two or of three syllables. It is the same in 1. 13.
II. I. Pie.] F. C. KoLBE {Irish Monthly y Sep., 1896; p. 512): Four citizens are
taken as the chief spokesmen, — they are the typical moving spirits of a crowd;
you find their counterparts in every market-place. Each speaks about a dozen
times, and by putting all their speeches together and watching their sequence, a
tolerably complete induction can be made. No. i b a practical man and an origin-
ator: all the practical suggestions originate from him, and he sticks to his own
plans, whatever the others might say; it is he who wants to start a discussion of
his own when Antony is going to speak; he assumes the leadership; he never ad-
dresses Brutus or Antony as the others do, but speaks always directly to the mob.
No. 2 listens and reflects and is sjrmpathetic; he does not make suggestions himself,
but is very quick to pick up, and carry on, and improve upon suggestions when
made by others; he is a useful echo; we may note it is he who is most moved by an
appeal to the pocket. Nos. i and 2 work together like a voice and a speaking
trumpet; or, to borrow a very different metaphor from history. No. i lays the egg
and No. 2 hatches it. No. 3 is the type of the personal partisan; he is good-natured
and responsive, one of those men who answer when a question is put to nobody in
particular; he has a powerful bump of admiration; ideas are nothing to him, persons,
everything; it is men like him that make tyranny possible; with him it is 'noble
Brutus,* and 'noble Antony,* and 'O royal Cssar*; it is he who says of Brutus:
'Let him be Caesar'; and his fears are, like his hopes, on men, 'I fear there ¥nU a
worse come in his place.' No. 4, too, has a marked personality; he is impatient, hot
tempered, talkative, and suspicious; he also has a strong bump, that of inquisitive-
ness; he represents the well-known prying tendency of a mob. Such are the men
Mark Antony sets himself to win. He finds them shouting for Brutus and exe-
crating Caesar. He begins by assuming their attitude, — ' For Brutus's sake I am
beholding to you' and * I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him.' His tactics are to
overdo their enthusiasm, and thus make them come to question it themselves.
ACT III. sc. ii.] IVLIVS CjESAR 165
Romans^ Countrey-men, and Louers^ heare mee for my 16
x6. Louers] Friends Pope, Han.
16. Romans, Countrey-men, and Louen] Wasbuston: There is nowhere,
in all Shakespeare's works, a stronger proof of his not being a scholar than this;
or of his not knowing of the genius of learned antiquity. This speech of Brutus is
wrote in imitation of his famed laconic brevity, and is very fine in its kind; but no
more like that brevity than his times were like Brutus's. The ancient laconic
brevity was simple, natural, and easy; this b quaint, artificial, jingling, and abound-
ing with forced antitheses. In a word, a brevity that, for its false eloquence, would
have suited any character, and for its good sense would have become the greatest
of our author's time; but yet, in a style of declaiming, that sits as ill upon Brutus as
our author's trousers or collar-band would have done. — ^M. Mason: I cannot
agree with Warburton that this speech is very fine in its kind. I can see no degree
of excellence in it, but think it a very paltry speech for so great a man on so great
an occasion. Yet Shakespeare has judidoiisly adopted in it the style of Brutus-^
the pointed sentences and labored brevity which he is said to have afifected. —
Cafell (i, 107): Every true admirer of Shakespeare has good cause for wishing
that there had been some authority to question this speech's genuineness, but
editors afiford it not; and it has the sanction besides of many likenesses to other
parts of his work, and of this in particular; in which we have already seen too great
a number of things hardly defensible. . . . The truth is, his genius sank in some
measure beneath the grandeur of Roman character, at least in this play, which we
may judge from thence to have been the first he attempted. The oratory of this
speech has no resemblance whatever to that which Brutus afifected, which was a
nervous and simple laconism. — Steevens: This artificial jingle of short sentences
was afifected by most of the orators in Shakespeare's time, whether in the pulpit
or at the bar. The speech of Brutus may, therefore, be regarded rather as an imita-
tion of the false eloquence then in vogue than as a ^)ecimen of laconic brevity. —
Singer: It b worthy of remark that Voltaire, who has stolen and transplanted into
hb tragedy of Brutus the fine speech of Antony to the people, and has unblushingly
received the highest compliments upon it from the king of Prussia and others,
afifects to extol this address by Brutus, while he is most disingenuously silent on
that of Antony, which he chose to purloin. — Verplanck: Tacitus, De Oratoribus,
says that Brutus's style was censured as *otiosum d disjundutn,* [ch. xviii.]. The
broken up style, without oratorical continuity, b precisely that assumed by the
dramatbt. — Knight (Studies ^ p. 417): The speech of Antony may not be equal to
Demosthenes, and the speech of Brutus may not be a very paltry speech. But
each being written by the same man, we have a right to accept each with a con-
viction that the writer was capable of making a good speech for Brutus as well as
for Antony; and that if he did not do so, he had very abundant reasons. It requires
no great refinement to understand hb reasons. The excitement of the great asser-
tion of republican principles . . . had been succeeded by a calm. . . . Brutus will
present calmly and dispassionately the * reasons of our Caesar's death.' He expects
that Antony will speak with equal moderation. — ^Lloyd (Cril. Essayy ap. Sing, ii,
P* S^S)' Shakespeare found the model of the curt, sententious oratory of Brutus in
Plutarch's desciption of hb written style: 'They do note that in some of his
epbtles he counterfeited that brief compendious manner of the Lacedaemonians.
As, when the war was begun, he wrote to the Pergamenians in this sort: ''I
V
l66 THE TR AGED IE OF [act hi. sa u.
[i6. Romans, Countrey-men, and Louers, heare mee for my cause]
understand you have given Dolabella money: if you have done it willingly, you
confess you have offended me; if against yoiu: wills, show it by giving me will-
ingly." These were Bnitus's manner of letters, which were honored for their brief-
ness.' [{2; ed. Skeat, p. 107.] — ^Hudson (lifis, etc., ii, 234): The speech in question
is far enough indeed from being a model of style either for oratory or anything
else; but it is finely characteristic; while its studied prinmess and epigianmiatic
finish contrast most unfavourably with the frank-hearted yet artful eloquence of
Antony. — Dowden (p. 302, foot-note) compares, for the style of this speech, that
of Brutus to Cassius: 'That you do love me, I am nothing jealous: What you would
work me to, I have some aim,' etc. — ^I, ii, 178 et seq., and also the last lines of the
same speech. — ^Wsight: The speech of Brutus is that of one who is convinced of the
goodness of his cause, but at the same time is sensible of the difficulty of convincing
others. It is, therefore, laboured, formal, and guarded. He does not attempt to
move the feelings of his hearers to S3rmpathy with him, but is argumentative and
logical throughout. To stir emotion is as foreign to his purpose as to show emotion
is contrary to his nature. — K, G. Moulton (Sh. as Dram, Art,, p. 175): It is a
master-stroke of Shakespeare that he utilises the euphiustic prose of his age to
express impassiveness in Brutus's oration. . . . The mob are swaying with fluctuat-
ing passions; . . . Brutus, called on to speak for the conspirators, still mftinfAinf
the artificial style of carefully balanced sentences, such as emotionless rhetoric
builds up in the quiet of a study. — ^Mark Huntek {Inirod., cbdii.) : It is charac-
teristic of Brutus, who is ready enough to indulge in persuasive eloquence and
impassioned sentiment when such are wholly superfluous, that when a passion-
ate appeal to the emotions of his hearers is most required, he should disdain the
emotional note, and clothe his words in the coldest rhetoric. It is no less character-
istic that the arguments, ostensibly addressed to the intellect, the 'reasons' of
whose logical cogency he is so confident, should prove on examination to be no
reasons at all, but a mere assertion backed up by a reference to the absolute trust-
worthiness of the speaker — ^himself. — Rolfe (Pod-Lore, vol. vi. No. i, p. 10): It is
to be noted that the speech of Brutus is in ^ose, — the only instance of the kind in
all Shakespeare. It is the poet's way of emphasizing the mistake that Brutus makes.
Confident in the purity of his motives, in his love of liberty and of Rome, he assumes
that a plain straightforward statement of the ' reasons ' that have influenced him and
his confederates must conunend itself to his fellow-citizens, and that no arts or
rhetoric are needed to enforce and impress it. — Rossi (p. 195) also calls attention
to this prose, and considers that this form was here used in order that the whole
speech might thus be kept within the bounds of truth and simplicity; Brutus is not
looking for any reward for himself, but calmly awaits the judgement of the People.
— [Cicero, writing to Atticus on the 18*** of May, B. C. 44, from Arpinum, says:
'Our friend Brutus has sent me his speech delivered at the public meeting on the
Capitol, and has asked me to correct it before publication without any regard to
his feelings. It is, I may add, a speech of the utmost finish as far as the sentiments
are concerned, and in point of language not to be surpassed. Nevertheless, if I
had had to handle that cause, I should have written with more fire. But the theme
and the character of the writer being as you see, I was unable to correct it. For,
granting the kind of orator that our Brutus aims at being, and the opinion he enter-
tains of the best style of speech, he has secured an imqualified success. Nothing
could be more finished. But I have always aimed, rightly or wrongly, at some-
ACT III. sc. ii.] IVLIVS CjESAR 167
caufe^ and be filent, that you may heare. Beleeue me for 17
mine Honor, and haue refpeft to mine Honor, that you
may beleeue. Cenfure me in your Wifedom, and awake
your Senfes, that you may the better ludge. If there bee 20
any in this Affembly, any deere Friend of CcefarSy to him
I fay, that Brutus loue to Cafar^ was no leffe then his. If
then, that Friend demand, why Brutus rofe againft CiB-
fary this is my anfwer : Not that I louM Ccsfar leffe, but
that I louM Rome more. Had you rather CtB/ar were li- 25
uing, and dye all 51aues ; then that Ccefar were dead, to
liue all Free-men ? As Ccefar lou'd mee, I weepe for him ; 27
30-35. Mnemonic Pope, Warb. 22. Brutus] Brutus's Pope,+-
21. to Mm] Popc,+j Cap. io them 27. Free-mew] /ree men Johns, et
Ff et cet. seq.
thing different. However, read the speech yourself, unless indeed you have read
it already, and tell me what you think of it. However, I fear that, misled by your
fumame, you wiU be somewhat hyper-Attic in your criticism. But if you will
only recall Demosthenes's thunder, you will understand that the most vigorous
denunciation is consistent with the purest Attic style. But of this when we meet.' —
(Ad AU.f A XV, I b; ed. Shuckburgh, iv, 50). This has, of course, no bearing on
the present speech by Shakespeare; but is interesting solely as a contemporary criti-
cism on the actual speech of Brutus. — Ed.]
19. Censure] That is, pass judgment, estimate,
21. Caesars] John Hunteb: This is a possessive, used objectively, and com-
prdiending both possessor and thing possessed; it means what pertained to dtsar.
The noun friends might, indeed, be supplied to complete the construction.
24, 25. Cafsar lesse, but . . . Rome more] Wright: This feature of Brutus's
character . . . may have been suggested by Plutarch. 'But Brutus, preferring the
respect of his country and commonwealth before private affection, and persuading
himself that Pompey had juster cause to enter into arms than Caesar, he then took
part with Pompey.' — Life of Brutus, ed. Skeat, p. 108. — [P. Lentulus Spinther says,
in a letter to Cicero, 29*^ May, B. C. 43 (Shuckburgh, iv, 275) : * " loving my country
more" I was the first to proclaim war against all my friends.' An expression
curiously similar to the present passage. In a foot-note the translator and editor
gives the original Greek: i^iXorim^ dXXa irarplS^ ifii^ fia?.Aov <piXuv; and says that
this line is 'said to be from the Erechtheus of Euripides.' — Ed.]
26, 27. dye all Slaues . . . liue all Free-men] The speech of Brutus to
the Plebeians, as given by Appian (Bk, H, ch. xix, § 137), contains the following:
'If he [Caesar] had required us to swear not only to condone the past, but to be
willing slaves for the future, what would our present accusers have done? For
my part I think that, being Romans, they would have chosen to die many times
rather than take an oath of voluntary servitude.' The similarity in thought is,
I think, but a coincidence; that Shakespeare consulted a translation of Appian is,
of course, possible, but Plutarch has apparently furnished him with all the material
necessary. — Ed.
27. Free-men] Craik (p. 305) maintains that this should be printed as one
l68 THE TRAGEDIE OF [act hi, sc iL
as he was Fortunate, I rdoyce at it ; as he was Valiant, I 28
honour him : But, as he was Ambitious, I flew him.There
is Teares, for his Loue : loy, for his Fortune : Honor, for 30
his Valour : and Death, for his Ambition. Who is heere
fo bafe, that would be a Bondman ? If any,fpeak, for him
haue I offended. Who is heere fo rude, that would not
be a Roman? If any,fpeak, for him haue I offended. Who
is heere fo vile that will not loue his Countrey? If any, 3$
fpeake, for him haue I offended. I paufe for a Reply.
All. None Btutus^ none.
Brutus. Then none haue I offended. I haue done no
more to CtBfar fkitn you fliall do to Brutus. The Quefli-
on of his death, is inroU'd in the CapitoU : his Glory not 40
29, 30. There «] There are Popc,+, 37- All] Ff, Rowc,+, Coll. Hal. Wh.
Varr. Ran. Cam.+, Huds. Cit. Capell et cet.
31-36. As six lines, verse Johns. [Several speaking at once. MaL
31. Who is] Who's Pope,H- (— Var. Knt, Craik.
'73). Btutus] F,.
36. Reply.] Reply— Rowe,+. 39. Jhall] should Mai.
word, freemen, since Shakespeare cannot have intended that prominence should be
given to the word 'men/ 'the notion conveyed by which is equally contained in
"slaves"; for which we might have had bondmen, with no difference 6l effect'
29. as he was Ambitious, I sleW him] Both Brutus and Antony use 'ambi-
tion' and 'ambitious' in the sense of inordinate desire for rank, hottours, or prefer^
ment, as given by Murfay (N, E. D., s.v.i.). In the majority of passages wherein
these words occur in Shakespeare they bear a meaning rather more discreditable
than otherwise. The word ambitio was used in the time of the Republic to character-
ise the canvassing for votes by a candidate in a perfectly legitimate manner; the
word ambilusy on the other hand, implied the use of underhand methods. — Ed.
33. rude] That is, devoid of refinement, uncultured, * Rude ' is here probably used
for its alliteration with * Roman*; just as 'base,' 1. 32, is coupled with 'bondman.' —
Ed.
39, 40. The Question . . . inroU'd in the CapitoU] Hudson: That is, the
reason of his death is made a matter of solemn official record in the books of the
Senate, as showing that the act of killing him was done for public ends, and not
from private hate. — [Shakespeare, perhaps, here refers to the legislative acts of
the Senate called Senatusconsulta, so named because the Consul was said Senatum
consulere. — Smith (Diet, of Greek 6* Roman Antiquities, s, v. Senatusconsultum)
says: 'When a Senatusconsultum was made on the motion of a person, it was said
to be made " in sententiam ejus." If the S. C. was carried, it was written on tablets
and placed in the ^Erarium [the common Treasury of the state]: the S. C. de Bac-
chanalibus provides that it shall be cut on a bronze tablet, but this was for the pur-
pose of its being put up in a public place where it could be read. The S. C. were
originally entrusted to the care of the tribunes and the sediles, but in the time o!
Augustus the quaestors had the care of them. (Dion Cassius, Iv, 36, and the note
of Reimarus.) Under the later emperors the S. C, "quae ad principes pertinebant,"
ACT III, sc. ii.] IVLIVS C£SAR l6g
extenuated, wherein he was worthy; nor his offences en- 41
forced, for which he fuffered death.
Enter Mark Antony y with Ca/ars Body.
Heere comes his Body, moumM by Marke Antony ^ who
though he had no hand in his death, (hall receiue the be- 45
nefit of his dying, a place in the Comonwealth, as which
of you (hall not. With this I depart, that as I flewe my
beft Louer for the good of Rome, I haue the fame Dag-
ger for my felfe, when it (hall pleafe my Country to need
my death. 50
AU. Liue BrutuSy liue, liue.
1. Bring him with Triumph home vnto his houfe.
2. Giue him a Statue with his Anceftors.
3. Let him be Cafar.
4. Cafars better parts, 55
41. nor his] not his F,F4. 51. liuCj Hue,] live! Pope, Han.
42. [Comes down. C^. 52, 53, 54, 55. i., 2., j., 4.] i Pleb.,
43. £nter...Body.] Enter Antony and 2 Pleb., 3 Pleb., 4 Pleb. Rowe,-h
certain of his House, bearing Oesar's (throughout), i. C., 2. C, 3. C, 4. C.
Body. Ca^. Enter Antony and others Capell. i. Cit., 2. Cit., 3. Cit., 4. Cit.
with Caesar's Body. Mai. et seq. Mai. et seq.
47. JhaU noi,\JhaU not? F4 et seq.
were preserved in "libri elephantini." (Vopiscus, Tacitus, c. 8.).' — ^That Shake-
speare evidently knew of such a custom is shown by the present passage; whence
he obtained that information is of small import. — ^Ed.]
41, 42. enforc'd] Wright: That is, urged unduly, exaggerated, 'Extenuate' and
'enforce' are here contrasted, as in: 'know We will extenuate rather than enforce.'
— Ant. &• Cleo., V, ii, 125.
48. Louer] Bradley (N, E, D.,s. v.i.): One who is possessed by sentiments of
affection, or regard towards another; a friend or well-wisher. Now rare. — [The
present line, among numerous other examples, quoted. Compare also 1. 15, supra;
and n, iii, 9, where Artemidorus subscribes himself to Caesar 'Thy Louer.' — Ed.]
48-50. I haue ... to need my death] Snider (ii, 253): One naturally asks
who is to be judge whether his country needs his death — the country or himself?
If the country, then he would be a criminal publicly condenmed, and there would
be no necessity for his dagger. . . . But, if he was to be the judge himself, why
did he commit such villainous acts that, in his own opinion, his country needed
his death? All this was intentional, no doubt, on the part of Shakespeare, for it
comports too well with the contradictory character of Brutus to admit of any
other supposition.
54. Let him be Caesar] Staffer (p. 328): What must have been the bitterness
of mind and spirit experienced by Brutus when, in answer to his proclamation of
liberty from the Forum, he heard the stupid people cry: 'Let him be CaessLrl'
176 THE TRACED IE OF [act hi, sc. u.
Shall be CrownM in Brutus, 56
1. WeeU bring him to his Houfe,
With Showts and Clamors.
Bru. My Countrey-men.
2. Peace, filence, Brutus fpeakes. 60
I. Peace ho.
Bru. Good Countrymen, let me depart alone.
And (for my fake)ftay heere with Antony:
Do grace to Cafars Corpes,and grace his Speech
Tending to Cce/ars Glories,which Marke Antony 65
(By our permiflion) is allowM to make.
I do intreat you, not a man depart,
Saue I alone, till Antony haue fpoke. Exit
I Stay ho, and let vs heare Mark Antony.
3 Let him go vp into the publike Chaire, 70
Wee'l heare him .• Noble Antony go vp.
56. ShaiX 6f] Shall now he Pope, Han. 64. Cor^\ Corps ¥^¥4,
Cap. Steev. Varr. Sing, i, CoU. i, ii, 65. Glories] glory Walker (Crit., i,
Craik, Sta. Wh. i, Hal. Dyce ii, iii, 250), Dyce ii, iii, Huds. iii.
Huds. 68. Scene vi. Pope, Han. Warb.
Brutus.] BrutuSy Live! live! Bru- Johns.
tus, live! Mitford. 70. pMike] pMique F,. pMick F4.
57, 58. One line Cap. et seq.
Had the empire depended only upon the genius of one man, Brutus, in killing
Caesar, might have saved the Republic, but, in point of fact, the Empire was rooted
in the general state of things. It was in not perceiving this that the error of Brutus
lay, and from this also resulted the utter failure of his enterprise. — Verity: No
words could well be more distasteful to Brutus. He has just told the Citizens that
patriotism alone led him to 'rise against Caesar,' and here he is treated as if he were
an ambitious schemer who for his own advantage had struck down a rival. The
Crowd all through ignore principles and care only for persons — ^now Pompey, now
Caesar, now Brutus, now Antony — and their favour is readily transferred from the
philosophic Brutus who does not imderstand them to the practical Antony who does.
56. Shall beCrown'd] Craik (p. 307), referring to the word *mw,* inserted by
Pope for the sake of the metre, is doubtful as to its being the correct word, but is
certain that some addition is necessary, since this line as it now stands is 'not a
possible commencement of a verse.' — Staunton suggests that the line read either
shall all or shall well, etc.
62. let me . . . alone] Verity: Here Brutus makes his third great mistake,
viz., in leaving Antony to say what he likes and have the last word. [The other two
mistakes are, his sparing Antony> at the time of the assassination of Caesar, and
allowing him to speak on this occasion.]
65. Glories] Walker (Crit., i, 250) quotes this line as an example wherein a
final 5 has been interpolated in the Folio, remarking that the error in question is
frequent in this play. Compare II, i, 243.
ACT III, sc. ii.] IVLIVS CjESAR I71
Ant. For Brutus fake, I am beholding to you. 72
4 What does he fay of Brutus t
3 He fayes,for Brutus sake
He findes himfelfe beholding to vs all. 75
4 'Twere beft he fpeake no harme of Brutus heere ?
1 This Cafar was a Tyrant.
3 Nay that^s certaine :
We are bleft that Rome is rid of him.
2 Peace, let vs heare what Antony can fay. 80
Ant. You gentle Romans.
AIL Peace hoe, let vs heare him.
^«.Friends , Romans , Countrymen, lend me your ears : 83
72. beholding] beholden F4, Rowe,+» 78. that's] thats Fa.
Jen. Craik, Sta. Ktly. 79. blejl] glad Ff, Rowe, Pope, Han.
[Goes into the pulpit. Cam.+* Cam.+. fMst blest Cap. blessed Steev.
75. beholding] beholden ¥4, Rowe, +1 et seq.
Craik, Sta. Ktly. 81. Romans.] Romans — F4.
76. he fpeake] fpeake or fpeak Ff, 83-117. Mnemonic Pope, Warb.
Rowe.
72, 75. beholding] Murray (N, E. D.): The sense [under obligation^ obliged]
evidently originated in an error for beholden, either through confusion of the endings
(cf, especially the 15*** century spelling -^yne for -en), or, more probably, after be-
holden was shortened to beholde, behold, and its grammatical character obscured,
the general acceptance of 'beholding' may have been due to a notion that it meant
looking (e, g., with respect, or dependence), or to association with the idea of holding
of or from a feudal superior. (It was exceedingly common in the 17^ century, for
which no fewer than ninety-seven instances have been sent in by our readers.)
83. An. Friends . . . Countrymen] Davies (ii, 242) : The only hint which
Shakespeare has here borrowed from Plutarch is Antony's shewing the dead body
of Csesar to the populace: it is composed of such topics as were most conducive
to the desired effect. . . . The Duke of Buckingham has very prudently pre-
served almost the whole of Antonjr's oration as the author wrote it, though he has
prestuned to alter every other scene in the play. — Wright: There is no reason to
suppose that Shakespeare went beyond North's Plutarch for hints when he wrote
the speeches of Brutus and Antony. Those which are put into their mouths by
Appian, and of which there was a translation in English published in 1578, have no
points of resemblance to these.[^Like Brutus, Antony speaks under constraint,
but for a different reason!^[WARDE (ed. 2; ii, p. 140) is also of the opinion that the
evidence in favor of Shakespeare's indebtedness to Appian is insufficient. — Ed.] —
MacCaixxtm (p. 646): [The oration given to Antony by Appian] may be analysed
and simmiarised as follows: ' Antblty begins by praising the deceased as a consul
a consul, a friend a friend, a kinsman a kinsman. He recites the public honours
awarded to Cesar as a better testimony than his private opinion, and accompanies
the enimieratioQ with provocative comment. He touches on Cssar's sacrosanct
character and the unmerited honours bestowed on those who slew him, but acquits
the citizens of unkindness on the ground of their presence at the fimeral. He
172 THE TRACED IE OF [act hi, sc il
I come to bury Ccefary not to praife him :
The euill that men do^ liues after them^ 85
The good is oft enterred with their bones,
So let it be with Cce/ar, The Noble Brutus,
Hath told you Cafar was Ambitious ly
If it were fo, it was a greeuous Fault,
And greeuousfly hath Cafar anfwer'd it go
Heere, vnder leaue of Brutus ysmd the reft
(For Brutus is an Honourable man,
So are they all; all Honourable men^
Come I to fpeake in Ccefars Funerall.
He was my Friend^ {aithfull,and iuft to me ; 95
But Brutus fayes , he was Ambitious,
And Brutus is an Honourable man.
He hath brought many Captiues home to Rome,
Whofe Ranfomes, did the generall Coffers fill :
Did this in Ccefar feeme Ambitious ? lOO
When that the poore haue cry^de, Cafar hath wept w^
86. enterred] interrU Dyce. 87. The] Om. Pope,+ (— Var. '73).
their hones] the hones F4, Rowe i. 99. Ranfomes] Ransons Rowe ii.
avows his own readiness for revenge, and thus censures the policy of the Senate,
bi)t admits that that policy may be for the public interest. He intones aiiyflm
in honour of the deified Caesar; reviews his wars, battles, victories, the provinces
annexed, and the spoils transmitted to Rome, and glances at the subjugation of
the Gauls as the payment of an ancient score. He uncovers the body of Casar and
displays the pierced and blood-stained garment to the wrath of the populace. He
puts words in the mouth of the dead, and makes him cite the names of those whom
he had benefited and preserved that they should destroy him. And the people
brook no more. ... It b quite possible that Shakespeare, while retaining Plu-
tarch's general scheme, may have filled it in with suggestions from Appian. . . .
Apparent loans from the same quarter in Antony 6* Cleopatra show that he was
acquainted with the English translation [by Henry Bynniman, 1578].
84. to bury Caesar] Wright: Shakespeare was, no doubt, thinking of his own
time and country. The custom of burning the dead had not been in use in Rome
very long before the time of Caesar
91. vnder leaue] Mark Hunter: If Antony has not himself overheard Brutus's
speech, we may suppose he had instructed some dependent to be present, who
in the interval between his master's entrance and Brutus's departure foimd time
rapidly to 'post' Antony in all that had passed. This would make a good piece
of stage-business. [Himter adds that he has learned later that such an action was
adopted by Tree in his revival of Jul. C<ss,]
loi. When that] Craik (p. 312): The 'that' in such a case as this is merely a
summary or compendious expression of what follows, which was convenient, per-
haps, in a ruder condition of the language, as more distinctly marking out the
ACT III, sc. ii.] JVLIVS CjESAR 1 73
Ambition fliould be made of ftemer ftuffe, 102
Yet Brutus fayes, he was Ambitious :
And Brutus is an Honourable man.
You all did fee, that on the Lupercally 105
I thrice prefented him a Kingly Crowne,
Which he did thrice refufe. Was this Ambition ?
Yet Brutus fayes, he was Ambitious :
And fure he is an Honourable man.
I fpeake not to difprooue what Brutus fpoke, 1 10
But heere I am, to fpeake what I do know ;
You all did loue him once, not without caufe,
What caufe with-holds you then, to moume for him?
O Judgement f thou are fled to brutifh Beads, 114
105. <m] ai Pope, Han. 114. ihou are] thou art Ff.
clause to be comprehended under the 'when.' We still commonly use it with
turwi when it serves to discriminate the conjunction from the adverb, although not
with other conjunctions which are never adverbs.
105. on the Lupercall] Hudson interprets this, on the day when the feast of Lu-
percalia was held. — Wsight remarks that Shakespeare here speaks of ' the Lupercal
as if it were a hill, when in reality it was a cave.' The words given to Marullus in
I, i, 77, 'You know it is the feast of Lupercal,' prove sufficiently that there was no
confusion in Shakespeare's mind; and, therefore, Hudson's interpretation is the one
preferred by the present Ed.
109. Honourable man] Lloyd (Crit, Essay; ap. Sing, ii, p. 513) : The ambig-
uous tones in which Antony harps upon his consideration for Brutus especially,
and then his associates, as honourable men, come down from Cicero; the second
Philippic furnishes his very words: [Lloyd gives the Latin; the following transla-
tion is by Yonge] 'However remark the stupidity of this fellow, — I should say, of
this brute beast. For thus he spoke: " Marcus Brutus whom I name to do him
honour, holding aloft his bloody dagger, called upon Cicero, from which it must
be understood that he was privy to the action." . . . You wise and considerate
man, what do you say to this? If they are parricides, why are they always
named by you, both in this assembly and before the Roman people, with a view
to do them honour?' — §{ xii, ziil; (ed. Bohn, p. 310.) — Hudson: Of course, these
repetitions of 'honourable man' are intensely ironical; and for that very reason
the irony should be studioiisly kept out of the voice in pronoimcing them. I
have heard speakers and readers utterly ^>oil the effect of this speech by q>e-
cially emphasizing the irony; the proper force of which, in this case, depends on its
being so disguised as to seem perfectly unconscious. For, from the extreme deli-
cacy of his position, Antony is obliged to proceed with the utmost caution until
he gets, and sees he has got, the audience thoroughly in his power.
114. ludgement! thou are fled to brutish Beasts] A passage in Jonson's
Every Man out of his Humour , * — reason long since is fled to animals, you know,'
ni, i, provoked the following note from Gifford (ed., p. 100): 'I wonder the com-
mentators have not . . . pointed out thid [line i^ Jonson] as designed to sneer at
174 '^^^ TRACED IE OF [act in, sc il
And Men haue loft their Reafon. Beare with me, 115
My heart is in the Coffin there with Ccefar^
And I muft pawfe,till it come backe to me.
1 Me thinkes there is much reafon in his iayings.
2 If thou confider rightly of the matter,
CtBfar ha's had great wrong. (his place. 120
3 Ha's hee Matters ? I feare there will a worfe come in
119. 2] Om. Ff, Rowe,+. 3 Cit 121. Ea^s hee Mafiersf] As sqwrate
Capell et seq. line Ca^. et seq.
121, Ha* 5 hee\ Hat has he ^xiOn,2iJ^, Maftersf] my masters? Cap.
Cam. Thai he has H, Morley, M. S. Walker, Ktly. not, masters? Craik,
Hunter. That has he Macmillan conj. Dyce ii, iii, Huds. ill.
Shakespeare, ['Judgement thou art fled,' etc.]. It is true that Eoery Man out, etc,
was published several years before J id. Cos., [». e,, in 1600], but that, I find, is no
conclusive argument in favour of Jonson, for ''he might have seen the lines in
manuscript"; or, as the manuscript was certainly not in existence at this time,
he might have known that Shakespeare intended to make use of such an expression.'
— ^Whaujey explains that Jonson's allusion is 'designed as a sneer on those phil-
osophers who, from the tractable and imitative qualities in brutes, maintained that
they were reasonable creatures.' These remarks would hardly be worth noting
were it not that Koeppel {Jahrbuch, xliii, p. 211) has ^^)arently taken Gifford
seriously, inasmuch as Gififord has not made any use of this seeming similaiity in
thought to establish the date of composition of Jul. Cos. because he considered the
Roman tragedies to belong to a later date. Koeppel then quotes a line from the
anonymous play: The Wisdome of Doctor DodypoU, 1600: 'Then reason's fled to
animals, I see.' — III, ii; (ed. Bullen, p. 129), and uses this as a proof that both
Jonson and the anon3rmous author are here referring to the present line in Jul.
Cos., which play must, therefore, have been well known prior to 1600. It may
not be denied that there is a similarity in all three passages; but that both the
author of Doctor DodypcU and Jonson were herein copying from Shakespeare b not
so manifest. Doctor DodypolPs progenitor may perhaps be referring to the line in
JoDson's play; but may he not quite as well refer to the philosopher's opinions,
mentioned by Whalley? On this point it is, perhaps, interesting to call attention
to an essay in Plutarch's Morals, entitled. That Brute Beasts have Reason, wherein
Gryllus, transformed into a pig by Circe, tries to convince Ulysses that all brutes
have more 'discourse of reason' than mankind. This work by Plutarch was first
translated into English by Philemon Holland in 1603; a translation in French
by Amyot appeared in 1572. — Ed.
116, 117. My heart . . . backe to me] Malone thinks that perhaps Shake-
speare may have recollected these lines from Daniel's Cleopatra, 1594: 'As for my
love, say Antony hath all; Say that my heart is gone into the grave With him, in
whom it rests, and ever shall.' — ^To this Wright pertinently replies that it is
'even more probable that the idea may have occurred to Shakespeare independ-
ently.' He also calls attention to the contrast between this pause by Antony and
that by Brutus, who pauses for a reply, since his speech is an argument. — Ed.
121. Ha's hee Masters ?] Delius: This is here no question of astonishment
or doubt, but rather an asseveration: Has harm been done him! [ObihmUnrecht
geschehen ist.] Underlying which is to be understood: Indeed I think so.
ACT III, sc. ii.] IVLIVS CjESAR 175
4. MarkM ye his words? he would not take y Crown, 1 22
Therefore 'tis certaine, he was not Ambitious.*
1. If it be found fo, fome will deere abide it.
2. Poore foule, his cyts are red as fire with weeping. 125
3. There's not a Nobler man in Rome then Antony.
4. Now marke him, he begins againe to fpeake.
Ant. But yefterday, the word of Ccefar might 1
Haue flood againfi the World : Now lies he there,
And none fo poore to do him reuerence. 130
0 Maiflers I If I were difposM to flirre
Your hearts and mindes to Mutiny and Rage^
1 fhould do Brutus wrong, and Cajpus wrong :
Who (you all know) are Honourable men.
I will not do them wrong : I rather ch'oofe 135
To wrong the dead, to wrong my felfe and you,
Then I will wrong fuch Honourable men.
But heere's a Parchment, with the Seale of Ca/ar^
I found it in his ClofTet, 'ds his Will :
Let but the Commons heare this Teflament : 140
(^Which pardon me) I do not meane to reade,
And they would go and IdfTe dead Cafars wounds,
^ ^ And dip their Napkins in his Sacred Blood ;
* Yea, begge a haire of him for Memory,
And d3nng, mention it within their Willes, 145
Bequeathing it as a rich Legade
Vnto their ifTue.
4 Wee'l heare the Will, reade it Marke Antony. 148
126. NobUr\ holder Wh. i. (mis- Which {pardon me) ... read, Q., 1691.
print?). Which, pardon me, ... read, Rowe.
127. againe] Om. Theob. ii,+ {Which pardon me ... read) Pope et
( — ^Han.). seq.
z 28-147. Mnemonic Pope, Warb. 144. Yea] Nay Cap.
141. (W&ch pardon me) ... reade,] 148. 4] All. Anon. conj. ap. Cam.
124. abide] See III, i, 108, for meaning of 'abide/ in this sense.
130. none ao poore to do him reuerence] Johmson: That is, the meanest man
is now too high to do reverence to Caesar. — Craik (p. 3x3): It is as if it were
'with none so poor.' And 'and' is logically (whatever it may be etymologically)
equivalent to unth,
X32. Mutiny and Rage] Wbigbt: Compare, 'Therewithal the people fell
presently into such a rage and mutiny, that there was no more order kept amongst
the common people.' — ^Plutarch: Life of Bndus, (15; ed. Skeat, p. 122.
143. Napldns] That is, handkerchirfs; the two words were used interchangeably.
176 THE TRAGEDIE OF [act ni, sc iL
All. The \WU,the WUl; we wiU heare QEfars WflL
Ant. Haue patience gentle Friends, I mud not read it 150
It is not meete you know how Cafar lou'd you :
You are not Wood, you are not Stones, but men :
And being men, hearing the Will of Cafar^
It will inflame you, it will make you mad ;
'Tis good you know not that you are his Heires, 155
For if you (hould, O what would come of it?
4 Read the Will,wee'l heare it Antony :
You (hall reade vs the Will, Cafars Will.
Ant. Will you be Patient? Will you (lay a-while ?
I haue o're-fliot my felfe to tell you of it, 160
I feare I wrong the Honourable men,
Whofe Daggers haue ftabbM Cafar : I do feare it.
4 They were Traitors : Honourable men ?
All. The Will,the Teftament.
2 They were Villaines, Murderersithe Will, read the 165
Will.
Ant. You will compell me then to read the Will :
Then make a Ring about the Corpes of Cafar ^
And let me fhew you him that made the Will :
Shall I defcend? And will you giue me leaue ? 170
All. Come downe.
2 Defcend.
3 You fhall haue leaue. • 173
150-156. Mnemonic Pope, Warb. Cap. conj., Ktly. ^00/ Caesar's Woids-
154. //] / Cap. [corrected in Er- worth conj.
rata]. 159-162. Mnemonic Pope, Warb.
156. Jkotddf 0] should-^ Rowe,-|-. 164. All.) Citizens. Dyce, Sta.
157, 158. As prose Craik. 167. WiU:] will? Pope et seq.
1 57. wce'l\ we will Theob. Warb. 168. Corpes] Corps F,F4.
Johns. Cap. Varr. Mai. Ran. Steev. 171. All.] First Cit. Cam. Edd. am].
Varr. Sing. Dyce, Ktly, Huds. [He comes down from the
158. Cffifar's Will\ read Caesar's tw// Pulpit. Rowe,-|-.
i55» 156. 'Tis good . . . would come of it] Verity: Observe the slow, de-
liberate rhythm due to the use of monosyllables. Antony speaks in this drawling
way so as to tantalize the crowd, whose impatience to hear the will increases every
moment. — ^Mark Hunter: I should imagine that at these words Antony sud-
denly drops his voice, hitherto at a somewhat excitedly high pitch, and speaks in a
lower, but more impressive tone.
161. Honourable men] Here, I think, for the first time Antony uses these
words with a distinct sneer; and then fairiy hurls the next line in the faces of
the crowd. — Ed.
^CT III. sc. ii.] IVLIVS CjESAR. 177
4 A Ring, (land round.
1 Stand from the Hearfe, fland from the Body. 175
2 Roome for Antony y moft Noble Antony.
Ant. Nay preffe not fo vpon me, fland farre off.
AIL Stand backe: roome,beare backe.
Ant. If you haue teares ^prepare to fhed them now*
Vou all do know this Mantle, I remember 180
The firft time euer Ccefar put it on,
Twas on a Summers Euening in his Tent,
That day he ouercame the NeruiJ. 183
177. fane] far* Dyce. 183. Neniij] Nervii FjF4.
179-188. Mnemonic Pope, Warb.
180. this Mantle] Theobald {Nichols, ii, 496): This circumstance with re-
gard to Cesar's mantle seems to me an invention of the poet; and, perhaps, not with
the greatest propriety. The Nervii were conquered in the second year of his
Gaulish expedition, seventeen [Qu. thirteen?] years before his assassination; and
it is hardly to be thought that Caesar preserved any one robe of state so long. —
[Is this not hypercriticism? Plutarch, Appian, and Dion Cassius mention the
fact of Cesar's rent robe being exhibited by Antony; and, acting on this, Shakespeare
but gives a more realistic touch to the incident by naming the particular mantle; as
well might we find fault with Antony's showing the gashes in it and naming the
very men whose swords made them — a manifest impossibility even had he been
an eye-witness of the murder, which he was not. Theobald's note appears also in
his edition, 1733, with an additional comparison between this passage and that
m HanUet, wherein Horatio, speaking of the Ghost, says: * Such was the very armour
he had on When he th' ambitious Norway combated.' — ^I, i, 60. With this Theo-
bald also finds fault on the ground that 'Horatio, being a school-fellow of yoimg
Hamlet, could hardly know in what armour the old King killed Fortinbras of
Norway; which happened on the very day, whereon young Hamlet was bom.' —
Would any one in the audience of Shakespeare's time, or the present, be so
conversant with all the facts as to be seriously disturbed by such slight inaccu-
racies?— Hudson also says that the matter about the mantle is fictitious, as
'Oesar had on the civic gown, not the military cloak, when killed.' As Antony's
present speech is 'fictitious,' why may he not be allowed to display a fictitious
mantle? — Ed.]
180. I remember] Wright: Antony did not join Csesar in Gaul till three years
after this event. — [This may, perhaps, furnish an excuse for Antony's further forget-
fulness; the victory over the Nervii was accomplished in the winter of 57 B. C, not
summer. — Ed.]
183. the Neniij] Sherlock (p. 31): This word is one of the most eloquent that
Antony has spoken. The Nervii had been some of the most formidable enemies of
Rome, and they had never been conquered till that day. The assembly which
Antony harangued was entirely composed of, citizens and of the veterans of Caesar.
To the citizens these words said: 'See, that Cssar who has delivered you from
your fears, who has given safety to your wives and children. . . .' To the soldiers:
'See, massacred by traitors, that Cxsar who conducted you to glory. . . .' Every
za
178 THE TRACED IE OF [act m, sc. ii.
Looked this place ran Cajftus Dagger through :
See what a rent the enuious Caska made : 185
Through this, the wel-belouM Brutus (labb'dy
And as he pluckM his curfed Steele away :
Marke how the blood of Ccefar followed it,
As rufhing out of doores, to be refolu'd
If Brutus fo vnkindely knockM,or no : 190
For Brutus yd^ you know,was Cafars Angel.
Iudge,0 you Gods,how deerely Cafar lou'd him:
This was the moft vnkindeft cut of all. 193
1S4. Caffius] Camus's F4, Rowe. 188. foUcwedl Ff, Wh. i. foUcw'd
Cassius' Pope et seq. Rowe et cet.
186. wel-idou*i\ weU-hdoM Dyce. 191-207. Mnemonic Warfo.
187. cwrjed[ curskl Dyce. 193. This...mofl\ This^ this was the
Pope, Theob. H^. Warb.
line of this speech deserves an eulogium. — [While Sherlock's remark as to the value
of this allusion to the Nervii is certainly just, it is not difficult, I think, to see why
Shakespeare makes Antony allude to this particular victory; it is thus mentioned
by Plutarch: 'The Senate understanding it [the victory] at Rome, ordained that
they should do sacrifices to the gods, and keep feasts and solemn processions fifteen
days together without intermission, having never made the like ordinance at Rome
for any victory that ever was obtained : because they saw the danger had been mar-
vellous great, so many nations rising as they did in arms together against him: and
further, the love of the people unto him made his victory much more famous.' —
Casoff § 19; (ed. Skeat, p. 61). — Ed.]
185. enuious] That is, malicious.
186. Through this . . . Brutus stabb'd] Wright: According to Suetonius,
of all the wounds which Csesar received, the only one which was mortal was the
second. Shakespeare in this passage appears to make Brutus give him the death-
blow. If so, we should read in m, i, 89, stage direction: Marcus Brutus and the
other conspirators,
189. As rushing out of doores] Mrs Montagu (p. 273): The miserable con-
ceit of Caesar's blood rushing out of the wound, to ask who so unkindly knocked,
is indefensible. — [That this, as a poetic conceit, is not of the best may not be
gainsaid; but is not the assertion that it is indefensible' somewhat rash? The
dogmatic tone is of itself almost sufficient to challenge defense, if any such were
needed, for words uttered under such stress as was Antony's on this occasion. — Ed.]
191. Caesars Angel] Steevens tells us that this term of endearment is quite
frequent in Sidney's Arcadia, which does not help us much to its particular meaning
here. — Boswell suggests that Brutus was trusted by Caesar as his guardian angel. —
To this view Craik (p. 315) dissents, preferring to understand 'angel' as being sim-
ply his best beloved, his darling; and Wright considers it as almost synonymous
with the genius, as in II, i, 74 {q. v.), which is also the opinion of the present Ed.
193. vnkindest] Delius interprets this as most unnatural; for a somewhat
similar thought, compare: *Blow, blow, thou winter wind. Thou art not so unkind
As man's ingratitude.' — As You Like It, II, vii, 174. — Ed.
ACT III, sc. ii.] IVLIVS CjESAR
179
For when the Noble Ccefar faw him (lab,
Ingratitude, more ftrong then Traitors armes, 195
Quite vanquiftiM him : then burft his Mighty heart,
And in his Mantle, muffling vp his face,
Euen at the Bafe ol Pompeyes Statue
(Which all the while ran blood)great Cafar fell.
O what a fall was there,my Countrymen ? 200
Then I,and you,and all of vs fell downe,
WhiFft bloody Treafon flourifliM ouer vs.
O now you weepe, and I perceiue you feele
Th^ dint of pitty : Thefe are gracious droppes.
Kinde Soules,what weepe you,when you but behold 205
Our Ccefars Vefture wounded ? Looke you heere,
196. Ais] lids Upton. Varr. Sing, i, Dyce, Sta. Wh. i, Cam. i,
198, 199. Euen„Staiue (Wkich,,. GI0.+. Statue Ktiy, Cam. ii.
fdl\ Wkich...feU, Even.^Staiue Warb. 199. ran] ran with Han.
198, 199. Euen.,.(}Vkich] As one line 205. what weepe] Ff, Knt, Cam. ii.
Han. whail weep Coll. ii, iii, Wh. i, Hal.
198. Staiue] statua Mai. conj., Steev. Ktly, Huds. whatf weep Pope et cet.
196, 197. Mighty . . . Mantle, muffling] Observe how this recurrence seems,
so to speak, to have the effect of 'muffling* the lines. — Ed.
198. Statue] Malone: If 'even' be considered as a monosyllable, [which it
usually is, with Shakespeare], the measure is defective. I suspect, therefore, he
wrote Statua, [For examples of this pronunciation, see II, ii, 87.]
199. Which aU the while ran blood] 'He was driven . . . against the base
whereupon Pompey's image stood, which ran all of a gore-blood till he was slain.' —
Plutarch: Casar, § 44; ed. Skeat, p. loi.
202. flourish 'd] Steevens: That is, flourished the sword. — Craik (p. 315)
interprets 'flourish' in the sense in which a plant is said to put forth its flowers:
'treason thus shot up into vigorous efflorescence over us.' — ^Wright, in opposition
to Steevens, says: ' the contrast is between the prostrate state of the people and the
triumphant attitude of the conspirators.'
204. dint] Murray (N. E. D., s, v. 3.) : A mark or impression made by a blow, or
by pressure, in a hard or plastic suriace; an indentation.
204. These are gracious droppes] Craik (p. 315): Falling, the thought seems
to be, like the bountiful and refreshing rain from heaven.
205. what weepe you] Mark Hunter: Po^'s insertion of a comma after
'what,' nmking it an exclamation of surprise, is a distinct improvement in the
matter, both of sense and rhythm.
206. Looke you heere] Maciollan {Introd., p. xli.): Although Shakespeare
had probably never read in the original, or in translations, any of Cicero's oratorical
treatises, he happens to attribute to his Antony the same magnetic influence of
real passion felt by the speaker and transmitted to the audience, and the same
overpowering appeal to pity and indignation by tearing away the robe and dis-
playing the wounds of the subject of his eulogy, as were employed with such effect
on a similar occasion by his grandfather, the famous orator. — (Cicero: De Oratore,
l8o '^^^ TRACED IE OF [act hi. sc. ii.
Heere is Himfelfe,maiT'd as you fee with Traitors. 207
1. O pitteous fpedlacle I
2. O Noble C(Bfar\
3. O wofuU day ! 210
4. O Traitors, Villaines I
1. O mod bloody fight !
2. We will be reueng'd : Reuenge
About, feeke, burne, fire, kill, flay.
Let not a Traitor liue. 215
AnU Stay Country-men.
1 . Peace there,heare the Noble Antony.
2. Wee'l heare him, wee'l follow him, wee'l dy with
him. (you vp
AnU Good Friends, fweet Friends, let me not ftirre 220
To fuch a fodaine Flood of Mutiny :
They that haue done this Deede,are honourable*
What priuate greefes they haue, alas I know not.
That made them do it : They are Wife, and Honourable, 224
207. tt^A] hy Pope,-f . 213. Reuenge] All. Revenge! Glo.
208-216. 0 piUeous ... Country-men] Cam.-|-.
As five lines, verse Cap. MS. (ap. Cam.). 216. [They are rushing out. Coll. ii.
213. We wiU] Wem Cap. (MS).
213-215. We wiU.,.TraUor liue] Ff, 217. Peace] Peace, peace Cap. conj.
Rowe. As two lines, ending: About,.. 220-240. Mnemonic Pope, Warb.
liue Var. '78, '85, Ran. As two lines, 221. fodaine] Juddain Fj. Judden F4.
ending: hurne.Jiue Ktly. As prose 224. do it: They are] doH: they* are
Pope et cet. Walker (Crit., iii, 247).
ii, xlvii.). — [Marc Antony may possibly have remembered the action of his grand-
father and used it to produce a like effect; but it is not necessary, I think, to suppose
that Shakespeare knew anything about Cicero's Treatise.' He is here closely fol-
lowing Plutarch's account of the incidents in connection with Caesar's funeral, as
related in the Life of Cctsar, § 45, ed. Skeat, p. 102; and in the Life of Brutus, § 15,
Ibid., p. 122. — Ed.)
213-215. We will be reueng'd . . . Let not a Traitor Hue] Delius: These
words are not, perhaps, spoken by the 2**^ Plebeian alone, but shouted out by
different ones. Likewise the following words, 1. 218, *We*ll hear him,' etc. [Wright
also suggests that this last-mentioned line be distributed as in 11. 208-212.]
214. About, seeke, bume, fire, kill, slay] Sherlock (p. 32): The same
passion, the same violence in their emotions, the same readiness to be inflamed,
the same disposition to do everything by the impulse of a moment, and nothing by
reason; these are the distinctive qualities of the people of Rome; and the words of
Shakespeare, 'bum, fire, kill, slay,' are the lines of the character of the Transte-
verinsy such as it still appears at the moment of my writing [1786].
223. greefes] That is, grievances. Compare I, iii, 129; IV, ii, 50.
ACT III. sc. ii.] IVLIVS CjESAR l8l
And will no doubt with Reafons anfwer you. 22$
I come not (Friends^ to fteale away your hearts^
I am no Orator, as Brutus is ;
But (as you know me all) a plaine blunt man
That loue my Friend, and that they know full well,
That gaue me publike leaue to fpeake of him: 230
For I haue neyther writ nor words, nor worth,
225. RtaSofis^ reason Warb. 231. writ] Johns. Var. '73, Mai. Var.
230. gaue] giue Ff, Rowe,-|-. '21, Coll. i, ii. wit Ff et cet.
226. steale away your hearts] Wright: That is, to deceive you by working
on your feelings. In Genesis ^ xxxi, 20, where the Authorised Version has, 'And
Jacob stole away unawares to Laban/ the rendering of the Bishops' Bible is, 'And
Jacob stale away the heart of Laban'; that is, deceived him.
228. a plaine blunt man] Mask Hunter (Introd,, clxvi.) : With all his arti-
fice, Antony is only completely successful because the passion which pervades the
speech is perfectly genuine. Antony feels what he says, and even when the words
seem most at variance with the actual fact, there b a certain element of truth in
the orator's attitude, and consequently a strain of sincerity in the utterance. . . .
Between the plain blunt man, who loves his friend and understands the elementary
obligations of man to man, and the serious philosopher, whose subtle reasoning
can find warrant in ethics for ingratitude, treachery, and murder, there is an eternal
distinction which the conunon conscience of mankind can recognise clearly enough,
but which the dreaming enthusiast and idealist is apt to miss.
231. For I haue neyther writ] As will be seen by a reference to the Text.
Nates those Editors who have followed this Folio reading are in the minority. —
Johnson and Malone, who are of this number, naturally understand Antony to
mean that he has no written or premeditated speech. Malone even accuses the
editor of the Second Folio of changing 'whatever he did not understand,' and
furthermore declares that *wit in Shakespeare's time had not the meaning which it
now bears, but meant understanding. 'Would Shakespeare,' asks Malone, 'make
Antony declare himself, void of conunon intelligence?' — Steevens, in opposition to
Malone's interpretation, says: 'The artful speaker was surely designed, with a£fected
modesty, to represent himself as one who had neither wit (i. «., strength of under-
standing) ... to influence the minds of the people. Was it necessary that on an
occasion so precipitate he should have urged that he had brought no written
speech in his pocket. ... I, therefore, continue to read with the Second Folio,
being unambitious of reviving the blunders of the First.' — Csaik finds grave fault
with Malone for following, and attempting to explain, the Folio reading. 'Is it
possible,' he asks, 'that such a critic can have had the smallest feeling of anything
in Shakespeare above the level of the merest prose? ' Continuing, Craik shows that
there are numerous passages in Shakespeare wherein wit has exactly its present
signification. . . . 'How would Malone,' he concludes, 'or those who think with
him (if there be any), explain the conversation about Benedick's wit, in Act V, sc. i,
of Much AdOf without taking the word as there used in the sense which it now
ordinarily bears? In the present passage, to be sure, its meaning is more compre-
hensive, corresponding nearly to what it still conveys in the expression "the wit of
1 82 THE TRACED IE OF [act hi, sc. ii.
Aftion, nor Vtterance, nor the power of Speech, 232
To ftirre mens Blood. I onely fpeake right on :
I tell you that, which you your felues do know,
Shew you fweet Ccefars wounds, poor poor dum mouths 235
And bid them fpeake for me : But were I BrutuSj
And Brutus Antony y there were an Antony
Would ruffle vp your Spirits,and put a Tongue
In euery Wound of Cafarj that fhould moue
The ftones of Rome, to rife and Mutiny. 240
232. Vtteranu] Utterance Pope,-|- (— Var. '73).
man." Compare: "Hastthouorword, or wit, or impudence, That yet can do thee
office?" — Meas, far Meas., V, i, 368.'
232. power of Speech,] Mark Hunter: I feel certam that the comma after
'speech' shoiild be omitted, and that 'to stir men's blood' should refer exclusively
to 'power of speech.'
237. Antony . . . Antony] Abbott (§ 475): A word repeated twice in a verse
often receives two accents the first time, and one accent the second, when it is less
emphatic the second time than the first. [In the present line] the former 'Antony'
is the more emphatic.
^40. The stones ... to rise and Mutiny] Wordsworth {Shakespeare^ s
Knowledge 6* Use, etc., p. 267) calls attention, if that were needed, to the origin
of these words, Lukey ziz, 40, and also shows that Shakespeare makes use of this
most striking thought in Rich. II, 'when King Richard returned from Ireland to
suppress the insurrection of Bolingbroke, he thus apostrophises the coast of Wales:
''Mock not my senseless conjuration, lords; This earth shall have a feeling, and
these stones Prove armed soldiers, ere her native king Shall falter imder foul
rebellion's arms." — HI, ii, 23.' To this same source we may also, perhaps, assign:
'Thou sure and firm-set earth Hear not my steps which way they walk, for fear
Thy very stones prate of my whereabout.' — Machethy II, i, 56. — Ed.
240. to rise and Mutiny] MacCallum (p. 296): Note the last words; for
though Antony feels entitled to indulge in this farcing and enjoys it thoroughly, he
does not forget the serious business. He keeps recurring more and more distinctly
to the suggestion of mutiny, and for mutiny the citizens are now more than fully
primed. All this, moreover, he has achieved without ever playing his trump card.
They have quite forgotten about the will, and, indeed, it is not required. But
Antony thinks it well to have them beside themselves, so he calls them back for
this last maddening draught. And all this while, it will be observed, he has never
answered Bnitus's charge that Caesar was ambitious. Yet such is the headlong
flight of his eloquence, winged by genius, by passion, by craft, that his audience
never perceive this. No wonder; it is apt to escape even deliberate readers. —
[Antony, be it remembered, has already declared that he ' came not to disprove what
Brutus said,"* but merely to state facts, and in this connection shows wherein Oesar
had manifested not ambition, but a lack of it: -(i) The ransoms of all his captives
went into the general coffers. (2) Caesar showea sympathy for the sorrows of the
poor of Rome. (3) Csesar refused the crown when it was offered him. See 11. 98-107,
above. — Ed.]
ACT III. sc. ii.] IVLIVS CjESAR 1 83
All. Wee'l Mutiny. 241
1 Wee'l bume the houfe of Brutus.
3 Away then, come/eeke the Confpirators.
Ant. Yet heare me Countrymen, yet heare me fpeake
All. Peace hoe, heare Antony ^mo^ Noble Antony. 245
Ant. Why Friends, you go to do you know not what :
Wherein hath Cce/ar thus deferuM your loues?
Ala3 you know not, I mud tell you then :
You haue forgot the Will I told you of.
AIL Moft true, the Will , let's ftay and heare the Wil. 250
Ant. ' Heere is the Will,and vnder Ccefars Seale:
To euery Roman Citizen he giues,
To euery feuerall man, feuenty fiue Drachm^es.
2 He. Moft Noble Ccsfar^ weeM reuenge his death.
3 Me. O Royall Ccefar. 255
Ant. Heare me with patience.
All. Peace hoe
Ant. Moreouer, he hath left you all his Walkes,
His priuate Arbors, and new-planted Orchards, 259
252, 253. euery, ,,euery\ eo*ry,„ev*ry 253. feuenty] seventy Popc,-h (— Var.
Popc-I- (—Var. '73). '73).
253. feueraU] seffral Theob. Warb. Drackmaes] drachma's Rowe,+
Johns. ( — ^Var. '73). drachmas Cap. ct seq.
253. Drachmaes] Sioth {Did, of Greek 6* Raman AniiquUies) gives the value
of a * drachma ' as 9 d. 3 farthings, or about twenty cents. Each citizen would thus
receive nearly fifteen dollars.
258, 259. his Walkes . . . and new-planted Orchards] Mesivale (ill, 34) :
Although enclosed within the dty walls, the Transtlberine region retained all the
appearance of a suburb, and a large part of it was included in the gardens of
[Oesar]. The temple of Fors Fortima lay at the first milestone from the Porta
Flumentana, or river-gate, and marked the extreme point of Caesar's property.
The gardens stretched thither along the bank of the Tiber from the Palatine bridge,
some mutilated arches of which are now distinguished by the name of Ponte Rotto.
The Sublician bridge abutted upon them in the centre, and we may amuse ourselves
with imagining that the palace of the Pamphili, standing close to its head, occupies
the exact site of the mansion itself which furnished a temporary residence to the
queen of ancient beauty [Cleopatra]. When this estate was surrendered to the use
of the Roman people, the halls and corridors would be devoted to the reception of
woiiLs of art and objects of indoor amusement; while the gardens, planted with
groves and intersected with alleys, would furnish a grateful alternation of shade
and sunshine for recreation in the open air. It would be adorned with shrubs of
evergreen, cut and trimmed with various fanciful shapes. Statues of admired
workmanship, the spoil of many an Oriental capital, would spring from gravelled
walks or parterres of native and exotic flowers; and ivy would be trained to creep
1 84 1^^^ TRACED IE OF [act hi, sc. ii.
On this fide Tyber, he hath left them you, 260
And to your heyres for euer : common pleafures
To walke abroad, and recreate your felues.
Heere was a Cafar : when comes fuch another ?
\.Ple. Neuer, neuer : come, away, away :
Wee'l bume his body in the holy place, 265
And with the Brands fire the Traitors houfes.
Take vp the body.
2.Ple. Go fetch fire.
3./fe. Plucke downe Benches. 269
•
260. ikU\ that Theob.-I- (— Var. '73), 266. fire the] fire all the Ff, Rowc,+,
Cap. Jen. Cap. Jen.
264. come, away, away] come, come Traitors] traitors' Warb. et seq.
away Cap. come, away, away, away 269. Benches] The benches (as sep-
Ktly. come, come, away, away Anon. arate line) Cap.
ap. Cam.
in studied negligence around them. Long ranges of tessellated pavements would vie
in variegated brilliancy of colour with the roses and violets, the hyacinths and
poppies, which satisfied the simple tastes of the ancient florists. These gardens,
occupying the right bank of the river, immediately faced the slope of the Aventine
hill, and lay almost in its morning shadow.
260. On this side Tyber] Theobald: The scene is here in the Forum near
the Capitol, and in the most frequented part of the dty; but Csesar's gardens were
very remote from that quarter. 'Trans Tibirim longe cubat b prope Caesaris hor-
tos,' says Horace, [Sat., I, iz, 18]. And both the Naumachia and Gardens of Cssar
were separated from the main city by the river. . . . Our author, therefore,
certainly wrote: ^On that side Tiber.' And Plutarch, . . . speaking of Caesar's
will, expressly says: *. . . his gardens and walks beyond the Tiber.* — (Life of
Brutus); where, in that author's time, the Temple of Fortune stood. — Farmer
exonerates Shakespeare of this mistake and assigns it to North's lack of care in
translating. — [Plutarch's words here are: koI t^ S^fup twv nipav tov norafzov
xfyiruv anoAeififihcn^' — Ed. Sintenis, ch. xix. North has, however, here followed
Amyot, who is really responsible for this trifling error. — ^Theobald is, of course, re-
ferring to a correct translation of the original. — Ed.]
266. fire] For 'fire,' in sense of to enkindle, compare II, i, 266; III, i, 46.
266. fire the Traitors houses] Steevens: The more modem editors read:
'Fire all the traitors houses,' [see Text. Notes], but 'fire' was then pronounced as it
was sometimes written, fier. [For many examples wherein the words fire, desire,
hour, and the like are pronounced with an extra syllable, see Walker, Vers., p.
136.1 — ^Malone: By the expression ' the more modem editors,' Mr Steevens seems
to have been willing to conceal that this was one of the many corruptions intro-
duced by the editor of the Second Folio. — [This note, for its patronising tone, and
subtile accusation of careless collation, would be, I think, difficult to surpass.—
Ed.] — Craik (p. 138) : The harshness and dissonance produced by the irregular fall
of the accent, in addition to the diaeresis, in the case of the word 'fire,' may be
thought to add to the force and expressiveness of the line [as in the Folio].
ACT III. sc. ii.] IVLIVS CjESAR 1 85
^Ple. Plucke downe Formes, Windowes,any thing. 270
Exit Plebeians.
Ant. Now let it worke : Mifcheefe thou art a-foot,
Take thou what courfe thou wilt.
How now Fellow / 274
270. WifuUnves] the windows Cap. 27$, 274. Take.,.Fellowf] One line,
271. Exit Plebeians.] Exeunt Plebe- Pope, et seq.
ians with the Body. Rowe,+- 273-276. Take..^ir] As one line in
Cap. MS. (ap. Cam.).
270. Windowes] Skeat (Did., s. v.) gives as the derivation of 'window,'
" wind-eye/' the hole or aperture through which light and air were admitted.' —
[Shakespeare, apparently uses 'window' indiscriminately both for the opening
and the shutter, as thus: ' — these windows that let forth thy life.' — Rich. Ill:
I, ii, 12; 'It [the soul] would not out at windows nor at doors.' — King John, V, vii,
29. ' In these examples ' window ' can mean only an opening; just as it seems to desig-
nate the shutter in the present line, and in ' Shuts up his windows, locks fair daylight
out.' — Rom. 6* Jul., I, i, 145. This last may, of course, be either opening or shutter.
Shakespeare uses ' window,' however, in several passages metaphorically for the eye-
lid, as the shutter of the eye, considered as an opening; e. g., 'thy eyes windows
fall Like death when he shuts up the day of life.' — Rom. 6* Jul., TV, i, 100; and
'Ere I let fall the windowes of mine eyes.' — Rich. Ill: V, iii, 116. (For a
discussion on this metaphorical use of 'window,' see Rich. Ill: V, iii, 129, this
edition.) — Ed.]
272. Mischeefe thou art a-foot] Oechelha^er (Einfilhrungen, etc., i,
326): Up to this point Antony has aroused the admiration and sympathy of the
crowd; in the same degree he suddenly descends from that lofty flight and trans-
forms himself into a frivolous comedian with these last words spoken as an aside.
The actor must, both by tone and action, make clear, in the most pronounced
manner, this sudden transformation. — [It is, I think, well to remember that this
is Oechelhaiiser's conception of Antony; not Shakespeare's. — ^Ed.]
273. Take thou] Craik (p. 318) suggests that we should read: 'Take now,'
since any emphasis on a pronoim b 'here unaccoimtable.' He remarks also that
'the abrupt entrance of the Servant is vividly expressed by the reversal of the
regular accentuation in the last foot.' Craik refers, however, to Pope's arrangement
of 11. 273 and 274 as one line (adopted by subsequent editors), which makes the
accent fall on the last syllable of 'fellow.' He then digresses into a discussion of
other examples of this abnormal accentuation which, while it b not germane to the
question of accent in a line — not, however, by Shakespeare — b interesting. He
quotes: 'Beyond all past example and future.' — Paradise Lost, x, 840; and also
•To whom thus Michael: These are the product.' — Ibid, xi, 683. 'Future,* says
Craik, 'which b common in Milton's verse, has everywhere else the accent on the
first syllable.' — ^In a note on the first of these lines H. G. Bohn remarks: 'The
accent upon the second syllable of "future" b a Latinism, but not peculiar to
Milton, being found in earlier poets. See Fairfax's Tasso, xvii, 88, 1. 1 : (* But not
by art or skill, of things future."] ' — Note that here the word is also the last in the
line, where license is always accorded. Neither Walker nor Abbott include future
among those words wherein the accent varies. — Ed.
1 86 THE TRACED IE OF [act ill. sc. iu.
Enter Seruant 275
Ser. SiT^Oilauius is already come to Rome.
Ant, Where is hee ?
Ser. He and Lepidus are at Cafars houfe.
Ant. And thither will I ftraight,to vifit him :
He comes vpon a wifh. Fortune is merry, 280
And in this mood will giue vs any thing.
Ser. I heard him fay, Brutus and Cajfius
Are rid like Madmen through the Gates of Rome.
Ant. Belike they had fome notice of the people
How I had moued them. Bring me to OSlauius. Exeunt 285
\Scene IIL\
Enter Cinna tlie Poety and after liim the Plebeians. i
Cinna. I dreamt to night, that I did feafl with Cafar,
And things vnluckily charge my Fantafie : 3
275. Enter...] After I. 273. Cap. 285. mouei[ mov^d Pope et seq.
Jen. Dyce, Sta. Odiauius] Odtavus Fa.
Seruant] Ff, Rowe i, Cap. Jen. Scene continued. Ff, Rowe. Scene
Dyce, Hal. a Servant Rowe ii. et cet. vn. Pope,+. Scene iv. Jen. Scene
276. Sir] Om. Pope,+. m. Cap. et cet.
278. He] He, sir Cap. conj. i. and ... Plebeians.] Om. Cap. et
Lepidus] lord Lepidus Walker seq.
(Crit., ii, 264). 3. vnluckily] unlucky Warb. Cap.
282. kirn] them Cap. Coll. ii. *em Sing, ii, Dyce, Sta. Del. Wh. i, Huds.
Dyce ii, iii, Huds. iii. Coll. iii. unlikely Coll. ii. (MS), Craik.
284, 285. notice of the people How I had moued them] Both Walker
[Crit.j i, 69) and Abbott (§ 414) quote this passage as an example of the redundant
object; as, for example, in * You hear the leam'd Bellario what he writes.' — Mer,
of Ven., IV, i, 167. — *0f ' in the present line must then mean aboui, as Abbott ex-
plains it; but may it not as well be taken in the sense of by or from, as in Abbott
(§ 170), who quotes, in illustration of this last meaning, * Received of the most
pious Edward? — Macbeth, HI, vi, 27. — Ed.
2. I dreamt . . . that I did feast] Steevens tells us that he Meams from
an old black letter treatise on Fortune-Telling, &c., that "to dream of being at
banquets, betokeneth misfortune."* — It is, however, not necessary to suppose
that Shakespeare was influenced by this; he is here transcribing almost the words
of North's Plutarch: * There was one of Caesar's friends called Cinna, that had a
marvellous strange and terrible dream the night before. He dreamed that Caesar bad
him to supper, and that he refused and would not go: then Caesar took him by the
hand, and lead him against his will.' — Life of C<Esar,^ § 45; ed. Skeat, p. 102. — Ed.
3. vnluckily charge my Fantasie] Steevens: That is, circumstances oppress
my fancy with an ill-omened weight. — Coluer (Notes and Emend., &c., p. 426):
Why should he consider it unlucky to dream of feasting with Caesar? His fancy
ACT III. sc. iii.] IVLIVS CjESAR 1 87
I haue no will to wander foorth of doores^
Yet fomething leads me foorth. 5
1. What is your name?
2. Whether are you going ?
3. Where do you dwell f
4. Are you a married man, or a Batchellor?
2. Anfwer euery man direftly. lO
I. I, and breefely*
4. I, and wifely.
3. I^and truly, you were beft.
Cin. What is my name? Whether am I going? Where
do I dwell ? Am I a married man, or a Batchellour ? Then 15
to anfwer euery man, direftly and breefely, wifely and
truly : wifely I fay, I am a Batchellor.
2 That's as much as to fay^ they are fooles that mar-
rie : you'l beare me a bang for that I feare : proceede di-
reftly. 20
5. [Enter Citizens. Cap. et seq. wisdy^ I say, I Sta.
7, 14. Whaker] WkUher F,F4. ia-20. Mnemonic Warb.
8. dweil\ live Cap. 19. feare : proceede]' fear. Proceed
17. wijdy I Jay^ I] wisdy^ I say — Johns.
/ Rowe,-|-. wisdy^ I say, I Var. '73.
was charged with things improbable, and the [MS correction] is 'things unlikdy,'
which also suits the measure better. — Wright interprets 'unluckily' as, in a
manner foreboding misfortune; and, for this use of the adverb, compares: 'The
best news is that we have safely found Our king and company.' — Temp., V, i, 221;
that is, have found them safe. — Singer (Sh, Vindicated, p. 246) characterises the
change of 'imluckily' to unlikdy as 'mischievous.' 'The Poet's presentiment,' he
says, 'is of some misfortune to happen, and nothing more is required than to omit
the letters il and read unlucky.* — This emendation was first made by Warburton
and adopted by several other editors, including Singer in his second edition, three
years after his foregoing note. — Ed.
3. Fantasie] For this use of 'fantasy,' in the sense of the imaginative faculty,
compare 11, i, 221, 257.
4. I haue no will to wander foorth] Steevens compares for a similar im-
willingness to go forth, after an ominous dream, the words of Shylock: ' — By
Jacob's staff I swear, I have no mind of feasting forth tonight: But I will go.' —
Mer. of Ven., U, v, 36.
13. you were best] For other examples of this idiom, see Abbott, § 230, or
Shakespeare passim.
17. wisely I say, I am] Craik (p. 320): Cinna's meaning evidently is. Wisely
I am a bachelor. But that is not conveyed by the way in which the passage has
hitherto been always pointed. [See Text. Notes.]
19. beare me a bang] An example of the ethical dative, for which see, if need .
fill, Abbott, § 220.
l88 THE TRAGEDIE OF [act hi, sc. iU.
Cinna. Direftly I am going to Cafars Funerall. 2 1
1. As a Friend, or an Enemy ?
Cinna. As a friend.
2. That matter is anfwered direftly.
4. For your dwelling : breefely. 25
Cinna. Breefely, I dwell by the Capitoll.
3. Your name fir, truly.
Cinna. Truly, my name is Cinna.
I. Teare him to peeces, hee's a Confpirator.
Cinna. I am Cinna the Poet, I am Cinna the Poet. 30
4. Teare him for his bad verfes, teare him for his bad
Verfes,
Cin. I am not Cinna the Confpirator.
4. It is no matter, his name's Cinna^ plucke but his
name out of his heart, and tume him going. 35
3. Teare him, tear him; Come Brands hoe. Firebrands :
to Brutus J to Cajftus^ bume all. Some to Decius Houfe, 37
31, 32. Mnemonic Warb. verse Rowe ii,-f".
33. Cin. I, ..Confpirator] Om. Var. 37. Bnitus...Caffius] Brutus'...Cas-
'o3» 'i3» '21, Sing. i. sius' Cap. Jen.
34. // is] It's Cap. (Errata). to Caffiusl and to Cassius' Var.
but] out Johns. Var. '73. '78, '85, Ran.
36, 37. Teare kim..Mou/e] As verse Deciusl Dedus's F4, Rowe.
Cap. Decimus's Han. Ran.
36-38. Teare him ... Away^ go] As Houfe] Houfes Ff.
29. Teare him to peeces] Staffer (p. 460) : The blackest action committed
by the people, in all Shakespeare's Roman plays, is the murder of the poet Cinna
in the midst of the tumult. The incident is given in Plutarch, but in his account
the crime, as perpetrated by the populace whom Antony had worked up into wild
excitement, is of a most ordinary and, so to speak, consistent character. It is a
very deplorable occurrence, but it is not an odious or a vile one, outraging all
feeling and reason. . . . Shakespeare, a bolder and more searching anatomist of
the human monster, has added a refinement of cruelty and folly to their crime,
knowing well what the mob is capable of in its intoxication on the day of revolu-
tion, and he shows us the amazing unreasonableness, and lets us hear the loud
bursts of stupid and ferocious laughter of a populace in revolt, who are perfectly
aware of what they are doing, and who, without the excuse of a mistake as to the
poor wretch's identity, tear him to pieces in a most light-hearted manner as a
pimishment for bearing a name grown distasteful to them.
31. Teare him for his bad verses] Kreyssig (p. 46): Were it not that the
fate of the poet Cinna is related by Plutarch, one would like to consider this whole
incident as a characteristic invention by Shakespeare. The scornful exclamation,
'Tear him for his bad verses,' is manifestly English in its humour. Even in Plu-
tarch it is apparent that the situation is an intentional misunderstanding, since the
ACT IV. sc. i.] IVLIVS CjESAR 1 89
and fome to Casiafs; fome to Ligarius: Away, go. 38
Exeunt all the Plebeians.
A6lus Quartus. i
\Scene /.]
£>r/^ Antony y OSlauitis^ and Lepidus. 2
39. all the Plebeians.] forcing out Island in the little River Rhenus near
Cinna. Coll. ii. (MS). Bononia. Han. A Room in Antony's
Act IV, Scene i. Rowe et seq. House. Cap. et seq.
Rome. Rowe, Pope. 2. £nter...Lepidus.] Antony, Octa-
A small Island near Mutina. Theob. vius and Lepidus, seated at a Table.
Johns. Var. '73, '78, '85. A small Mai. et seq.
blood of the crazed populace, once aroused, demands a victim, and in the chance
likeness of a name finds but another incitement to satisfy its wild desires.
I. Actus Quartus] Lloyd {Crit. Essay, ap. Singer, ii; p. 510): The scene of the
triumvirs in consultation, which precedes that of the quarrel between Brutus and
Cassius, is admirably invented to define the characterization of either party.
The proscription with which they commence deprives them of all moral superiority
to the so-called traitors and murderers they are leagued against, and the little
delicacy they evince in tampering with the will of the friend whose death they are
bound to avenge shows that the sacred motive is practically debased into a mock
heroic pretence. — ^Moulton (Sh, as Dram. Art., p. 200): The emotional strain
now ceases, and, as in the first stage, the passion is of the calmer order; the calnmess
in this case is of pity balanced by a sense of justice. From the opening of the
Fourth Act the decline in the justification of the conspirators is intimated by the
logic of events. The first scene exhibits to us the triumvirate that now governs
Rome, and shows that in this triumvirate Antony is supreme; with the man. who
is the embodiment of the reaction thus appearing at the head of the world, the
fall of the Conspirators is seen to be inevitable. The decline of our sympathy with
them continues in the following scenes. — G. P. Baker (p. 271): What makes this
Fourth Act ineffective to-day is what may have made it ineffective in its own day,
that just when we have been wrought up to the keenest interest in what the mob
will do to the murderers of Cssar, we are asked to let that pass for good and all.
Instead, we are given two short scenes which merely prepare for the fighting in the
Fifth Act, and a long scene of the quarrel between Brutus and Cassius, delightful in
itself, but piu^ly episodic. It does bring out the sensitiveness and the imderlying
sweetness of Brutus, it does count in characterization; but it does not move the
story towards its dose; make a dramatic climax after Act IH, or in any way fulfil
the exciting promises of that act. The fact is, of course, that from the moment the'S
Fourth Act begins the play lacks the unifying influence of Cssar, and we are forced ]
to make one of those awkward changes of interest midway in a play which are [sic]
usually fatal to any unity of effect. For, whether we like Caesar or not, the first
three acts tell his story rather than that of Brutus, and the last three [sic] acts be-
long to Brutus more than to any other character. [See Note by MacCallum on
IV, iii, I.] — Maoollan (ItUrod,, p. xlix.): There was an interval of a year and a
I go THE TRACED IE OF [act iv. sc. i.
Ant.Thttc many then (hall die, their names are prickt 3
3. many] marry Grey (ii, 186).
half between the arrival of Octavius in Rome and the proscriptions of the Trium-
virate recorded in Act IV, sc. i. . . . The struggle between Antony and Octavius,
and the predominance of Cicero at Rome during their difference, is omitted by
j Shakespeare. In m, ii, 279 Antony arranges to meet Lepidus and Octavius at
/ Cesar's house and their meeting is described in [the present scene]. — Maltzahn
{Jakrbuchf vii, p. 59) suggests that, in representation, this scene with the Trium-
virate be substituted for the scene with Cinna as the closing scene of Act in.
Since the stage-setting is an interior, it can be played as a front scene. The fact
that the modem stage-direction requires the Triumvirate to be seated at a table
may be obviated by having them enter together, Antony carrying the proscription
list in his hand. By this arrangement the whole of the Fourth Act is thus made to
take place in the Tent of Brutus.
2. Enter Antony, Octauius, and Lepidus] Theobaid, on the authority of
Plutarch and of Appian, fixes the locality of this scene of the proscriptions
at: 'a little Island, near Mutina, upon the River Lavim'us.' — ^Hanmer places
the scene in an island on the Rhenus, near Bononia, which is. the spot mentioned
by Dion Cassius (Bk, xlvi, ch. 54). — ^Jennens pertinently remarks: *What if
Shakespeare knew all this? Is a poet obliged to follow hbtory exactly? . . .
What though the old copies say nothing of the place here? yet it is implied in
[11. 10-14]. What! does Antony send Lepidus on a journey (not to say a voyage)
from an island near Mutina or Bononia, to fetch the will from Caesar's house in
Rome, and direct him to come again to him to this same island, and if he did not
meet with him there, to return to the capitol at Rome? . . . Besides, supposing
this island to be the scene, Octavius should rather have said, ''Or here or at Rome*';
for the direction ''at the capitol" is too particular.' — Warbubton, for reasons
best known to himself, follows the Folios and omits to assign any locality. —
Capell lays the scene 'At Rome. A Room in Antony's house,' wherein he has
been followed by subsequent editors. Shakespeare must have regarded it as of
slight import, as he has made Antony appoint his meeting with Octavius and
Lepidus at the house of Caesar, and yet here he sends Lepidus to that same place.
Capell's stage direction seems, therefore, the most appropriate. — Ed.
3. These many then shall die] Appian gives the full text of this Proclama-
tion, which Horace White, its translator, says, 'is the only copy of this hideous
instrument that has come down to us. The text corresponds with all that we
glean from other authorities concerning it.' After a preamble reciting at length
the causes for such a proscription and wholesale condemnation to death of those
who had been concerned in the conspiracy against the state, it thus concludes:
'In God's name, then, let no one harbor any of those whose names are hereto apn
pended, or conceal them, or send them away, or be corrupted by their money.
Whoever shall be detected in saving, or aiding, or conniving with them we will put
on the list of the proscribed without allowing any excuse or pardon. Those who
kill the proscribed and bring us their heads shall receive the following rewards:
to a free-man 25,000 Attic drachmas per head; to a slave his freedom and io,coo
Attic drachmas and his master's right of citizenship. Informers shall receive the
same rewards. In order that they may remain imknown, the names of those who
receive the rewards shall not be inscribed in our registers.' — (Civil Wars, Bk, IV,
ch. ii, §§ 8-13).— Ed.
ACT IV, sc. i.] IVLIVS C^SAR igi
O^aJYouT Brother too muft dyexonfent you Lepidus ?
Lep. I do confent 5
OUa. Pricke him downe Antony.
Lep. Vpon condition PuMius (hall not liue,
Who is your Sifters fonne, Marke Antony.
Ant. He (hall not liue; looke, with a fpot I dam him.
But Lepidus^ go you to Ccefars houfe : 10
Fetch the Will hither, and we (hall determine
How to cut off fome charge in Legacies.
Lep. What? (hall I finde you heeref
0£la. Or heere, or at the CapitolL Exit Lepidus
Ant. This is a (light vnmeritable man, 15
5. con/enl,] consent: Cap. cansenir— Coll. Huds.
Knt, Cam.+. 13, 14. Whai...(U] As one line Craik,
II. JhaU] wiU Steev. Van. Sing, i, Dyce ii, iii.
4-7. Your Brother too must dye . . . Publius shsdl not liue] 'For Caesar
left Cicero to Antonius's will, Antonius also forsook Lucius Caesar, who was his
uncle by his mother: and both of them together suffered Lepidus to kill his own
brother, Paulus.' — Plutarch: Life of Antonius, § 10; (ed. Skeat, p. 169). — Upton
(Crit. Obs.f p. 326): As 'tis not imcommon to blimder in proper names, I make no
doubt but in the room of 'Publius' [1. 7] we should read Lucius, Antony's imcle by
his mother's side: and then a trifling correction sets right the other line: ' You
are his sister's son.' — Steevems: The mistake is more like the mistake of the
author than of his transcriber or printer. — [According to both Appian and Dion
Cassius, Ludus and Paulus were among the few of those proscribed who escaped.
Dion Cassius (Bk, zlvii, ch. 8) says: 'Except that Antony did release his imcle,
at the earnest entreaty of his mother, Julia, he performed no other praiseworthy
act'— Ed.]
6. Octa. Pricke . . . Antony] Lloyd {Crit, Essay; ap. Singer, p. 511) : Already in
this scene we have an adumbration of the future relative attitudes of Octavius and
Antony, and of the predominant genius of the first Lepidus and Antony give up
brother and sister's son, but no friend b demanded of Octavius as a sacrifice;
afterwards he cautiously guards himself against giving an unlimited assent to
Antony's depreciation of their absent colleague, and there is warning that he is
prepared against such double-dealing if brought to bear upon himself in the
concluding words of this scene pi. 53-56].
9. I dam him] Wright: In many passages of the New Testament the substitu-
tion of condemn for 'damn,' and condemnation iot damnation, would prevent many
erroneous interpretations.
15. This is a slight . . . man] Wright: With this description of Lepidus, com-
pare the scene in ^n/. 6* Cleo,, II, vii, 28-57. — \^ Ant,^ Cleo. Shakespeare is ampli-
fying the portrait of Lepidus, of whom we have but a sketch in Jul. Cos. Possi-
bly he formed his opinion of him from this slight hint given by Plutarch: 'Now the
government of these triumviri grew odious and hateful to the Romans, for divers
respects; but they most blamed Antonius, because he, being elder than Caesar, and
ig2 THE TRACED IE OF [act iv. sc. L
Meet to be fent on Errands : is it fit 1 6
The three-fold World diuided, he Ihould ftand.
One of the three to fhare it f
OSla. So you thought him,
And tooke his voyce who fhould be prickt to dye 20
In our blacke Sentence and Profcription.
Ant. OSlauiuSy I haue feene more dayes then you,
And though we lay thefe Honours on this man,
To eafe our felues of diuers fland'rous loads.
He (hall but beare them, as the Affe beares Gold, 25
To groane and fwet vnder the Bufineffe,
Either led or driuen,as we point the way :
And hauing brought our Treafure, where we will,
Then take we downe his Load, and tume him off 29
24. fland'rous] slanderous Coll. Hal. 27. Either] Or Popc,-|- (— Var. '73).
Dyce, Ktly, Cam.-f , Huds. poinl] print Ff, Rowe.
of more power and force than Lepidus, gave himself again to his former riot and
excess.' — Life of Antanius, § 10; (ed. Skeat, p. 170). — ^Ed.]
15. vnmeritable] For other examples of adjectives ending in able and ible, both
positive and negative, used in an active sense, see Walker (Crit,, i, 183); or
Abbott, § 3.
17. The three-fold World] Green (p. 350): Curious it is to note how slowly
the continent which Columbus discovered became fully recognized as an integral
part of * the inhabited world.' . . . Brucioli's Trattato ddla Sphera, Venice, 1543,
... in dividing the globe into climates, does not take a single instance except from
what is named the Old World; in fact, the New World of America is never mentioned.
Somewhat later, in 1564, when Sambucus published his Emblems ^ and presented
Symbols of the parts of the inhabited Earthy he gave only three [i>arts, Europe, Asia,
and Africa, as comprising the whole world]. . . . Shakespeare's geography, how-
ever, though at times defective, extended further than its 'symbols' by Sambucus.
He refers to America and the Indies in Com, of Err., Ill, ii, 131, and to the East and
West Indies in the Merry ^ives, I, iii, 64. Yet in agreement with the map of
Sambucus, [where] the three Capes prominent upon it are the Gibraltar Rock, the
Cape of Good Hope, and that of Malacca, Shakesp>eare on other occasions ignores
America and all its western neighbors. — [In the present passage] and also in Ant,
6* Cleo. he speaks of the 'three nook'd world.* — IV, vi, 6. — [For a discussion on
the last mentioned passage, see Ant, & Cleo., this edition, p. 274.]
25. as the Asse beares Gold] Steevens compares: ' — ^like an ass whose back
with ingots bows. Thou bear'st thy heavy riches but a journey, And death unloads
thee.' — Meas.for Meas., Ill, i, 25. And Wright adds, also: 'Wears out his time,
much like his master's ass. For naught but provender, and when he's old, cashier'd.'
-Othello, I, i, 47.
27. Either] Metrically 'either' is here a monosyllable. For other examples of
like contraction, see Abbott, § 466.
2Q. tume him ofif] Macmillan: Notice the dramatic irony in this speech.
ACT IV, sc. i.] IVLIVS CjESAR 1 93
(Like to the empty Affe)to (hake his eares, 30
And graze in Commons.
OHa. You may do your will :
But hee's a tried, and valiant Souldier.
Ant, So is my Horfe Ollauius^ and for that
I do appoint him ftore of Prouender. 35
It is a Creature that I teach to fight,
To winde, to ftop, to run direftly on :
His corporall Motion, gouem'd by my Spirit,
And in fome tafte, is Lepidus but fo :
He muft be taught, and trained, and bid go forth : 40
A barren fpirited Fellow; one that feeds
On Obiedls, Arts, and Imitations. 42
31. in] on Coll. (MS). Coll. iii. objects ^ oris Sta. conj. Glo.
Commons] common Han. Cam.+. abject arts R. G. White conj.
33. tried] trVd F,F4. (Sh. Schol., 398).
38. Motion,] motion Pope et seq. 42. Imitations.] imitations, Rowe et
42. Obietls, Arts] abject arts Theob. seq. (subs.)
Han. Warb. Johns. Cap. Jen. Dyce,
Antony proposes to treat Lepidus much as he himself was afterwards treated by
Octavius.
31. Commons] Murray {N, E. D., s, v. 5.): A conunon land or estate; the
undivided land belonging to the members of a local conmiunity as a whole. Hence,
often, the unenclosed or 'waste' land which remains to represent that. Formerly
often commons. — [The present line quoted. — ^Walker (Crd., i, 245) somewhat
doubtfully included this present line among those examples wherein the letter s was
interpolated at the end of certain words in the Folio; later (p. 261) he withdraws
this word, as it frequently is used in the plural with a singular sense. — ^£d.]
35. appoint] Murray (N. E, D., s, v. II. 9.) : To decree, assign, or grant authori-
tatively or formally (a thing to a person). [The present line quoted.]
39. in some taste] Craik ({>. 323): The 'taste' which is here referred to is a
taste in contradistinction to a more full enjoyment or participation, a taste merely.
'In some taste' is another way of saying, not in some sense, but in some measure or
degree.
42. On Obiects, Arts, and Imitations] Theobald: ^Tis hard to conceive
why he should be called a 'barren-spirited fellow' that could feed either on 'ob-
jects' or 'arts'; that is, as I presume, form his ideas and judgment upon them;
stale and obsolete imitation, indeed, fixes such a character. I am persuaded we
must read, 'On abject arts,* i. e., on the scraps and fragments of things rejected
and despised by others. — Steevens: Sure, it is easy enough to find a reason why
that devotee to pleasure and ambition, Antony, should call him 'barren-spirited'
who could be content to feed his mind with 'objects,' i. e., speculative knowledge,
or 'arts,' i. e., mechanic operations. . . . Lepidus, in Ant. 6* CUo., H, vii, is rep-
resented as inquisitive about the structures of Egypt, and that, too, when he is
almost in a state of intoxication. Antony, as at present, makes a jest of him,
and returns him unintelligible answers to very reasonable questions. 'Objects,'
13
194 1^^^ TRACED IE OF [act iv, sc. L
Which out of vfe, and ftalMe by other men 43
Begin his fafhion. Do not talke of him.
But as a property : and now OilauiuSy 45
Uften great things. Bmtus and Cajfius
Are leuying Powers; We muft ftraight make head :
Therefore let our Alliance be combin'd, 48
43. ftoTde] ftal'd Ft. JiaWdY^.
however, may mean things objected, or thrown out to him. ... A man who
can avail himself of neglected hints thrown out by others, though without orig-
inal ideas of his own, is no uncommon character. — [Wright: If any other com-
mentator had written such a note, Steevens would have been the first to point
out its weakness.] — Knight, in reference to Steevens's note, asks, Upon ^lat are
we to feed, when both 'speculative knowledge' and the 'mechanical operations' are
excluded? Lepidus, he thinks, is called barren-spirited because he is merely a fol-
lower of the discarded opinions of others. — Delius considers the words 'arts and
imitations' as qualifying or, rather, amplifying the word 'objects,' and connected
thus with the relative clause. That is, the objects upon which Lepidus is nourished
are arts and imitations which are already staled by the use of others. Though
Delius does not say so, 'arts' must then be interpreted in the sense of artifices,
crafty designs, which is quite admissible, and his whole explanation commends
itself inasmuch as it does not depend upon any alteration of the text. — Hudson
declares that to him Theobald's emendation is 'little less than shocking,' and asks
if it be 'credible that Shakespeare could have been guilty of such a combination as
abject arts? Besides, does not the word "imitations" show that he had in mind
works of art? And why may not "objects" stand for any objects of interest or
curiosity?' — Rolfe: Antony says that Lepidus feeds not on objects, arts, and
imitations generally, but on such of them as are out of use and staled by other
people. — [This is, I think, one of the passages whereof any paraphrase hardly renders
a meaning more comprehensible than the words themselves. What auditor or
reader is in doubt as to Anthony's contemptuous opinion of Lepidus; even though
the words be changed to abject arts, as Theobald suggests, or objects^ orts^ as does
Staimton? On the other hand, is any change of the text necessary? 'Objects'
is here, I think, used in the sense given by Murray (N. E, D., s. v, 1. 3. b.) : * Some-
thing which on being seen excites a particular emotion, as admiration, horror, dis-
dain, commiseration, amusement; a sight, spectacle, gazing-stock.' &c., and among
other examples he quotes: ' Swear against objects. Put armour on thine ears and on
thine eyes.'— Hmcm, IV, iii, 122.— Ed.)
44. Begin his fashion] Steevens compares the character of Justice Shallow,
as described by Falstaff: "a came ever in the rearward of the fashion, and sung
those tunes to the overscutch'd huswives that he heard the carmen whistle.' —
2 Hen. IV: m, ii, 340.
45. property] Murray (N. E. D., s. v. 4.): A mere means to an end; an in-
strument, a tool, a cat's-paw. [Compare: ' — 'tis a thing impossible I should love
thee but as a property.' — Merry Wives, HI, iv, 9.]
46. Listen] Schmidt {Lex., s. v. 2.) gives several examples of this transitive use
of 'listen.' See also, if needful, Abbott, § 199.
ACT IV, SC. i.]
IVLIVS C^SAR
195
Our beft Friends made^ our meanes ftretcht,
And let vs prefently go fit in Councell,
How couert matters may be beft difclosM,
And open Perils fureft anfwered.
0£la. Let vs do fo : for we are at the ftake^
And bayed about with many Enemies ,
And fome that fmile haue in their hearts I feare
Millions of Mifcheefes.
SO
55
Exeunt
49. iruuff] all combined Leo (Notes,
p. 59). made secure Mark Hunter conj.
our meanes ftretcht] our best
means stretcht Johns. Cap. Var. '73.
our means stretched to the utmost Mai.
Var. '21, Ktly. our choicest means
stretch* d out Sta. conj. our means ^ our
plans stretched out Bulloch, our means
stretched out Leo (Notes, p. 59). our
meanys stretched J. D. (N. & Q., 6 Oct.,
1877, p. 263). all our means stretched
Mark Hunter conj. and our beft meanes
stretcht out Ff et cet. (subs.)
$2. an/wered] answer^ Dycc.
56. Mifcheefes] mischief Varr. '78,
'85, Mai. Ran. Steev. Varr. '03, '13.
49. our meanes stretcht] Malone, whose text reads 'our means stretched to
the utmost f* considers the reading of the Second Folio, 'and our best means stretch'd
outf' 'as ill-conceived as possible. . . . ''Means" or abilities, if stretched out,
receive no additional strength from the word best, nor does "means," when con-
sidered without reference to others, . . . seem to admit of a degree of comparison.'
An omission, due to transcriber or compositor, would occur at the end of the line
rather than at three points in the line itself, says Malone, which justifies him in
preferring his own emendation to that of the Second Folio's editor. — Steevens:
1 am satisfied with the reading of the Second Folio, in which I perceive neither
awkwardness nor want of perspicuity. 'Best' is a word of mere enforcement, and
is frequently introduced by Shakespeare. Compare: 'My life itself and the best
heart of it.' — Hen. VIII: I, ii, i. Why does 'best,' in this instance, seem more
significant than when it is applied to 'means'? — ^Macmiijan: 'Our best friends
made' is so incomplete in itself that it seems likely that what is omitted in the
Folio is an adjective meaning J^m after 'made,' or perhaps an infinitive with to,
so that the line would be nearly as follows: 'Our best friends made to know oiu:
best means stretch'd.'
53 1 54* At the stake. And bayed about] Two metaphors, one taken from
bear-baiting, and the other from hunting the hart. For the first, compare: 'They
have tied me to a stake; I cannot fly, But, bearlike, I must fight the course.' —
Macb,, V, vii, i, 2; for the second, see II, ii, 228, above, and note. — Ed.
56. Mischeefes] That is, harms, injuries. Compare: 'The name of Henry the
Fifth hales them to an himdred mischiefs, and makes them leave me desolate.' —
2 Hen. VI: IV, viii, 59.
196
THE TRACED IE OF
[act IV, sc. iL
[Scene //.]
Drum.
Enter Brutus ^ LucilliuSy and the Army.
and Pindarus meete them.
Stand ho.
Giue the word ho, and Stand.
What now LucilliuSy is Cajftus neere f
He is at hand, and Pindarus is come
To do you falutation from his Mafter.
Bru.^t, greets we well. Your Mafter Pindarus
Titmius
Bru.
Lucil.
Bru.
Lucil.
5
8
Scene n. Rowe et seq.
Before Bnitus's Tent in the Camp,
near Sardis. Rowe,+y Cap.
I, 2. Drum.. ..them] Enter Brutus
and Forces; Lucius and others attend-
ing. Cap. Drum. Enter Brutus and
Soldiers; to them Ludlius and his
Soldiers marching, Titinius and Pin-
darus. Jennens et seq. (subs.)
I. Ludllius,] l^udUus, Lucius, Mai.
et seq.
2. meete] meeting Var. '73 et seq.
3. ho\ here Mai.
[to his Officers entering. Cap.
4. [to him Ludlius, with Soldiers;
Pindarus and Titinius. Cap.
4, 5. Giue the f00r({...Ludllius] As one
line Walker (Crit., iii, 247).
6. [to his Party. Cap.
7. [presenting Pindarus, who gives a
letter. Cap. et seq. (subs.)
Scene II.] Maltzahn {Jahrhuch, vii, p. 59) recommends that this and the fol-
lowing scene be' acted continuously, with but one stage-setting. Thus: Bnitus's
Tent, with its front curtains drawn back, occupies almost three-fourths of the
stage on either the right or left side. In the background a distant view of hills, and
in the middle foreground the camp with tents, outposts, etc. When Cassius enters,
he and Brutus go within the Tent and the rest of the scene there takes place;
followed by that with Messala, and the appearance of the Ghost of Caesar. — Mac-
MiLLAN (Introd., p. 1.)- An interval of about a year must be supposed to separate
the first and second scenes of this Act.
I. Enter Bnitus, Lucillius, and the Army] Jennens: In Cai^ell's text
Lucillius, Titinius, and Pindarus do not enter until Brutus has said 'Stand ho!'
and a direction is given that these words shall be spoken to his (Brutus^s) officers,
entering. Then Lucillius (entering with his soldiers, and Pindarus and Titinius)
says to his party: 'Give the word, ho, and stand.* By thus ordering the scene,
Capell seems to understand that Brutus and Ludllius, with their several bodies of
soldiers, being upon their march, meet; and then each of them gives the word of
command to stand to their separate parties. But the scene is before Bnitus's
Tent. . . . Therefore he and his soldiers have done marching, have erected the
tent, and are expecting the other companies at the place appointed. Here the
scene oi)ens; Lucillius, being upon the march, and having arrived where Brutus is,
Bnitus (as generalissimo of the forces) bids him stand; Ludllius conveys these
orders to his officers, and bids them give the word of command to the soldiers.
7. do you salutation] Wright: Compare: * The early village cock Hath twice
done salutation to the mom.' — Rich. Ill: V, iii, 210.
ACT IV, sc. ii.] IVLIVS CjESAR jgy
In his owne change^ or by ill Officers,
Hath giuen me fome worthy caufe to wifh 10
Things done, vndone : But if he be at hand
I fhall be fatisfied.
Pin, I do not doubt
But that my Noble Mafter will appeare
Such as he is, full of regard, and Honour. 15
Bru. He is not doubted. A word Lucillius
How he receiuM you : let me be refoluM.
Lucil. With courtefie, and with refpeft enough,
But not with fuch familiar inflances, 19
9. change] charge Warb. Han. Cap. line Craik.
Huds. iii. 16, 17. Ludllius...yiw:] Ff. Lucillius
Officers] offices Johns, conj. — ...yiw, Rowe,-f , Cap. Ludlius,...
16. -4 word] Hear a word Han. you; Walker (Crit., iii, 247). Lucilius;
A word Lucillius] As sei>arate ...you, Mai. et cet.
9. In his owne change] Warburton: That is, either your master, by the
change of his virtuous nature, or by his officers abusing the power he had entrusted
to them, hath done some things I could wish undone. This implies a doubt which
of the two was the case. Yet, immediately after, on Pindarus's saying, 'His
master was full of regard and honour,' Brutus replies, 'He is not doubted.' To
reconcile this we should read: * In his own cAorf « .' — ^Johnson: The arguments for
the change proposed are insufficient. Brutus could not but know whether the
wrongs committed were done by those who were immediately under the command
of Cassius or those under his officers. The answer of Brutus to the Servant is only
an act of artful civility; his question to Lucillius proves that his suspicion still con-
tinued. Yet I cannot but suspect a corruption, and would read, 'or by ill offices*
That is, either changing his inclination of himself y or hy the iU offices and bad
influences of others. — M. Mason: Brutus says to Lucillius, 'Thou hast de-
scribed a hot friend cooling.' That is the 'change' which Brutus complains of. —
Steevens: Surely alteration is unnecessary. In the subsequent conference Brutus
charges both Cassius and his officer, Lucius Pella, with corruption.
16. He is not doubted. A word Lucillius] Craik (p. 326): Brutus . . .
first addresses himself to Pindarus, then to Lucilius. Even if the prosody did not
admonish us to the same efifect, it would, in these circumstances, be better to print
the passage with two hemistichs or broken lines. — [See Text. Notes, Capell denotes
this change in address by printing this dialogue between Brutus and Lucilius as an
aside (i, e., in quotation marks, according to his custom) down to the entrance of
Cassius, 1. 36. — Ed.]
19. instances] Craik (p. 236): The word still in use that most nearly ex-
presses this obsolete sense of 'instances' is, perhaps, assiduities. — Dyce (Gloss.,
s. V. 'Instance') says: 'A word used by Shakespeare with various shades of mean-
ing, which it is not always easy to distinguish — "motive, inducement, cause,
ground; symptom, prognostic; information, assurance; proof, example, indica-
tion."'— Murray (N. E. D., s, v.) gives ten shades of meaning of this word. The
198 THE TRACED IE OF [act iv. sc. u.
Nor with fuch free and friendly Conference 20
As he hath vsM of old.
Bru. Thou haft defcribM
A hot Friend, cooling : Euer note LucUliuSy
When Loue begins to ficken and decay
It vfeth an enforced Ceremony. 25
There are no trickes, in plaine and fimple Faith :
But hollow men, like Horfes hot at hand,
Make gallant (hew, and promife of their Mettle :
Low March within.
But when they fhould endure the bloody Spurre, 30
They fall their Crefts, and like deceitful lades
Sinke in the Triall. Comes his Army on ?
LucUJlh&y meane this night in Sardis to be quartered:
The greater part, the Horfe in generall 34
25. enforcei[ enfordd Dyce. distance, advancing. Wh.i. (after!. 32).
27. <U hand] in hand Craik conj. March within. Cap. et cet.
29. Low...within] After 1. 35 Pope, -h. 31. Crefts] Creft Ff, Rowe,+ ( — ^Var.
After 1. 37 Wh. ii. March heard in the '73).
one which most nearly approaches the present use is in, 7: 'Something which
proves or indicates; a proof, evidence; a sign, token, mark.' This is also the last
group of meanings given by Dyce, and as he quotes the present line among his
last examples, it is a fair inference that he thus understands it. Murray does not
include assiduity among the different meanings of 'instance.' — ^£d.
25. Ceremony] For the sake of the metre, though to the destruction of euphony,
'ceremony' might be here pronounced as a trisyllable. — ^Walker (Vers, ii, 73)
gives many examples from Shakespeare and from other writers of this — as I think
mistaken — ^pronimciation. — Ed.
27. at hand] Craik (p. 328) explains this phrase as here meaning 'when held
by the hand or led,' and Wright also thus interprets it; but since Murray (N, E,
D,f s. V. hand, II, 25. c) quotes the present line and two other pasages wherein
'at hand' means 'At the immediate moment; at the start,' that meaning here
seems preferable. — ^John Hunter compares for this and the following lines:
' — those that tame wild horses Pace 'em not in their hands to make 'em gentle.
But stop their mouths with stubborn bits, and spur 'em Till they obey the manage.'
— Hen. VIII: V, iii, 21. But beyond the fact that certain words, such as 'hands,'
'horses,' 'spur,' are conunon to both passages, there does not appear much similar-
ity; the thought is, moreover, quite different. — ^Ed.
29. Low March within] In this form directions for music, in the Folio, are
rare; the word music more usually precedes, as thus: Music of march within.
Perhaps a parallel for 'March' thus used to designate a piece of music may be in
'Our dreadful marches to delightful measures.' — Rich. Ill: I, i, 8. Compare also
the stage-direction, V, i, 24: 'March.* — Ed.
31. fall] For numerous examples of 'fall' thus used transitively, see Schmidt
(Lex., s. V. 16. B.), or consult Abbott, § 291.
ACT IV. sc. u.] IVLIVS CJSSAR I99
Are come with Cajfvus. 35
Enter Cajfvus and his Powers.
Bru. Hearke, he is arriuM :
March gently on to meete him.
Cajfu Stand ho.
Bru. Stand ho, fpeake the word along. 40
Stand.
Stand.
Stand.
Caffu Moft Noble Brother,you haue done me wrong.
Bru. ludge me you Gods; wrong I mine Enemies? 45
And if not fo, how Ihould I wrong a Brother.
CaJfi.BrutuSy this fober forme of yours, hides wrongs,
And when you do them
BruL CaJJiuSy be content,
Speake your greefes foftly, I do know you well. 50
Before the eyes of both our Armies heere
(Which (hould perceiue nothing but Loue from vs)
Let vs not wrangle. Bid them moue away :
Then in my tent Cajftus enlarge your Greefes, 54
36. Enter ... Powers.) After 1. 38 Cap. [Without] Stand. [WthoutJ
Cap. Dyce. Stani, [Without] Siani, SU. First
his Powers.] Ff. Forces. Cap. Sol. SUnnd, Second Sol. Siani. Third
Soldiers. Rowe et cet. Sol. Siand, Cam.+, Within. Stand.
38. MQfch\ MaHch Fa. Within. Stand. Within. Stand. Rowe
39. [To his Officers entering. Cap. et cet.
40. ho] [to his] Cap. 43. [One after other and fainter.
41-43. Stand. Stand. Stand.] Ff. Coll. MS.
I. O. Stand. 2. O. Stand. 3. O. Stand. 46. Brother.] Brother? F2F4.
48. And when you do them] Mask Hunter: The general meaning is that
Brutus, in spite of his outward appearance of conscious rectitude, is still liable like
other men to do wrong, and when he does, act unjustly. — ^Here Brutus interrupts
Cassius, who was perhaps going on to say that wrongs so ofifered were resented all
the more on that account. The taunt is not without justification, and possibly
Brutus feels that it has touched him on a vulnerable point. At any rate, the fol-
lowing speech is distinctly conciliatory.
49. content] Murray {N. E. D., s. v. I. b.): Be satisfied in mind; be calm, quiet,
not uneasy. [The present line quoted. Compare I, iii, 159.]
50. greefes] For a similar use of 'griefs,' for grievances ^ causes of complaint ,
compare I, iii, 129; III, ii, 223.
50. I do know you weU] Brutus means by this, I think, that there is no occa-
sion for Cassius to be so vehement, since they are both intimate friends; he
then adds a second reason against any unseemly wrangling in the presence of their
armies. — Ed.
200 THE TR AG ED IE OF [act iv, sc. ii.
And I will giue you Audience. 55
Cajft. PindaruSy
Bid our Commanders leade their Charges off
A little from this ground.
Bru. LucUliuSj do you the like^ and let no man
Come to our Tent, till we haue done our Conference. 60
Let Lucius and Titinius guard our doore. Exeunt
Manet Brutus and Cajftus. 62
58-60. A liUle,„Conference] Lines 60. done] dooe Fa.
end: l,ucM}JS,,Jike,,.JiU wc.Confer- 61. Lei Ludus] LuciUus Craik, Wh.
ence. Walker (Crit., iii, 248). i, Dyce ii, iii, Huds. ill. Lei Ludlius
59. Ludllius] As sei>arate line Cap. Coll. ill. (misprint?).
Ludus Craik, Wh. i, Dyce ii, iii. Coll. our] ihe Rowe ii, Pope, Theob.
iii. Han. Warb. Dyce ii, iii. Coll. iii, Hud&
do you] do Pope,+, Steev. Var. iii.
&03, '13. 62. Manet] Manent Ff.
rnafi] man, Ludlius Cap.
57. Charges] That is, the troops under command.
59-61. Lucillius . . . Lucius and Titinius] Ckaik (p. 331): The function
of Ludus was to carry messages. As Cassius sends Ins servant, Pindanis, with a
message to his division of the force, Brutus sends his servant with a similar message
to his division. Nothing can be dearer than that Ludllius in 1. 59 is a misprint for
Ludus, and Ludus in 1. 61 a misprint for Lucillius. Or the error may have been
in the copy; and the insertion of the 'Let' was probably an attempt of the printer
or editor to save the prosody of that line, as the omission of the 'you' is of some
modem editors to save that of the other. [See Text. Notes.] — ^Wright quotes the
foregoing, and suggests that as Ludlius and Titinius convey the orders to the com-
manders in the next scene, I. 156, it would be better to interchange Pindanis and
Titinius in 11. 56 and 61.
62. Manet Brutus and Cassius] Knight: In the Shakesperean theatre Brutus
and Cassius evidently retired to the secondary stage. — Dyce: The 'Manet'
shows, I think, that Knight is mistaken, and that here the audience were to suppose
(as they frequently had to suppose) a change of scene. — Wright: As the scene
merdy changes from the outside to the inside of Brutus's tent, the simple arrange-
ments of the theatre in Shakespeare's time did not indicate it. There is a sunilar
instance in Rom. 6* Jul., II, ii, where the scene on the modem stage changes from
one side of the wall of Capulet's orchard to the other, and yet the first line of the
new scene rhymes with the last of the one before it.
ACT IV, sc. iii.] IVLIVS CjESAR 201
[Scene III.\
Scene continued. Ff, Rowe. Scene sius. Theob.+< Lucius and Titinius at
m. Pope et seq. the door. Enter Brutus and Cassius.
Inside of Brutus's Tent. Theob. et Cap. et seq.
seq. (subs.) Re-enter Brutus and Cas-
Scene III.] Dkyden {Preface to his Troilus 6* Cressida, sig. a. recto) says that
though his own quarrel scene between TroUus and Hector in Act V. may be said to re-
semble somewhat the present scene, and also that scene between Amintor and Mel-
antius in Beaumont and Fletcher's Maid's Tragedy ^ HI, ii, yet had ' these two never
been written Euripides had f umish'd [him] with an excellent example in Iphegenia in
Aidis, [11. 317 to 472 J between Agamemnon and Menelaus'; he acknowledges that
the latter and not Shakespeare's work was his model. He thus continues: 'The
occasion which Shakespeare, Euripides, and Fletcher have all taken is the same:
grounded upon Friendship; and the quarrel of two virtuous men, rais'd by natural
degrees to the extremity of passion, is conducted in all three to the declination
of the same passion; and concludes with a warm renewing of their friendship.
But the particular groimdwork that Shakespeare has taken is incomparably
the best: Because he has not only chosen two the greatest heroes of their age; but
has likewise interested the liberty of Rome, and their own honors, who were the
redeemers of it, in this debate. And if he has made Brutus, who was naturally a
patient man, to fly into excess at first; let it be remembered, in his defence, that
just before he has received the news of Portia's death: whom the Poet, on purpose
neglecting a little chronology, supposes to have dy'd before Brutus, only to give
him an occasion of being more easily exasperated. Add to this, that the injury he
had received from Cassius had long been brooding in his mind; and that a melan-
choly man, upon consideration of an affront, especially from a friend, would be
more eager in his passion than he who had given it, though natiurally more chol-
erick.' — Rymes (p. 154): Brutus and Cassius are by the poet represented acting
the parts of Mimics: from the Nobility and Buskins, they are made the Planipedes;
are brought to dance barefoot, for a Spectacle to the people. Two Philosophers,
two generals (imperatores was their title), the tdtitni Romanorutn, are to play the
Bullies and Buffoon, to shew their Legerdemain, their activity of face, and divarica-
tion of Muscles. They are to play a prize, a tryal of skill in huffing and swaggering,
like two drunken Hectors for a two-penny reckoning. — Gildon (p. 381) : I must
needs say that the advantage Mr Dryden gives to the Briton is equally due to
Euripides, for certainly Agamemnon and Menelaus, in the poetic world at least,
and in the system of heroes in the time Euripides' wrote, were as great as Brutus
and Cassius, one of whom cannot carry away the prize of the greatest hero of his
age without some dispute. Next in the quarrel of Euripides, not the disappoint-
ment of some pay of legions, or the denial of quitting a man guilty of bribery,
which both were past, but the fate, the glory, and the honour if not the safety of
all Greece, depended on the groimd of their difference. — Theobald: This quarrel-
ling scene . . . was received with so much applause that it is spoken of in one of the
preliminary copies of verses in the First Folio: * Or till I hear a scene more nobly
take. Than what thy half-sword parlying Roman's spake.' — [lines by L. Digges.j —
Mrs Montagu (p. 274): The characters of the men are well sustained [in this
202 THE TRACED IE OF [act iv, sc. in.
[Scene III.]
scene]: it is natural, it is interesting; but it rather retards than brings forward the
catastrophe, and is useful only in setting Brutus in a good light. . . . The principal
object of our poet was to interest the spectator for Brutus; to do this he was to
show that his temper was the furthest imaginable from an3rthing ferocious or
sanguinary, and by his behaviour to his wife, his friends, his servants, to demon-
strate, that out of respect to public liberty, he made as difficult a conquest over lus
natural disposition, as his great predecessor had done for the like cause over natural
affection. — Coleridge (p. 105): I know no part of Shakespeare that more im-
presses on me the belief of his genius being superhuman than this scene between
Brutus and Cassius. In the Gnostic heresy it might have been credited with less
absurdity than most of their dogmas that the Supreme had employed him to
create, previously to his fimction of representing, character. — ^Knight (Studies^ p.
418) : The matchless art of Shakespeare [in this scene] consists as much in what he
holds back as in what he puts forward. Brutus subdues Cassius by the force of his
moral strength, without the slightest attempt to conunand the feelings of a sensi-
tive man. When Cassius is subdued, he owns that he has been hasty. They are
friends again, hand and heart. — ^A. C. Bradley (p. 60): One purpose of this
scene, as also of the appearance of Cesar's Ghost just afterwards, is to indicate the
inward changes. Otherwise the introduction of this famous and wonderful scene
can hardly be defended on strictly dramatic grounds. No one would consent to
part with it, and it is invaluable in sustaining interest during the progress of the
reaction, but it is an episode, the removal of which would not affect the actual
sequence of events (unless we may hold that, but for the emotion caused by the
quarrel and reconciliation, Cassius would not have allowed Brutus to overcome his
objection to the fatal policy of offering battle at Philippi). The quarrd-scene illus-
trates yet another favourite expedient. In this section of a tragedy Shakespeare
often appeals to an emotion different from any of those ezdted in the first half of
the play, and so provides novelty and generally also relief. As a rule this new emo-
tion is pathetic; and the pathos is not terrible or lacerating, but, even if painful,
is accompanied by the sense of beauty and by an outflow of admiration or affection,
which come with an inexpressible sweetness after the tension of the crisis and first
counterstroke. So it is with the reconciliation of Brutus and Cassius and the
arrival of the news of Portia's death. — ^MacCallum (p. 267, foot-note): Two objec-
tions have been made to this scene or, rather, to the whole Act. The first, in
A. C. Bradley's words, that it has a * tendency to drag'; [the second, by G. P.
Baker, that it was 'probably] not entirely successful in Shakespeare's own day';
and afterwards Baker refers to it as 'ineffective today.' [See note on IV, i, i.] In
view of Digges' testimony, it is difficult to see how Baker can say that it was not
entirely successful in Shakespeare's day. As to the impression it makes now, one
must largely depend on one's own feelings and experience. Certainly I myself
have never been conscious that it dragged or was ineffective, nor have I noted that
it failed to stir the audience. ... On every occasion it seemed to me that the
quarrel-scene was the most popularly successful in the play. This statement is, I
believe, strictly accurate, for having Digges' lines in my mind I was on the watch
to see whether the taste of the Elizabethan coincided with the taste of a later
generation. [Bradley's criticism of this scene,] that in the economy of the piece
it leads to nothing, ... is quite true, though his proviso is a most important one.
But it does very manifestly connect with what has gone before, and gives the
ACT IV, sc. iii.] IVLIVS CjESAR 203
Cajft. That you haue wronged me, doth appear in this: i
You haue condemn'd, and noted Lucius Pella
For taking Bribes heere of the Sardians ;
Wherein my Letters, praying on his fide,
Becaufe I knew the man was flighted off. 5
Bm. You wronged your felfe to write in fuch a cafe.
Cajft. In fuch a time as this, it is not meet
That euery nice offence fhould beare his Comment.
Bru. Let me tell you CaJfiuSj you your felfe
Are much condemn'd to haue an itching Palme. 10
To fell, and Mart your Offices for Gold
To Vndeferuers. 12
4. Wherein] Whereas Huds. Cap.
4, 5. LeUers, praying...man was] 6. cafe] cause Cap. conj.
LeUer, praying.„inan, was Ff, Rowe, 8. nice ofence ... Hs Commeni] of-
Cap. Var. '73, '78, '85. LeUer (paying fence,..nice comment Dodd ap. Cam.
...ifiaif) was Pope, Theob, Han. Warb. his] Us Pope,-|- ( — ^Var. '73).
Johns. LeUers, praying^.man, were 9. Lei] Yet lei Pope, Theob. Han.
Mai. et aeq. Warb. Ktly. And lei Cap. Dyce ii, iii,
5. off] of Rowe ii, Pope, Han. Warb. Huds. iii. Bui lei Kinnear.
essence and net result of the story. We could sooner dispense with the Fifth Act
than the Fourth, for the Fifth may with less injustice be described as an appendix,
than the Fourth as an episode. Not only is it less unique in kind, but for the most
part it works out issues that can easily be foreseen and that to some extent are
dearly indicated here. Of course, this is not to say that it could be rejected without
mutilating the play, for it works them out far more impressively than we could do
in our own imaginations, even. with Plutarch to help us. — [MacCallum has, I
think, misunderstood Baker's criticism, which was that this whole aci was dramatic-
ally inefifective inasmuch as it does not carry on the story of the fate of the con-
^irators. — Ed.]
2. You haue condemn'd, and noted] 'The next day after Brutus, upon
complaint of the Sardians, did condenm and note Lucius Pella for a defamed per-
son, that had been a praetor of the Romans.' — ^Plutarch: Life of Brutus , § 25 (ed.
Skeat, p. 135). This incident is, however, given as occurring on the day following
the altercation between Brutus and Cassius at their first meeting, and was the
cause for another dispute; Shakespeare has merged the two quarrels in one, just as
in the next Act he combines the two battles at Philippi. — Ed.
2. noted] CsAiGiE (N. E, D., s. v, note 7. c): To stigmatize for some reason.
[The present line quoted.]
8. nice] That is, slight^ insignificant.
8. his] See Murray (N. E. D., s. v. Its) for an account of this use of the mas-
culine possessive for the neuter pronoim.
10. condemn'd to haue] That is, condemned for having. Compare: 'you forget
yourself To hedge me in,' I. 30, below; and for other examples of this genmdial use
of the infinitive, see Abbott, § 356.
204 THE TR AGED IE OF [act iv, sc. liL
Cajft. I, an itching Palme ? 13
You know that you are Brutus that fpeakes this,
Or by the Gods, this fpeech were elfe your laft. 15
Bru. The name of Cajftus Honors this corruption,
And Chafticement doth therefore hide his head.
Cafft. Chafticement ?
Bru. Remember March, the Ides of March Remeber :
Did not great lulius bleede for luftice fake ? 20
What Villaine touch'd his body, that did ftab.
And not for luftice ? What? Shall one of Vs,
That ftrucke the Formoft man of all this World,
But for fupporting Robbers : fhall we now, 24
13. /] Ay Rowe i. 18. Chafticemetaf] Ckastisementt—
14. fpeakes] freaks F4, Rowe, Craik, Rowe et seq. (subs.)
Ktly, Cam. speak Pope et cet. 19-29. Mnemonic Waib.
17. doth] does Coll. i. 20. luftice] justice* Cap. Var. '78, *8s,
kis] its Pope,+ (—Var. '73). Mai. Ran. Stcev. Varr. Knt, Coll.
Dyce, Wh. Ktly, Cam.-|-.
17. Chasticement doth therefore hide his head] Mask Hunter: The reply
is feeble save as an additional insult, for Brutus has no authority to punish Cassius
for a public ofifence, and if he had, by refraining from doing so from personal
motives, his conduct is not a whit more upright than Cassius's has been in the case
of Lucius Fella.
19-24. Remember March . . . But for supporting Robbers] Mark Hxtnter
calls attention to the inconsistency between this speech and the other by
Brutus at the beginning of Act II, wherein he acknowledges that Cssar had in
no way abused his power. This want of agreement Himter thinks can be eicplained
by the assumption that: 'Shakespeare may [in the present passage] have written
with his eye too much on the text of Plutarch, and have forgotten the remarkable
sentiments that without Plutarch's authority he had hipiself put into the mouth of
Brutus in Act II.*
21, 22. What Villaine . . . And not for lustice] Edwards (p. 125): This ques-
tion is so far from inferring [that those who touched Caesar were villains] that, on
the contrary, it is a strong way of denying that there were any such among them as
were villains enough to stab for any cause except that of justice. — [This note from
Edwards's Canons, etc., 1748, is repeated, with a few slight verbal changes, by
Malone in his edition, 1790 — and is accredited to him in the following Variorum
editions, without, however, any acknowledgement to Edwards. This is unusual;
Malone was customarily fair in assigning to others their proper opinions; and,
therefore, we may, I think, make allowance for this apparent lapse of memory. —
Ed.] — Wright: Compare, for this construction, V, iv, 3: *Yet, coimtrymen, O
yet hold up your heads. What bastard doth not?'
24. But for supporting Robbers] Coleridge (p. 134): This seemingly
strange assertion of Brutus is unhappily verified in the present day. What is an
immense army, in which the lust of plunder has quenched all the duties of the
citizen, other than a horde of robbers, or differenced only as fiends from ordinarily
ACT IV. sc. iii.] IVLIVS CjESAR 205
Contaminate our fingers, with bafe bribes ? 25
And fell the mighty fpace of our large Honors
For fo much trafh, as may be grafped thus?
I had rather be a Dogge^and bay the Moone,
Then fuch a Roman. 29
25. Bfihtsf\ bribes y Knt, CoU. Dyce, 27. grafped] fftasfid Dyce.
Cam.+. 28. bay] baite Fa. bait FjF^f Rowe.
reprobate men? Cfl^ar supported, and was supported by, such as these; and
even so Buonaparte in our days. — MacCallum (p. 202) : This [speech of Brutus],
one feels, is merely an argumerUutn ad hominem, brought forward very much in
afterthought for a particular purpose. At the tune, neither in Brutus*s speeches to
himself or others, nor in the discussions of the CQlispiratqrSj^ is Caesar accus^ of
countenancing peculation, or is this made a handle against him. And if it were, it
would not be incompatible with acquiescence in a royal government. ... On
Coleridge's interpretation Brutus's charge would come to nothing more than this,
that Csesar had employed large armies. I believe there is a more definite reference
to a passage in the Life of Antony: 'Now it grieved men much, to see that Cesar
should be out of Italy following of his enemies, to end this great warre, with such
great perill and daimger: and that others in the meantime abusing his name and
authoritie, should conmiit such insolent and outragious parts imto their citizens.
This me thinkes was the cause that made the conspiracie against Caesar increase
more and more, and layd the reynes of the brydle uppon the souldiers neckes, where-
by they durst boldlier commit many eztorsions, cruelties, and robberies.' — [§ 5; ed.
Skeat, p. 162.]
28, 29. I had rather ... Then such a Roman] MacCallum (p. 262):
Surely there are few more pathetic passages even in Shakespeare than the con-
fession of disillusionment wrung from Brutus by the force of events, a confession
none the less significant that he admits disillusion only as to the results and still
clings to his estimate of the deed itself. ... In anticipating the effects of Caesar's
rule, he had said he 'had rather be a villager than to repute himself a son of Rome'
in the probable conditions. But his attempt at remedy has resulted in a situation
even more intolerable. He would rather be a dog than such Romans as the con-
federates, whom he sought to put in Caesar's place, are disclosing themselves to be.
28. a Dogge, and bay the Moone] Warburton, under covert and convenient
seeming of praising Shakespeare's ingenuity, but, in reality, extolling his own, says
that in this Brutus, by an innuendo, likens Cassius and his attitude toward Caesar
to a dog who barks at the moon but in envy of its brightness. — C afells' objection is,
I think, apposite, he says: 'This . . . refinement upon a thought is repugnant
to character. Brutus is but describing the " dog " by his idlest property, to heighten
his own with: if the vulgar-imputed motive for ''baying" be at all thought of, to
wit, the dog's envy of the brightness of what he bays at, and the motives of others
shadow'd under it, this shadowing (it is likely) is general, and relates to all the con-
spirators, even the speaker himself.' — Green (p. 269) illustrates this line by three
examples from the emblem writers of the sixteenth century wherein is shown the
figure of a dog barking at the moon. An evidence, if such were needed, that this
habit was of quite general observation. — Murray (N. E. />., s. v. bay^ vb.*) 'To
bark at, to assail with barking'; quotes the present line. — Ed.
2o6 THE TRACED IE OF [act iv. sc. iiL
Cajfi. BruttiSy baite not me, 30
He not endure it : you forget your felfe
To hedge me in. I am a Souldier, I,
Older in practice, Abler then your felfe
To make Conditions.
Bru, Gro too : you are not Cajftus. 35
30. haii^ Fa. hay Theob. Warb. Huds. iii.
Cap. Var. '78, '85, Steev. Var. '03, '13, 35. ioo\ to Ff.
Dyce, Coll. ii, iii, Craik, Sta. Wh. you are] YouWe Steev. Var. '03,
Hal. Ktly, GI0.+, Huds. iii. haU YJF^ '13, Sing. i.
etcet. not] Ff, Rowe, Pope, Theob.
32. in. /] »», / Rowe et seq. Warb. Johns. Cap. Var. '73. not,
Souldier, /] soldier, ay Var. '73. Theob. conj., Han. et cet.
38-30. bay . . . baite] In order fully to comprehend the discussion occasioQed
by these two words a slight study of the Text, Notes is necessary. It will be noticed
that the Folios, in both II. 28 and 30, have bait; Rowe, alone among modem editors,
follows this — probably because he printed directly from the Fourth Folio with all
its imperfections. — ^Theobald, on the other hand, reads in both lines bay; between
this reading and that of the First Folio the texts of subsequent editors are almost
equally divided. — Capell, who follows Theobald, says: 'Cassius does but catch
at the term which feeds the mood he is in,' and that, '"bait," is but the blunder
of cop3rists.' — Malone, while he acknowledges the plausibility of Theobald's
change — bay — considers that the Folio text should not be altered, since, though
examples of bay used in this sense may be shown, yet 'bait' occurs quite as often;
and Steevens, for exactly these same reasons, declares in favour of Theobald. —
Craik thinks it possible that there was some confusion between 'bait' and 'bay,*
and that 'both words were apt to call up a more or less distinct notion of encom-
passing, or closing in.' 'Perhaps something of this,' he adds, 'is what runs in
Cassius's head when says: "You forget yourself, To hedge me in."' — ^Wright con-
siders that there is no necessity for either the change of the later Folios in 1. 28
or that of Theobald, 1. 30. 'It would be absurd,' he says, 'to speak of baiting the
moon, and Cassius implies that Brutus was not only barking at him, but attacking
him as a wild beast is attacked by dogs.'
32. To hedge me in] Johnson: That is, to limit my authority by your direc-
tion or censure. — Craik (see preceding note), more justly, I think, refers this to
encompassing, etc., in a vague allusion, let me suggest, to the baiting of a bear. — Ed.
32. a Souldier, I] Steevens: The modem editors instead of 'I' have read
Ay, because the vowel sometimes stands for the affirmative adverb. I have replaced
the old reading on the authority of the following: 'And I am Brutus; Marcus
Brutus, I.' — [V, iv, 10. — As far as I know the only 'modem' edition which reads
Ay is the Variorum of 1773, of which Steevens was co-editor with Johnson. —
Jennens, whose edition appeared in the following year, gives i4y as a conjectural
reading of his own, but his collation of preceding editions does not, naturally,
include that of Johnson and Steevens. — Craik has also, independently, made the
same conjecture, and Hudson, in his last edition, adopts this reading. — Ed.]
34. To make Conditions] Johnson: That is, to know on what terms it is fit
to confer the offices which are at my disposal. [See 1. 11, above.]
35. you are not Cassius] Theobald, in a letter to Warburton, dated 14* Febru-
ACT IV. sc. iii.] IVLIVS CjESAR 207
Cajft. I am, 36
Bru. I fay, you are not.
36, 37. / am.„I fay] Brutus, / am...Cassius, / say Steev. conj.
ary, 1729, says: 'If this [the omission of a comma before '^Cassius"] be not persuad-
ing a man out of his Christian name, the devil is in it. What ! because Cassius is testy
the Editors will not allow Brutus to think he is Cassius. But this absurdity is de-
rived from false pointing. I read: "you are not, Cassius." Thus Brutus denies
Cassius's assertion that he is an older, or abler, soldier than himself.' — (Nichols, ii,
496). — ^But Theobald does not adopt this obvious pointing in his edition which
appeared in 1 733, or even in his second, which was issued in 1 740. Warburton either
forgot this suggestion or purposely ignored it, since he not only follows the Folio
text, but contributes a note in justification of it: 'Brutus in his reply only reproves
Cassius for degeneracy. And he could not do it in words more pathetic than by
saying, you are not Cassius, i. e., you are no longer that brave, disinterested philo-
sophic Cassius, whose character was made up of honor and patriotism; but are
simk down into the impotency and corruption of the times.' — Such a remark as the
foregoing was an opportimity for Edwasds, who, in his Canons of Criiicismy fre-
quently turns Warburton's own words against his arbitrary assertions; and he thus
rebukes him (p. 158) : 'One may justly say of our critic, as Worcester does of Hot-
spur: "He apprehends a world of figures here; But not the form of what he should
attend." If Mr Warburton had not been giddy with his ideas of bravery, disin-
terestedness, philosophy, honor, and patriotism, which have nothing to do here, he
would have seen that '^Cassius" is the vocative case, not the nominative; and that
Brutus does not mean to say, you are not an abler soldier; but he says, you are not an
abler than I; a point which it was far from being beneath his character to insist on.
If the words "you are not Cassius" meant a new imputation on him of degeneracy,
his mere denial of it is very flat; and Brutus's replying to that denial, by a mere
iQ)etition of his former assertion, is still worse; whereas, if the words mean only a
denial of what Cassius had just said, it is natural enough for each of them to
maintain his ground by a confident assertion of the truth of his opinion. And that
the superiority of soldeirship was the point of their dispute is most manifestly
evident by Brutus resuming it a little lower: "You say you are a better soldier:
Let it appear so." Upon which Cassius answers: "I said, an eider soldier; not a
better" ' — Hanmer inserts a conmia, as in Theobald's proposed reading; though it is
manifestly improbable that he had seen it. His silence on this point may be com-
pared to that of his greater follower, Johnson, who says, in his immortal preface, in
regard to Theobald, 'I have sometimes adopted his restoration of a comma without
inserting the paneg3rrick in which he celebrated himself for his achievement' (Var,
'21, vol. ii, p. 94). — Cafell, however, takes Hanmer to task for this change; he
upholds the Folio, and says (p. no): '[Hanmer's] pointing . . . puts the sense of
this speech that is neither worthy of Brutus nor even pertinent: For what is it he
would deny? that Cassius was not "abler than he was to make conditions"? Could
Brutus have such a thought, in any state of mind? or Cassius talk of making condi-
tions, unless in one so disturb'd as his apparently at this juncture? ' — The conclusion
to which Capell arrives is, of course, the only one possible with the Folio reading,
viz.: That Brutus tells Cassius he is not himself. Capell omits any mention of
Warburton. — ^This whole note on the presence or absence of a comma may stand,
I think, as an object lesson in the vagaries of textual criticism. — Ed.
2o8 THE TRACED IE OF [act nr. sc. iii.
Cajft. Vrge me no more, I (hall forget my felfe : 38
Haue minde vpon your health : Tempt me no farther.
Bru. Away flight man. 40
Cajfu Is't poflible ?
Bru^ Heare me, for I will fpeake.
Mud I giue way, and roome to your rafti ChoUer ?
Shall I be frighted, when a Madman ftares f
Cajft. O ye Gods, ye Gods, Muft I endure all this ? 45
Bru. All this? I more : Fret till your proud hart break.
Go ftiew your Slaues how ChoUericke you are.
And make your Bondmen tremble. Muft I bouge ?
Muft I obferue you ? Muft I ftand and crouch
Vnder your Teftie Humour ? By the Gods, 50
You ftiall digeft the Venom of your Spleene
Though it ^o Split you. For, from this day forth,
He vfe you for my Mirth, yea for my Laughter
When you are Wafpifli.
Cajft. Is it come to this ? 55
Bru. You fay, you are a better Souldier :
Let it appeare fo; make your vaunting true.
And it (hall pleafe me well. For mine owne part,
I (hall be glad to learne of Noble men. 59
39. farther] further Varr. Ran. Steev. 48. bouge] boudge FaF,. budge F4.
Varr. Sing. Knt, Dyce, Craik, Sta. 52. Though] Thought Fj.
Ktly, Huds. 59. Noble] abler Coll. ii, iii. (MS),
44-48. Mnemonic Warb. Craik, Dyce ii, iii, Huds. iii. beUer
AS' 0 ye] 0 Pope,-f . Cartwright.
46. more: Fret] more. Fret F3F4.
39. health] That is, safely j well-beings welfare.
43. Must I giue way, and roome, etc.] Gibber (p. 62) : When the Betterton
Brutus was provoked, in his dispute with CassiuSy his spirit flew only to his eye; his
steady look alone supplied that terror which he disdained an intemperance in his
voice should rise to. Thus, with a settled dignity of contempt, like an unheeding
rock, he repelled upon himself the foam of Cassit^s. . . . Not but, in some part of
this scene where he reproaches CassiuSy his temper is not under this suppression,
but opens into that warmth which becomes a man of virtue; yet this is that 'hasty
spark' of anger which Brutus himself endeavors to excuse.
49. obserue] That is, reverence j show homage j or respect; used thus in its deriva-
tive sense; as in *the observed of all observers.* — Hamlety III, i, 162.
51. Venom of your Spleene] The spleen was considered the seat of the
emotions: either anger or pleasure; here, of coiu^, it refers to a fit of passion. For
an exactly opposite use, compare: 'I shall split all in pleasure of my spleen.' —
Tro. 6* Cres.y I, iii, 177. — Ed.
ACT IV, sc. ui.] JVLIVS CjESAR 209
Cajf. You wrong me euery way : 60
You wrong me Brutus :
I faide^ an Elder Souldier, not a Better.
Did I fay Better f
Bru. If you did, I care not. (me.
Cajf, When Ccefar liuM, he durft not thus haue mou'd 65
/?r«/.Peace. peace,,you durft not fo haue tempted him.
Cajft. I durft not.
Bru. No.
Cajfi. What? durft not tempt him ?
Bru. For your life you durft not. 70
Cajft. Do not prefume too much vpon my Loue,
I may do that I (hall be forry for.
Bru. You haue done that you (hould be forry for.
There is no terror CaJJius in your threats ; 74
60, 61. As one line Rowe et seq. 62. Better] a better Knt (Nat. ed.).
60. me euery way:] me; every way 74"90. Mnemonic Warb.
Ritson.
59. Noble men] Collier (Notes, etc., p. 427): Cassins had said nothing
about 'noble men/ and his reply has reference to what he did actually utter. His
word had been 'abler/ not 'noble' or nobler; and in order to make the retort of
Brutus apply to what Cassius had asserted, Brutus unquestionably ought to say
* abler men.' 'Noble' is struck through by the MS and abler inserted in the place
of it; whether upon any other authority than apparent fitness must remain doubtful.
— Craik (p. 336) says that even were Collier's MS correction *a mere conjecture,
its claim to be accepted would be nearly irresistible'; and that 'noble' is here 'alto-
gether inappropriate.' — Marshall: This emendation seems to me, like so many
of those made in Collier's MS, to be just such a one as a person going through the
plays with his pencil would make on the spur of the moment, because it was what
he thought Shakespeare ought to have written.
62. an Elder Souldier, not a Better] Hxtdson: Cassius was much the abler
soldier, and Brutus knew it; and the mistake grew from his consciousness of what
he thought he heard. Long before this time Cassius had served as Quaestor under
Marcus Crassus in his expedition against the Parthians; and when the army was
all torn to pieces, both Crassus and his son being killed, Cassius displayed great
ability in bringing o£f a remnant; as he also did for some time after that, in the
military administration of Syria.
70. For your life you durst not] Davies (ii, 249) : Quin spoke this line with a
look of anger approaching to rage. Barton Booth, on the contrary, looked stedfastly
at Cassius, and pronounced the words with firmness indeed, but with a tone not
raised much above a whisper, which had much greater weight with the spectators,
and produced a stronger e£fect than the loudness of Quin.
72. that I shall be sorxy for] For another example of this omission of the
relative, compare: 'Thy honourable metal may be wrought From that it is dis-
posed.'— ^I, ii, 333.
14
2IO THE TRACED IE OF [act iv. sc. iiL
For I am ArmM fo ftrong in Honefty, 75
That they pafle by me, as the idle winde,
Which I refpefl not. I did fend to you
For certaine fummes of Gold, which you deny'd me,
For I can raife no money by vile meanes :
By Heauen, I had rather Coine my Heart, 8o
And drop my blood for Drachmaes, then to ^ring
From the hard hands of Peazants, their vile trafh
By any indirefldon. I did fend
To you for Gold to pay my Legions, 84
81. Drackmaes] drachmaes Rowe, 83. indtret^ion] indiredness Pope.
Pope,+* drachmas Cap. et seq.
75. Arm'd so strong in Honesty] Compare: 'What stronger breas^late than a
heart untainted Thrice is he armed that hath his quarrel just.' — 2 Hen, VI: m,
ii, 232. — Ed.
77. respect] Craigie (N, E. D., s. v, 2. b.): To heed, pay attention to; to ob-
serve carefully.
79-83. I can raise no money ... By any indirection] Kseyssig (ii, 30}:
It is a two-edged virtue to desire the end and despise the means! The sentiments
of Brutus are excellent. But drops of the heart's blood will not pay the legions,
and the sentimental contempt of money has seldom fiUed a military chest. Thus
the sermon against extortion ends prosaically enough — with a request for gold.
Does it not almost smack of self-deception (Sdbst-Ironie) when Brutus continues,
'I did send To 3^u for gold to pay my legions'? — ^Miss £. H. Hickey (Sk. Soc.
Trans., 13 Oct., 1882; p. 48*): It is curious how unconscious Brutus a{^)ears of
having given any occasion of annoyance to Cassius. With strange inconsistency
he blames Cassius for not sending him gold, after he had accused him of obtaining
gold by wrong means, — means which he himself would scorn to use. — MacCallum
(p. 264, foot-note) : It will be noticed that in this episode Shakespeare has altered
Plutarch in two respects: In the first place Cassius did give money to the amount
of Hhe thirde part of his totall summe.' This is not very important, as, in the
play, he disclaims ever having refused it. But in the second place Brutus was
neither so scrupulous nor so unsuccessful in raising supplies, but had used them
... in developing his sea-power.
81, 82. to wring From the hard hands] Warbukton: This is a noble senti-
ment, altogether in character, and expressed in a manner inimitably happy. For
to * wring ' implies both to get unjustly and to use force in getting; and * hard hands '
signify both the peasant's great labour and pains in acquiring and his great unwill-
ingness to quit his hold. — Holt White: I do not believe that Shakespeare, when
he wrote 'hard hands' in this place, had any deeper meaning than in 'Hard-
handed men that work in Athens here.' — Mid. N. Dream, V, i, 72.
83. indirection] Murray (N. E. D., s. v. 2.): Want of straightforwardness in
action; an. act of practice which is not straightforward and honest; deceit; mal-
practice. [The present line quoted.]
83, 84. I did send ... to pay my Legions] Brutus, in a letter to Cicero
from Dyrrachium, i April, 43 B. C, says: *The two things which I want are
ACT IV, sc. iii.] IVLIVS CjESAR 211
Which you deny'd me : was that done like CaJJiusl 8$
Should I haue anfwer'd Caius Cajfius fo ?
When Marcus Brutus growes fo Couetous,
To locke fuch Rafcall Counters from his Friends,
Be ready Gods with all your Thunder-bolts,
Dafh him to peeces. 90
CaJJi. I deny'd you not.
Bru. You did.
Caffi, I did not. He was but a Foole
That brought my anfwer back.5rw/kr hath riuM my hart:
A Friend (hould beare his Friends infirmities; 95
But Brutus makes mine greater then they are.
Brti. I do not, till you practice them on me. 97
93. 94. / did...braughi] As one line Warb.
Dyce. 97. tilL..them]wiU„Jh<UHBn. Still.,.
94. back] Om. Steev. conj. them Warb. Jen. though.„them Quincy
95. kis] a Rowe, Pope, Theob. Han. MS. His. ..them Kinnear.
money and more men. The latter — the sending some part of the soldiers now in
Italy to me — you can accomplish either by secret arrangement with Pansa, or by
bringing the matter before the Senate. The former can be got from the Senate
direct. This is still more necessary, and not more so for my army than for that
of the other commanders. This makes me the more regret that we have lost Asia:
which I am told is being so harrassed by Dolabella that his murder of Trebonius
no longer appears the most cruel thing he has done. Antisiius Vetus, however, has
come to my aid with money.' — (Shuckburgh, iv, 205). Again, writing from Dertona
on 5^ of May, he says: 'I am already unable to feed and pay my men. When
I undertook the task of freeing the Republic I had more than 40,000 sestertia
[about £s 20,000] in money. So far from any part of my private property remaining
unencumbered, I have by this time loaded all my friends with debt. I am now
supporting a force amounting to seven legions, you can imagine with what diffi-
culty.'— (Ibid., p. 230). — Ed.
88. Rascall] The original meaning of 'rascal,' according to Craigie (N. E. D.,
s. V. A. I.), is: 'The rabble of an army or of the populace, . . . persons of the
lowest class,' and therefore, used as an adjective, it means pertaining to the lowest
class, hence, wretched, mean, paltry.
95. A Friend should beare, etc.] Dowden (p. 304) : Each is natiurally and
inevitably aggrieved with the other; one from the practical, the other from the
ideal, standpoint. Shakespeare, in his infinite pity for human error and frailty,
makes us love Brutus and Cassius the better through the little wrongs which bring
the great wealth of their love and true fraternity to light. . . . When their hearts
are tenderest comes the confession of the sorrow which Brutus could not utter as
long as a shadow lay between his soul and his friend's.
97. I do not . . . them on me] Johnson: That is, I do not look for your
faults, I only see them, and mention them with vehemence when you force them
into my notice by practising them on me.
212 THE TRACED IE OF [act iv. sc. iii.
CaJJi. You loue me not. 98
Bru. I do not like your faults.
Cajft. A friendly eye could neuer fee fuch faults. 100
Bru. A Flatterers would not, though they do appeare
As huge as high Olympus.
Cojffi. Come Antony y and yong OSlauius come,i
Reuenge your felues alone on CaJJiuSy
For CaJJius is a-weary of the World : 105
Hated by one he loues, brau'd by his Brother,
Check'd like a bondman, all his faults obferu'd,
Set in a Note-booke, leamM, and con'd by roate
To caft into my Teeth. O I could weepe
My Spirit from mine eyes. There is my Dagger, 1 10
And heere my naked Bread : Within , a Heart
Deerer then Plutcfs Mine, Richer then Gold:
If that thou bee'ft a Roman, take it foorth. 1 13
loi. do\ did Coll. (MS), Huds. iii. iii. WUkin^ WUkin TJF^.
105. a-iueary] F2F3, Dyce, Wh. i, 112. Pluto's] Plutus* Pope et
Cam. i, Coll. iii. a weary F4, Rowe,+. scq.
aweary Cap. et cet. 113. bee*fi a Roman] need*si a Roman
109. my] his Cap. conj. Warb. beesi a Roman Cap. (corrected
no. eyes.] eyes: Ff (eies: F,). in Errata).
109. To cast into my Teeth] Compare: 'You are the first who rears your
hand.' — III, i, 38; also: 'Hail to thee worthy Timon, and to all That of his boun-
ties taste.* — Timon^ I, ii, 129.
112. Pluto's] Verity : The identification of Plutus^ the god of riches, with * Pluto,*
the god of the nether world, occurs in classical writers, and their names are the same
in origin. Elizabethan writers often identify the two deities; compare Webster,
Duchess of Malfi: * Pluto, the god of riches.* — III, ii. — Macmillan compares:
'every grain of Pluto*s gold,* Tro, & Cress., Ill, iii, 197, as another example
of the confusion between the two names; and says: ' If Shakespeare and Webster
identify "Pluto** and Plutus, they might plead the authority of Aristophanes
{PluluSy 727) and Sophocles (Fr. 259) in support of the identification. It should
also be borne in mind that Pluto is the Italian form of Plutus.* — [In the line from
Plutus to which reference is made the dative of H^oinoav, i. e., UkoOrcopi, is
used instead of UXoinoi, the dative of UXobros; though a few lines fiulher down
the forms 6 UXovtos and t6v UXovtov appear. I regret that I am unable to
identify Macmillan*s reference to Sophocles. — Ed.]
113. If that thou bee'st a Roman] Johnson: I think he means only that he
is so far from avarice, when the cause of his country requires liberality, that if any
man should wish for his heart, he would not need enforce his desire any otherwise
than by showing that he was a Roman. — Blackstone: This seems only a form of
adjuration, as in 'Now as you are a Roman, tell me true,* 1. 215, below. — [Is
there not here a personal appeal rather than that on the score of patriotism, as
suggested by Johnson? There has been no mention of the public good. Cassius
ACT IV. sc. iii.] JVLIVS CjESAR 21 3
I that denyM thee Gold, will giue my Heart :
Strike as thou did'ft at Ccefar : For I know, 1 1 5
When thou did'ft hate him worft, y loued^ft him better
Then euer thou loued'ft Caffius,
Bni. Sheath your Dagger :
Be angry when you will, it (hall haue fcope :
Do what you will, Diflionor, (hall be Humour. 1 20
O CaJfiuSy you are yoaked with a Lambe
That carries Anger, as the Flint beares (ire.
Who much inforced, (hewes a haftie Sparke,
And (Iraite is cold agen.
Cajfu Hath Ctf^«^ liuM 125
M
116. y\ ihou FL 121. Lambe] man Pope, temper
1 19-124. Mnemonic Warb. Anon. ap. Cam. heart Herr.
120. DiJkonor,JhaU]diJhonourJhaUY^, 122, 123. That,.,Who] That.„Wkkh
Humour] honor Craik conj., Han. Who„,That Lloyd (N. & Q.,
White conj. 12 Sep.. 1885).
121. yoaked] yok^ Dyce. 123. inforced] enforM Dyce.
says: If I denied you gold I am prepared to give you even my heart in place of the
money. Compare what Henry sa)rs to Lord Scroop: *Thou . . . That knew'st
the very bottom of my soul That almost might'st have coined me into gold.' —
Hen, V: H, ii, 97. — Ed.]
113, 114. thou . . . thee] Macmillan: The use of the singular pronoun
shows that Cassius is impassioned. The colder Brutus throughout the scene uses
the plural pronoun. — [Does it not rather show that here, for the first time in their
contest, Cassius is beginning to weaken, and so uses the more familiar form of
address? It will, however, be noticed that Brutus does not respond in a like
manner. — Ed.]
113. bee'st] Compare III, iii, 6, and note.
119. it shall haue scope] That is, your anger, implied in the adjective 'angry,'
shall have full scope.
120. Dishonor, shall be Humour] That is, even a dishonourable action shall
be regarded as a mere caprice of the moment. Compare 1. 152, below.
1 21-124. you are yoaked with a Lambe . . . And straite is cold agen]
O. F. Adams: The reference is, of course, to Brutus himself, though occasionally
misunderstood. — F. A. Marshall: The author may have intended to use a some-
what exaggerated similitude; there being in his mind, as there often was, a double
idea. He meant Brutus to say that he had the gentleness of a Mamb ' in his nature,
as well as that slowness to ang^r which comes rather from a firm and resolute
disposition than from a gentle one.
122. as the Flint beares fire] Hudson says that as late as his own boyhood
the 'idea was common of fire sleeping in the flint, and being awaked by the stroke
of the steel.' Compare Tro, & Cress.: * [wit] lies as coldly in him as fire in a flint.'
— Ill, iii, 257; and Timon: * the fire i ' the flint Shows not till it be struck.' — I, i, 22;
also, Lucrece: 'as from this cold flint I enforced this fire.* — I. 181.
125. Hath Cassius liued, etc.] This, of course, refers to Brutus's speech,
214 ^^^ TRAGEDIE OF [act iv, sc. iil
To be but Mirth and Laughter to his Brutus, 126
When greefe and blood ill tempered, vexeth him ?
Bru, When I fpoke that, I was ill remper'd too.s
CaJJi. Do you confefle fo much? Giue me your hand.
Bru. And my heart too. 1 30
Cajfi. O Brutus !
Bru. What's the matter ?
CaJJi. Haue not you loue enough to beare with me,
When that rafh humour which my Mother gaue me
Makes me forgetfuU. 135
127. blood ill tem^'d] Ft. blood, iU- Pope ii,-f, Cap. Stcev. Varr. Sing, i,
temper*dy blood iU-temper'd Rowe et cet. Knt i, Coll. Hal. Huds.
128. Temper' d too,s] F,. 135. forgetfuU] forgelfuUs Fa.
130. [Embracing. Rowe,-f. [A Noise within. Tlieob.-f-,
133. Haue not you] Have you not Cap. Varr. Mai. Steev. Varr. Sing.
' I'll use you for my mirth, yea for my laughter When you are waspish/ 1. 53. It had
apparently rankled in Cassius's mind and had stung him more than any other
reply by Brutus. Benedick in a like way, it will be remembered, bitterly resented
the remark of Beatrice that *he was the prince's jester.' — Much Ado, n, i, 250. — Ed.
127. blood ill temper'd] Wsigett: Burton {Anat. of Melancholy, Pt I, sec. i,
memb. 2, subsec. 2) describes the four humours, blood, phlegm, choler, and melan-
choly, corresponding to the four elements, upon the tempering or mixing of which
depended the temperament of a man's body. . . . See, also, Davies of Hereford's
Microcosmos: 'HI tempred's that where some one element Hath more dominion
then it ought to haue; For they rule ill that haue more regiment Then nature,
wisdom, right, or reason gaue.' — (ed. Grosart, p. 30, col. 2). — ^Macmillan: '111-
temper'd' is here badly combined, so as to make a man inclined to be ill-tempered
in the present sense of the word, which we find in the following line. The expression
'ill-tempered blood' is not exactly in accordance with the doctrine of the four
humours, since here the blood is regarded as determining a man's character by
itself and not in combination with choler, phlegm, and melancholy. Often 'blood '
in Shakespeare expresses the whole of the passionate side of human nature as dis-
tinguished from the reason, e, g., in Hamlet: * — blest are those. Whose blood and
judgment are so well commingled,' etc., Ill, ii, 74. — [That 'blood ill temper'd'
does not refer to the doctrine of the four humours, but here means disposition,
both for the reason above given by Macmillan, and since Schmidt {Lex.) gives
numerous examples of 'blood' used in this sense, is likewise the opinion of the
present Ed.]
127. vexeth] Wright: The verb is singular, because 'grief and blood 'express
but one idea.
134. rash humour] That is, choler, which was supposed by its predominance to
make a man of irascible temperament. Jonson gives to Asper, in Every Man out
of his Humour, the task of explaining the effect of too much of any one of the four
humours: ' — when some one peculiar quality Doth so possess a man, that it doth
draw All his afifects, his spirits, and his powers, In their conductions, all to run one
way, This may be truly said to be a humour.' — Induction; ed. Gifford, p. 16.
Compare also I. 152, below. — Ed.
ACT IV, sc. iii.] IVLIVS CjESAR 21$
Bru. Yes Ca/siuSyZxid from henceforth' 136
When you are ouer-eameft with your Brutus,
Hee'l thinke your Mother chides ^ and leaue you fo.
Enter a Poet.
Poet. Let me go in to fee the Generals, 140
There is fome grudge betweene *em, 'tis not meete
They be alone.
Lucil. You (hall not come to them.
Poet. Nothing but death (hall (lay me.
Caf. How now? What's the matter ? 145
Poet. For (hame you Generals; what do you meane ?
Loue^and be Friends, as two fuch men (hould bee,
For I haue feene more yeeres Tme fure then yee.
Caf. Ha , ha , how vildely doth this Cynicke rime ? 149
136. from] Om. Cap. Steev. Var. 1. 144 Cap. et scq.
*03» '13- 140, 143, 144- Poet., Ludl., Poet.]
139. Enter a Poet.] Enter Lucilitis Poet (Within), Lucil. (Within), Poet
and Titinius and a Poet. Rowe i. (Lu- (Within). Theob.-f , Cap. Van.
cius Rowe ii.). Enter Poet. Theob.+ 140-145. In margin Pope, Han.
( — ^Han.). Enter Poet followed by 141. *em] them Cap.
Lucilius and Titinius. Dyce, Sta. 143. [at the door. Cap.
Enter Poet followed by Lucilius, Titin- 149. vUddy] vUdy F4.
ius, and Lucius. Glo. Cam.+. After doth] does Cap.
138. chides] That Is, scolds, upbraids,
139. a Poet] Steevens: In Plutarch the intruder was Marcus Phaonius, who
had been a friend and follower of Cato; not a poet, but one who assumed the char-
acter of a cynic philosopher. [The couplet, 11. 147, 148,] is a translation from
Homer: *aKKiL irl0€o$*, itufxa U peurrtpcj kar^ i/Auo — Iliad, Bk, i, 259, which
is thus given in North's Plutarch: 'My Lords, I pray you hearken both
to me. For I have seen mo years than suchie three.' — [Brutus , § 35; ed.
Skeat, p. 135.] Compare: 'Octavius I have seen more days than you.* — IV, i,
22, above. — Craik (p. 344): There was probably no other authority than the
Prompter's book for designating him a *Poet.' — Mark Hunter: The expression
'jigging fool,' however, shows that Shakespeare intended Phaonius to be a poet.
. . . North's doggerel rendering [of Homer's lines] doubtless suggested to Shake-
speare the idea of making him not only a counterfeit Cynic, but a miserable
rhymester.
143. Lucil. You shall not, etc.] Craik (p. 344): In the Variorum of '21 and
the other modem editions, although they commonly make no distinction between
the abbreviation for Lucilius and that for Lucius, this speech must be understood
to be assigned to Lucius, whose presence alone is noted by them in the heading
of the scene. But in the Folio the speaker is distinctly marked Lucil, This is a
conclusive confirmation, if any were wanting, of the change [of Lucilius for Lucius]
in IV, ii, 61.
2i6 THE TRACED IE OF [act iv. sc Ui.
Bru. Get you hence firra : Sawcy Fellow,hence. 1 50
Caf. Beare with him BrutuSy 'tis his fafhion.
Brut. He know his humor, when he knowes his time :
What fliould the Warres do with thefe ligging Fooles/ 153
150. fifrd[ firrah F,. iS3- ^W»rii«»a^»»^ P<^i+, Cap.
Scene rv. Pope, Han. Warb. Johns. Jen.
150, 151. Bni. Get you hence . . • Cas. Beare with him] Staffer (p. 361):
When we seek the reason of Shakespeare's incontestable and uncontested pre-
eminence among all other poets as a delineator of character, we discover in the
last hiding-place of analysis that it consists in the largeness and breadth of his
treatment. He alone dares to introduce into his portraits the little seeming con-
tradictions which terrify ordinary reasoning because of their apparent inconsist-
ency with the general outlines of the character, although in reality they enhance
the resemblance by keeping closer to nature. The consistency of Shakespeare's
characters is universally admired. ... It is obvious and strikes the mind at once,
while the contradictions here spoken of are almost impercq>tible; but it is their very
impercq>tibility that makes it incumbent upon critics to dwell upon them with
especial care; for, without destro3ring the inner unity of the characters, these light
and delicate touches break through all superficial harmony and reveal a still greater
art than what is usually the object of admiration. Who would ever have guessed
beforehand . . . that at the entrance of the officious mediator, who comes and
preaches peace to the two generals when they have already made peace, that it
would be Brutus — the patient and gentle Brutus — that would be the most ex-
asperated; or that it would be Cassius — the violent and choleric man — that would
endeavor to protect the meddlesome intruder? But when the particular drcimi-
stances are taken into consideration, all surprise at the anomaly vanishes. The
fact is given by Plutarch, the reason of it by Shakespeare.
152. He know ... his time] Craik (p. 345): In this line we have what the
rule, as commonly laid down, would make to be necessarily a short or unaccented
syllable carrying a strong emphasis no fewer than four times: *Ile' — *his' — *he' —
'his.'
152. know . . . knowes] Murray {N, E. Z>., s, v. 2 trans.): To recognise in
some capacity; to acknowledge; to admit the claims or authority of.
152. humor] See note on 1. 134, above.
153- lig&ing] According to Murray (N. E. Z?., s. v. Jig), the word was variously
applied; either to describe (i) a lively, rapid dance, or (3) a song or ballad of lively,
jocular, or mocking character; and s. r. Jigging (singing, playing, or composing
jigs), the present line is quoted. — [Pope could hardly be ignorant of this secondary
meaning of *jig' — its use survived for some time later than his editions — yet he
changed the word here to jingling^ and was therein followed by subsequent editors
down to the Variorum of 1773. This provoked a note from Malone on the ignor-
ance of ancient English literature thus displayed, levelled not at Pope, the original
o£fender, but at Capell only of all those who had followed the change. Malone's
remarks on Capell's shortcomings as an editor require a half-page of fine print in
the Variorum of *2i, but as this note is no more applicable here than in many
another place, and is perhap>s inspired by personal rancor, it is omitted. Both
Malone and Steevens were ever unjust to Capell, though often silently adopting
or appropriating his sagacious emendations. — Ed.]
ACT IV, sc. iii.]
IVLIVS CjESAR
21/
Companion , hence.
Caf. Away , away be gone. Exit Poet 1 5 5
Bru. LucUlius and Titinius bid the Commanders
Prepare to lodge their Companies to night.
Caf. And come your felues,& bring Mejfala with you
Immediately to vs.
Bru. LticiuSjdi bowle ofWine. 160
Ca/. I did not thinke you could haue bin fo angry.
Bru. O CaJJius, I am ficke of many greefes.
Ca/, Of your Philofophy you make no vfe,
If you giue place to accidentall euils.
Bru, No man beares forrow better. Portia is dead. 165
Ca/ Ha? Portia"^
Bru. She is dead.
Ca/, How fcap'd I killing,when I croft you fo ?
O infupportable, and touching loffe !
Vpon what fickneffe ? 170
Bru. Impatient of my abfence,
155. [Enter Lucillius and Titinius.
Rowe et seq.
159. [Exeunt Lucillius and Titinius.
Rowe et seq.
161. bin] been Y^^,
162-170. Mnemonic Pope, Warb.
165. Portia is] Portia^s Pope, Theob.
154. Companion] Schmidt {Lex.y s. v. 4.) gives many examples of this word
used as a term of familiarity or contempt.
161. I did not thinke ... so angry] C. Forbes (N. & Q., 28 Sep., 1850,
p. 275): I believe that both replies [here and in 1. 168] contain an illusion to the
fact that Anger, grafted on sorrow, almost invariably assiunes the form of frenzy;
that it is in every sense of the word 'Madness,' when the mind is unhinged, and
reason, as it were, totters from the effects of grief. Cassius had but just mildly
rebuked Brutus for making no better use of his philosophy, and now — startled by
the sudden sight of his bleeding, mangled heart — ^pays involuntary homage to the
very philosophy he had so rashly underrated. Compare Romeo's address to
Balthasar: 'The time and my intents are savage- wild. More fierce and more in-
exorable far Than empty tigers or the roaring sea.* — V, iii, 37; and his remark to
Paris: 'Stay not, begone; live, and hereafter say, A madman's mercy bade thee
run away.' — lb., 1. 66. — Macmillan: To the foregoing illustrations we may add:
'And melancholy is the nurse of frenzy.' — Tarn, of Shrew ^ Ind., ii, 135.
171. Impatient of my absence] Cafell (p. 112): Impatience and 'absence'
concurring wounded the poet's ear; he put up with 'impatient' and hopes his
reader will do so. — Craik (p. 347): This speech is throughout a striking ex-
emplification of the tendency of strong emotion to break through the logical forms
of grammar, and of how impossible it is for language to be perfectly intelligible
and highly expressive sometimes, with the grammar in a more or less chaotic or
21 8 THE TRACED IE OF [act iv. sc. iii.
And greefe, that yong OUauius with Mark Antony 172
Haue made themfelues fo ftrong : For with her death
That tydings came. With this fhe fell diftraft,
And (her Attendants abfent) fwalloVd fire. 175
174. came\ came; Dyce, Coll. ii, iii, 175. fir^ poison Oechelliatiaer (Stage
Craik, Sta. Hal. Cam.+y Huds. came arrangement).
...Ktly. /
uncertain state. It does not much matter whether we take 'grief' to be a nomina-
tive, or a second genitive governed by 'impatient.' In principle, though not per-
haps according to rule and established usage, 'Octavius wUk Mark Antony' is as
much entitled to a plural verb as 'Octavius and Mark Antony.' — ^Wright: The
sense is quite clear, but there is a mixture of two constructions, 'Impatient of my
absence, and grieving* and 'Impatience of my absence and grief.'
174. That tydings] Craik (p. 347): 'Tidings' is commonly used by Shake-
speare as a plural noun; we have in V, iii, 54: 'These tidings will wdl comfort
Cassius'; but there are other instances beside the present in which it h treated as
singular. — [In illustration of the latter Wsight quotes: 'How near the tidings of
our own comfort fa.' — Rich. II: H, i, 272. To thfa may be added: 'Where when
and how Camest thou by thfa ill tidings.' — ^Ibid., m, iv, 80; and, 'That's the worst
tidings that I hear of yet.' — i Hen. IV: IV, i, 127. — Ed.]
174. distract] Craik (p. 348): In Shakespeare's day the language poaaeaaed
the three forms — distracted^ 'dfatract,' and distraught; he uses them all. We have
now only the first
175. (her Attendants absent) swsdlow'd fire] Thfa fa from Plutarch, who
says: 'And for Porda, Brutus's wife, Nicolaus the Philosopher and Valerius
Maximus do write, that she determining to kill herself (her parents and friends
carefully looking to her to keep her from it), took hot burning coals and cast them
into her mouth, and kept her mouth so close that she choked herself. There was a
letter of Brutus found, written to hfa friends, complaining of their negligence, that,
his wife being sick, they would not help her, but suffered her to kill herself; choosing
to die rather than to languish in pain. Thus it appeareth that Nicblaus knew not
well that time, sith the letter (at the least if it were Brutus's letter) doth plainly
declare the disease and love of this lady, and also the manner of her death.' — Life
of Brutus, § 32; (ed. Skeat, p. 151).— Steevens: The death of Portia may want
that foundation which has hitherto entitled her to a place in poetry as a pattern
of Roman fortitude. She is reported, by Pliny, I think, to have died at Rome of a
lingering illness while Brutus was abroad; but some writers seem to look on a
natural death as a derogation from a distinguished character. — [I have not suc-
ceeded in locating Steevens's doubtful reference to Pliny. Dion Cassius gives but
a line to this incident, he says: * Portia perished by swallowing red-hot charcoal.* —
Bk, xlvii, § 49; (Foster's translation, vol. iii, p. 155). — ^Appian likewise says that
Portia killed herself by swallowing coals of fire; but places her suicide after that of
Brutus and caused by grief for that event.— Bk, IV, ch. xvii, § 136; trans. White, ii,
334. — Ed.) — Malone: Valerius Maximus *sa)rs [Bk, iv, § 5] that Portia survived
Brutus, and killed herself on hearing that her husband was defeated and slain at
Philippi. [Malone here quotes the foregoing extract from Plutarch, and thus
continues:] 'See also Martial, Bk,i, epigr. xlii. Valerius Maximus, Nicolaus, and
ACT IV. sc. iii.] IVLIVS C^SAR 219
Caf. And dyM fo? 176
Bru. Euen fo.
Plutarch all agree in saying that she put an end to her life; and the letter [given by
Plutarch], if authentic, ascertains that she did so in the lifetime of Brutus. Our
author, therefore, we see, had sufficient authority for his representation; and there
is, I think, little groimd for supposing with Dryden that Shakespeare knew that
Portia had survived Brutus, and that he on purpose neglected a little chronology,
only to give Brutus an occasion of being more easily exasperated.' [See note by
Dryden on IV, iii, i. — Cicero wrote to Brutus in Macedonia on 8**' of June, B. C.
43, a letter which, sajrs its translator and editor, Shuckburgh, 'is to condole with
Brutus on the death of his wife Porcia. . . . Her illness is alluded to [in a letter
from Brutus to Atticus in May of this same year]. If this letter is genuine, the ac-
count that she died a natural death must be the true one.' — ^Thus Cicero writes:
'I would have performed the function, which you performed in my own time of
mourning, and have written you a letter of consolation, had I not known that you
did not stand in need of those remedies in your sorrow with which you relieved mine.
And I should hope that you will now more easily heal your own wound than you then
could mine. It is, moreover, quite unlike a man as great as you are, not to be able to
do himself, what he has enjoined on another. For myself, the arguments which you
had collected, as well as your personal influence, deterred me from excessive indul-
gence in grief: for when I seemed to you to be bearing my sorrow with less firmness
than was becoming to a itian, and especially one accustomed to console others, you
wrote upbraiding me with sharper terms than were usual with you. Accordingly,
putting a high value on your opinion, and having a wholesome awe of it, I pulled
myself together and regarded what I had learnt, read, and been taught as being
the weightier by the addition of your authority. And at that time, Brutus, I owed
nothing except to duty and nature: you now have to regard the people and the
stage — to use a common expression. For since the eyes not only of your army, but
of all the citizens, and I ought almost to say of all the world, are fixed on you, it is
not at all seemly that the man who makes us all braver should himself seem weak-
ened in mind. To smn up: you have met with a sorrow — ^for you have lost a thing
unparalleled in the world — and you must needs suffer from so severe a wound, lest
the fact of having no sense of sorrow should be a greater misfortune than sorrow
itself: but that you should do so in moderation is advantageous to others, necessary
for }rourself. I would have written at greater length, had not even this been al-
ready too much. We are expecting you and your army, without which — even if
everything else succeeds to our wishes — we seem likely to be scarcely as free
as we could desire. On the whole political situation I will write at greater length,
and perhaps with more certainty, in the letter which I think of handing to our
friend Vetus.' — (ed. Shuckburgh, vol. iv, p. 307). — ^The Epigram by Martial, to
which Malone refers above, is thus translated in Bohn's edition: 'When Porcia
had heard the fate of her consort Brutus, and her grief was seeking the weapon,
which had been carefully removed from her, "Ye know not yet," she cried, "that
death cannot be denied: I had supposed that my father had taught you this
lesson by his fate. " She spoke, and with eager mouth swallowed the blazing coals.
"Go now, officious attendants, and refuse me a sword, if you will." ' — p. 45. — Ed.]
175. absent] For other examples of an adjective thus used participially, see, if
needful, Abbott, § 380.
220 THE TRACED IE OF [act iv, sc. in.
Caf. O ye immortall Gods ! 178
Enter Boy with Wine y and Tapers,
Bru. Speak no more of her:Giue me a bowl of wine, 180
In this I bury all vnkindnefle Ca/sius. Drinkes
Caf. My heart is thirfty for that Noble pledge.
Fill Lucius^ till the Wine ore-fwell the Cup :
I cannot drinke too much of Brutus loue.
Enter Titinius and Mejfala. 185
Brutus. Come in Titinius :
Welcome good Mejfalax 187
178. O ye] Om. Steev. conj. Mai.
179. Enter Boy... Tapers.] Re-enter 185. £nter..4uid...]Re-enter...with...
Lucius.. .tapers. Cap. et seq. (subs.) Cap. Dyce. Re-enter...and... Varr.
184. Brutus] FaF,. Brutus's F4, Scene v. Popc,+ (— Var. '73).
Rowe, Tlieob. Brutus' Pope et cet. 186, 187. One line Rowc,
180. Speak no more of her] Dowden {Mind & Artf p. 304): Brutus is susr
tained by the spirit of Portia. To live in her spirit of Stoicism becomes now the
highest act of religion to her memory. . . . The armed men talking so gravdy,
before the great day which is to dedde the fate of the world, of the 'insupportable
and touching loss' make us know what this woman was. Profound emotion,
Shakespeare was aware, can express itself quietly and with reserve. The noisy
demonstration of grief over the supposed dead Juliet is the extravagant abandon-
ment to sorrow, partly real and partly formal, of hearts which were little sensitive,
and which had little concerned themselves about the joy or misery of Juliet living.
Laertes's rant in the grave of Ophelia is reproved by the more violent hyperbole of
Hamlet. Brutus will henceforth be silent and possess his soul. The remainder of
his life is a sad, sustained devotion to his cause.
187. Welcome good Mtssala] Cicero, writing from Rome to Brutus in
Macedonia, the middle of July, says: *You have Messalla [sic] with you. What
letter, therefore, can I write with such minute care as to enable me to explain to
you what is being done and what is occurring in public affairs, more thoroughly
than he will describe them to you, who has at once the most intimate knowledge of
everything, and the talent for enfolding and conveying it to you in the best possible
manner? For beware of thinking, Brutus — for though it is imnecessary for me to
write to you what you know already, yet I cannot pass over in silence such eminence
in every kind of greatness — beware of thinking, I say, that he has any parallel in
honesty and firmness, care and zeal for the republic. So much so that in him elo-
quence— in which he is extraordinarily eminent — scarcely seems to offer any oppor-
timity for praise. ... But my affection carries me away; for it is not the purpose
of this letter to praise Messalla, especially to Brutus, to whom his excellence is not
less known than it is to me, and these particular accomplishments of his, which I
am praising, even better. Grieved as I was to let him go from my side, my one
consolation was that in going to you, who are to me a second self, he was performing
a duty and following the path of the truest glory. But enough of this.' — (Shuck-
burgh, iv, 318). — Ed.
ACT IV. sc. iii.] IVLIVS CjESAR 221
Now fit we clofe about this Taper heere, i88
And call in queftion our necefiities.
Cajf. Portia^ art thou gone? 190
Bru, No more I pray you.
Mejfalay I haue heere receiued Letters,
That yong OllauiuSy and Marke Antony
Come downe vpon vs with a mighty power,
Bending their Expedition toward Philippi. 195
Mejf. My felfe haue Letters of the felfe-fame Tenure.
Bru. With what Addition.
Mejf. That by profcription,and billes of Outlarie, 198
190, 191. Marked as aside Cap. 196. Tenure] Ff, Rowe, Pope, tenor
190. Portia,] 0 Portia! Pope,-|-. Knt, Sta. tenour Theob. et cet.
192. heere] Om. Pope ii. 198. projcription] proscriptions Pope,
receiued] recevM Dyce. Han.
ii)S. toward] Um'rdVQi^j'\-. towards Outlarie] Outlawry F4.
Cap. Varr. Ran.
189. call in question] That is, consider, examine,
190, 191. Portia ... I pray you] These two lines are evidenUy spoken in a
lower tone, aside, and not heard by Messala; otherwise he would have known
that Brutus had already received intelligence of Portia's death. — ^£d.
195. Bending] Mussay (5. v., bend IV, 20. c.) : To direct (anything led, driven,
or carried). [Compare 'And towards London do they bend their power.' — Rich.
Ill: IV, v, 14.1
196. My selfe] Wright: 'Myself,' when used alone in the nominative, is gen-
erally foUowed by the first person, but sometimes takes the third, as in 'Even
so myself bewails good Gloucester's case.' — 2 Hen, VI: HI, i, 217.
198-203. That by proscription . . . Cicero being one] 'Octavius Caesar,
Antonius, and Lepidus made an agreement between themselves . . . and did set
up bills of proscription and ouUawry, condenming two hundred of the noblest men
of Rome to suffer death, and among that number Cicero was one.' — Plutarch:
Brutus, § 20; .(ed. Skeat, p. 128).
198. That by . . . billes of Outlarie] Craik (p. 348): The supernumerary
short syllable — the 4ion or the 'and' — [may] be disposed of, as usual, by the two
being rapidly enunciated as one. The line might, indeed, be reduced to periect
regularity by the -tion being distributed into a disyllable, in which case the prosody
would be completed at 'out,' and the two foUowing unaccented syllables would
count for nothing (or be what is called hypercatalectic), unless, indeed, any one
should take them for an additional foot, and so holding the verse to be an Alexan-
drine. But taste and probability alike protest against either of these ways of
managing the matter. Nay, even the running together of the 4ion and the and
is not necessary, nor the way that would be taken by a good reader; that is, not
how the line be read, but only how it might be scanned: in reading it, the 'and'
would rather be combined with 'bills,' and a short pause would, in fact, be made
after the 4ion, as the pointing and the sense require. So entirely unfounded is the
222 THE TRACED IE OF [act iv, sc. iii.
O^auiuSy Antony y and LepiduSj
Haue put to death, an hundred Senators. 200
Bru. Therein our Letters do not well agree :
Mine fpeake of feuenty Senators, that dy'de
By their profcriptions, Cicero being one.
Cajft, Cicero one ?
MeJfa.Cicero is dead, and by that order of profcription 205
Had you your Letters from your wife, my Lord?
Bru. No Mejffala.
Mejfa. Nor nothing in your Letters writ of her ?
Bru. Nothing Mejfala. 2og
300. death,] death FjF4. 205. Cicero] Ay Cicero Cap. Steev.
an] a Cap. Var. '78, '85, Ran. Varr. Sing. Yes, Cicero Ktly.
204. Cicero] Cibero F2. by that] thai by Cap.
204, 205. Cicero one?, ..profcription] profcription] profcription. ¥^¥4.
Ff, Rowe, Pope, Theob. Han. Warb. 207. No] No, not from her Words-
Mai. Var. '21. As two lines, ending: worth.
dead...profcription Cap. et cet. 208. your] you Fj.
notion that a pause, of whatever length, occurring in the course of a verse can ever
have anything of the prosodical effect of a word or syllable.
200. an hundred] Compare 'Which like a fountain with an hundred spouts.'
— ^n, ii, 88. Yet, on the other hand, we have 'Upon a heap a hundred ghastly
women.' — I, iii, 25. This last, *a hundred,' is the more usual, at least in Shake-
speare.— ^Ed.
200-202. an hundred Senators . . . seuenty Senators] These numbers are
apparently Shakespeare's own invention. As may be seen by the preceding note,
Plutarch gives the number as two hundred; Appian (Civil Wars, Bk, IV, ch. ii, § 5)
gives the number of senators as 'about 300, and of the so-called knights about
2000'; in the next section he says, however, that 'twelve or, as some say, seven-
teen names were on the first list; and that Cicero's name was among these.' — Ed.
204, 205. Cicero one ? . . . Cicero is dead] Steevens remarks: 'For the inser-
tion of the affirmative adverb [Ay^ at the beginning of 1. 205] to complete the
metre I am answerable.' This refers also to the division of line 205 at the word
'dead.' As may be seen from the Text. Notes, Capell has anticipated Steevens both
in this addition and arrangement. — In regard to this distribution of lines Craik
(p. 350) says: 'We are not entitled to exact or to expect a perfect observance
of the punctilios of regular prosody in such brief expressions of strong emotion as
the dialogue is here broken up into. What do the followers of Steevens profess to
be able to make, in the way of prosody, of the very next utterance: "No, Messala"?
The best thing we can do is to regard "Cicero one?" and "Cicero is dead"
either as hemistichs (the one the commencement, the other the conclusion, of a
line), or, if that view be preferred, as having no distinct or precise prosodical
character whatever. Every sense of harmony and propriety, however, revolts
against nmning " Cicero is dead " into the same line with "and by that order," etc'
207-20Q. No Messala . . . Nothing Messala] R. W. Hamilton (p. 221):
There is one apparent contradiction which is supposed to injure the truth of Brutus.
ACT IV, sc. iii.] IVLIVS CjESAR 223
[207-209. No Messala . . . Nothing Measala]
M^th the public despatches he has received the account of Portia's death. He
bears it in the spirit of his stoicism, and only reveals it to his friend. To Messahi
he appears ignorant of it, and even denies to have received the information. He is
now sitting in a councO of war, during the midnight which precedes the battle of
Philippi, and he will know no private grief. He will neither tell his widowerhood,
nor the cruel proscription of his friends to the harassed anny. It may be sup-
pression; it is falsehood, but it is of the character of the courage which disinter-
estedly conceals the pain it endures. It is the nerve which will not shrink. It is
to save others that it veils the inly consuming agony. We offer not the excuse of
our principles: the stem character is fully supported on its own. It may be, too,
that he is supposed to warrant the deception, because his information is private,
though it accompanied the public news. He might deem that he was not required
to be the mourner before others until the fact obtained its legitimate publicity.
— ^J. Resch (Archivfur das Studium, etc., band Ixvii, p. 446) thinks that this pre-
tended ignorance and hypocrisy, which is quite inconsistent with the character of
Brutus as drawn by Shakeq)eare, can only be explained by the supposition that the
prompter's copy from which the Folio was printed contained two versions of the
news of Portia's death, and, by an oversight, both became incorporated in the
text. 'Proofs for this hypothesis,' Resch continues, 'are, of course, lacking, since
there is no Quarto copy of Jtd, Cits. Such a repetition is not without analogy,
e. g.f in Love*s Ijobow^s Lost, IV, 111,302-304 and 350-352; again, V, ii, 827-832 and
833-840, we have in one case an actual repetition and m the other, two separate
versions. If we should discard the first version in the present play we must omit
lines 162-178, beginning with "I did not think you could have been so angry"
down to " Speak no more of her [it]. Give me a bowl of wine. " We must likewise
strike out the two short lines "Portia, art thou gone" and "No more I pray
3^ou." With these omissions the bearing of Brutus on hearing Messala's message
and the remark of Cassius, " I have as much of this in art as you. But yet my nature
could not bear it so," become at least comprehensible. If, on the other hand,
the scene with Messala is to be considered as an interpolation, we must omit 11.
206-222, «. «., from "Cicero is dead, and by that order of proscription" down to
"Well to our work alive. What do you thinke Of marching to Philippi presently. " '
As to the question which of these two versions is the original or which is the better,
Resch opines that the version wherein Brutus tells Cassius of Portia's death de-
serves the preference, and for these reasons: ' His grief furnishes the best explanation
of his irritation with Cassius; besides, as has been shown, if the lines are to be
omitted a change in the text is invdved. As regards the scene with Messala, it
establishes no special point which had not been brought forward previously, and
its excision, beginning and ending with a complete line, causes no actual break in
continuity; the reference to Cicero's death in 1. 205 is, moreover, perfectly approriate
to the speech of Brutus: "Well to our work alive," etc. Finally, Brutus's bearing
at the communication to Cassius of Portia's death is certainly more consistent with
his character as previously exhibited.' — [Paul Kannengiesser (Jakrbuch, xliv,
50) also discusses these two passages and arrives at the same conclusion as given in
this thoughtful essay by Resch, to whom he does not, however, refer. His arrange-
ments with their omissions are identical with those of his predecessor. — Ed.] —
Vestfy: Perhaps Brutus dissembles thus because he cherishes a faint hope that
after all Portia is not dead — that the report which reached him was false and that
224 ^^^ TRACED IE OF [act iv. sc. iu.
[207-209. No Messala . . . Nothing Messala]
Messala has later tidings of her being alive. Compare his question: 'Hear yovL
ought of her, in yours?' — Beeching: Perhaps Brutus wishes to appear to take
his wife's death impassively in order not to dishearten Messala by seeming to
attach importance to her estimate of the situation. — Mark Hunter in his Preface ac-
knowledges his indebtedness to Percy Simpson for several scholarly notes, which
appear, I believe, in Hunter's edition only. Under the present passage he says
that Simpson 'thinks it possible that Brutus's first answers to Messala's ques-
tions: "No, Messala," "Nothing, Messala," are the half-dazed, half-indifferent
utterances of a man staggering imder a loss that has stirred his nature to its depths,
and as Messala insists on probing the still fresh wound, Brutus takes, as it were, a
lesson in endurance by listening calmly, with no symptom of grief or agitation.' — ^To
this Hunter adds: 'What Messala takes for stoical fortitude is, in reality, a sensi>
tive shrinking from a woimd which is too recent and too painful to be laid bare in.
the presence of any but the most intimate friends. To Cassius, after the quarrel
has drawn the two men more closely together, Brutus can speak of his loss a little^
and even, in a broken way, speak of the circumstances of Portia's death. Before^
others he cannot speak; hence he at once checks Cassius when Lucius enters, —
"Speak no more of her"; and again, after the entrance of Titinius and Messala, —
" No more, I pray you." With an effort Brutus turns to business. After a little, Mes-
sala abruptly puts the question. Brutus's repeated denial is surely not prompted
by any wish to give an example of fortitude, as I have heard suggested, but rather
to put aside the question. He hopes, perhaps, that Messala does not know the truth,
or knowing it, will not speak, if he imagines Brutus still ignorant. When Messala
persists, Brutus, as the least painful way, suffers him to tell the news again, rather
than venture himself to speak of it. Still he cannot bear the details, and whoi Mes*
sala is about to speak of the ''strange manner' ' of Portia's end, he checks him by
an assumption of fortitude which is far from felt. Cassius, of course, knows that
Brutus has not now heard the news for the first time, and Messala must, I think,
recognise it too. They commend him, not because they think he regards the
greatest human loss as a thing not meriting sorrow, but because they admire the
strong manly nature that will not wear the heart upon the sleeve. Although Brutus
does not mention Portia again, we may be sure that he will find time to mourn for
her in secret, as he says he will find time to shed tears for Cassius. The interpreta-
tion here suggested is rather for the actor than for the commentator to make
good; but this is not seldom the case with Shakespeare. The fit actor could, I
believe, demonstrate throughout the whole scene that the loss of Portia and the
keenness of Brutus's suffering for that loss prompt all that Brutus says and
does; his harshness to Cassius at the beginning; the sudden self-abandonment, after
the quarrel is made up, in the single pathetic verse — pathetic as falling from the
lips of a strong self-contained man: "O Cassius, I am sick of many griefs"; the
strange denial to Messala; the "much forgetfulness" a little later; the tenderness
shown to Lucius; the consideration for Claudius and Varro, even the little flash
of irritability when, at the close of the scene, he rouses the same soldiers from sleep.'
— Macmillan (p. 1 75) : This is not the first lie that Brutus is guilty of in the play.
But his former lie [to Portia, * I am not well in health, and that is all.' — II, i, 285]
was actuated by an easily intelligible motive, whereas this one is not. Further,
in the present case Brutus accepts without protest Messala's admiration, which is
based upon a misconception produced by the lie. — [Macmillan, unaware apparently
ACT IV. SC. in.] IVLIVS CjESAR. 22$
Mejfa. That me thinkes is (Irange. 210
Bru. Why aske you ?
Heare you ought of her, in yours ?
Mejfa. No my Lord
Bru. Now as you are a Roman tell me true.
Mejfa. Then like a Roman, beare the truth I tell, 215
For certaine ihe is dead, and by ft range manner*
Bru. Why farewell Portia: We muft die Mejfala :
With meditating that ihe muft dye once,
I haue the patience to endure it now. 219
2X1, 2X2. One line Roweetseq. 21$. my Lori[ my lord, notkint
2x2. ought] ought Warb. et seq. Wordsworth.
that herein he has been anticipated by Resch, see ante, thinks that the 'difficulties
in the end of this scene are due to additions subsequently made, and not perfectly
reconciled with the original draft.' — Ed.] — Porter-Clakke: The wearing effect
on Brutus of all this pretence of control while his heart was in agony adds to what
he must suffer from anxiety as to the approaching battle. Does Shakespeare mean
to suggest that Brutus is discovering in this, as he may also discover in his disregard
d friendship for Caesar when his reason bade him strike him down, that the heart
may not be forced and violated imduly? — MAcCALLUif (p. 242): Brutus may
profess ignorance to save himself the pain of explanation, though surely it would
have been simpler to say 'I know all.' But the effect is imdoubtedly to bring his
self-control into fuller relief in presence of Messala and Titinius, even than in the
presence of Cassius a few minutes before; for then he was announcing what he al-
ready knew, here he would seem in the eyes of his informants to be encountering the
first shock. Too much must not be made of this, for Cassius, who is aware of the
circumstances, b no less impressed than the others, and Cassius would have de-
tected any hollow ring. But at the least it savours of a willingness to give a demon-
stration, so to speak, in Clinical Ethics. — [The foregoing remarks are, after all, but
excellent attempts to excuse what is nothing more or less than a deliberate lie.
And a lie, moreover, from which nothing but a reputation for fortitude, under the
most distressing calamity, could accrue. The lie told by Desdemona after her
supposed death is to shield Othello, and, therefore, to a certain extent, pardonable;
that told by Ophelia to Hamlet in regard to the whereabouts of her father was to
Aield that father, and is likewise, on that ground, explicable. Brutus had no motive
but a selfish one; and as such a conclusion is quite inconsistent with the Brutus of the
former scenes, our only recoiurse is to accept the explanation given by Resch, viz.:
that these words between Brutus and Messala are an interpolation from a MS ad-
dition which appeared first in the play-house copy, and which, by mistake, became
incorporated in the text. — ^Ed.]
217. Why] Wright: Like what used as an interjection. Here it expresses
acquiescence; in that case, that being so. Compare 1. 331 : 'Why I will see thee at
Philippi then.'
218, 219. With meditating ... to endure it now] Ereyssig (p. 32):
This is Portia's only elegy. It is, moreover, evident that the triumph here cele-
15
226 THE TRACED IE OF [act iv, sc m.
Mejfa. Euen fo great men^ great lofles (hold indure. 220
Cajfu I haue as much of this in 'Art as you,
But yet my Nature could not beare it fo.
Bru. Well^ to our worke aliue. What do you tfainke
Of marching to Philippi prefently.
CaJJi. I do not thinke it good. 225
Bru. Your reafon ?
CaJJi. This it is : 227
220. JhoU^ Fs. 327. U is\ Om. Steev. conj., John
TTiint«»r mni WnrHsvmrt'fi «n nrmte.
227. w sjj v/ni> oiccv. cuuj., juou
Hunter conj. Wordsworth so prints.
brated is not that of the system of Stoic philosphy,but of the Heroic soul \EMair
sede] of a man ever striving towards the great and noble.
218. once] MuBSAY (N, E. D., s, v, B. 5.): At some future time; some day.
221. Art] Malone: That is, in theory. — [Craik (p. 351) takes exception to this
interpretation, and says that 'art' here 'rather signifies by acquired knowledge or
learning, as distinguished from natural disposition. The passage is one of the many
in our old poets . . . running upon the relation between nature and art.*]
223. to our worke aliue] Ckak (p. 351): That is, let us proceed to our living
business, to that which concerns the living, not the dead. — ^John Hunter:
'Alive' here qualifies the pronoun us, involved in 'our' ( « of us): now to the work
which demands the attention of us. alive, which we the living must attend to.
There is a somewhat similar grammatical difficulty in such phraseology as 'his
ability as a staiesman,'
223, 224. What do you thinke . . . Philippi presently] Mask Hunter:
In Plutarch the discussion between Brutus and Cassius as to the policy of adopt-
ing offensive and defensive tactics took place at Philippi itself; and in Shakespeare
we must imagine the discussion taking place in the same neighborhood; for although
at the beginning of the scene we were at Sardis, we can scarcely be there now.
Here we have not only a double time, but double notions of space are likewise
required. Sardis is a very long way from Philippi, and yet we have just learned
that Octavius and Antony are coming down upon Brutus and Cassius, 'bending
their expedition towards Philippi.' Evidently Philippi is directly in the line of
attack. Secondly, by (\. 233), 'The people 'twixt Philippi, and this ground,' we can
scarcely understand the inhabitants of the countries between Macedonia and
Sardis, but rather the natives of the immediately surrounding neighborhood upon
whom the army relied for supplies. 'This ground' again obviously points to some
military position capable of being strongly defended, where the troops are 'full of
defence, ' and not very far from Philippi. In fact, the opening lines of Act V, where
Octavius expresses surprised satisfaction at the tactics adopted by the enemy,
tell us that 'this ground' is no other than 'the hills and upper regions' above Phil-
ippi. Lastly, the end of this scene is plainly closely connected in point of time with
the foUowing Act. Almost everything that is said and done makes us feel that we
are on the eve of a decisive engagement, not merely at the beginning of a cam-
paign. There are, of course, both here and in V, i. touches which suggest 'long
time' and long distance; but this is Shakespeare's device to conceal an inevitable
inconsistency.
ACT IV, sc. iii.] IVLIVS CjESAR 227
Tis better that the Enemie feeke vs, 228
So (hall he wafle his meanes, weary his Souldiers^
Doing himfelfe offence, whil^ft we lying ftill, 230
Are full of reft, defence, and nimbleneffe.
Bru.QtooA reafons muft of force giue place to better :
The people 'twixt Philippic and this ground
Do ftand but in a forcM affeftion :
For they haue gnig'd vs Contribution. 235
The Enemy, marching along by them,
By them fhall make a fuller number vp.
Come on refrefht, new added, and encourag'd :
From which aduantage (hall we cut him off.
If at Philippi we do face him there, 240
235. ffu^^ grudged F)F4. 239. JhaU we] we shall Craik conj.
238. new added] Ff, Rowc,-|-. new off,] Ff. off Cam. offy Rowe
aided Sing, ii, Ktly. new-aided Dyce, et cet.
Hal. Huds. new-hearted CoU. ii, iii. 240. him there] hinty there Theob.
(MS), Craik. new-added Cap. et cet. conj. (Nichols, ii, 497), withdrawn.
229, 230. his . . . his . . . himselfe] Here and in 1. 239, below, 'enemy' is
taken coUectively as a singular noim; it is not, however, always so; in V, i, 18 we
have 'The enemy comes on in gallant show. Their bloody sign of battle is hung
out.* — Ed.
238. new added] Collier's MS here reads new-heartedy upon which he remarks
{Notes, etc., p. 428) : 'This error might be occasioned by the then broad pronuncia-
tion of "added" having been mistaken for hearted.' — Csaik (p. 352): The only
meaning that can be forced out of 'new-added ' gives us merely a repetition of what
has been already said in the preceding line, a repetition which is not only unneces-
sary, but would be introduced in the most unnatural way and place possible;
whereas [the MS correction] new-hearted is the very sort of word one would expect
to find where it stands, in association with 'refreshed' and 'encouraged.' — Collier
(ed. ii): 'New-aided,' which is Dyce's emendation [see Text. Notes]y is only saying
the same thing over again that appears in 1. 237. New-hearted is a strong and
expressive compound. [Collier then quotes the last sentence of Craik's note
commending this emendation.] — Dyce, in defence of his conjecture (which also
had occurred to Singer), in his second edition thus replies: '"Hearted" bears
not the most distant resemblance, either in spelling or in sound, to the orig-
inal word "added"; from which the word substituted by me, aided, differs only
in a single letter. Collier declares that new-aided is only sa3dng the same thing
over again [as in 1. 237]; but how came it to escape him that *^ new-hearted and
encouraged" are synonymous terms? — "To heart: To encourage; to hearten." —
Todd's Johnson. Craik's note would seem to show that he was not aware of my
conjecture, new-aided; though the reader would be apt to judge, from what Collier
says, that it was known to Craik, and had been condenmed by him; in which case,
let me add (without any disrespect to Craik), I should not have thought the worse
of it.'
228 THE TRAGEDIE OF [act iv. sc. iii.
Thefe people at our backe. 241
Caffi. Heare me good Brother,
Bru. Vnder your pardon. You muft note befide^
That we haue tride the vtmoft of our Friends :
Our Legions are brim full^ our caufe is ripe, 245
The Enemy encreafeth euery day,
We at the height, are readie to decline.
There is a Tide in the affayres of men.
Which taken at the Flood, leades on to Fortune :
Omitted, all the voyage of their life, 250
Is bound in Shallowes,and in Miferies.
246. tncrtajdl^ increasing Ed. conj. 248-254. Mnemonic Pope, Warb.
248, 249. There is a Tide . . . leades on to Fortune] Steevens and
BoswELL quote, as parallel in sentiment, passages from Beaumont and Fletch-
er's Custom of the Country, 11, iii, and Bloody Brother, 11, i. — Malone likewise
from Chapman's Bussy lyAmbois, I, i. (ed. Pearson, p. 10). [—These arc all
only paraphrases of the axiom that Opportunity once lost is irretrievable.
The observation b not, I think, original with Shakespeare, or Bacon, or Beau-
mont and Fletcher, or Chapman. — Ed.] — ^Walker (CH^., iii, 248) compares,
for a like intermingling of the simile with the thing compared, V, iii, 68^71. —
Green (p. 258): From at least four distinct sources in the Emblem-books of
the sixteenth century Shakespeare might have derived the characteristics of the
goddess [Occasion, or Opportunity]: from Aldat, Perriere, Corrozet, and Whit-
ney. Perriere {Theatre de Bans Engins, 1539) presents the figure with stanzas of
old French, [which] may be accepted as a translation of the Latin of Alciat, on the
goddess Opportunity; . . . she is portrayed standing on a wheel that is floating
upon the waves; and as the tide rises there are apparently ships or boats making for
the shore. The figure holds a razor in the right hand, has wings upon the feet, and
abundance of hair streaming from the forehead. Whitney's English lines (p. 181)
sufficiently express the meaning both of the French and of the Latin stanzas.
[It is to these which Green refers as 'an exact comment' on the present passage in
Jul, C€es.]: * Why doest thou stande within an open place? That I maye wame all
people not to staye. But at the firste, occasion to imbrace, And when shee comes
to meete her by the waye.' * There is,' adds Green, *"the full sea," on which
Fortune is now afloat; and people are all warned, "at the first occasion to embrace,"
or "take the current when it serves."* — ^Wright: Compare Bacon, Advancement
of Learning, [1605]: *In the third place I set down reputation, because of the
peremptory tides and currents it hath; which, if they be not taken in their due time,
are seldom recovered, it being extreme hard to play an after game of reputation.' —
Bk, ii, ch. 23, § 38; (Clarendon ed., p. 243).
251. bound in Shallowes] Verity: That b, confined to shallows, etc. —
Mark Hunter: There seems to be here some confusion between the adjective
hound, ready to go, as in homeward hound, hound for Naples, and the past parti-
ciple of hind. — [Hunter is, perhaps, right; but the simpler explanation seems the
better, that 'bound in' here means circumscribed by shallows and miseries. — £0.]
ACT IV. sc. iii.] IVLIVS CjESAR 229
On fuch a full Sea are we now a-float, 252
And we mufl take the cunrent when it ferues.
Or loofe our Ventures,
Caffu Then with your will go on : wee'l along 255
Our felues^and meet them at Philippu
Bru. The deepe of night is crept vpon our talke.
And Nature muft obey Neceflitie,
Which we will niggard with a little reft :
There is no more to lay, 260
Cajft. No more, good night,
Early to morrow will we rife, and hence.
Enter Lucius. 263
255) 256. rAm...Philippi] Lines end: 260. Jay.] say? Cap. et seq.
^...Philippi Cap. et seq. 262. wiU toe] we will Rowe ii, Pope,
255. wee'l along] we wiU along Rowe, Han.
+, Varr. CoU. Wh. w^U on Cap.
255. Then with 3rour wiU go on] Goll (p. 71) : In the discussion of the plan
of campaign Brutus is again vidorious with his unfortunate scheme, because he
dictatorially doses the mouth of Cassius. Is it a proof that Brutus is only an indif-
ferent commander, possessed of small intelligence, that he seems to be so mistaken
as to the conditions? It might seem so, because this time his reasons for fighting
at Philippi rather than at Sardis cannot possibly be ethical. And yet the correct
explanation is another one. Brutus is tired to death of the whole string of events
which are so ill-suited to his disposition that from amongst all his shattered hopes
one wish only remains — to bring the whole business to an end. On that account
Brutus wishes to advance; the only advantage of his plan being that the battle
win be expedited — Philippi is, therefore, better than Sardis. He seeks the judg-
ment for his actions which alone can give him peace and rest. Now, as before, the
interim between thought and action is like a 'hideous dream,' which must be cut as
short as possible. After all, judgment cannot be evaded. Let it come I
256. Our selues] This use of 'ourselves' seems to imply a separation of the
forces, that is: Go forward according to your desire, and we ourselves will go to
Phili];^i. This is, of course, not what Cassius intends; therefore the word is used,
I think, in contradistinction to the 'himself referring to the enemy in 1. 230:
'doing himself offence.' — ^Ed.
259. niggard] Schmidt {Lex,, s, v. 2.) : To supply sparingly. — [The present line
quoted, as the only example of this word used in exactly this sense. Niggarding
occurs, used intransitively, in Sonnet i, I. 12: 'And, tender churl, makes waste in
niggarding.' — Craigie (N. E. D., s. v. 2.) quotes the present line as the only ex-
ample, thus far found, of 'niggard' used transitively. — ^£d.]
262. Early to morrow . . . hence] Mask Hunter: Notice how absolutely
unnecessary all this haste would be — the few hours snatched for sleq>, the early
forced march — if the armies were still at Sardis. [See note, 11. 223, 224.]
262. will we . . . hence] Craik (p. 354): It might almost be said that the
adverb 'hence' is here turned into a verb; it is construed exactly as 'rise '-is. So
both with 'hence' and home in I, i, 7.
230 ^^^ TRACED IE OF [act iv. sc. liL
Bru. Lucitis my Gowne: farewell good Meffala^
Good night Titinius : Noble, Noble Caffius^ 265
Good night, and good repofe.
CaJJi. O my deere Brother :
This was an ill beginning of the night :
Neuer come fuch diuifion 'tweene our foules :
Let it not Brutus. 270
Enter Lucius with the Gowne.
Bm. Euery thing is well.
Caffu Good night my Lord.
Bru. Grood night good Brother.
Tet. Meffa. Good night Lord Brutus. 275
Bru. Farwell euery one. Exeunt.
Giue me the Gowne. Where is thy Inftrument ?
Luc. Heere in the Tent.
Bru. What, thou fpeak'ft drowfilyf
Poore knaue I blame thee not, thou art ore-watchM. 280
264. farewett\ now fareweU Han. 272. Bm.] Fx.
farewell now Huds. Fare you (or ye) 273, 274. Cafli. Good,.3rotker] Om.
well Walker (Vers., p. 141). Pope,4-.
269. come] came Rowe i. 280. tkee not] thee art F,. thee F3F4.
269. Neuer come] That is, may such difference never come. This refers, ol
course, to their quarrel. 'Come' is herein the optative mood.
273, 274. Good night my Lord . . . Brother] Mark Hunter: The formal
address, *my Lord,' is with Cassius expressive of love, gratitude, and deq> rever-
ence. In reply, 'good Brother ^ Brutus affectionately disclaims the title of supe-
riority.— [Compare, perhaps, Hamlet's reply to Horatio: 'Sir, my good friend, I'll
change that name with you,' when Horatio has called himself Hamlet's ^poor ser-
vant.'— ^I, ii, 162. — Ed.] — F. C. Kolbe {Irish Monthly y Sep., 1896; p. 509): It is a
wonderful touch that at the end of this scene, in which Cassius has felt the strength
of Brutus and been cowed by it, he calls him (for the only time in the whole play)
'my Lord.^ No wonder, then, that when Brutus unfolds his plan about Phili[^i,
Cassius, although he does not like it, gives way. Over-generosity makes Brutus
forgive too much; over-admiration makes Cassius surrender his better judg-
ment.
280. ore-watch'd] Craik (p. 354): *0*er-watched' is used in this sense of worn-
out with watching by other writers as well as by Shakespeare, however irrecon-
cilable such an application of it may be with the meaning of the verb to watch. We
have it again in Lear: 'AH weary and o'er watched.' — II, ii, 177. — [Is not 'watch*
here and in 1. 290, 'watch your pleasure,' used in its technical sense, from the
method of taming hawks by keeping them from sleep? See Tro, 6* Cress., Ill, ii,
45: ' — you must be watched ere you be made tame'; also Othello: 'I'll watch him
tame.' — ^HI, iii, 23. For other examples of active and passive verbs with neuter
form, see, if needful, Abbott, § 295. — Ed.]
ACT IV, sc. iii.] IVLIVS CjESAR 23 1
Call ClaudiOy and fome other of my men, 281
He haue them fleepe on Cufhions in my Tent
Luc. VarruSfSLtid Claudia,
Enter Varrus and Claudia.
Var. Cals my Lord ? 285
Bru. I pray you firs, lye in my Tent and fleepe,
It may be I fliall raife you by and by
On bufmefle to my Brother Cajftus.
Var. So pleafe you, we will (land,
And watch your plefaure. 290
Bru. I will it not haue it fo : Lye downe good firs,
It may be I fliall otherwife bethinke me.
Looke Lucius J heere's the booke I fought for fo :
I put it in the pocket of my Gowne. 294
281, 283, 284. Claudio] Claudius 289, 290. One line Rowe.
Rowe et seq. 291. wUl «/] Fi.
283, 284. Varrus] Varro Rowe et seq. 292. [Servants retire and sleq>. Cap.
284. SoENE VI. Pope, Han. Warb. et seq. (subs.)
Johns.
281. some other] Craik (p. 354): By 'some other' we should now mean
some of a different sort. For some more we say some others. But although 'other'
thus used as a substantive, with the plural of the ordinary form, is older than the
time of Shakespeare, I do not recollect that he anywhere has oihers. Nor does it
occur, I believe, even in Clarendon. On the other hand, it is frequent in Milton. —
(The plural form, 'others,' occurs in three passages in Shakespeare, viz.: 'With
eyes as red as new-kindled fire. And others more.' — King John^ IV, ii, 164; 'What
is it they do When they change us for others?* — Othello, IV, iii, 98; and ' — ^the
greatest are misthought, For things that others do.' — Ant. 6* Cleo., V, ii, 178. — ^Ed.]
283. Varrus] Walker (Cn*/., ii, 323), among other examples wherein the letter
r, both in pn^)er names and in some other words, is doubled, cites the present pas-
sage, and says: * Varrus . . . — vulg. Varro ^ — is, if this form be the right one.
Varus; of course, not the Varus. I rather think, however, that Varro is the true
reading.'— {See Text. Notes.]
287. raise] Schmidt {Lex., s. v. 4.): To rouse, to stir up, to awake, to make to
rise.
290. watch your pleasure] That is, stay awake during your pleasure, or as
long as you so will it. (Compare 1. 280, and note.)
293, 294. Looke Lucius . . . the pocket of my Gowne] Hudson (Life, etc.,
ii, 235): What the man is, and where he ought to be, is all signified in these two
lines. And do we not taste a dash of benignant irony in the implied repugnance
between the spirit of the man and the stuff of his present imdertaking? The idea
of a bookworm riding the whirlwind of war! The thing is most like Brutus; but how
out of his element, how unsphered fxom his right place, it shows him! There is a
touch of drollery in the contrast which the richest steeping of poetry does not dis-
guise. I fancy the Poet to have been in a bland, inteUectual smile as he wrote
232 THE TRAGEDIE OF [JMT nr, sc nL
Iju. I was fore your Lordflnp dklmot ghie it me. 295
Bru, Beare with me good Boy, I am mudi forgctfiill«
Canft thoo hold vp thy heauie eyes a-winle,
And touch thy Inftrumeiit a ftraine or two.
Liu. I my Lord, an't pleafe 3^00.
Bru, It does my Boy : 300
I trouMe thee too much, but dioo art wilfiiig.
Luc. It is my duty Sir.
Brut. I (hould not vrge diy duty paft thy might,
I know yong bloods looke for a time of reft.
Luc. I haue flept my Lord already. 305
Bru. It was well done, and thou fliah fleepe againe:
I will not hold thee long. If I do Hue,
I will be good to thee,
Muficke and a Song. 309
297, 298. thy..ja^^lnU,..Shy..jor two\ (Crit., m, 248).
lhy..Jtr two, lky..ui-wksl€ Ff. 309. Mi]ficke...SoQg.] Musick..^ng:
300-302. // does...my duiy Sir] Two toward the End, Ludus £aOs asleep,
lines, ending: muck,. July Sir. Walker Cap. Jen.
that strain of loving earnestness in which the matter is delivered. And the irony b
all the more delectable for being so remote and mipronounced; like one ol those
choice arrangements in the background of a painting, ^diich, without attracting
conscious notice, give a zest and rdish to what stands in front. The scene, whether
for charm of sentiment or felicity of conception, b one of the finest in Shakespeare.
Here, too, he had a hint from Plutarch: * — whilst he fBrutus] was in war, . . .
after he had taken order [for his weightiest causes], if he had any leisure left him,
he would read some book till the third watch of the night, at what time the cap-
tains, petty captains, and colonels did use to come to him.* — [Bruius, § 26; ed.
Skeat, p. 136.] — Macmillan: The conversation between Brutus and his attendant
may be compared with that between Desdemona and her attendant, Bianca
[Emilia?], which has a similar position in the end of the Fourth Act of Othello.
Both scenes are pervaded with a feeling of drowsiness and peaceful tranquillity,
which agreeably relieves the strain to which our feelings are subjected by the
highly-wrought scene that has gone before, and by the tragic conclusion of the
drama which we know to be imminent. In both cases the ease and natural sim-
plicity of the conversation conceal the dramatist's consimmiate art.
295. I was] Walker (Cril.] ii, 204) quotes this line among many other exam-
ples wherein *thou wert, you ivercy "I was" must have been pronounced [for
the sake of the metre] as one syllable, in whatever manner the contraction was
affected.'
297, 298. Canst thou ... a straine or two] Staffer (p. 342): Brutus asks
Lucius for a little music, which he loved^ and even this detail has its significance
when contrasted with the brief remark made by Caesar respecting Cassius: *he
hears no music'
ACT IV. sc. iii.] IVLIVS CJSSAR 233
This is a fleepy Tune : O MurdVous flumbler f 310
Layeft thou thy Leaden Mace vpon my Boy,
That playes thee Muficke ? Gentle knaue good night :
I will not do thee fo much wrong to wake thee :
If thou do'ft nod, thou break'ft thy Inftrument,
He take it from thee, and ( good Boy) good night. 315
Let me fee, let me fee; is not the Leafe tumM downe
Where I left reading/ Heere it is I thinke.
Enter the Ghojl of Ccefar. 3 1 8
310. flumbler] Jlutnber F,F4. me see Pope, let me see — Theob.H-.
315. [Lays the instrument by, and lel*s see Steev. conj.
sits down. Cap. Jen. 317. [He sits down to read. Rowe,+y
316. Let me fee,] Bui Pope,-!- ( — Var. Varr. Ran.
'73). Let^s see Steev. conj. Scene vn, Pope, Han. Warb.
let me fee;] let me Jeef Ff . let Johns.
310, 311. Murd'rous slumbler . . . thy Leaden Mace] Holt White com-
pares Spenser, Faerie Queene: 'When as Morpheus had with leaden mase
Arrested all that courtly company.' — I, iv, 44. — Mask Hunter: The metaphor is
from the bailiff touching persons on the shoulder with his mace or stafif, in token of
arrest.
313. I will not ... to wake thee] Compare, for this construction, 'Be^not
fond To thinke that Caesar beares such rebell blood.' — lU, i, 48.
3x4. thou break'st] Abbott (§ 363): The subjunctive is replaced by the indica-
tive after if where there is no reference to futurity and no doubt is expressed, as in
'if 'thou lovest me.' [In the present line] the meaning is you are sure to hredk, and
the present indicative, being used in the consequent, is also used in the antecedent.
317. Heere it is I thinke] MacCallum (p. 268): Brutus's habit of reading
at night is mentioned by Plutarch, but, when we consider the circumstances, has it
not a deeper meaning here? His love for Portia we know, but after his brief refer-
ences to her death, he seems to banish her fxom his mind, and never, not even in
his djing words, does her name cross his lips again. Is this an inadvertence on
Shakespeare's part, or an omission due to the kinship of Jul, Cces, with the Chronicle
History? Is it not rather that he conceives Brutus as one of those who are so
bound up in their affections that they fear to face a thought of their bereavement
lest they should utterly collapse? Is it fanciful to interpret that search for his
book with the leaf turned down, in the light of Macauley's confession on the
death of his sister, 'Literature has saved my life and my reason; even now I dare
not, in the intervals of business, remain alone a minute without a book'? — [Morley
(On Popular Culture) observes, not, however, with any reference to the present
passage, 'Montesquieu used to say that he had never known a pain or a distress
which he could not soothe by half an hour of a good book.' — {Miscellanies , iii, 5). —
This is, I think, a translation of a sentence in the Portrait de Montesquieu, par Lui
Meme: 'L'^tude a 6t6 pour moi le souverain remMe contre les d6gouts de la vie,
n'ayant jamais eu de chagrin qu'une heure de lecture n'ait dissip^.' — ((Euvres
Postkume, p. 134). — Ed.]
318. Enter the Ghost of Caesar] Steevens: It does not appear from Plu-
tarch that 'the Ghost of Caesar' appeared to Brutus, but 'a wonderful strange
234 ^^^ TRACED IE OF [act nr, sc. in.
[318. Enter the Ghost of Cwmt]
and monstrous shape of a body.' This apparition could not be at once the
shade of Caesar and the 'evil genius' of Brutus. 'Brutus boldly asked what
he was, a god or a man, and what cause brought him thither. The ^Miit
answered him, I am thy evil spirit, Brutus; and thou shalt see me by the dty
of Philippes.' — \BrvXuSy § 26; ed. Skeat, p. 136. — ^Steevens dies Vakrius Mazi-
mus. Adz and Sayings, etc, which passage b thus translated in Speed's edition,
Z6S4: 'Antonius, having lost the battle of Actium, Cassius Ptamensis, who had
taken his part, fled to Athens; where he fell asleq> in the nig^t, being tired with care
and trouble: He thought there came to l|im a person of a very great stature, black
complexion, his beard deformed, and long hanging hair, who, being ask'd what he
was, answer'd, Cacodemon. Being affrighted with so horrid a sig^t, and tenible
name, he called up his servants, and demanded of them if they saw any one in such
a habit dther come in or go out of the chamber: Who affirming that no sodi had
come there, he again betook himsdf to his rest; when immediatdy the same shape
appeared to him again; when awaking altogether, he called for a light, commanding
the servants to depart. But between this night and the loss of his head, whidi
Cesar took from him, there followed a very short space of time.' — ^Bk, I, ch. vii,
§ 7. — Valerius Maximus also relates how the figure of Caesar, 'above mortal stat-
ure clad in a purple robe, and an angry countenance,' appeared to Cassius at the
battle of Philippi. 'At which sight affrighted he fled, having first heard these
words uttered. What wouldsi thou do more, if U he too little to ham kUTdf Didst
thou not murther Caesar 0 Cassius? But no deity can be prevaiPd agamsi; tkero'
fore by injuring him whose mortal body still bums, thou hast desenfd to ham a
god so much thy enemy.* — (Bk, I, ch. viii, § 8; ed. Speed, p. 45). — Ed.] — ^hlALONE:
Shakespeare had also certainly read Plutarch's account of this vision in the Life
of Cttsar: 'Above all, the ghost that appeared unto Brutus showed plainly that
the gods were offended with the murther of Cssar. The vision was thus: . . .
He thought he heard a noise at bis tent-door, and looking towards the light of the
lamp that waxed very dim, he saw a horrible vision of a man, of a wonderful great-
ness and dreadful look, which at first made him marvelously afraid.' — [Ctesar,
§ 46; ed. Skeat, p. 103]. It is manifest from the words printed in italics that Shake-
speare had in his thoughts this passage, which relates the very event which he de-
scribes, as well as the other. — [This inddent is related also by Appian, Cioil Wars,
Bk, IV, ch. xvii, § 134; and, as the translator and editor, Horace White, points out,
Appian has apparently copied the words of Plutarch in the reply of the Spectre:
* 'O ob%, S> fipovT€, dalfjuatf icaxbt.* — Ed.] — Craik (p. 356) : By 'evil spirit ' apparently
is meant nothing more than a supernatural visitant of evil omen. At any rate,
the present apparition is aft^iVards distinctly stated by Brutus himself to have
been the ghost of the murdered dictator, V, v, 23. So also, in Ant, & Cleo., 'Since
Julius Caesar, Who at Philippi the good Brutus ghosted.' — II, vi, 12. Perhaps
we might refer also to *0 Julius Caesar, thou art mighty yet, Thy spirit walks
abroad.' — V, iii, 106. And to * Caesar's spirit, ranging for revenge.* — III, i, 300. —
DowDEN (p. 288): The Ghost of Caesar (designated by Plutarch only the 'evill
spirit' of Brutus) serves as a kind of visible symbol of the vast posthumous power
of the dictator. — Beeching {Introd., p. xvii.): Tragedy has always made great use
of Ghosts. This is necessary as the only means of representing what is eternal in
man after death; it also helps to supply the place of what is impossible for us, the
direct presentation of Destiny. Where murder has been committed, it is at once
ACT IV. sc. iii.] IVLIVS CjESAR 235
How ill this Taper bumes. Ha! Who comes heere?
I thinke it is the weakeneffe of mine eyes 320
That fhapes this monftrous Apparition.
It comes vpon me : Art thou any thing ?
Art thou fome God, fome Angell, or fome Diuell, 323
the simplest and most teUing way of suggesting retribution. Thus Banquo appears
to Macbeth; a company of Ghosts, to Richard; Caesar, to Brutus. This last instance
is e^>ecially effective. Brutus had said: 'Oh that we then could come by Caesar's
spirit, And not dismember Caesar.' — ^n, i, 190. But in the event what happened
was this, that all they did was to 'dismember Caesar'; they could not 'come by his
spirit'; that survived the butchery and asserted itself at the battle of Philippi.
What an effective way, then, of exhibiting the imconscious irony of that speech,
and showing the terrible blunder of the whole conspiracy, to write the stage direc-
tion, ^Efii€f the Ghost of Casar.* — MacCallxtm (p. 269): The Brutus of the play
breathes no word of the visitation, though it b repeated at Philippi, till a few min-
utes before his death, and then in all composure as a proof that the end is near, not
as a horror fxom which he seeks deliverance. . . . When he has taken heart the
spectre vanishes. This means, too, that it has a closer connection with his nerves,
with his subjective fears and misgivings, than the 'monstrous shape' in Plutarch.
... All day the mischievousness of his intervention has been present to his mind;
now his accusing thoughts take shape in the vision of his murdered friend, and his
vague presentiments of retribution at Philippi leap to consciousness in its prophetic
words. But all this does not abash his soul or shake his purpose. He only hastens
the morning march. — Oechelhauser (Einfilhtungenf i, 324) says that in order to
make this apparition effective the foUowing arrangement of the lights is necessary:
'Before the appearance of the Ghost in the darkness of the background the lamp
hanging fxom the centre of the tent is slowly extinguished; house and stage are
plunged in darkness; only the single candle on Brutus's table throws its feeble light
into the gloom. The rising ghost should then be suddenly iUiuninated with a dull-
pale light shining upon it alone; Brutus then sees it. After the last words of the
ghost the illuminating light is extinguished, and the phantom vanishes; the light
in the hanging lamp returns and the scene is lit as before. Any such effect
as a gliding away of the Ghost is to be especially avoided.' — ^Winter (Art of
Mansfield, p. 162) commends Mansfield's arrangement of this scene, wherein,
'while the voice of Caesar was heard the Spectre remained invisible, except
to Brutus.' — [It may be asked, how then is the audience, unfamiliar with the
direction of the FoUo, to grasp Shakespeare's intention as to the identity of the
Phantom? — Ed.)
319. How ill this Taper bumes] Steevens: That lights grew dim, or burned
blue, at the approach of spectres was a belief which Shakespeare might have found
examples of in almost every book of his age that treats of supernatural appearances.
Compare Rich. Ill: 'The lights bum blue. It is now dead midnight.' — V, iii, 180.
— [By this note Steevens intends, I think, to demonstrate that Shakespeare need not
have relied solely upon Plutarch for this detail, as suggested by Malone in the fore-
going note. Under the line from Rich. III. Steevens quotes: ' — ^my mother would
often tell mee when the candle burnt blew, there was some ill Spirit in the house.' —
Galathea, II, iii, 63. — Ed.]
236 THE TRACE DIE OF [act iv, sc. iil
That mak'ft my blood cold, and my haire to ftare ?
Speake to me, what thou art. 325
Ghq/l. Thy euill Spirit Brutus ?
Bru. Why com'ft thou ?
Ghq/l. To tell thee thou (halt fee me at Philippi.
Brut. Well : then I (hall fee thee againe ?
Ghq/l. I, at PItUippi. 330
Brut. Why I will fee thee at Philippi then:
Now I haue taken heart, thou vani(heft.
Ill Spirit, I would hold more talke with thee. 333
326. Brutus?] Brutus F2. Brutus. 330. [Exit Ghost. Rowc,+. Van-
F,F4. ishes. Cap. et seq. (subs.)
329. Weil: then,„againe?] Well — 332, 333- vamjheft. Ill SpirUy] vath-
then,..again — Rowe. Then..,again — ishestf III spirit; Rowc.
Pope,+. Then ... again as one line 333. ///] E^U Ed. conj.
Steev. Van. Sing. Dyce.
324. stare] Schmidt (Lex., s, v. i.): To be stiff, to stand on end. — Skeat (Did.,
5. V. I.): A weak verb, from a Teutonic type Stara, adjective jbcei; appearing in
German, jtoir, stiff, inflexible, fixed. [The present line quoted. Compare also:
*With hair up-staring, — then like reeds, not hair.' — Tempest, I, ii, 213.] » .. •'
325. Speake to me] That is, communicate, report Compare: 'Speak your
griefs softly.' — IV, ii, 50, above.
326. Thy euill Spirit] Goll (p. 73): What does this imply? It means that
Brutus has lived on a fallacy. He had not the right to kill Caesar into which he
reasoned himself. He has not acted rightly in putting his ideals above all himian
considerations. His theory was wrong. He is not the great citizen he imagined
himself. He has chased phantoms; and, during the chase, he has trampled all true
hilmanity imder foot, violated the noblest human qiialities: goodness, pity, grati-
tude, love. He is, in spite of all, a murderer, and must suffer the fate of a murderer.
This, then, is the judgment on Brutus, the judgment of humanity, of society, ac-
cording to the objective measure of justice. ... To this judgment Brutus must
answer, and humanity, society, history declare him guilty — Cxsar passes sentence
of death upon Caesar's murderer.
331. Why] That is, in that case, that being so. Compare: * Why farewell Portia,'
1. 217, above.
332. Now I haue taken heart] Hudson: This strongly, though quietly,
marks the Ghost as subjective; as soon as Brutus recovers his firmness, the illusion
is broken. The order of things is highly judicious here, in bringing the 'horrible
vision' upon Brutus just after he has heard of Portia's shocking death. With
that great sorrow upon him he might well see ghosts. The thickening of calami-
ties upon him, as the consequences of his stabbing exploit, naturally awakens
remorse. — Verity, in reference to the foregoing note, says: *I suppose that many
who adopt this view do so from a vague desire to clear Shakespeare of the suspicion
that he himself ** believed in ghosts." But the theory will not explain all the in-
stances of apparitions in Shakespeare. . . . No theory of "subjectivity" (to use a
tiresome word) will account for so emphatic an apparition [as the Ghost in Hamlei]i
ACT IV. sc. iii.] IVLIVS CjESAR 237
Boy, Lucius yVarrus J Claudia ^ Sirs : Awake:
Claudia, 335
Luc. The firings my Lord, are falfe.
Bru, He thinkes he (UIl is at his Inftrument*
Lucius^ awake.
Luc. My Lord.
Bru. Did'ft thou dreame Lucus^ that thou fo cryedft 340
out?
Luc. My Lord, I do not know that I did cry.
Bru . Yes that thou did'ft : Did'ft thou fee arty thing ?
Luc. Nothing my Lord.
Bru. Sleepe againe Lucius \ Sirra Claudia^ Fellow, 345
Thou : Awake.
Var. My Lord.
Clou. My Lord.
Bru. Why did you fo cry out firs, in your fleepe ?
Bath. Did we my Lord ? 350
Bru. I : faw you any thing?
Var. No my Lord, I faw nothing.
Clau. Nor I my Lord.
Bru. Go, and commend me to my Brother Cajftus :
Bid him fet on his Powres betimes before, 355
And we will follow.
Both. It fhall be done my Lord. Exeunt 357
334) 335- Vamis, Claudio...Claudio] 345, 346. FeUow,.Awake] One line
Varro, Claudius...Claudius Rowe et Cap. et seq.
seq. 346. Thau:] Varro Warb. Theob.
337. ftiU is] isftiU F4, Rowe i, Theob. Han.
ii, Warb. Johns. Var. '73. 348. Claeu.] F,.
340. Luois] Fi. 350. Both.] Var. Clau. Capell et seq.
345. Claudio] Claudius Rowe et seq. 355. Powres] powers T^F^,
noTf surely, do we require any such theory. Shakespeare uses the supernatural as
one of the legitimate devices of dramatic art. It is part of the original story of
Oesar and Brutus, and he retains it for dramatic effect.' [See also, in this connec-
tion, note by Beeching, 1. 318, above. — For a similar example of an effort of will
overcoming an hallucination, compare Macbeth's exclamation on the disappear-
ance of the Ghost of Banquo: 'Why, so: being gone I am a man again.' — ^HI, iv,
107. — ^Ed.]
346. Thou : Awake] Wakburton: The accent is so unmusical and harsh, 'tis
impossible the poet could begin his verse thus. Brutus certainly was intended to
speak to both his other men; who both awake and answer at an instant.
357. Exeunt] In BelFs edition (1773) ^ter this stage-direction the following lines
are given to Brutus: 'Sure they have raised some devil to their aid: And think to
238 THE TRAGEDIE OF [act iv. sc. in.
[357. Exeunt]
frighten Brutus with a shade; But ere the night doses this fatal day FU send more
ghostSy this visit to repay.' — ^In a foot-note F. Gentleican remarks: 'As these four
uncharacteristic, bouncing lines are used in representation, by way of f^tnAXr^ the
actor off with a flourish, we insert them; thou^ very disgraceful to Brutus and
Shakespeare: we have seen the Ghost introduced a second time; but such an addi-
tion is insufferaUe ignorance.' — ^In Mrs Inchbald's edition (x8o8) these lines
also i^pear, but are made to follow 'SI spirit I would hold more talk with thee,'
1. 353, and the dialogue between Brutus and his attendants is omitted. — ^D. £.
Baker {Biog, Dram.), among the tragedies on this subject, gives: 'The Tragedy or
JuLixTS CiBSAK, wUk the Deaths of Brutus and Cassius, written criginaUy by Shake-
speare; altered by Sir William Davenant and John Dryden. Acted at Drury Lane,
12 mo., 1719.' 'This seems,' says Baker, 'to be a publication of the play-house
copy, with alterations for the stage, which periiaps were traditionally ascribed to
Davenant and Dryden; how truly, let any person determine, after reading the
following ridiculous rant which is added at the close of the Fourth Act, and was
spoken by Mr Walker when he performed the character of BnUus at Covent
Garden Theatre.' Baker then quotes the iansoing lines as in Bell and Indibald. —
Genest, in recording the above-mentioned performance by Walker, January 31,
1766, says in reference to the origin of these unfortunate lines: 'It being generally
known that Davenant and Dryden had joined in mangling Shakeq)eare's Tempest,
some person seems to have attributed the alteration of Jul. Cos. to them for that
reason, and that alone — it is, however, morally certain that Davenant never assisted
in altering Jtd Ctes. — that being one of the plays assigned to Oligrcw, and which,
consequently, Davenant could not act at his own theatre — about 1682 Jul. Cos.
was printed as acted at the Royal Theatre — in this edition there is not the slij^test
foundation of the above quoted lines — it is, therefore, clear that this inteqx>lation
was not received into that sink of corruption — ^the Prompt-Bo(^ — (for such it b
with regard to Shakespeare)— till after 1682.'— H. Fischer {Anglia, bd, viii, heft
iii, 1885, p. 416) discusses the question of collaboration in an adaptation of Shake-
speare's Jul. C<Es. by Davenant and Dryden. He agrees with Genest and Baker that
evidences of such a joint work are too slight to be of any value. Fischer lays stress
upon the fact that the 1719 ed. of Jul. Cas. was issued under the name of W. Chet-
wood, who was prompter at Drury Lane when this version was produced. 'That
no contemporaries refer to this work,* he concludes, * points to the fact that every
assertion as to the existence of an adaptation of Jul. C<es. by Davenant and Dryden
rests upon the title-page of this copy of 1719, which, perhaps, Chetwood for some
unknown purpose provided with the names of the two pjoets.' — [Thus, even as Omar,
we come out by the same door as in we went, and receive no answer to the question:
Who wrote those 'bouncing lines? Let the galled jades wince; Shakeq)eare's
withers are unwrungi — ^Ed.]
ACT V, sc. i.] IVLIVS CjESAR 239
A£lus Quintus. i
[Scene /.]
Enter 0£lauius ^ Antony ^and their Army.
0£la. Now Antony y our hopes are anfwered ,
You faid the Enemy would not come downe,
But keepe the Hilles and vpper Regions : 5
It proues not fo : their battailes are at hand;
They meane to wame vs at Philippi heere :
Anfwering before we do demand of them.
Ant. Tut I am in their bofomes^and I know
Wherefore they do it : They could be content 10
I. A<5lus Quintus] Act V, Scene i. Cap. et seq.
Rowe. 7. wame] wage Han. w<Ul Mason
The Fields of Philippi, with the two (Com., p. 278).
Camps. Rowe. The Plains of Philippi.
I. Actus Quintus] OECHELHAt^SER (EinfUkrungen, i, 235) and Schlegel (as
quoted in Jakrbuck, vii, 55) recommend that this Act be played not with the
five short scenes as here, but with two. Thus: After this scene between Octavius
and Antony, which may be acted as a front scene representing a landscape with
the tent visible, the rest of the Act may be set to the full depth of the stage. After
the death of Cassius and Titinius their bodies are to be carried out; Brutus after
his suicide will remain, of course, in the centre of the stage until the fall of the
curtain.
3. our hopes are answered] That is, what we hoped for has taken place.
5. keepe] Muilray (N. E. Z?., s, v. II. 33): To stay or remain in, on, or at (a
place); not to leave; especially in to keep one*s bed, to keep the house,
5. the Hilles and vpper Regions] Appian (Civil Wars; Bk, IV, ch. xiii, § 105)
gives the following description of this locality: 'Philippi ... is situated on a
precipitous hill, and its size is exactly that of the siunmit of the hill. There are
woods on the north through which Rhascupolis led the army of Brutus and Cas-
sius. On the south is a marsh extending to the sea. On the east are the gorges
of the Sapsan and Corpileans, and on the west, a very fertile and beautiful plain
extending to the towns of Murcinus and Drabiscus, and the river Strymon, about
350 stades. . . . The plain slopes downward so that movement is easy to those
descending from Philippi, but toilsome to those going up from Amphipolis.'^— Ed.
6. battailes] That is, one of the divisions of their army. Compare: 'The
French are bravely hi their battles set.* — Hen, V: IV, iii, 69.
7. wame] That is, summon, Schmidt (L«p., s. v, 3) gives several examples of
this use of this word.
9. I am in their bosomes] That is, I understand their inmost thoughts.
Compare Regan's speech to Oswald, in regard to Goneril: 'I know you are of
her bosom.' — Lear, IV, v, 26. — Ed.
240 THE TRACED IE OF [act v, sc. L
To vifit other places^ and come downe 1 1
With fearefull brauery : thinking by this face
To faften in our thoughts that they haue Courage ;
But 'tis not fo.
Enter a Mejfenger . 15
Mef. Prepare you Generals,
The Enemy comes on in gallant (hew :
Their bloody figne of Battell is hung out,
And fomething to be done immediately.
Ant. 06lauitiSy leade your Battaile foftly on 20
11, 12. f^ace$t and,.,hrauery:] places; 19. fometking] somethings Han.
and,..hravery, Pope et scq. Wh. i.
12. fearefixU brauery] M alone: That is, with a gallant show of courage,
canying with it terror and dismay. 'Fearful* is here used in an active sense —
producing fear, intimidaling. — Steevens compares, for an mterpretation more
just than Malone's, Sidney, Arcadia: *— her horse, faire & lustie, which she rid
so, as might shew a fearefull boldnes, daring to doo that, which she knew that she
knew not how to doo.* — Bk, ii, [ch. 22; ed. i, p. 200 verso.] — ^To the same effect
Craik (p. 360), who takes 'fearful bravery* for bravery in show or appearance,
which yet is full of real fear or apprehension. — ^Wright accepts Malone*s ex-
planation of 'fearful,* and for 'bravery* in the sense of bravado compares Hamlet:
— ' the bravery of his grief did put me Into a towering passion.' — ^V, ii, 79. He
also shows that Shakespeare is here following Plutarch: ' — for bravery and rich
furniture, Brutus*s army far excelled Caesar*s.* — Brutus, § 27; (ed. Skeat, p. 137)-
18. Their bloody signe of Battell] 'The next morning by break of day, the
signal of battle was set out in Brutus* and Cassius* camp, which' was an arming
scarlet coat.* — Plutarch: Brutus, § 27; ed. Skeat, p. 139. — Mark Hunter says,
'This was the well-known Roman signal of battle'; and quotes Plutarch, Life of
Fabius: * It was no sooner day, but he [Varro] set up the scarlet coat flying over
his tent, which was the signal of battle.* [ed. Clough, i, 390.] — Andrews (Latin-
English Lex., s, V. Sagum): A coarse woolen blanket, or mantle of servants; but most
frequently of soldiers, a military cloak. Hence saga is a sign of war, as toga is a
sign of peace in the phrases: saga sumere, To put on the saga, 1. c, to take up
arms, prepare for battle. It was the custom for all Romans to do this, in token
of preparation for war, even those who were not going to the field, excepting per-
sons of consular rank. [From the foregoing it is not, I think, diflBcult to trace the
origin of the custom referred to in the present line. The scarlet military cloak
would thus symbolise a battle. There is, perhaps, a reminiscence of this in The
True Tragedie of Richard Duke of Yorke, 1600: 'Sound trumpets, let our bloudie
colours waue. And either victorie or else a grave.* — II, iii, 66. In Chapman's
CcBsar 6* Pompey, Caesar before Pharsalia says: 'Hang out of my tent My crim-
sine coat of Armes, to give my souldiers That ever sure sign of resolv'd for fight.* —
Act in. (p. 164, ed. Pearson). For a survival of this military signal, P. Simpson
{N. & Qu., 3 March, 1900, p. 164) compares: 'The twelfth day came news the
Hollanders were in sight, and out went their bloody colours at the fort.* — Last
East Indian Voyage (London, 1606: Hakluyt Soc. reprint, p. 44). — Ed.]
ACT V, sc. i.] IVLIVS CjESAR 241
Vpon the left hand of the euen Field. 21
0£la. Vpon the right hand I, keepe thou the left.
Ayit. Why do you croffe me in this exigent.
0£la. I do not croffe you : but I will do fo. March. 24
21. «*e«] euH F4. 23. exigent,] exigent? FjF4.
22. thou] you Ritson. 24. March] Om. Coll. iii.
22. Vpon the right hand I] Wsigot: In Plutarch's account of the battle it is
said that Cassius, although more experienced as a soldier, allowed Brutus to lead
the right wing of the army. Shakespeare made use of this incident, but trans-
ferred to the opposite camp, in order to bring out the character of Octavius, which
made Antony yield. Octavius really commanded the left wing.
22. keepe thou] RrrsoN (p. 145): The tenour of the conversation evidently
requires us to read 'keep you.* — Ciuik (p. 361): Ritson means, apparently, that
you and your are the words used elsewhere throughout the conversation. But he
forgets that the singular pronoun is peculiarly emphatic in this line, as being
placed in contrast or opposition to the 'I.' — ^Wright also objects to Ritson's
proposal, since '"thou'' gives a touch of imperiousness to Octavius's speech.'
23. exigent] Schmidt (Lex., s. v. i.) : Pressing necessity, decisive moment. [Com-
pare Ant. ^ Cleo.: 'Thou art sworn, Eros, That, when the exigent should come,
. . . Thou then wouldest kill me.' — IV, xiv, 63.]
24. I will do 80] Delius: 'Do so' refers not to 'cross you,' but rather to the
former speech of Octavius, ' Upon the right hand, I.' — [Hudson also thus interprets
this line.] — Rolfe: I take it that Octavius, instead of opposing Antony, jrields to
him, and does it readily, with a play upon 'cross,' 'I will cross you (in the sense of
crossing over to the other side of the field) '; and with the word he does cross over.
According to Plutarch he commanded the left wing, and this makes the play
agree with the history. It is also confirmed by the context. So far from setting
himself in opposition to Antony, Octavius in his very next speech asks the former
whether they shall 'give sign of battle,' and when Antony says no, he at once
accepts this decision and gives orders accordingly. — ^Joicey (Notes 6* Queries,
2$ July, 1891, p. 63): If this line or the latter part of it were made an aside,
1 think the sense would become much dearer. We may suppose that Antony
would be annoyed at his line of action being interfered with at this critical moment,
and that he would, therefore, utter 1. 23 with sharpness enough to anger Octavius.
The latter, knowing that his success was dependent on Antony's soldiership, would
check any bitter retort, and acquiesce either in silence (in which case the aside is
equal to 'I do not cross you now, but I will do so hereafter') or with the words
'I do not cross you' (I submit to your leadership), and as he turned he would
say, 'but I will do so,' aside. The aside will then forecast the quarrel that was
shortly to come between them. — ^Verity: 'Do so' b here probably equivalent to
I will do as you wish. — Mark Hunter: The conjunction 'but' is against this
view. [Octavius means] I do not seek to thwart you, but I shall do as I please. —
Tolman: Here we get a most skilful anticipatory glimpse of the coming struggle
between Octavius and Antony. . . . The fact that Octavius had command of
the left wing of the army, of himself and Antony, is not brought out in the play,
and it would be unlike Shakespeare to give us no indication of the coming strife
between Octavius and Antony. [This last sentence is Tolman's objection to
Rolfe's interpretation. — Ed.] — Herford: Octavius means that he does not differ
16
242 THE TRACED IE OF [ACT v, sa i.
Drum. Enter Brutus y CaffiuSy & tfieir Army. 25
Bru. They (land, and would haue parley,
Gaffi. Stand faft TitiniuSy we muft out and talke.
Oila. Mark Antony y (hall we giue figne of Battaile ?
Ant. No CcefoTy we will anfwer on their Charge.
Make forth, the Generals would haue fome words. 30
061. Stirre not vntill the Signall.
Bru. Words before blowes : is it fo Countrymen ?
06la. Not that we loue words better, as you do.
^rw.Good words are better then bad ftrokes OSlamus.
An\n your bad ftrokes BrutuSy you giue good words 35
WitnelTe the hole you made in Ccefars heart,
Crying long liue, Haile Ccefar.
CaJJi. Antonyy
The pofture of your blowes are yet vnknowne ; 39
25. Scene n. Pope, Han. Warb. 39. pofiure] puncture Singer (N. &
Johns. Qu., 10 Ap., 1858). portents Bulloch.
Drum...Army.l Drum.. .Army; powers Herr.
Ludlius, Titinius, Messala, and others are] is Coll. ii. (MS), Ktly.
attending. Cap. et seq. (subs.)
for the sake of havmg his own way, but he will have it nevertheless. . . . Shake-
speare takes no notice of the parallel incident, where Brutus begs and obtains
the right wing from Cassius. . . . We cannot, therefore, assume that Shake^>eaie
meant him to lead the right, and consequently Octavius the imperial left. There
is thence no reason to forego [as suggested by Rolfe] the natural (and highly
dramatic) meaning of Octavius's words.
39. posture of your blowes] Staunton: Elsewhere Shakespeare always em-
employs 'posture' in its ordinary sense of altitude, position, &c.; but here, if not a
misprint, it must be taken to mean quality or composition, — [Mitrsay (N, E. D,,
s. V.) does not give any example of 'posture* used in the sense suggested. — Ed.] —
John Huntek: That is, The way in which you give blows, the attitude you assume
when you are about to give blows, remains to be shown. — Wright: That is. It is
not yet known where your blows are directed. — Deighton: No one has ever seen
you strike a blow in combat. [Verity also so interprets; but would Cassius even
insinuate such a libel as this? Antony's prowess in arms was well known. Plu-
tarch says: 'Now there were divers hot skirmishes and encounters, in the which
Antonius fought so valiantly, that he carried the praise from them all. . . .
Cesar . . . showed plainly what opinion he had of him when at the last battle
of Pharsalia ... he himself did lead the right wing of his army, and gave An-
tonius the left wing, as the valiantest man and skillfullest soldier of all those he had
about him.' — Antonius, § 4; ed. Skeat, p. 160. May not 'posture' be taken as
meaning position? i. e., as to whether they are to be held in high or low estima-
tion, is unknown, as for your words we know how honey sweet they can be.
This will, moreover, bring out the antithesis introduced by 'But' in the next
line. — Ed.]
ACT V, SC. i.]
IVLIVS CjESAR
243
But for your words, they rob the Hibla Bees,
And leaue them Hony-leffe.
Ant. Not lUngleffe too.
Bru. O yes, and foundleffe too :
For you haue ftolne their buzzing Antony^
And very wifely threat before you fting.
Ant. Villains : you did not fo, when your vile daggers
Hackt one another in the fides of Cce/ar :
You (heVd your teethes like Apes,
And fawnM like Hounds,
And boVd like Bondmen, kifiing Ccefars feete ;
WhiPft damned CaskUy like a Curre, behinde
Strooke Ccefar on the necke. O you Flatterers.
40
45
50
52
40. ihey\ you Cap.
42. fiingleffe] siringless Rowe i. (mis-
print).
too.] too? Del. Perring, Macmil-
Ian, Beeching.
43-45. O yes ,..wijdy] In margin
Pope, Han.
45. tkreal] You threat Pope, Han.
47. Hackt] Hack F3F4, Rowe.
48, 49. You,„Hounds] One line Rowe
et seq.
48. teethes] teeth FiF^.
51. Wha*Jl] WhOe CoU. (monovol-
ume).
Caska, like a Curre, behinde] Ff,
Rowe, Theob. Han. Warb. Casca, like
a cur behind, Johns. Var. '73. Casca,
like a cur, behind, Cap. et cet.
52. Strooke] Struck F,F4.
52, 53. Strooke„.Flatterersf] One
line Cap. conj.
52. O you] O Pope,4- (—Var. '73),
Cap. Steev. Var. '03, '13. Sing, i,
Dyce ii, iii, Huds. iii.
39. are] This is the plural by attraction. See, for other examples, if needful,
Abbott, § 412.
40. Hibla] SifTTH (Classical Diet.) says that there were three towns of this name
in Sicily, and adds: 'It is doubtful from which of these three places the Hyblean
honey came, so frequently mentioned by the poets.*
42. Not Stinglesse too.] 'With a full stop after "to,*' remarks Deighton, 'the
words can only mean, "I did not rob them of all their stings"; with the insinuation
that Brutus had robbed them of some.* Deighton commends Delius's conjecture,
'too?* (see Text. Notes), as an improvement in the sense, and thus continues: 'An-
tony would then be made to say with irony: "You surely don*t mean to say that
I at the same time robbed them of all their power of wounding, and kept that
power for my own purposes?** — [Deighton has, however, followed the punctuation
of the Folio.— Ed.]
47. Hackt one another] 'Then the conspirators thronging one upon another,
because every man was desirous to have a cut at him, so many swords and daggers
lighting upon one body, one of them hurt another, and among them Brutus caught
a blow on his hand.* — Plutarch: Brutus, § 12; ed. Skeat, p. 119.
48. teethes] Walker (Crit., i, 242) quotes this among many other examples
wherein, apparently, a final s is interpolated in the Folio.
51, 52. Caska ... on the necke] Johnson: Casca struck Caesar on the neck,
coming like a degenerate cur behind him, [This interpretation is, doubtless.
244 '^^^ TRAGEDIE OF [act v, sc. L
Cajfu Flatterers f Now Brutus thanke your felfe, 53
This tongue had not offended fo to day,
If Cajftus might haue rulM. 5$
06la. Come, come, the caufe« If arguing make vs fwet,
The proofe of it will tume to redder drops :
Looke, I draw a Sword againft Confpirators,
When thinke you that the Sword goes vp againe ?
Neuer till Cafars three and thirtie wounds 60
S3. FlaOerers?] You flaUerersI Ktly. Varr. Sing. Dyce, Ciaik, Cam.
Whatt FlaUererst Wordsworth. GI0.+.
thanke] you may thank Steev. 58. a Svpord] sword Walker (Crit., i,
conj. 88).
58. Looke] Behold Rowe, Pope,+ 60. thirtie] twenty Theob.+» Cap.
( — ^Var. *73). As separate line Steev. Jen. Varr. Mai. Steev. Varr. Hal.
prompted by Johnson's own pomting of the passage (see Text, Nates); that of the
Folio and also Capell make Antony say that Casca struck Caesar behind, like a
degenerate cur. — Ed.]
53. Flatterers] Capell (i, 113) observes that when he adopted Pope's reading,
'O Flatterers/ in the preceding line, he had not noticed that this line, 53, is
'unmetrical still, through fault of the first printer or else of his copy.' He
suggests that 'Flatterers?' be printed apart, as it perfects 1. 52, and vrbat
comes after as another line, 'being a three-foot hemistich.' — ^Walker {Vers.,
135) also proposes this arrangement of the lines. — ^Abbott (§ 506) quotes the
present line among examples wherein a deficiency in the metre may be supplied
by 'a gesture ... to demand attention,' as thus: 'Flatterers? {turns to Brutus)
Now, Brutus,' etc.
54, 55. This tongue ... If Cassius might haue rul'd] This refers to the
reasons urged by Cassius for the assassination of Antony at the same time with
Caesar; see II, i, 175-205; also, HI, i, 167. — ^Maciollan interprets, how-
ever, that: *If the advice of Cassius had been followed, they would not
have met the enemy imtil a later date, and Antony would have been in such
a hopeless position that his language would have been more humble.' — ^Macmil-
lan is here in the minority; the former interpretation being that almost universally
followed. — Ed.
59. the Sword] Octavius draws his sword and holds it aloft. Is not */^ sword,'
therefore, more consonant than merely *the sword.' The slight difference in
sound between 'this sword' and 'the sword' is hardly noticeable. This need not
apply to the words 'the sword' in 1. 62, below; there 'the sword' is sufficiently
identified as that belonging to traitors. — Ed.
60. three and thirtie] On the authority of Plutarch, Appian, and Suetonius,
Theobald changes ' thirtie ' to twenty; he considers the error due to the transcriber. —
RrrsoN observes that there is a like error in Beaumont and Fletcher's Noble
Gentleman, where Caesar's * two and thirty wounds ' are mentioned (V, i) ; but as the
Noble Gentleman was not licensed until 1625 the present passage may be responsible
for the words as in Fletcher's text. — Ed.
ACT V, sc. i.] IVLIVS C£SAR 245
Be well aueng'd; or till another Cafar 61
Haue added flaughter to the Sword of Traitors.
Brut. Cafar ^ thou canft not dye by Traitors hands,
Vnlefle thou bring'ft them with thee.
06la. So I hope: 65
I was not borne to dye on Brutus Sword.
Bru. O if thou wer't the Nobleft of thy Straine,
Yong-man, thou could'ft not dye more honourable.
Cajfu A peeuifh School-boy, worthies of fuch Honor 69
61, 63. afk4her C«£aT..^ward of print).
Traitors] the swords of traitors Have to 63. hands] Om. Var. '03, '13, '21.
slaughter added another Caesar. Hen. 66. Brutus] Brutus' Pope et seq.
62. Sword of Traitors] word of traitor 68. honourable] honourablie Craik
Coll. MS. conj. honourably Wh. i.
Tr(utors] Tirators Rowe i. (mis- 69. worthies] worthies Ff.
6x, 62. till another Caeaar . . . the Sword of Traitors] Steevens compares:
'Or add a royal number to the dead, . . . With slaughter coupled to the name
of kings.' — King John, II, i, 349; which does not help to explain the present passage;
and beyond the fact that the words 'add' and 'slaughter' are common to both,
there is but little similarity m thought. — ^John Humtek mterprets thus: 'Until I
mysdf, another Caesar, fall, as another victim, by the sword of the same traitors.'
62. Sword of Traitora] Craik (p. 363): [Collier's MS correction (see Text.
Notes)] would seem to be an admission on the part of Octavius (impossible in the
circumstances) that Cassius and Brutus were as yet free from treasonable slaughter,
and traitors only in word or name. — Cot.t.tfr (ed. ii.) observes that this emenda-
tion might 'reasonably be disputed'; and Dyce (ed. ii.) characterises it as 'a most
unhappy alteration. '
65. So I hope:] Deuus here punctuates with a comma after 'hope,' and thus
interprets: ' So (in case I am not to die by traitor's hand) I hope I am not destined
to die on Brutus's sword.' — P. Sdipson (Sh. Punctuation, p. 67) says: 'It is the
function of the colon [in the Folio] to mark an emphatic pause. Compare its use in
the Prayer Book to point the Psalms for singing. Compare also: "O pardon me,
thou bleeding peece of Earth: That I am meeke and gentle with these Butchers." —
in, i, 284.' — [Have we not another example in this present line? Octavius, I
think, says 'So I hope' slowly, while looking fixedly at Brutus; then, after a
short pause, 'I was not bom to die on Brutus sword.' — Ed.
67. Straine] Schmidt (Lex,, s. v. 4.): Stock, race. [Compare: 'And he is bred
out of that bloody strain That haunted us in our familiar paths.' — Hen. V: II, iv,
SI.]
69. peeuish] Dyce (Gloss.): This appears to have generally signified, during
ShakespeiLre's days, silly, foolish, trifling, . . . though, no doubt, the word was
formerly used to signify, as now, pettish, perverse.
69. worthies of such Honor] John Humtek: That is, utterly unworthy to fall
by Brutus's sword. — [Schmidt (Lex., s. v. worthless. 2.) gives the present line as the
only example wherein Shakespeare uses this word in the sense of undeserving,
unworthy.]
246 THE TR AGE DIE OF [act v. sc. L
loynM with a Masker, and a Reueller. 70
AfU. Old CaJJtus ftUl.
06la. Come Antony : away :
Defiance Traitors, hurle we in your teeth.
If you dare fight to day, come to the Field ;
If not, when you haue llomackes. 75
Exit OSlauitis ^Antony y and Army
Caffi. Why now blow winde, fwell Billow,
And fwimme Barke :
The Storme is vp, and all is on the hazard.
Bru. Ho iMcillitiSy hearke, a word with you. 80
LucUlitis and Mejfcda Jland forth.
Luc. My Lord.
CaJJi Mejfala.
Mejfa. What fayes my Generall ?
CaJJi. Meffalaytlds is my Birth-day : as this very day 8$
76. Scene m. Pope, Han. Warb. separate line Steev. Van*. Sing, i, Dyoe
Johns. ii, Hi.
77. 78. Why now,„Barke] As one line 82. [Brutus speaks apart to Ludlius.
Rowe et seq. Rowe et seq. (subs.)
78. Barke:] bark? Wh. i. 83. MelTala] Casca Bell's editkm
79y 80. The Skfrme^.Bru, Ho] As one (throughout).
line, reading: aWs on th* hazard Walker 85. MelTala] As separate line Pope
(Vers., 76). et seq.
80. Ho] Om. Pope,-f , Cap. As as] at Ktly.
71. Old Cassius still] John Hunter: This is spoken like CassiusI this is Cas-
sius as he ever used to be, viz., a choleric fellow.
72. Come Antony : away:] Here, I think, is another example (see 1. 65, above,
and note) wherein the colon is used to mark an emphatic pause, as suggested by
Percy Simpson. The two colons serve almost in place of stage-directions to in-
dicate Antony's hesitation and the impatience of Octavius. — Ed.
73. Defiance . . . hurle we] Holt WnrrE compares Milton: 'Hurling de-
fiance toward the vault of Heaven.* — Paradise Lost, i, 669; and observes that
*hurr is here peculiarly expressive, as that is the word commonly used by the
challenger in casting down lus gage of battle. [Good sentences and well pro-
nounced; but is it peculiar in Shakespeare to choose the most * expressive' word? —
Ed.]
75. stomackes] That is, inclination^ disposition.
85. Birth-day] For this punctuation, see 1. 72, above.
85. as this very day] Wright: For *as* used redundantly with expressions
of time, compare: 'Meantime I writ to Romeo That he should hither come as this
dire night.* — Rom. 6* /«/., V, iii, 247; and, *One Lucio As then the Messenger.' —
Meas.for Meas., V, i, 74. [See, also, if needful, Abbott, § 114. — Professor Allen,
in a note on Tempest, I, ii, 70, 'as at that time,* shows by a number of examples
that many such adverbial forms with 'as* prefixed or sufiEixed once existed in the
ACT V, sc. i.] IVLIVS CjESAR 247
Was Cajfius borne. Giue me thy hand Meffala : 86
Be thou my witneHe; that againft my will
(As Potnpey was) am I compelled to fet
Vpon one Battell all our Liberties.
You know^ that I held Epicurus ftrong, 90
And his Opinion : Now I change my mindC;
And partly credit things that do prefage.
Comming from Sardis^ on our former Enfigne 93
88. am /] / am Walker (Crit., ii, '78, '85, Huds. iii. Sormiri Coll.
347), Huds. iii. (MS).
93. Jormer\ foremosi Rowe,+y Var. 93. Enfigne] ensigns Lettsom.
old colloquial language of both England and Germany. He notices particularly
the expression in the Prayer-Book Collect for Christmas: 'as at this time to be
bom of a pure Virgin.' — (Minutes of Sh, Soc, of Pkiladelpkia, 1864; p. 12).
86-89. Oiue me thy hand Messala . . • our Liberties] 'But touching Cas-
sius, Messala reporteth that . . . after supper he took him by the hand, and,
holding him fast (in token of kindness, as his manner was), told him in Greek:
"Messala, I protest unto thee, and make thee my witness, that I am compelled
against my mind and will (as Pompey the Great was) to jeopard the liberty of our
country to the hazard of a battle."' — Plutarch: BrtUus^ § 27; ed. Skeat, p. 139.
87-90. Be thou . . . You know] Abbott (§ 234): 'Thou' is often used in
statements and requests, while 'you' is used in conditional and other sentences
where there is no direct appeal to the person addressed. [Compare: 'Come thou
on my side and entreat for me. As you would beg were you in my distress.' —
UicA. ///: I, iv, 273.]
88. (As Pompey was)] Verity: An allusion to the campaign of 48 B. C,
which ended in the battle of Pharsalia in Thessalus. Knowing that Caesar's troops
were veterans, while most of his own were inexperienced, Pompey wished to avoid
a decisive battle and to wear out the enemy; but his followers were impatient, and
practically forced him to fight. The complete defeat at Pharsalus was the result.
90. I held Epicurus strong] Wright: That b, 'I was firmly attached to
the doctrines of Epicurus.' 'Just before the murder of Caesar,' says Plutarch: 'It
is also reported, that Cassius (though otherwise he did favour the doctrine of
Epicurus), beholding the image of Pompey, ... he did softly call upon it to aid
him.' — [CfBsar^ § 45]; ed. Skeat, p. 100. And again, when Brutus told him of the
vision he had seen at Sardis: 'Cassius being in opinion an Epicurean . . . spake
to him touching the vision.' — [Brutus y § 26]; ed. Skeat, p. 136.
92. credit things that do presage] Herforo: The theory of divinations was
one of the points most hotly debate between the Epicureans and Stoics. The
Stoics, holding that the universe was permeated with divine influence, • • . were
the staunchest upholders of the significance of omens; the Epicureans, regarding
the gods as dwelling apart from the world and indifferent to its affairs, repudiated
presages and explained all 'visions' as optical illusions of sense. [See Lucretius:
De ReruMf etc., Bk, ii, 11. 644-659. — Ed.)
93. former] Bradley (N. E. D,, s, v, 3.): Situated more forward; front, fore.
[The present line quoted.]
248 THE TRACED IE OF [act v, sc. L
Two mighty Eagle sfell, and there they pearchM,
Gorging and feeding from our Soldiers hands, 95
Who to PJtilippi heere conforted vs :
This Morning are they fled away, and gone,
And in their deeds, do Rauens, Crowes, and Kites
Fly ore our heads, and downward looke on vs
As we were fickely prey ; their fliadowes feeme 100
A Canopy mod fatall, vnder which
Our Army lies, ready to giue vp the Ghoft.
Mejfa. Beleeue not fo,
CaJJi. I but beleeue it jpartly.
For I am frefh of fpirit,and refolu'd 105
To meete all perils, very conftantly.
98. ]luds\ Jleads ¥iF^, 103. giue vp] give Pope, Theob. Han.
Rauens] ravenous Warb. Warb.
106. perils] Peril Ff, Rowe, +.
94. 95. Two mighty Eagles . . . from our Soldiera hands] 'When they
raised their camp, there came two eagles that, flying with a marvellous force,
lighted upon two of the foremost ensigns, and always followed the soldiers, which
gave them meat and fed them, until they came near to the city of Philippes: and
there, one day only before the battle, they both flew away.' — Plutarch: Brulus,
§ 26; ed. Skeat, p. 137.
95. Gorging] Bradley (N, E. Z>., s. v. gorge. 1.): To fill the gorge; to feed
greedily. (In early use, of a bird of prey.) [The present line quoted.]
96. consorted] That is, accompaniedy attended.
98. Rauens, Crowes, and Kites] Warburton justifies his reading, 'Raven-
ous crows,' by the ornithological statement that 'a raven and a crow is the same
bird of prey*; to this Edwards (p. 112) replies: 'Though Mr Warburton cannot
find it in the dictionaries, yet every crow-keeper in the country will tell him there
is as real a difference between a raven and a crow as there is between a crow and
a rook, or a rook and a jack-daw. The carrion crow, or gor-crow (». c, gore-crow)
as it is called, is not the raven. Ben Jonson distinguished them in his Fox: " — vul-
ture, kite. Raven, and gor-crow, all my birds of prey." — I, ii. And Willoughby,
on BirdSf would have told him that there is this small difference between them,
that one weighs almost as much again as the other.'
100. sickely prey] Mark Hunter: That is, sick to death and soon to become
their prey.
10 1. fatall] That is, foreboding ill,
102. lies, ready] Mark Hunter: There is a strong pause after 'lies,' and
the trochee which follows, 'ready,' lends impressive emphasis to the verse.
104. I but beleeue it partly] Wright: For this position of 'but' in the
sentence, see, 'Where Brutus may but find it.' — I, iii, 161, where 'but' does not
qualify the verb next which it stands. [Does not the rhythm in each case prescribe
the position of 'but'? — Ed.]
106. constantly] That is, with firmness of mind.
ACT V, sc. i.] IVLIVS CjESAR 249
Bru. Euen fo Lucillius. 107
Cafft. Now mod Noble Brutus j
The Gods to day (land friendly, that we may
Louers in peace, leade on our dayes to age. iio
But fince the affayres of men refts ftill incertaine,
Let's reafon with the word that may befall.
If we do lofe this Battaile, then is this
The very laft time we (hall fpeake together :
What are you then determined to do .^ 115
Bru. Euen by the rule of that Philofophy, •
107. Lucillius] Lucius Rowe ii. no. age] Ff, Rowe, Pope, age: Col.
[Lucilius stands back. Coll. agel Theob. et cet.
(monovolume). in. refis] rest Rowe et seq.
109. Jland friendly^] stand friendly! incertaine] uncertain Cap. Jen.
Coll. (monovolume). Varr. Mai. Ran. Stcev. Varr. Sing, i,
no. Louers in peacey] Lovers, in peace Craik.
£d. conj. 115. deierminedl determined Dyce.
109. The Gods to day stand friendly,] Collier's punctuation of an excla-
mation point after 'friendly' (see Text, Notes) , brings out more clearly than the
Folio's comma, I think, that 'stand' is here the optative. — ^Mabk Huntek
also thus explains the verb, although he retains the punctuation of the
Folio. — Ed.
no. Louers] That is, friends; compare, for this use of the word, II, iii, 9;
III, ii, 16.
111. rests] Wright notes that this is 'a printer's blunder, and not a plural
inflection.' — The blunder may perhaps have been caused by the proximity of the s
in the word 'still,' if, as has been said, the compositor was here working from
dictation; or this may be still another example of the interpolation of an 5 in the
Folio, for which see Walker (Crit., i, 242), and compare 1. 48, above. — Ed.
112. Let's reason . . . that may befall] Mark Hunter: That b, 'Let us
imagine the worst that may happen to us, and calmly determine how we
shall face it.' Not less than this seems to be implied in 'Let's reason with the
worst.'
113. 114. then is this The very last time, etc.] Warburton: That is, I am
resolved in such a case to kill myself. What are you determined of? [Might
not Cassius have been considering that in the loss of the battle, he would likely be
slain? — Ed.]
116-123. Euen by the rule of that Philosophy . . . That goueme vs
below] Before entering upon the discussion Of these lines, it is well to place
before the student the passage from North's Plutarch upon which the passage is
evidently based: 'Brutus answered him, being yet but a young man, and not over
greatly experienced in the world: I trust (I know not how) a certain rule of phil-
osophy, by the which I did greatly blame and reproue Cato for killing of himself,
as being no lawful nor godly acte, touching the gods, nor concerning men, valiant;
not to give place and yield to divine providence, and not constantly and patiently
250 THE TRAGEDIE OF [act v, sc. L
[ 1 16-123. Buen by the rale of that Philosophy . . . That goaerne vs bek»w]
to take whatsoever it pleaseth him to send ua, but to diaw back and fly: but being
now in the middest of the danger, I am of a contraiy mind. For if it be not the
will of God, that this battle fall out fortunate for us, I will looke no more for hope,
neither seek to make any new supply for war again, but will rid me of this miseimble
world, and content me with my fortune. For, I gave up my life for my ooontzy in
the Ides of March, for the which I shall live in another more f^orious workL' —
\BrvluSy § 27; ed. Skeat, p. 140.}— WABBunoNi^'This speedi from Plutarch our
Shakespeare has extremely softened in all the offensive parts of it; as any one may
see who consults the original; and, with no less caution, has omitted his bunous
exclamation against virtue: 'O virtue! I have worship'd thee as a real good; but
find thee only an unsubstantial name.' His great judgment in this is very re-
markable, on two accoimts: First, in his caution, not to give offence to a moral
audience; and, secondly, as he has hereby avoided a fault, in drawing his hero's
character. Fot to have had Brutus gone off the stage in the manner Plutarch
represents it, would have suppressed all that pity (especially in a Christian audi-
ence) which it was the poet's business to raise. So that, as Shakespeare has man-
aged this character, he b as perfect a one for the stage as (Edipus, which the critics
so much admire J-^Steevens:' There is an apparent contradiction between the
sentiments contained in this and the following speech, which Shakespeare has
put into the mouth of Brutus. In this, Brutus declares his resolution to wait
patiently for the determinations of Providence; and in the next he intimates that,
though he should survive the battle, he would never submit to be led in diains to
Rome.'' This sentence in North's translation is perplexed, and might be easfly
misunderstood. Shakespeare, in the first speech, makes that to be the present
opinion of Brutus, which in Plutarch is mentioned only as one he formeriy en-
tertained, though he now condemned it.^-CAPELL (i, 113): In making use of the
line from Plutarch ['What are you determined to do?'] the propriety of language b
violated; for to make the answer accord with it its terms ought to have been:
'How are you then determined to act?' This fault the poet fell into, probably, from
his intentness on other matters; namely, upon softening Brutus's answers, and
abating by artifice the rigor that b in the originals; a rigor that had revolted his
audience, hurting something his Cassius, and making Brutus unamiable and less a
subject of pity. How he affected this softening with regard to Cassius we may see
by comparison with Plutarch: In Brutus, he takes a different method; such a one
as throws a cloud on the answers (the first — chiefly) that has perplexed editors,
and (with their printing) is not penetrable by any: The artifice here lies in dark'-
ning the moral and Christian sentiment that is convey'd in the first by throwing
matter between; and in wording ambiguously the second speech's profession,
which, in fact, is a Roman one and a covert declaration, like Cassius's reversing that
of the former. — ^Blackstone: I see no contradiction. Brutus would not deter-
mine to kill himself merely for the loss of one battle: 'We will try fortune in a^^
second fight' (scene iii, 1. 123, below). Yet he would not submit to be a captive. —
Malone assents to the views of Steevens, and dissents to Blackstone's solution,
since ' the question of Cassius relates solely to the event of iHs battle.' — ^M. Mason
observes that the inconsistency is apparent only; as thus: Brutus had determined
to abide every extremity of war, but to be led in triumph through the streets would
be a trial which, he acknowledges, he could not endure. 'Nothing,' adds Mason,
'is more natural than this. We lay down a system of conduct for ourselves, but
ACT V. sc. i.] IVLIVS CJESAR 25 1
[ 1 16-123. Euen by the rule of that Philosophy . . . That goueme vs below]
occurrences may happen that will force us to depart from it.' — Ritson's method of
'reconciling' the 'apparent contradiction' is substantially the same as that of
Mason. — Courtenay (ii, 254) 'partly admits' that, as Steevens says, the passage
in North's translation might be easily misunderstood. 'The perplexity/ says
Courtenay, 'arises from North putting "I trust" in the present tense. The
original is in the past tense.' See Langhome, vi, 231, and Plutarch i, 1002. — [In
the Clough-Dryden translation the verb is rendered 'I was led,' v, 346.— Ed.1
Courtenay thus continues: 'Shakespeare's adoption of a version contradicted not
only by a passage immediately following, but by the event which he presently
portrays, is a striking instance of his careless use of his authorities.' — ['Striking'
on accoimt of its rarity? — Ed.] — Craik (p. 366): The construction plainly is, I
know not how it is, but I do find it, by the rule of that philosophy, etc., cowardly
and vile. The common pointing, which completely separates 'I know not how,'
etc., from what precedes, leaves the 'by the rule' without connection or meaning.
It is impossible to suppose that Brutus can mean, I am determined to do by^ the
rttle of that philosophy, etc. [On this Rolfe, Craik's modem editor, remarks:
'Thb meaning, which Craik considers "impossible," seems, on the whole, the best
possible. So Dyce and Hudson appear to imderstand the passage, making "I
know not how . . . the time of life," parenthetical.' — ^This parenthesis is, how-
ever, Johnson's, see Text. Notes. — Ed.] — Craik continues: 'But how did Cato act?
He slew himself that he might not witness and outlive the fall of Utica. This was
merely "for fear of what might fall," to anticipate the end of life. It did not
follow that it would be wrong, in the opinion of Brutus, to commit suicide in order
to escape any certain and otherwise inevitable calamity or degradation, such as
being led in triumph through the streets of Rome by Octavius and Antony.' —
John Hunter: The question of Cassius may be presumed here to suggest to the
mind of Brutus that Cassius expects him to say he will kill himself; and the answer
of Brutus may be interpreted thus: I know not why it is, but even according to
the principles of that philosophy, etc., I cannot see that it is anything but cowardly
and base to anticipate the measure of our life-time, through fear of what might
happen to us: my determination is, that arming myself with patience, I shall
await the purpose of some powers above at whose disposal we on earth are. —
BncH (p. 460): It is curious that Shakespeare in the speech 'To be or not to be,'
which he gives to Hamlet, and where he may be supposed to speak his own senti-
ments, contradicts, in words as well as ideas, the thought of the Roman that it
was cowardly to kill oneself. Hamlet does not doubt there is any one who would
not rid himself of his misfortime if death was the end. According to Shakespeare,
our religion has made us cowards from the hope of a future state, as the idea of a
god would have deprived Brutus of the power of disposing of himself. Shakespeare
makes Brutus give way to the taimts of the unbelieving Cassius, while Plutarch
more naturally makes Brutus state at once that he was of a contrary mind to his
former opinion on suicide, which made him condenm the act in another, but which
he found untenable when placed himself in the same situation. — ^Wright {Introd.f p.
xzzvii, foot-note) : North mistook Amyot's French, which is as follows: ' Brutus luy
respondit, Estant encore ieime & non assez experiment^ es affaires de ce monde, ie
feis, ne s^ay comment, un discours de philosophic, par lequel ie reprenois & blas-
mois fort Caton de s'estre desfait soymesme.' North translated /m (— j^) as if
it were from fietf and this error misled Shakespeare, who gave a different turn to
252 THE TRAGEDIE OF [act v, sc. I
[I i6- 123. Euen by the rule of that Philotophy • . . That goneme vs below]
Bnitus's q)eech. In m, ii, 48 be has represented Brutus as quite picpued for
suidde. — ISsxa. (p. 17): It will be perceived in Plutarch that the particular
phrase, *wA to give place and yield to divine Providence,' refers to Cato, not to
Brutus himself. So in Shakespeare, the correqxxiding words, 'arming with pa-
tience to stay the Providence,' refer also to Cato, not to Brutus himself; hence
'myself' in the passage should necessarily be printed kimsdf: wbSSt so it is equally
obvious the sense requires that the negative ' not* found in Plutarch, bat accidentally
lost out of the text of Shakeq)eare, should be restored, and that it justifies itself to
absolute insertion therein. Finally, the ellipsis before 'not arming himsdf
should be imderstood to be 'for,' so as to run harmonioasly with 'F<nr fear of
what' in the preceding line. In the reading proposed, it is true the measure is not
observed; but it is better to make the author's meaning dear to the reader by re>
tainiDg 'for not,' than to adhere too rigidly to metre, and leave his meaning m
obscurity. Thus the subsequent remarks and reasoning of Brutus coincide, and
the former just complaints of inconsistency disappear. — Wokdswokth (5A.
Historical Plays j i, 222): May it not be that in his ddineation of the diaiacter
of Brutus our poet desired to set forth the utmost that the naimral powers and
faculties of man can be expected to attain to, unadigkUmd by nvdaHan and
unassisted by divine grace? — see sc. v. . . . Professor Morley is reported to have
said [in a lecture on Shakespeare], 'From the study of Shakeq)eare's plays, one was
led to the conviction that he was deeply religious, and that a religious purpose
ran through the whole of his works.' — {The Times, 19^ October, z88x.) — Beecb-
ing: There b little likelihood that Shakeq)eare was misled by such an obvious
mispunctuation as the colon after 'world' |ln North's Plutarch, see ante]; and even
if he was, that would not make him write nonsense. The interesting search for
the origines of speeches must not prevent our interpreting those q)eeches on their
own showing. Brutus says that not only does his philosophy fortnd suicide 'for
fear of what might fall,' but it is repugnant to him; 'I do find it cowardly and
vile.' On being pressed by Cassius, he owns that victory and death are necessary
alternatives; but there is still the possibility of death in battle. See sc. iv. The
passage, 'I have the same dagger for myself,' III, ii, 48, can hardly come in
evidence as to Bnitus's feeling about suidde; he could scarcdy contemplate the
possibility of himself turning tyrant; and compare above: 'I have done no more
to Caesar than you shall do to Brutus.' — Ibid., 1. 38. — ^Verity: I cannot help think-
ing that there is some confusion in the passage, and that Shakespeare has fallen
into it through following North's Plutarch too dosely. What Plutarch really
makes Brutus say amounts to this: 'when I was young and unexperienced I
blamed Cato for his self-destruction: now I think differently: if we fail, I shall kill
myself.' That is, he does mean, in case of defeat, to imitate Cato, and says so. —
Mark Hunter: The true translation of Amyot [whom North here mistranslates]
would be: 'Brutus answered him, "When I was but a young man ... I made
(t know not how I was led to do it) a philosophical discourse." ' . . . But for the
error in punctuation (due perhaps to the printer), which makes Brutus at the time
of the conversation 'but a young man,' the passage as a whole is consistent enough.
. . . When Cassius asks him whether, if he will not slay himself, he is contented
to be led in triumph through the streets of Rome, he answers rather vaguely than
inconsistently. He may mean no more than that he will fight to the death. In
the end he acts inconsistently with his professed principles; but the abandonment
ACT V, sc. i.] IVLIVS CJESAR 253
By which I did blame Cato^ for the death 117
117. By\ Be Fa.
of his principles form part of his tragic failure. — ^Herford: It is better to make
'I know not how' depend on what precedes than to suppose a long parenthesis
(I know not how . . . time of life), foreign to the simple style of this play; the first
two lines being then a direct answer to Cassius's question, which, however, they
do not neatly fit. . . . Shakespeare's Brutus does not formally annoimce his
retraction [as does Plutarch's]; he is startled into it by the sudden vision of a
Roman triumph. — ^MacCallum (p. 185): It is possible that North [in translat-
ing Amyot] used trust in the first sentence as a preterite equal to trusted, just as he
uses lift for lifted. But Shakespeare at least took it for a present: so he was
struck by the contradiction which the passage seems to contain. He got over it,
and produced a new effect, and one very true to human nature, by making Brutus's
latter sentiment the sudden response of his heart, in defiance of his philosophy, to
Cassius's anticipation of what they must expect if defeated. . . . This last may
show us, however, that Shakespeare, even when he seems to copy most literally,
always introduces something which comes from himself. Despite his wholesale
appropriation of territory that does not in the first instance belong to him, the
produce is emphatically hb own. — [I have reserved for the last, though out of
chronological order, the remarks of Charles Knight. His words — at times slightly
caustic — are, on the whole, a summing up of the evidence; and an answer to the
questions, viz.: Is there here any inconsistency? If there be, who is responsible —
Plutarch, Amyot, or Shakespeare? — Ed.] — C. Knight (Studies, etc., p. 419):
Most literal critics, why have you [who say that Shakespeare makes Brutus
express himself inconsistently] not rather confided in Shakespeare than in your-
selves? When he deserts Plutarch, he is true to something higher than Plutarch.
In Brutus he has drawn a man of speculation; one who is moved to kill the man he
loves upon no personal motive, but upon a theory; one who fights his last battle
upon somewhat speculative principles; one, however, who, from his gentleness,
hb constancy, hb fortitude, has subdued men of more active minds to the ad-
miration of his temper and to the adoption of his opinions. Cassius never reasons
about suicide: it b hb instant remedy; a remedy which he rashly adopts, and
ruins, therefore, his own cause. Brutus reasons against it; and he does not revoke
hb speculative opinions even when the consequences to which they lead are pointed
out to him. Is not this nature? and must we be told that this nicety of character-
ization resulted from Shakespeare carelessly using his authorities; trusting to the
false tense of a verb, regardless of the context? 'But he contradicts himself,'
says the critic [Courtenay, see ante], *by the event which he presently portrays.'
Most wonderfully has Shakespeare redeemed his own consistency. It b when
the mind of the speculative man b not only utterly subdued by adverse drciun-
stances, but bowed down before the pressure of supernatural warnings, that he
deliberately approaches hb last fatal resolve. What b the work of an instant with
Cassius, b with Brutus a tentative process. . . . The irresbtible pressure upon
his mind, which leads him not to fly with hb friends, is the destiny which hovers
over him.
117. Cato] Cato the Younger, governor of Utica, who, rather than fall into the
hands of Cssar, killed himself when Utica was besieged. He is the protagonbt of
Addison's tragedy.
254 ^^^ TRAGEDIE OF [act v. s& L
Which he did giue himfelfe, I know not how : 1 18
But I do finde it Cowardly, and vile,
For feare of what might &11, fo to preuent 120
The time of life, arming my felfe with patience,
To (lay the prouidence of fome high Powers,
That goueme vs below.
CaJJi. Then, if we loofe this Battaile, 124
118. kim/dfe,] himsdf. Popc,+, CoU. 121. /f«M]<mMCap.Craik,Con.(MS).
Hal. Wh. i. life, arwtmH An onuflsioQ be-
118-121. / knaw...of lifey] Ff, Rowc, tween these two words Waib. cooj.
Pope, Theob. Han. Warb. CoU. Hal. 122. fome] those ColL ii, iu. (M^,
Wh. Cam. GI0.+. (/ knaw„.of lift) Craik.
Johns, et cet. 124. this BaUaiU] Om. Steev. conj.
120. preuent] MaijOne: That is, anticipaU^—STEEVEXiS: 'Prevent,' I beiieve,
has here its common signification, [to obstruct, kinder]. — ^Dr Johnson, m his IXo*
tionary, adduces this very instance as an examine of it. — [Makxie, pace Johnsoa
and Steevens, is here unquestionably rig^t.— Schmidt (Lex.) also thus inteii»ets
'prevent' in the present passage, and Muskay (N, E. D., s. v. I. x.), to use the words
of Steevens, 'adduces this very instance as an example of it' in the sense of amtic'
ipate. Compare: 'I must prevent thee, Cymber.' — HI, i, 44- — Ed-J
121. The time of life] Malone: That is, the full and complete time, the
period. — Collier (Notes and Emend., etc., p. 249) observes that the MS conec-
tion (see Text. Notes) 'imquestionably raids better' than the Folio text; aiidy
while acknowledging that Malone has correctly explained the i^irase 'time of life,'
remarks that Malone 'strangely persevered in printing "time'* for term.* — Singer
(Sh. Vindicatedy p. 249) thus replies: 'It would have been more strange if Malone
had ventured to change the imdoubted word of the poet! One of his chief merits is
close adherence to the old text where good sense can be made of it. . . . "Time"
is duration. [Compare] Baret: "Died before his time, PUius immatunts obit.*" —
Craik denounces the Folio reading as 'simply nonsense,' and willingly adopts the
MS correction, which Collier himself does not, except in his monovolume. — Ed.
121. arming my selfe with patience] Warburton conjectures that between
this and the preceding phrase some words are lost, perhaps to this effect:
On the contrary, true courage is seen in, etc. — ^Johnson, referring to this con-
jecture, remarks: 'there is needed only a parenthesis to clear it [see Text. Notes ^
11. iid-i2i]. The construction b this: I am determined to act according to that
philosophy which directed me to blame the suicide of Cato; arming myself with
patience, etc' — [The occasion must, indeed, be desperate when we find Johnson
recommending as an aid to clearness a method of punctuation for which, as
Boswell tells us, he had a peailiar antipathy: 'Johnson's attention to precision and
clearness in expression was very remarkable. He disapproved of a parenthesis;
and, I believe, in all his voluminous writings not half a dozen of them will be
foimd.' — Life of Johnson; ed. Fitzgerald, p. 441. — Ed.]
124. this Battaile] Steevens justifies his proposed omission of these two words
inasmuch as they derange the metre, and have already occurred in the foregoing
speech of Cassius, I. 113; and, further, as an example of such an ellipsis, quotes:
'King Lear hath lost, he and hb daughter ta'en.' — Lear^ V, ii, 6.
ACT V, sc. i.] IVLIVS CjESAR 255
You are contented to be led in Triumph 125
Thorow the ftreets of Rome.
Bru. No CajffiuSj no 2
Thinke not thou Noble Romane,
That euer Brutus will go bound to Rome,
He beares too great a minde. But this fame day 130
Muft end that worke, the Ides of March begun.
And whether we (hall meete againe, I know not :
Therefore our euerlafting farewell take :
For euer, and for euer, farewell CaffiuSy
If we do, meete againe, why we fhall fmile ; 135
If not, why then this parting was well made.
CajffL For euer, and for euer, farewell Brutus :
If we do meete againe, weeU fmile indeede ;
If not, 'tis true, this parting was well made.
Bru. Why then leade on. O that a man might know 140
i2t. Thorow] Fa. Through F,F4, 127, 128. One line Rowe.
Rowe, Hal. Ktly. Huds. Coll. iii. Along 127-136. Mnemonic Pope, Warb.
Pope, Han. Thorough Theob. et cet. 131. the Ides] that Ides Ff, Rowe i.
ftreeis] sireei Rowe ii. begun] began Coll. Hal. Huds.
Rome.] Romef Theob. ii. et seq. 140-143. Mnemonic P<^, Warb.
130. 131. this same day . . . the Ides of March begun] See extract from
Plutarch, 11. 1 16-123, ante.
131. begun] Schmidt (Lex., s. v. begin) says that this form of the imperfect is
used by Shakespeare only when required by the rhyme. In the present passage
he interprets 'begun' as the participle, i. e,, the work begun on the Ides of March.
— ^Wright shows, however, by many examples, that *both began and "begim"
are found for the preterite at an early period of the language.'
132. whether we shall meete againe, I know not] BntCH (p. 460): Cas-
sius did not speak of the possibility of meeting anywhere hereafter [11. 113,
114, above] if they were not to meet alive after the battle. That was consistent
with his faith as it was in Epiciuns, but not with the stoical philosophy, the re-
ligion, or even character of Brutus, as given by Shakespeare himself [as in his
lines to Cassius, 1 27-131]. Here he assents to the doctrine of Cassius, Hamlet, and
Shake^)eare, that a great mind will not put up with misfortunes — and casting
off the idea of a disposer of events, he does not speak of submitting to Providence.
'Nearly the whole of this speech [from the present line to the end of the scene]
is Shakespeare's, as nearly as the whole of the preceding was Plutarch's. Shake-
speare omits in the first speech the acknowledgment of a future state — which is to
be found in the Brutus of Plutarch — and makes Brutus and Cassius join in chorus
to its complete disavowal. . . . Nothing is more clear than the sentiments of
Shakespeare with regard to a future state; and here he offends against character
and against truth in order to suppress an opinion contrary to his own.
137-140. For euer, and for euer ... a man might know] Mask Hunteb:
Cassius is too profoundly moved to find words of his own. He can only repeat
256 T^^E, TRACED IE OF [act v, sc. fl.
The end of this dayes bufmefle, ere it come : 141
But it fufficeth, that the day will end,
And then the end is knowne. Come ho, away. Exeunt. 143
\Scene II?[
Alarum, Enter Brutus and MeJJala, I
Bru, Ride, ride Meffala^ ride and giue thefe Billes
Vnto the Legions, on the other fide.
Lowd Alarum.
Let them fet on at once : for I perceiue 5
But cold demeanor in 0£laui(fs wing :
And fodaine pufh giues them the ouerthrow :
Ride, ride Meffala^ let them all come downe. Exeunt 8
Scene iv. Pope, Han. Warb. Johns. 6. 0<5lauio*s] Odavius* Pope et seq.
Scene n. Cap. et seq. 7. And] One Han. A Warb. Johns.
The Same. The Field of Battle. Ktly.
Capell. 8. Exeunt] Exeunt, Alarums. Rowe
1. Alarum.] Alarums, as of a Battle et seq.
join'd. Capell.
wistfully the words that have fallen from Brutus. Compare the spirit of the
farewell scene as it is in Shakespeare with North's Plutarch: 'Cassius fell a-laugh-
ing to hear what he said, and embracing him, "Come on then," said he, "let us go
and charge our enemies with this mind."' [Brutus, § 27; ed. Skeat, p. 140.] Com-
pare and contrast the speech of the same Brutus: * Fates, we will know your
pleasures,' etc. — HI, i, 115-117.
2. and giue these Billes] 'In the meantime Brutus, that led the right wing,
sent little bills to the colonels and captains of private bands, in the which he wrote
the word of the battle.'— Plutarch, Brutus, § 28; ed. Skeat, p. 140.
6. Octauio's] Compare, for this form of the genitive of a proper noun ending
in -ins, the stage-direction, IH, i, 306, and: 'Stand you directly m Antonio's
way.' — I, ii, 8.
7. giues them the ouerthrow] For this construction — the present for the
future tense — compare: 'This is the night That either makes me or fordoes me
quite.'— O/Ae/Zo, V, i, 128.— Ed.
ACT V, sc. iu.] IVLIVS CAESAR 257
\Scene III.^
Alarums. Enter CaJJius and Titinius. i
CaJJu O looke TitiniuSy looke, the Villaines flye :
My felfe haue to mine owne tumM Enemy :
This Enfigne heere of mine was turning backe,
I flew the Coward, and did take it from him. 5
Titin. O CaJJiuSy Brutus gaue the word too early,
Who hauing fome aduantage on 0£lauiuSj
Tooke it too eagerly : his Soldiers fell to fpoyle,
WhiFft we by Antony are all inclosM.
Enter Pindarus. • 10
Find. Fly further off my Lord : flye further ofl,
Mark Antony is in your Tents my Lord :
Flye therefore Noble CaJJius^ flye farre off.
Cajfi. This Hill is farre enough. Looke, look Titinius
Are thofe my Tents where I perceiue the fire ? 15
Tit. They are, my Lord.
Cajft. TitiniuSy if thou loueft me, 17
Scene v. Pope, Han. Warb. Johns. 9. are] wtre Popc,+ ( — Var. '73).
Scene m. Cap. et seq. 11. further, ^further] farther ^.farther
Another part of the Field, Cap. Coll. Hal. Wh. i.
4, 5. This Ensigne . . . and did take it from him] '[Cassius], perceiving
his footmen to give ground, he did what he could to keep them from flying, and
took an ensign from one of the ensign-bearers that fled, and stuck it fast at his
feet.* — Plutarch, Brutus, § 28; ed. Skeat, p. 143. — Wright here interprets 'ensign'
as the ensign-bearer; and Mt,' 1. 5, as 'the ensign or standard which he carried.'
-5. I slew the Coward] Mark Hunter cdls attention to this 'slaying of the
standard-bearer, characteristic of Cassius's fiery, choleric temper,' as a touch
added by Shakespeare to Plutarch's account.
7. aduanuge on] Compare ' — I have seen the hungry ocean gain Advantage
on the kingdom of the shore.' — Sonnet, bdv, 6.
8. Tooke it too eagerly: his Soldiers fell to spoyle] Craik (p. 369): That
is, followed his advantage too eagerly. The prosody of thb line, with its two super-
fluous syllables, well expresses the hurry and impetuosity of the speaker. — ^Wright:
As Prince Rupert's at Naseby, where Cromwell was the Antony of the day.
13. farre ofi] Wright: It may be that 'far' is here the comparative and equiva-
lent to further, just above. Compare: 'Far than Deucalion off.' — Wint. Tale, TV,
iv, 442. See Rich. II: V, i, 88: 'Better far off than near, be ne'er the near';
that b, to be never the nearer.
17
2S8 THE TRAGEDIE OF [act v. sc m.
Mount thou my horfe, and hide thy fpurres in him, i8
Till he haue brought thee vp to yonder Troopes
And heere againe, that I may reft affur'd 20
Whether yond Troopes, are Friend or Enemy*
TU. I will be heere againe, euen with a thought. £»/•
Caffu Go PindaruSj get higher on that hill,
My fight was euer thicke : r^[ard TMmus^
And tell me what thou not'ft about the Field. 25
This day I breathed firft, Time is come round,
And where I did begin, there fhall I end,
My life is run his compafle. Sirra, what newes ? 28
21. ymm^ ymC Cap. Var. '78, '85. Warfo. Johns. fM^ [Pmdanis goes vp.
23. Ugher\ ikUher Ff, Rowe, Cap. Dyce, Wh. i. jEeU. [Exit Pindams.
Jen. Var. '78, '85. tkee kigker Cap. conj. Han. et cet.
ihai] tins Cap. conj., Mai. conj. 26. breatkeil hrealMd YJP^ hreaOM
24. regard Tltinius] regard^ TitiniuSy Dyce.
F4. 28. Au] f^ Pope, Theob. Han. Waib.
25. Field,] Ff, Rowe, Pope, Theob. Sirra] Now Pope,+.
22. euen with a thought] Steevens compares: 'That which is now a hocae,
even with a thought The rack dislimns.'— i4ii/. £r Qeo,, IV, xiv, 10; and Wxzgbt,
'Come with a thought.' — Temp,, IV, i, 164.
23. Go Pindams, get higher, etc.] To this scene, with Pindams aloft de-
scribing the fight to Cassius below, Steevens compares the third scene in Act V.
of Beaumont and Fletcher's Banduca, where Drusius and Penius describe, bom an
upper platform, the battle between the Romans and the Britons. — ^It was, how-
ever, a common stage device; probably a survival of the classic dramatic rule that
all such actions were to be described to the audience by the actors. Compare:
' Aut agitur res in scenis, aut acta refertur. . . . Non tamen intus Digna geri promes
in scenam; multaq: tolles Ex oculis, quae moz narret facimdia praesens.' — Horace,
De Arte Poetica, 1. 179. — Ed.
24. My sight was euer thicke] This and many other slight, yet realistic,
details are contained in the account of the battle in Plutarch (Brutus, §§ 28, 29;
ed. Skeat, pp. 142, 143), whom Shakespeare is here most closely following. — For
the adjective 'thick' as applied to 'sight,' Wright compares: 'His dimensions to
any thick sight were invincible.' — 2 Hen, IV: III, ii, 336.
26. Time is come round] Steevens compares: 'The wheel is come full
circle,' — Lear, V, iii, 174, in the dying speech of Edmimd.
28. compasse] Murray (N. E, D., s. v. V. b.): A circuit of time, round, revolu-
tion. [The present line quoted.] — ^Wright compares: 'A sibyl that had mmiber'd
in the world The sim to course two hundred compasses,*— Othello, HI, iv, 70.
28. Sirra] Craigie (N. E. /)., s, v.) : From Sir. The additional syllable had prob-
ably no definite origin, though explained by Minsheu as the interjection ah or ha,
A term of address used to men or boys, expressing contempt, reprimand, or as-
sumption of authority on the part of the speaker; sometimes employed less seriously
in addressing children.
28. Sirra, what newes] Craik (p. 370): The expressive effect of the break in
ACT V, sc. iii.]
IVLIVS CjESAR
259
Find. Aboue. O my Lord.
Cajfi. What newes ?
Find. TUinius is enclofed round about
With Horfemen, that make to him on the Spurre,
Yet he fpurres on. Now they are almoft on him :
Now TiHnitis. Now fome light : O he lights too.
Hee's tane. ShawU
And hearke, they fhout for loy.
Cajft. Come downe, behold no more :
O Coward that I am, to liue fo long,
To fee my beft Friend tane before my face.
Enter Pindarus.
Come hither firrah : In Parthia did I take thee Prifoner,
And then I fwore thee, fauing of thy life.
30
35
40
42
29. Aboue.] Within. Cap. Appearing
on the Hill. Jen.
29-31. O my L^J...Titinius is\ As
one line, and reading: my good Lord
Steev. conj.
31-36. Lines end: is.,.th(U.„on...Titi'
mus...hearke..,ioy. Mai. Steev. Var. '03,
'13. Lines end: aboui,.Spwre...him...
Titim\is„4oo,..hearke...ioy. Craik. Lines
end: aboiU ... Spurre ... him ... Titinius...
hearke., .toy Dyce ii, iii.
33 » 34- Yet he ... lights too] Lines
end: him; now ... lights too Var. '78,
*8s, Ran.
34. Now Titinius.) Now Titinius, Ff .
TitiniusI Pope,+, Cap.
34> 35- Now...Hee*s tane] One line
Var. '21, Sing. i.
34. light..Mghts] 'Hght..:Hghts Mai.
Steev. Varr. Sing. Coll. Wh. i.
35, 36. One line Pope et seq.
35. tane] taken Wh. i.
37. Come...more] Two lines, ending:
downe.. .more Cap.
41. Come...firrah] One line Pope et
seq.
the even flow of the rhythm produced by the superfluous syllable here, and the
vividness with which it brings before us the sudden awakening of Cassius from his
reverie, startled, we may suppose, by some sign of agitation on the part of Pindarus,
will be felt if we will try how the line would read with *5t>, what news?' — [Much
depends upon the pronunciation of 'Sirrah'; and had Craik but given us some key
to this, his note would have an added force. — Ed.]
34. Now Titinius.] Mark Hxtnter: Pindarus calls ezdtedly to Titinius, as if he
could hear him, to quicken his pace and escape. — [The period after 'Titinius' may
perhaps be here used to mark an incomplete sentence. — According to Percy Simpson
(Sh. Punctuation, p. 79) /a full stop could be used even for an unfinished sentence.
In such cases the sense was a sufficient guide.' — Compare II, i, 154 and note. — Ed.]
34. light] Bradley (N. E. D., s. v. verb, i.) writes that '"light," in the sense
to dismount from a horse or vehicle, apparently originates in an absolute use of the
verb in the sense to relieve the horse or vehicle of one's weight.' — [The verb alight
has the same meaning, although it is a distinct verb; it is, therefore, not neces-
sary to print 'light' with an apostrophe (see Text. Notes), as though an abbreviation
of alight. — Ed.]
42. I swore thee] That is, I made thee take oath. Compare: 'Sweare priests
and cowards, and men cautelous.' — II, i, 147.
26o THE TRACED IE OF [act v, sa in.
That whatfoeuer I did bid thee do, 43
Thou fhould'ft attempt it Come now, keepe thine oath,
Now be a Free-man, and with this good Sword 45
That ran through Cafars bowels, fearch this bofome.
Stand not to anfwer : Heere, take thou the Hilts,
And when my face is couer'd,as 'tis now.
Guide thou the Sword Caf or j^om art reueng'd,
Euen with the Sword that kilPd thee. 50
47- ^^\ fnit Pope,+. +, after Sword, 1. 49. Caasras fills oo
50. thee.] thee. [Kills him. Ff , Rowe. his sword. CoU. ill. Kills himsolf. Pope
Dies. Capell. Pindarus stabs him. Cam. et cet.
42. sauing] Wright: 'Saving' is here a verbal substantive, and the full phzase
was *in saving of thy life*; the preposition in first degenerated into a, as in
a-hunting, a-fisking, etc., and then disappeared altogether. Compare: 'I kili'd
the slave that was a-hanging thee.' — Lear, \, m, 274. In John, u, 20 the Authorised
Version has: 'Forty and six 3rears was this temple in building/ where Tyndale
gives 'a building.'
45. Free-man] Compare ' — to live all Free-men,' m, ii, 23; and see note
thereon.
46. search this bosome] Wright compares: 'Alas, poor shepherd! searching of
thy woimd, I have by hard adventure foimd my own.' — As you Lihe Ii, U, iv, 44;
and: 'The tent that searches To the bottom of the worst.' — Tro, £r Cress., U, ii, 16.
He suggests that: 'Perhaps Cassius intentionally uses the word with this surgical
meaning, his sword being the tent or probe which searched the wound of his grief.'
— Mark Hunter refers to the foregoing interpretation and remarks: I prefer
merely, search this bosom for my heart, just as Titinius sa3rs: 'Come Cassius'
sword and find Titinius* heart.' — ^1. 99, below.
47. Hilts] Murray {N. E. D., s. v. hilt): i. The handle of a sword or dagger,
tb. Formerly often in plural, with same sense. — [Wright compares: 'I'll run him
up to the hilts, as I am a soldier.' — Hen. V: H, i, 68.]
49. Cssar, thou art reueng'd] Boissier, in the following remarks, gives us a
strange picture of the times: '"You tell me," Cicero writes to Atticus, "that my
Tusculans give you courage: so much the better. There is no surer and speedier
resource against circumstances than that which I indicate.'" — (ad Alt., xv, 2).
*This resource was death. How many people accordingly availed themselves of it!
Never has a more incredible contempt of life been seen, never has death caused less
fear. Since Cato's, suicide became a contagion, a frenzy. The vanquished, Juba,
Petreius, Sdpio, know no other way of escaping the conqueror. . . . When Dedmus
Brutus, a fugitive, hesitates to choose this heroic remedy, his friend Blasius kills
himself before him in order to set him an example. It was a veritable delirium at
Philippi. Even those who might have escaped did not seek to survive their de-
feat. . . . Cassius was impatient, and killed himself too soon; Brutus doses the
list by a suidde astonishing by its calmness and dignity. What a strange and
frightful conunentary on the Tusculans, and how clearly this general truth,
thus put in practice by so many men of spirit, ceases to be a platitude!'
(P- 323).— Ed.
ACT V, sc. iii.] IVLIVS CjESAR 26 1
Pin. So, I am free, 5 1
Yet would not fo haue beene
Durft I haue done my will. O Cafftus^
Farre from this Country Pindams (hall run,
Where neuer Roman fhall take note of him. 55
Enter Titinius and Mejfala.
Mejfa. It is but change, Titinius : for 0£lauius
Is ouerthrowne by Noble Brutus power,
As CaJJius Legions are by Antony.
Titin. Thefe tydings will well comfort Cajpus. 60
Mejfa. Where did you leaue him.
Titin. All difconfolate.
With Pindarus his Bondman, on this Hill.
Mejfa. Is not that he that lyes vpon the ground ?
Titin. He lies not like the Liuing. O my heart I 65
MeJfa. Is not that hee ?
Titin. No, this was he Mejfalay
But Cajftus is no more. O fetting Sunne :
As in thy red Rayes thou doeft fmke to night ;
So in his red blood Cafsius day is fet. 70
51, 52. One line Rowe et seq. 66. Is noi thai] Is thai S. H. Clark
56. Scene v. Pope, Han. Warb. (MS).
Johns. 69. to nighi] to-nighi Knt, Coll. i, iii,
£nter...and...] Re-enter...with... Hal.
Capell. 70. is fet] ii Jet Ff .
60. wtll\ much M. Hunter conj.
57. It is but change] Wsight: That is, the vicissitude of war, alternation of
fortune. What they had lost on one side they had gained on the other.
60. These tydings] For 'tidings' used as a singular noun, see IV, iii, 174.
68. O setting Sunne] Wright: It appears from 1. 122 that it was only three
oclock. — Mark Hunter: As the conspiracy at its stormy beginning was set with
a dramatic background of actual tempest, so its decay and death is dramatically
symbolised by setting sim and growing darkness.
69. sinke to night] Craik (p. 371) observes, in reference to Collier's and
Knight's reading * to-night*: 'Surely a far nobler sense is given to the words by
taking ''sink to night*' to be an expression of the same kind with sinh to rest or
sink to sleep. The colorless dulness of the coming night is contrasted with the
red glow in which the limiinary is descending. ''O setting sun, Thou dost sinh^*
meaning simply thou dost set, is not much in Shakespeare's manner. Besides, we
hardly say, absolutely, that the sun sinksy whether we mean that it is setting or
only that it is descending. And the emphasis given by the "Uhnight" to the mere
expression of the time seems imcalled for and unnatural.'
262 THE TRACED IE OF [act v, sc. iiL
The Sunne of Rome is fet Our day is gone, yi
Clowds,Dewes,and Dangers come; our deeds are done:
Miftruft of my fuccefTe hath done this deed.
Mejfa. Miftruft of good fuccefle hath done this deed*
O hateful! Error, Melancholies Childe : 75
Why do^ft thou fhew to the apt thoughts of men
The things that are not ? O Error foone conceyuM,
Thou neuer com'ft vnto a happy byrth,
But kil'ft the Mother that engendred thee.
Tit. What Pindarus? Where art thou Hndarus} 80
Mejfa. Seeke him 7i*rfw'«j,whilft I go to meet
The Noble Brutus^ thrufting this report
Into his eares ; I may fay thrufting it :
For piercing Steele, and Darts inuenomed, 84
71. Sunn^ Sonne Fa. Son F,F4. 77. O Enrof\ Error Popc,-h
sun Rowe et seq. ( — ^Johns.)» Cap.
75. Mdanckolies] Melancholy's Pope 80. What] Why Cap. (corrected in
et seq. Errata).
84. inuenomedl envenomed Dyce.
72. and Dangers come] Xome' is here, I think, the imperative, as in 'Come,
you spirits That tend on mortal thoughts.' — Macbeth^ I, v, 41. — Ed.
73. 74. successe • . . good auccesse] Craik (p. 372): It is plain that [in
Shakespeare's time] 'success' simply was not understood to imply all that was
conveyed by the expression 'good success.' By 'mistrust of my success' Titinius
must be interpreted as meaning no more than mistrust, doubt, or apprehension
of what I had met with; in conformity with what he afterwards says: 'Alas, thou
hast misconstrued everything.' — ^1. 93. [Compare II, ii, 10.]
74. Mistrust of good successe] Walker (Cn7., iii, 249): Alluding to Cassius's
melancholy temperament.
76. apt] That is, easily impressed, impressionable. Compare: 'I find thee apt.'
— Hamlet J I, v, 31.
77-79. O Error soone conceyu*d . . . that engendred thee] Mark
Hunter: It is to be regretted that Shakespeare did not 'blot' these lines. The
fancy becomes a conceit and the conceit is followed too far, even if the thought
were otherwise unimpeachable, as it is far from being. The Mother of error is
said to be Melancholy; but obviously, Error is not reproached for slaying Melan-
choly, but for slaying Cassius. Cassius is thus the mother — certainly not a happy
simile. Should we read father? Father or mother, to assert that a misunderstand-
ing always results in the death of the person who misunderstands is far from
asserting a universal truth.
79. kil'st the Mother] Wright: Like the brood of the adder, according to a
popular belief. Compare: 'The Adders death, is her owne broode.* — Gosson,
Schoole of Abuse y 1579 (ed. Arber, p. 46).
82, 83. thrusting this report Into his eares] Compare: 'You cram these words
into mine ears against The stomach of my sense.* — Tempest, II, i, 106.
ACT V, sc. iii.] IVLIVS CtESAR 263
Shall be as welcome to the eares of Brutus y 85
As tydings of this fight.
Tit. Hye you MeJfalUj
And I will feeke for Pindarus the while :
Why did^ft thou fend me forth braue Ca/sius ?
Did I not meet thy Friends, and did not they 90
Put on my Browes this wreath of Viftorie,
And bid me giue it thee? Did^ft thou not heare their
Alas, thou haft mifconftrued euery thing. (fhowts ?
But hold thee, take this Garland on thy Brow,
Thy Brutus bid me giue it thee, and I 95
Will do his bidding. Brutus^ come apace.
And fee how I regarded Caius Ca/sius :
By your leaue Gods : This is a Romans part.
Come Ca/sius Sword, and finde Titinius hart Dies
Alarum. Enter Brutus ^ Mejfala^yong Cato^ 100
Strata J Volumnius y and Ludllius.
95. [Crowning him. Coll. ii. 99. Ca£uiis...Titinius] Cassius\..Titi-
98. [Stabs himself. Rowe. nius' Pope et seq.
100. Scene vi. Pope,-h.
91. this wreath of Victorie] 'By and by they . . . might see Titinius crowned
with a garland of triumph, who came before with great speed unto Cassius.' —
Plutarch, Bruins^ § 29; ed. Skeat, p. 143. — [For a description and representation
of the various garlands used as rewards among the Roman soldiery, see Gikeen
(pp. 224-226); but inasmuch as Shakespeare is here using the words of Plutarch
it seems hardly fair to take the present passage, as does Green, as an eioimple
to show Shakespeare's knowledge and use of heraldic emblems. — ^Ed.]
94. hold thee] Compare: 'Hold thee, there's my piurse.' — All's WeU, IV, v, 46.
— ^Abbott (§ 212) takes 'thee' in both these passages as the dative. Presiunably
eUncd. — Mark Hunter thinks it better, although hM and 'hold thee' frequently
precede the giving of something, that 'hold thee' be here taken in the sense of
5to^, stay. 'Here, of course,' says Himter, '"hold thee" has no precise meaning,
whether of take or 5/ay, but merely enables Titinius to pass naturally from the
lament for Cassius's error to the crowning of his brows. We may paraphrase:
"But enough of this."'— -Ed.
95. bid] Wright: Shakespeare uses both 'bid ' and hade for the past tense. Com*
pare: 'My gentle Phebe bid me give you this.* — As You Like Itj IV, iii, 7.
98. By 3rour leaue Qods] Macmillan: In accordance with the Platonic view,
Titinius implies that he cannot volimtarily depart from life without the permission
of the gods. — ^Mark Hunter: The proud Roman scarcely thinks it necessary to
ask pardon from heaven for slaying himself.
98. a Romans part] See note by Boissier, 1. 49, ante. — ^Wright compares:
'Why should I play the Roman fool and die On mine own sword?' — Macb.^ V, vii, 30.
264 ^^^ TRACE DIE OF [act v, sc in.
Bru. Where, where Mejfala^ doth his body lye ? 102
Mejfa^ Loe yonder, and TiHnius mourning it*
Bru, TiHnius face is vpward.
Cato. He is flaine. 105
Bru. O lulius Cafary thou art mighty yet,
104. Titinius] TUinius* Pope et seq.
103. mourning it] Craik (p. 373): An unusual omstniction of the verb I0
mourn in this sense. We speak commonly enough of mourning the death of a
person or any other thing that may have happened; we might even perhaps
speak of mourning the person who is dead or the thing that is lost; but we only
mourn over the dead body. — [Mussay (N, K D.) does not quote the ptesent pas-
sage imder any of the various senses of the verb to mourn.]
Z04. Titinius face is vpward] Joseph Hunter (ii, 150): Ihis passage shows
that the practice of the stage to represent death by lying with the face upwaid is as
old as the time of Shakespeare.
X06. O luliua Caesar, thou art mighty yet] Hudson (LifCf etc., fi, 230):
The final issue of the conspiracy, as represented by Shakespeare, is a pretty con-
clusive argimient of the blunder, not to say the crime, of its authors. Oesar,
dead, tears them and their cause all to pieces. In effect they did but stab him
into mightier life; so that Brutus might well say: 'O Julius Caesar, thou art mighty
yet/ etc. Am I wrong, then, in regarding the nemesis which asserts itself so sternly
in the latter part of the play as a reflex of irony on some of the earlier scenes?
I the rather take this view, inasmuch as it infers the disguise of Cesar to be an
instance of the profoimd guile with which Shakespeare sometimes plays upon his
characters, humouring their bent, and then leaving them to the discq>line of
events. — Miss Julia Wedgwood (Contemporary Review, March, 1893, p. 366):
The keynote of the play is struck in [this speech] of the dying [sic] Brutus. We
trace the first faint suggestion of that idea in Plutarch's assertion that the great
genius which attended him through his lifetime, even after his death, remained
as the avenger of his murder, pursuing through every sea and land all those who
were concerned in it, and suffering none to escape. . . . Here Shakespeare touches
silver and leaves gold. That idea of a guardian genius captivates his fancy, he uses
it for the delineation of meaner men; he brings it into one of the finest speeches of
Brutus; but in delineating the greatest of Romans he bids the guardian stand
aside; the great genius who pursues Oesar's murderers shall be Caesar himself. —
J. M. Brown (p. 100) : As he sees comrade after comrade fall, Brutus feels the
growing power [of Caesar's spirit]. Even Cassius, most bitter and imwilling though
he was to see aught great in his foe, has, with his dying breath, to acknowledge
the rising might of his spirit. It is this noble spirit that is the true protagonist of
the tragedy. It is that that dominates every scene, every action, every word, every
character, and the weakened personality of the would-be king brings out all the
more distinctly the surpassing power of that which was almost becoming a separate
force in nature and history, nay, feels the influence of it raising his ambitions and
his tone far above the merely human. On his death the memory of the degenerate
snatcher at the crown completely vanishes; and the other, the great spirit, suffers
apotheosis; it reaches the divinity, the vacillating, superstitious Caesar aped.
Caesar, . . . the ambition-ridden weakling, has to die 'with none so poor to do
ACT V. sc. iii.] IVLIVS C^SAR 265
Thy Spirit walkes abroad^ and turnes our Swords 107
In our owne proper Entrailes, Low Alarums.
Caio. Braue TUiniuSy
Looke where he haue not crown'd dead Ca/sius. no
Bru. Are yet two Romans liuing fuch as thefe ?
The laft of all the Romans^ far thee well :
It is impoflible, that euer Rome 113
107. walked] wa*kes Fa. et cet.
108. Low Alarums.] Om. Cap. Jen. 112. Thelafi\ThoulastRowe,'\- yCap.
Low alarms. Var. '73. Jen. Varr. Ran. Dyce ii, iii, Huds. iii.
no. where] Ff, Rowe. if Popc,4-. Romans,] Romans/ Pope,-!-.
whether Var. '73, Cam.-f. whe*r Cap. far] Fj.
him reverence' that the spirit of Caesar may live as the never-failing foimtain of
imperial power. [Compare: 'Thou, thou it was, most divine Julius, that didst
exact the revenge due to thy celestial wounds, compelling that proud head [Cas-
sius's], so perfidius to thee, to implore the sordid aid of a slave, driven to that
extremity of fury that he neither desir'd to live, nor durst to die by his own
hand.' — Valerius Maximus, Ads and Sayings, etc., Bk, vi, ch. viii, § 4; trans.
S. Speed, p. 293. — Ed.)
107, loS. turnes our Swords . . . proper Entrailes] Steevems compares:
* — populumque potentem In s\ia victrid conversum viscera dextr^.' — ^Lucan,
Pharsalia, i, pi. 3, 4].
108. In our] That is, into our; for other examples of 'in' thus used, see Shake-
speare passim.
no. where] That b, whether; compare: 'See where their baser mettle be not
moved.' — ^I, i, 71.
112. The last of all the Romans] Malome, in justification of the present
reading, and as an argimient against Rowe's change ' Thou last,' quotes from North's
Plutarch the following: 'So when he prutus] was come thither, after he had
lamented the death of Cassius, calling him the last of all the Romans, being im-
possible that Rome should ever breed again so noble and valiant a man as he, he
caused his bodie to be buried.* — (Brutus, § 29; ed. Skeat, 144). Malone further
remarks that 'Thou last' was 'not the phraseology of Shakespeare's time,' and in
corroboration quotes: 'Take that the likeness of this railer here.' — j Hen. VI:
V, V, 58; and: ' — as you, O the dearest of creatm-es, would not even renew me with
thine eyes.' — Cymb,, III, ii, 42. — Steevens, while following the Folio text, is still
'perfectly convinced' that in the instances quoted by Malone * the' is 'merely the
error of a compositor who misunderstood the abbreviations employed to express
thou and ye in the original MS.' He considers, moreover, that the passage from
Plutarch is not, in this case, to the purpose, since: 'The biographer is only relating
what Brutus had said. In the text Brutus is the speaker, and is addressing himself,
propriA person/!, to Cassius.' In refutation of Malone's assertion that 'Thou last'
is not the language of Shakespeare, Steevens quotes: 'Thou loathed issue. . . .
Thou rag of honour! thou detested.' — Rich. Ill: I, iii, 232. — ^He himself admits,how-
ever, that, as it is of no great importance to the meaning of Shakespeare, whether
we read 'the' or thou, the Folio text is here to be preferred, which is the opinion
of the present Ed.
266 THE TRACED IE OF [act v. sc. iiL
Should breed thy fellow.Friends I owe mo teares
To this dead man^ then you fhall fee me pay. 115
I fhall finde time^ Cafsius : I fhall finde time.
Come therefore, and to Tharfus fend his body,
His Funerals fhall not be in our Campe,
Leaft it difcomfort vs. LuciUius come, 1 19
114. S^ow\ fdlow: Ff. Thcob. ct seq.
mo\ Fa. moe ¥^¥4, Craik. tnore xz8. Funerals] Ff, Mai. Steev. Vair.
Roweetcet. Knt, CoU. Dyce, Ciaik, Sta. Wh.
117. Tharfus] Thassos or Thasos funeral Tope tt ctU
114, 115. I owe mo teares To this dead man] Theobald: This paassge
(but why I know not) seems twice to have been sneer'd [at] in Beaumont and
Fletcher's Knigkt of the Burning Pestle. Luc^ crying over Jasper, her sweetheart,
suppos'd dead, says: 'Good friends, depart a little, whilst I ta^t My leave of this
dead man, that once I lov'd.' [IV, iv.]. And Master Humphrey, before, says to
Lucd: '—it Shall be repaid again, although it cost me More than 111 speak of now.'
[I, i.] — [Theobald says he knows not why this passage should be thus apparently
derided; but is the sneer even apparent? Apart from the fact that the Knigfd ef
the Burning Pestle b burlesque, is there any other ground for sudi an assumption?
There b, to be sure, a slight resemblance in the form of the lines and the thought,
but no more than might not be easily accounted for by the similarity of the situa-
tions.— Ed.)
114. mo] Compare: 'No, sir, there are moe with him.' — ^n, i, 82; and see note
thereon.
Z16. I shall finde time, Casshis: I shall finde time] Mask Hunter: Notice
the solemn and impressive movement of this pathetic verse. There are three
troches and the remaining feet are almost spondees.
117. Tharsus] Theobald: The whole tenor of history warrants us to write,
as I have restored the text, Thassos. Tharsos was a town of Cilicia, in Asia Minor;
and is it probable Brutus could think of sending Cassius's body thither out of
Thrace, where they were now encamp'd? Thassos, on the contrary, was a little isle
lying close upon Thrace, and at but a small distance from Philippi, to which the
body might very commodiously be transported. Vide Plutarch, Appian, Dion
Cassius. [Both Plutarch and Dion Cassius mention Thassos as the place to which
the body of Cassius was conveyed. Appian refers to Thasos as the retreat of many
of the nobility during the proscriptions; but does not, however, mention it as the
place of Cassius's burial. The fact that it is so spoken of by Plutarch is, I think,
quite suflBicient to justify Theobald's remark — that is, if Shakespeare cared that
the locality be correct. — Ed.]
118. Funerals] Walker (Crit., iii, 249): So our old writers passim; Latin,
funera. ... In the [present passage], however, I suspect that the reading /wnera/
is right; the construction seems to require it. Both forms were used. — [Shake-
speare uses the form 'funerals' in only two other passages, viz.: 'Turn melancholy
forth to funerals.' — Mid. N. Dream, I, i, 14; 'Wise Laertes' son did graciously
plead for his funerals.' — Tit. And., I, i, 176. — *In the present passage,' Wright
notes, ' Shakespeare has taken the plural from Plutarch.' Funeral occurs four times
in this play alone: III, i, 256; 260; III, ii, 94; III, iii, 21. — Ed.]
ACT V, sc. iv.] IVLIVS C^SAR. 267
And come yong CatOy let vs to the Field, 120
Liibio and Flauio fet our Battailes on :
Tis three a Clocke, and Romans yet ere night,
We (hall try Fortune in a fecond fight. Exeunt. 123
\Scene IK]
Alarum. Enter Brutus y MeffalUy CatOy LucUliuSy i
and Flauius.
Bru. Yet Country-men : O yet, hold vp your heads.
Cato. What Ballard doth not? Who will go with me?
I will proclaime my name about the Field. 5
I am the Sonne of Viarcus CatOy hoe.
A Foe to Tyrants, and my Countries Friend.
I am the Sonne oi Marcus CatOyhoe.
Enter Souldiers find fight. 9
121. Labio] Laheo Han. et seq. part of the Field. Cap.
Flauio] Flavius Ff et seq. i. Alarum... Brutus, Meflala] Alar-
122. d Clocke] o'clock Theob. et urns. Enter, fighting, Soldiers of both
seq. Armies, then Brutus. Capell.
Scene vn. Pope, Han. Warb. Johns. 2. Flauius] Others Capell.
Scene iv. Cap. et seq. 9. Enter...fight] Charges the retiring
The Field of Battle. Pope. Another Enemy. CapeU.
122. 'Tie three a Clocke] Vesity: This is scarcely consistent with 11. 68, 69
antef which indicated that the time was already evening. Probably the incon-
sistency arose thus: Plutarch says, 'He [Brutus] suddenly caused his army to
march, being past three of the dock in the afternoon' (ed. Skeat, p. 148); but
Plutarch is speaking of the second battle of Philippi, which took place twenty
days later. . . . Here, in connecting [the two battles], he uses the statement of
Plutarch, and forgets, apparently, that he has previously spoken of sunset. —
Mark Hxtnter: As a second fight is to follow on the same day, some hours of
daylight are required for it. On the modem stage, with all its appliances to imitate
sunset, the inconsistency could not pass unnoticed. But an Elizabethan audience
might very well forget that they had just been called upon to imagine sunset.
For dramatic and symbolic reasons Shakespeare wished Cassius to die with the
Sim. A little later he foimd it necessary to put the clock back, and trusted that
the trick would succeed, as similar tricks generally succeeded with him. If we can-
not thus account for the inconsistency on the 'double time' hypothesis, we must
then suppose that Shakespeare wrote more carelessly than the average reader reads.
4. What Bastard doth not] Wright: That is, Who is so base bom that he
doth not? Compare: 'What villain touched his bodv, that did stab And not for
justice.' — ^IV, iii, 21.
268 T^^^ TRACED IE OF [act v, sc. iv.
And I am BnituSy Marcus Brutus^ I, lO
Brutus my Countries Friend : Know me for Brutus.
Luc. O yong and Noble Cato^ art thou downe ?
Why now thou dyeft, as brauely as TitiniuSy
And may'ft be honoured, being Caters Sonne.
Sold. Yeeld, or thou dyeft. 1$
Luc. Onely I yeeld to dye :
There is fo much, that thou wilt kill me ftraight :
Kill BrutuSy and be honoured in his death.
Sold. We muft not : a Noble Prifoner. 19
10. Andl am\ Ff. Lucil. And 1 am the Enemy. Cato is overpowered and
Bru. Andl am Rowe et cet. falls. Mai. et seq. (subs.)
11. Exit. Pope,-f-. Charges them in 16. Ondy 1\ I only Han.
another part, and Exit, driving them Warb. marks omission of line
in. The Party charged by Cato rally, following.
and Cato falls. Capell. Exit, charging 17. [Giving him money. Han. Johns.
19. not: a] not, sir, A Cap.
10, II. And I am Brutus . . . Know me for Brutus] Macmillan: The
name of the speaker of these two lines is omitted in the Folios. They are by almost
all editors assigned to Brutus [see Text, Notes], But Brutus was so well known
that it is strange that he should tell his name with such emphasis, and it is still
more strange that he should follow the lead of such a young man as Cato. The
iteration of the name Brutus sounds like the language of a man who was pretend-
ing to be what he was not. The ascription of these two lines to Ludlius would
make the motive and action of Lucilius much plainer to the audience, who would
have some difficulty in taking in the situation with only the words 'Kill Brutus,' in
1. 18, to enlighten them. It seems probable that the printer of the Folio by mis-
take put the heading * Luc* two lines too low down.
16. Onely I yeeld to dye] That is, I yield only in order to die. For other
examples of this transposition of the adverb, see, if needful, Abbott, § 420.
17. There is so much . . . kill me straight] Warburton supposes that
before this line there is an omission, the lost line being a question by the soldier
as to the amount of resistance still maintained by the enemy; to this Lucilius replies:
* There is so much,* etc. — Johnson: Dr Warburton has been much inclined to
find lacunoiy or passages broken by omission, throughout this play. I think he has
been always mistaken. The Soldier here says: * Yield, or thy diest.* Lucilius
replies, *I yield only on this condition, that I may die; here is so much gold as
thou seest in my hand, which I offer thee as a reward for speedy death.' What
now is there wanting? [See Text, Notes, — Heath (p. 447) also thus interprets this
line.] — Macb£ILLan: Possibly Lucilius, speaking in the character of Brutus, means
that so much can be laid to his charge that the soldier is sure to kill him immedi-
ately.— [The consistency of Hanmcr's stage-direction is not very obvious. Wliy
should Lucilius think that the offer of money would serve as a bribe, when by his
death the Soldier would naturally obtain all, whether offered or not? It is not, on
the other hand, necessary to suppose with Warburton that there is here an omis-
sion in order to arrive at the interpretation suggested by Macmillan, which
seems, on the whole, satisfactory. — Ed.]
ACT V, sc. iv.] IVLIVS C^SAR 269
Enter Antony. 20
2.Soldn Roome hoe : tell Antony^ Brutus is tane.
I .Sold. He tell thee newes. Heere comes the Generall,
Brutus is tane, Brutus is tane my Lord.
Ant. Where is hee ?
Luc. Safe Antony ^ Brutus is fafe enough : 25
I dare affure thee, that no Enemy
Shall euer take aliue the Noble Brutus :
The Gods defend him from fo great a fhame^
When you do finde him, or aliue, or dead.
He will be found like Brutus^ like himfelfe. 30
Ant. This is not Brutus friend, but I affure you,
A prize no leffe in worth ; keepe this man fafe,
Giue him all kindneffe. I had rather haue
Such men niy Friends, then Enemies. Go on,
And fee where Brutus be aliue or dead, 35
And bring us word, vnto 0£lauius Tent :
How euery thing is chanced. Exeunt. 37
20. Enter Antony] After 1. 22 Cap. F4 et seq.
et seq. 35. wker^ Ff, Rowe. if Popc,-f-.
22. ihe^ the Pope ii. et seq. whether Var. '73, Cam.+. whe^r Cap.
24. [They show Lucilius. Cap. et cet.
7 29. or aliue] alive Warb. 36. word] Om. Ff.
^31. Brutus friend,] Brutus, friend ^ Odlauius] Odlavius' Pope et seq.
31-34. I assure you . . . Friends, then Enemies] 'Antonius . . . said
unto them: ''My companions, I think you are sorry you have failed of your pur-
pose, and that you think this man hath done you great wrong; but I assure you,
you have taken a better booty than that you followed. For instead of an enemy
you have brought me a friend: and for my part, if you had brought me Brutus
alive, truly I cannot tell what I should have done to him. For I had rather have
such men my friends, as this man here, than mine enemies." ' — Plutarch, Brutus,
§ 31; ed. Skeat, p. 149.
34. Friends, then Enemies] Percy Simpson {Sh, Punctuation, p. 45) shows by
several other examples from the Folio and contemporary books that it was the
usual pointing to place a comma before 'than.' In the present instance this
comma survived, however, down to and including the Variorum of 1821. — ^Ed.
35. where] That is, whether; see V, iii, no and I, i, 71.
37. is chanc'd] Compare: 'I Caska, tell us what hath chanced to-day.' — I, ii, 237.
270 THE TRACED IE OF [act v, sc. v.
[Scene K]
Enter Brutus ^ Dardanius^ CKtus^ StratOy I
and Volummus.
Brut. Come poore remaines of friends, reft on this
Rocke.
cm. StatUlius fhew'd the Torch-light, but my Lord 5
He came not backe : he is or tane,or flaine.
Brut. Sit thee downe, Clitus : flaying is the word,
It is a deed in fafliion. Hearke thee, Clitus.
Clit. What I ,my Lord ? No, not for all the World.
Brut. Peace then, no words, lO
Clit. He rather kill my felfe.
Brut. Hearke thee, Dardanius.
Dard. Shall I doe fuch a deed ?
Clit. O Dardanius,
Dard. O Clitus. IS
Clit. What ill requeft did Brutus make to thee ?
Dard. To kill YavdyClitus : looke he meditates.
Clit. Now is that Noble Veflell full of griefe. 18
Scene vm. Pope, Han. Warb. Another part of the Fidd. Pope.
Johns. 8. [Whispering. Rowe.
Scene v. Cap. et seq. 13. ShaV\ Om. Cap.
5, 6. Statillius shew'd the Torch-light, but . . . He came not backe]
'Brutus thought that there was no great number of men slain in battle: and to
know the truth of it, there was one called Statilius, that promised to go through his
enemies, for otherwise it was impossible to go see their camp: and from thence, if
all were well, that he would lift up a torch-light in the air, and then return again
with speed to him. The torch-light was lift up as he had promised, for Statilius
went thither. Now Brutus, seeing Statilius tarry long after that, and that he came
not again, he said: "If Statilius be alive he will come again." ' — ^Plutarch, BnAus^
§ 32; ed. Skeat, p. 150. — [Here, I think, is an instance where Shakespeare's com-
plete familiarity with his authority has blinded him to the fact that his auditors
have not this same advantage; without reference to this extract from Plutarch
these two lines are purposeless. — ^Ed.]
6. He came not backe] Wright: That is, he is not come back. For this use
of the past tense for the perfect, compare: *I saw not better sport these seven
years* day.* — 2 Ben, VI: II, i, 2. Again: 'And I said. Surely he is torn in pieces;
and I saw him not since.* — Genesis, xliv, 28.
8. It is a deed in fashion] Referring to the suicide of Cassius and Titinius.
See also the note by Boissier on V, iii, 50.
18. Vessell full of griefe] Deuus: Compare: 'I never saw a vessel of like
ACT V, sc. v.] IVLIVS C^SAR 27 1
That it runnes ouer euen at his eyes.
BruU Come hither, good Volummus y)i^ a word. 20
Volum. What fayes my Lord ?
BruU Why this, Volumnius :
The Ghoft of Ccefar hath appeared to me
Two feuerall times by Night : at Sardis^once ;
And this lafl Night, here in Philippi fields : 25
I know my houre is come.
Volum, Not fo, my Lord.
BruL Nay, I am fure it is, Volumnius.
Thou feeft the World, Volumnius, how it goes,
Our Enemies haue beat vs to the Pit : Low Alarums. 30
It is more worthy, to leape in our felues.
Then tarry till they pufti vs. Good Volumnius,
Thou know'ftjthat we two went to Schoole together : 33
25. Flalippi Jidds] PkUippufidds FjF^, Rowe,+. PhUippV fields Cap. Varr.
Mai. Stcev. Varr. Coll.
sorrow So filFd and so becoming.' — WitU. Tale, III, iii, 21. — ^Mark Hunter:
The comparison of a himian being with a vessel is biblical, and from the Bible
Shakespeare probably took it. Several times in Shakespeare a woman is termed
'the weaker vessel,' from j Peter y in, 7 {Lovers Labour'Sf I, i, 270; As You Like //,
n, iv, 6, etc.). Here and in WitU. Tale the allusion seems to be to the vessels that
are made 'some to honour, and some to dishonour' (2 Timothy , ii, 20). Brutus,
that noble vessel, is a vessel unto honour, 'sanctified and prepared unto every good
work.'
23*25. The Ghost of Csesar . . . here hi Philippi fields] Mark Hunter:
Here we have Mong time' suggested. It could not have been at Sardis that the
Ghost of Caesar first appeared to Brutus (see note on IV, iii, 224). Moreover, the
second appearance, if it occtirred 'this last night' and 'in Philippi fields,' necessi-
tates an interval of at least one night between the opening of the first scene of this
Act (when the armies of the liberators came down from the heights to the plains
of Phflippi to engage the enemy) and the present scene. But, according to short
time, there has been no such interval. The second battle takes place on the same
day as the first battle.
26. my houre is come] Deighton compares: 'Then they sought to take him:
but no man laid hands on him, because his hour was not yet come.' — John, vii, 30.
29. Thou seest the World] That is, you see the present state of affairs.
Compare: * — till then, think of the world.' — I, ii, 330, and note.
30. Our Enemies haue beat vs to the Pit] Schiodt (Lex,, s. v. Pit): Like
beasts of the chase. — Mark Hunter: There may also be a reference to the grave.
33. we two went to Schoole together] Maooxlan: Brutus, in Plutarch,
'prayed him for the studies sake which brought them acquainted together.'
Plutarch here refers to the studies of philosophy and rhetoric in which Volumnius
and Brutus had been associated as grown men. Shakespeare makes the appeal
more touching by supposing that they were schoolboys together.
272 ^^^ TRACED IE OF [act v. sc v.
Euen for that our loue of old, I prethee
Hold thou my Sword Hilts, whileft I runne on it. 35
Vol. That's not an Office for a friend, my Lord.
Alarum fiill.
Qy. Fly, flye my Lord, there is no tarrying heere.
Bru. Farewell to you, and you, and you Volumnius.
Strata^ thou hafl bin all this while afleepe : 40
Farewell to thee, to Strato^ Countrymen :
My heart doth ioy, that yet in all my life,
I found no man, but he was true to meJ
I (hall haue glory by this loofmg day 44
34. ^€ihee\ Ff. pt^y thee Popc,+, 35- vkilefl\ wkUe F,F4, Rowe,+.
Craik,Sta. prUhee Kxit,Dyce,Cam.+. wkiVst Cap. Jen. wUlst Var. '78 et
pray thee Cap. et cet. seq.
35. Sword Hilts] Swords HUt FjF4, 41- ihee, to StratoJ thee too, Strato.
Rowe,-!-, Cap. Varr. sword-hilts Mai. Theob. et seq.
et seq. 42. in attl all Ff.
35. Hilts] See V, iii, 47.
38. there is no tarrjring heere] ' — one of them said there was no tarrying
for them there, but that they must needs fly.'— Plutarch, Brutus, { 32; ed. Skeat,
p. 150. — Craik compares: 'There b nor flying hence nor tarrying hatJ—Maebeik,
V, V, 48.
39-41. Farewell to 3rou . . . Farewell to thee] Abbott ({ 332): The dif-
ference between 'thou' and 'you' is well illustrated by this farewdl addressed by
Brutus to his schoolfellow Volumnius, and his servant Strato. Compare also the
farewell between the noble Gloucester and Edgar 'dressed like a peasant': 'Edg.
Now fare you well, good sir.' 'Glouc, Now, fellow, fare thee well.' — Lear, IV, vi,
32, 41. — ^Mark Hunter: Although Shakespeare apparently makes Strato, who
was really Brutus's friend, his servant, Dardanius and Clitus, who are also ser-
vants, are addressed with the plural 'you.' 'Thee' in 1. 41 is due to 'thou' in the
preceding verse, which again is due to a desire for euphony. (Read the verse
substituting *you have been.')
44. I shall haue glory by this loosing day] In Bell's Edition, after this
line, the following is added: 'Retire and let me think a while — Now, one last look,
and then, farewell to all; Scorning to view his country's wrongs, Thus Brutus al-
ways strikes for liberty. Poor slavish Rome, farewell.' ThenfoUowsl. 60: 'Caesar
now be still,' etc. [To these lines the editor, F. Gentleman, adds a note to the effect
that though these lines are not in the original text, they are 'properly added,'
but does not vouchsafe any information as to their authorship. — Ed.] — Canning
(Sh.^s Historical Plays j p. 9) : Brutus firmly believes in the glorious happiness of a Ro-
man Republic without, apparently, studying whether his fellow-cotmtrymen at that
time desired such a form of government, or what the views of the majority were upon
the subject. — [H. WnrrE, translator of Appian's History y remarks (ii, 379, foot-note) :
'Dion Cassius (xlvii, 49) say^ that before killing himself Brutus repeated the words
of Hercules, " Delusive virtue, thou art but a name. I cultivated thee as a reality,
but thou art the slave of fortune." Florus (iv, 7) puts in the mouth of Brutus
ACT V, sc. v.] IVLIVS CjESAR 273
More then OSlauius^ and Marke Antony y 45
By this vile Conqueft (hall attaine vnto.
So fare you well at once^ for Brutus tongue
Hath almoft ended his liues Hiflory :
Night hangs vpon mine eyer, my Bones would reft,
That haue but laboured to attaine this houre. 50
•
Alarum. Cry withiny Flye^ flye^ flye.
Cly. Fly my Lord, flye.
Bru. Hence : I will follow :
I prythee StratOy ftay thou by thy Lord^
Thou art a Fellow of a good refpeft : 55
Thy life hath had fome fmatch of Honor in it,
Hold then my Sword, and tume away thy face, .
While I doe run vpon it. Wilt thou Strata ? 58
46. this\ their Walker (Crit., i, 302), '03, '13.
Huds. iii. 53. [Exeunt Clitus, Dardanius, and
47. Brutus] Bruius* Pope et seq. Volumnius. Cap.
53. follow:] follow thee. Pope,4- $6. fmatch] smack Varr. Ran. Wh. i.
(— Var. *73), Cap. Steev. Varr. in it] inH Pope,+.
nearly the same words: **Non in re^ sed in verbo tantum esse virtutem'* Bnitus's
dying speech given by Plutarch is much longer, as well as more appropriate and
dignified, and better entitled to credence.' — ^H. B. Foster (Dio's Annals of the
Roman People, iii, 155) notes that the above passage, 'Delusive virtue,' etc.,
is No. 374 among the Fragmenta Adespota in Nauck's Fragmenta Tragecorum
Graecorum. — ^Ed.]
56. smatch] Wright: That b, smack, tincture. With the forms smad^ for the
verb and 'smatch' for the noun, compare ake and ache as used in the Folio. — [See
note on Temp., I, ii, 433, this edition; and for other examples of smack, in this
sense, see Schmidt, Lex., s. v. The form 'smatch ' b not used elsewhere by Shake-
speare.— Ed.]
57, 58. Hold then my Sword . . . While I doe run vpon it] Green (p. 302)
gives a reproduction from one of the emblem-writers, Aldat, 1581, wherein is
portrayed the death of Brutus, who is shown falling upon a sword which rests upon
the ground. Green also quotes two verses by Whitney descriptive of this event; and
adds: 'the references or allusions by the later poet to the earlier can scarcely be
questioned; they are too dedded to be the results of pure accident.' — [The similarity
is certainly not due to accident, but to the fact that Whitney is here also following
Plutarch. Two lines betray him, thus: 'But firste, his frendes perswaded him to
flee, Whoe aimswer'd thus, my flighte with handes shalbee.' In Plutarch is this
sentence: ' — one of them said . . . that they must needs fly. Then Brutus,
rising up, "We must fly indeed," said he, "but it must be with our hands, not with
our feet.*" — Brutus, { 32; ed. Skeat, p. 150. — Ed.]
18
274 ^^^ TRAGEDIE OF [act v. sa ▼.
Sira. Giue me your hand firft. Fare you wel nqr Lx>rcL
Bru. Farewell good Sirato. Cdfar^ now be ftill, 60
I Idll'd not thee with halfe fo good a wOL Dyes.
Alarum. Retreat. Enter AnUmy^ Oilamus^ Jfej
LuaUius f and the Army.
Ona. What man is that ?
Mejfa. My Mafters man. Strata^ where is thy Mafte^ ? ^5
Stra. Free from the Bondage you are in Mejfala^
The Conquerors can but make a fire of him :
For Brutus onely ouercame himfelfe,
And no man elfe hath Honor by his death.
Lucil. So Brutus fliould be found. I thank thee Brutus 70
That thou haft prou'd LucUlius faying true,
61. Dyes.] He runs on hb sword and 63. the Army] their Army. Mai. et
dies. Rowe et seq. seq.
62. Scene ix. Pope, Han. Warb. 71. Ludllius] ImcStnu^ Fbpe et
Johns. seq.
61. I kni'd not thee with hmlfe so good a wfll] Staffer (p. 350): The death
of Brutus was not merely the penalty he paid lor a series of imprudent and mis-
takeo actions, but was also the ezpiatioQ of a great crime. Dante and Viigil, after
having travelled through the ei^^t circles of hdl, and having arrived at the lowest
abyss of all, perceive the three-faced monster, 'the En4)eror of the realm of sorrow/
who 'at every mouth a sinner champed': '"That upper spirit Who hath worst
punishment," so spake my guide, "Is Judas, he that hath his head within And
piles the feet without. Of th' other two, Whose heads are under, from the murky
jaw Who hangs, is Brutus: lo! how he doth writhe And speaks not. The other
Cassius, that So large of limb."' — Canto xxxiv, [11. 56-63; trans. Gary]. . . . Many
extenuating ciromistances could, indeed, easily be plead in Brutus's favour, and
there is no human tribimal at whose bar he would not stand absolved. . . . But
from an absolute, ideal point of view like Dante's, abstracting all adventitious cir-
omistances of place, time and persons, the regicide would deserve a place of honour
in the nethermost hell, for no crime could be greater than his— that of high treason
against the Divine King, for he who had committed it would be guilty of trying to
make himself wiser than God, and of taking the place of the Most High in the
government of the world. — [Gary, in a note on the passage quoted by Stapfer,
says: 'Landino struggles, but I fear in vain, to extricate Brutus from the unworthy
lot which is here assigned him. He maintains that by Brutus and Gassius are not
meant the individuals known by those names, but any who put a lawful monarch
to death. Yet if Gsesar was such, the conspirators might be regarded as deserving
of their doom. ... If Dante, however, believed Brutus to have been actuated by
evil motives in putting Gsesar to death, the excellence of the patriot's character in
other respects would only have aggravated his guilt in that particular.*]
71. Lucillius saying true] See V, iv, 30.
ACT V, sc. v.] IVLIVS CjESAR 275
0£la. All that feruM BrutuSyl will entertaine them. 72
Fellow, wilt thou beftow thy time with me ?
Stra. ly\{ MeffcUa will preferre me to you.
O^a. Do fo , good Mejfala. 75
MeJfUn How dyed my Mailer Siratol
Stra. I held the Sword, and he did run on it.
Meffa. OSlauiuSy then take him to follow thee.
That did the latefl feruice to my Mafter.
Ant. This was the Nobleft Roman of them all : 80
All the Confpirators faue onely hee,
Did that they did, in enuy of great Cafar :
He, onely, in a generall honeft thought.
And common good to all, made one of them. 84
75. goo^ Om. Cap. Steev. Van. '03, Han.
'13. 83, 84. generall honeft..,And\ gener-
76. Majler] Om. Fa. Lord F,F4, i?i«, Akm«/...Of Coll. ii,iii (MS), Craik.
Rowe,-f-. g€neral-konest.,.And Walker (Crit., i,
78. then take him] lake kim then 29), Dyce ii, iii, Huds. iii.
72. entertaine] That is, employ , take into service.
74. preferre] That is, recommend; compare: 'Shylock thy master spoke with me
this day And hath preferred thee.' — Mer, of Ven., II, ii, 155.
80. This was the Noblest Roman of them all] Dowden (p. 306): The
life of Brutus, as the lives of such men must be, was a good life, in spite of its dis-
astrous fortunes. He had found no man who was not true to him. And he had
known Portia. The idealist was predestined to failure in the positive world. But
for him the true failure would have been disloyalty to his ideals. Of such failing
he stiffered none. Octavius and Mark Antony remained victors at Philippi. Yet
the purest wreath of victory rests on the forehead of the defeated conspirator. —
Snider (ii, 255): These lines are often quoted as Shakespeare's actual opinion of
Brutus, but they are spoken by Antony, to whom they appropriately belong, and
to nobody else. — Boas (p. 472): With characteristic felicity Antony, in his fare-
well tribute, gives Brutus the praise that he would have coveted most, of being a
pattern specimen of himianity. Dante, with his keen imperialistic sympathies,
consigns Brutus and Cassius to the lowest circle of the Inferno, with Judas as their
companion in torture. Shakespeare, on the contrary, exhibits their motives and
aims in the most favourable light. Yet the play is a demonstration throughout of
the inevitable trimnph of Caesarism.
81. saue onely hee] Abbott (§ 118): 'Save' here seems to be used for
saved f and 'he' to be the nominative absolute. [Compare: 'Save I alone.' — ^HI,
ii, 68.]
83, 84. a generall honest thought, And common good to all] Colliek
(Notes f etc., p. 430) observes, in regard to the MS correction (see Text. Notes),
that: 'It is hardly requiring too much, in such a case, to suppose that the scribe
misheard generous and wrote ''general"; but the propriety of introducing the
change into the text is a matter of discretion.' — ^To this moderate admission Singer
276 THE TRACED IE OF [act v, sc.t.
His life was gentle, and the Elements 85
So mixt in him, that Nature might fland vp,
And fay to all the World; This was a man. ij
(Sh. Vindicated, p. 249) retorts: 'We may trust he [Collier] wili be discreet enoog^
to avoid it.' — Craik (p. 378) pronounces the MS reading 'a great improvcniait
upon the old text/ and adds: 'To act "in a general honest thought" is pohaps
intelligible, though barely so; but, besides the tautdogy which must be admitted on
the common interpretation, what is to act ''in a aunmon good to all"?' — ^Wright
gives the answer to Craik's question thus: ' Under the influence of a general honest
motive, and for the common good of all. The construction b loose, as in "Impa-
tient of my absence And grief, that young Octavius," etc., IV, iii, X7I1 but there
is no necessity to read with Collier's MS annotator.'
85-87. His life was gentle . . . This was a man] Steevens compares:
'He was a man (then boldly dare to say)
In whose rich soul the virtues well did suit;
In whom so mix'd the elements all lay.
That none to one could sov'reignty impute;
As all did govern, so did all obey:
He of a temper was so absolute.
As that it seem'd, when nature him began,
She meant to show all that might be in man.' —
Dra3rton, Baron's Wars, 1598, canto iu.^
Malone notes that the original title of this poem was Martitneriados, The Lamentable
Civil Warres of Edward the Second and the BarronSy and that it was published hdon
1598. 'But,' continues Malone, 'Drayton afterwards newmodelled the piece
entirely, and threw it into stanzas of eight lines, making some retrenchments and
many additions and alterations throughout. An edition of his poems was published
in 1602, but it did not contain The Baron's Wars in any form. They [Qu. itf] first
appeared with that name in the edition of 1608. . . . The lines quoted by Steevens
are from the edition of 1619. ... I am inclined to think that Drayton was the
copyist. ... He perhaps had seen this play when it was first exhibited, and per-
haps between 1613 and 1619 had perused the MS. ... It is not improbable that
both poets were indebted to Ben Jonson, who has this passage in Cynthia's Revdls,
acted in 1600 and printed in 1601 : '' A creature of a most perfect and divine temper:
one in whom the humours and elements are peaceably met without emulation of
precedency." — II, iii. (p. 266; ed. Gifford'). — R. G. WmxE: Even if the likeness
between the passages in question must necessarily be the consequence of imitation
on the part of one poet, it would not follow that Drayton was the copyist. For we
know that Shakespeare was ready enough to take a hint or even a thought from
any quarter; and a decision that he did not do so in this case (imitation being pre-
sumed) must rest upon the previous establishment of the fact that Jul. Cas. was
written before 1603; as to conclude, from the resemblance, that the play was pro-
duced before the recasting of the poem is to beg the question in the most palpable
way. . . . Imitation of one poet by the other might have been more reasonably
charged ... [on account of] the following similarity between a speech of Antony's
and another passage in The Baron's Wars:
ACT V, sc. v.] IVLIVS C^SAR 277
0£la. According to his Vertue, let vs vfe him 88
Withall Refpea,and Rites of Buriall.
89. WiAhaWi With aU F3F4.
' 'I tell you that, which you yourselves do know;
Shew you sweet Cssar's wounds, poor, poor dumb mouths,
And bid them speak for me; but were I Brutus,
And Brutus Antony, there were an Antony
Woiild ruffle up your spirits, and put a tongue
In every wound of Caesar's.' — ^III, ii, 234-239.
'That now their woimds (with mouthes euen open'd wide)
Lastly inforc'd to call for present death,
That wants but tongues, your swords doe giue them breath.' —
Barents Wars^ Bk, ii, st. 38 (ed. 1603).
Which was thus altered for the edition of 16 19, in which it is a part of stanza 39:
'So that their Woundes, like Mouthes, by ga|Mng wide,
Made as they meant to call for present Death,
Had they but Tongues, their deepnesse gives them breath.'
85, 86. Elements So mixt in him] Nases (5. v. Elements): Man was supposed
to be composed of the four elements, the due proportion and conmuxture of
which in his composition was what produced in him every kind of perfec-
tion, mental and bodily. The four temperaments, or complexions, which
were supposed immediately to arise from the four humours, were also more
remotely referred to the four elements. Thus in Microcosmus the four com-
plexions enter, and, being asked by whom they are sent, reply: 'Our parents,
the four elements'; and each afterwards refers himself to his proper element:
Choler to fire; Blood to air; Phlegm to water; Melancholy to earth, [Act II, sc. i.].
No idea was ever more current or more highly in favour than this, particularly
with the poets. Hence Sir Toby inquires: 'Does not our life consist of the four
elements?' — Twelfth Nighl, II, iii, 9. [Nares then quotes the present passage and
also that from The Baron's Wars given by Malone, and thus concludes]: It has been
doubted which author copied the other; but the thought was so much public
property at that time as to be obvious to every writer. So Browne says of a lady
that such a jewel 'was never sent To be possesst by one sole element. But such a
work nature disposde and gave Where all the elements concordance have.' — Brit,
Past.y i, I, p. 8. The thought of Shakespeare's 44th and 45th Sonnets, which form
but one poem, turns chiefly upon this supposed combination; among other things
he says: 'My life being made of four, with two alone Sinks down to death oppress'd
with melancholy.' [Nares follows this with quotations from The Mirror for Mag-
istrates; Massinger's Renegado; Sir John Davies' Immortality of the Soul; Ant. ^
Cleo.y and Beaiunont and Fletcher's Nice Valour, wherein allusion is made to this
doctrine that four elements in equal proportion made a perfect disposition. The
idea was common property, and in this instance, therefore, both Drayton and
Shakespeare may be freed from the charge of plagiarism. — ^Ed.]
87. This was a man] Upon which word is the emphasis here to be placed? —
Joseph Hxtnter (ii, 151) decides that 'was' is the important word; metrically the
accent there falls; but even then does not the sense require that we read it, ' This
was a man'? — Ed.
2/8 THE TRACED IE OF IVLIVS CjESAR [act v, sc ▼.
Within my Tent his bones to night fhall ly, 90
Mofl like a Souldier ordered Honourably :
So call the Field to refl, and let's away^
To part the glories of this happy day. Exeunt omnes.
FINIS. 94
93. omnes.l Om. Cap. 94. FINIS.] Om. F4.
92. the Field] Wright: That is, the army on the field of battle.
APPENDIX
379
APPENDIX
THE TEXT
'The Tragedie of Jultds C.£Sar' was first printed in the Folio of 1623, where
it occupies twenty-two pages, from p. 109 to p. 130 inclusive, in the division of
Tragedies, between Timon and Macbeth. The Acts alone are indicated — ^with the
exception of scena prima at the beginning.
Collier: The manuscript originally used for the Folio must have been ex-
tremely perfect and free from corruptions, for there is, perhaps, no drama in the
volume more accurately printed.
The Cambrhx^e Editors, on account of the freedom from corruptions in the
Text, opine that Jul. Cces. 'may perhaps have been (as the preface [in the Folio]
falsely implied that all were) printed from the original manuscript of the author.'
List of Emendations Adopted in the Text of the Cambridge Edition
This List does not include Stage Directions; divisions into metrical lines; mere
punctuation, such as changing an / into an ?] nor changes of q)elling, such as
Pompey*s for 'Pompeyes*; months for 'moneths.' The Four Folios arc considered as
one text. The lines are nimibered according to the Text, as in the present volume.
In the following passages —
Rowe amends Maughter' to laugher, — ^I, ii, 84.
Grant White amends 'old men, fooles,' to old men fool. — ^I, iii, 74.
Cam. Edd. amend 'Is fauors like' to infavor^s like. — I, iii, 141.
Theobald amends 'first of March' to ides of March. — II, i, 45.
Capell amends 'heare' to are. — ^11, ii, 64.
Johnson amends 'lane' to law. — ^III, i, 47.
Theobald amends 'hart' to heart. — ^III, i, 231.
Staunton amends 'obiects, arts' to objects, orts. — ^IV, i, 42.
Pope amends 'Pluto's' to Plutus*. — IV, iii, 112.
DATE OF COMPOSITION
Capell (i, pt ii, p. 99): This play is, perhaps, some ten years younger [than the
Mer. of Ven.y 1598J, if (as it is probable) the three Roman plays were writ together;
for one of them, Ant.^ Cleo., is entered in the books of the Stationers' Company
under the year 1608.
28Z
282 APPENDIX
Malone (Variorum, 1S21, ii, 295), in his Chronological Order d the plajfi,
places Jul. Cos. 27^ in the list, with the date 1607, between Macbdk and TtM^
Night. 'Lord Sterline's Julius Oesar/ says Malone (ibid., p. 446), 'thouc^ not
printed till 1607, might have been written a year or two before; and periiaps hs
publication in that year was in consequence of our author's i^y on the same
subject being then first exhibited.' [SeeMalone'snoteonI,i,x.] The same obser-
vation may be made with respect to an anonymous perfonnance, called The
Tragedy of Julius dtsar and Pompey, or Casar^s Revenge, of which mn edition (I
believe the second) was likewise printed in 1607. There is an edition without date,
which probably was the first This (day, as appears by the title-page, was ixivatdy
acted by the students of Trinity College, Oxford. In the running title it n caDed
The Tragedy of Julius C(Bsar, perhaps the better to impose it on the public for the
performance of Shakespeare. The subject of that piece is the defeat of Pompey at
Pharsalia, the death of Julius, and the final overthrow of Brutus and Caarius at
Philippi. The attention of the to?m being, perhaps, drawn to the history of the
hooh-nosed fdlow of Rome, by the exhibition o£ Shakespeare's Jul. Cea^ the book-
sellers, who printed these two plays, mig^t have flattered themselves with the hope
of an expeditious sale for them at that time, especially as Shakespeare's play was not
then published. It does not appear that Lord Sterline's Julius Ceuar was ever
acted: neither it nor his other plays being at all calculated for dramatic exhibitioo.
On the other hand, Shakespeare's Jul. Cos. was a very popular piece; as we leain
from Digges, a contemporary writer, who . . . has alluded to it as one of [Shake-
speare's] most celebrated performances. [See note by Theobald on IV, iii, z.]
We have certain proof that Ant. 6* Cleo. was composed before the middle of the
year 1608. An attentive review of that play and Jul. C(bs. will, I think, lead us
to conclude that this latter was first written. Not to insbt on the dironoiogy of
the story, which would naturally suggest this subject to our author before the other,
in Jul. Cos, Shakespeare does not seem to have been thoroughly possessed of
Antony's character .... Antony is not fully delineated till he appears in [Ani. fir
Cleo.]. The rough sketch would naturally precede the finished picture. ... If
the date of The Maid's Tragedy [by Beaiunont and Fletcher] were ascertained, it
might throw some light on the present enquiry; the quarrelling scene between
Melantius and his friend being manifestly from a similar scene in Jul. Cos., [IV,
ill.]. . . . That the Maid*s Tragedy was written before z6zi is ascertained by a
MS play now extant, entitled The Second Maid*s Tragedy, which was licensed by
Sir George Buck, on the 31^' of October, 161 1. I believe it never was printed.
If, therefore, we fix the date of the original Maid's Tragedy in i6zo, it agrees suffi-
ciently well with that here assigned to Jul. Cos. [In regard to this play mentioned
in the Vertue MSS, Collier (Jntrod., p. 5) says: 'This might be the produc-
tion of Lord Stirling, Shakespeare's drama, that written by Munday, Drayton,
Webster, Middleton, and others [entitled C(gsar*s Fall], or a play printed in 1607,
imder the title of The Tragedy of Julius Ctesar and Pompey. Mr Peter Cimning-
ham, in his Revel* s Accounts (Inlrod., p. xxv.), has shown that a dramatic piece, with
the title of The Tragedy of C<tsar, was exhibited at Court on Jan. 31, 1636-7.']
Chaucers (p. 431): It is more than probable that the argument of Alexander
[Earl of Stirling's] play supplied Shakespeare with his outline; as the play itseli
furnished Shakespeare with thoughts and expressions to fill up the figrire. It is,
therefore, improbable that our poet produced his Jul. Ctes. before 1607. . . .
I have not observed any note of time in the play itself which would make this
DATE OF COMPOSITION— DRAKE^COLLIER 283
Inference more certain. [In the list of all the plays in order Chalmers places JvX.
Cos. the 29^, between Macbeth and Ant, dc Cleo. Was he forgetful of the fact
that Plutarch furnished 'the argument' to both the Earl of Stirling and Shake-
speare?— ^EdJ
Drake (5A. and his Times) decides upon 1607 as the most likely date of the
composition, and in his chronological list likewise places Jul, C<bs. between Macbeth
and Anl. 6* Cleo.
Knight: The passages [in i4ii/. 6" CUo, to which Malone has referred] do not so
much point to the general historical notion of the characters, as to the poet's own
mode of treating them. This would imply that the play of Jul, Cos, had preceded
that o(Ant,&r Cleo. But there is nothing to fix the exact time when either of them
was written. We believe that they were among the latest works of Shakespeare.
Collier (Introd,, p. 3): We think there is good ground for believing that Jul.
Cits, was acted before 1603. We found this opinion upon some circumstances
connected with the publication of Drayton's Baron* s Wars, and the resemblance
between a stanza there found and a passage in Jul. Cxs. [In the notes to the
passage to which Collier refers, 'His life was gentle; and the elements So mix'd in
him, that Nature might stand up And say to all the world. This was a man,' — V,
V, 85, win be found the opinions of Malone, Steevens, and others in regard to the
similarity between this and the verse from Drayton which Collier compares; for
convenience of reference this verse is here repeated: 'Such one he was, of him we
boldly say, In whose rich soul all sovereign powers did suit. In whom in peace th'
elements all lay So mix'd, as none could sovereignty impute; As all did govern,
yet all did obey: His lively temper was so absolute. That 't seem'd, when heaven
his model first began. In him it shew'd perfection in a man.' Malone was aware
that this stanza was not in the early issue, 1596, of Mortimeriados; and that the
entire form of the poem, as well as the name, was altered in a later edition, but he
apparently did not know that any edition earlier than that of 1608 contained this
stanza, or that before that time the name was changed to The Baron^s Wars.
Collier thus continues]: 'This course [the change of form and name] Drayton took
before 1603. . . . We apprehend that he did so because he had heard or seen
Jul. C(Bs. before then; and we think that strong presimiptive proof that he was the
borrower, and not Shakespeare, is derived from the fact that in the subsequent
impressions of The Baron's Wars, in 1605, 1608, 1610, and 1613, the stanza remained
precisely the same as in the edition of 1603; but that in 1619 . . . Drayton made
even a nearer approach to the words of his original: "He was a man, then boldly
dare to say, In whose rich soul the virtues well did suit; In whom so mix'd the
elements did lay. That none to one could sovereignty impute; As all did govern,
so did all obey: He of a temper was so absolute, As that it seem'd when Nature him
began, She meant to show all that might be in man." ' [To Steevens is due the
credit for noticing first the similarity between this later form of the verse and the
passage in Jul. C<bs. From the mention, in Hamlet, IH, ii, of the Capitol as the
scene of Qesar's assassination, and its representation in that place in the present
play. Collier adduces that Jul. C<es. is the older of the two tragedies. That this was
the poptilar notion is shown by many references to other writings; to these ex-
amples Colh'er adds: 'Thy stately Capitol (proud Rome) had not beheld the
bloody fall of pacified Caesar, if nothing had accompanied him,' Edward Djrer,
284 APPENDIX
•
Prayse of Notkingy 1585; and thus concludes: 'Robert Greene, a graduate of both
Universities, makes the same statement, and Shakespeare may have followed aooDe
older play, where the assassination scene was laid in the CapitoL Chaucer had so
spoken of it in his Monk's Tale,* — For a further discussion on this p<»nt, see nofcet,
m, i, 18.— Ed.
Vesflanck {IfUrod., p. 6) quotes the fc»egoing remarks by Collier, and thus
comments: Allowing that the resemblance pointed out to be one not admitting <rf
the easy explanation of an origin conunon to both, or of an accidental coincideoce,
it no more proves Drayton to be the copyist than Shakeqieare. The improved
edition of the Baron* s Wars had been printed in 1603; and if it had then been read
by the great dramatist, he might have afterwards unconsdoualy used this or any
other thought, and so improved the expression of it that Drayton, in his subsequent
version of this poem, was induced to improve his original thou^t in somewhat
the same words. This is as probable a solution as Mr Collier's, and more so, as it
agrees better with the other evidence — if, indeed, there be any need of a conjectuial
h3^pothesis on the subject, which I do not think there is. But the truth is that,
however uncommon the idea and expression may now appear to the modem reader,
both were, in the age of Shakespeare and Drayton, familiar to tO\ readers of poetry,
and part of the conmion property of all writers. . . . [See Note on V, v, 85, by
Nares.] Thus it is quite evident that there cannot well be a slighter foundation for
any chrondogical argument than that drawn from such a supposed imitation of
one writer from another, when the opinions, images, and expressions are part of the
common-place property of the writers of the age. . . . Thus the composition of this
drama, like CorioL^ may, with all reasonable probability, be assigned to some of the
seven or eight years subsequent to 1607 — that period of the author's life, and of
the history of English liberty, when the principles of popular rights were first dis-
tinctly and continuously brought into collision with the doctrine of divine regal
power and prerogative.
W. W. Lloyd (ap. Singer, viii, 515): My own impression is, as regards the play
[by Mimday, Drayton, Middleton, etc.] and the poem [Mortimeriados] of 1602-3,
that Shakespeare's drama was subsequent to them, an impression, however, due
to little more than his readiness to welcome every scattered beauty he encoimtered,
and then to the preoccupation of these years with the composition of other dramas
of pretty certain and confirmed chronology.
CsAiK (p. 49), after presenting substantially Malone's reasons, concludes that
'the present Play can hardly be assigned to a date later than 1607; but there is
nothing to prove that it may not be of considerably earlier date. It is evident that
the character and history of Julius Cssar had taken a strong hold of Shakespeare's
imagination. There is perhaps no other historical character who b so repeatedly
alluded to throughout his PIa3rs.' [Craik gives in full the passages wherein men-
tion is made of Caesar; to economise space the references only are here given]:
As You Like It, V, ii, 34; 2 Hen. IV: I, i, 23; Hen, V: V, Prol. 28; i Hen, VI:
I, i, 56; 76., I, ii, 139; 2 Hen, VI: IV, vii, 65; 3 Hen, VI: V, v, 53; Rick, III:
III, i, 69-84; Hamlet, I, i, 114; 76., V, i, 236; Ant, 6* Cleo., I, v, 29; 76., II, vi,
passim; lb,. III, ii, 54; 76., Ill, xiii, 82; Cymb., II, iv, 21; 76., Ill, i, passim,
[To these may be added: Merry Wives, I, iii, 9; Meas,for Meas., II, i, 263; Love*s
Labour^ V, ii, 618; Rich, II: V, i, 2; 2 Hen, VI: IV, i, 137; Rich, III: IV, iv, 336;
DATE OF COMPOSITION^BATHURST—HUDSON 285
J Ben. VI: III, i, 18; Macbeth, III, i, 57; OiheUoy 11, iii, 127.]— Mark Hunter
{IfUred,, p. Izxviii.) refers to the foregoing note by Craik, and says: 'Of such allu-
sions, however, there is not one in any authentic play of Shakespeare of earlier
date than 1599 that betrays any knowledge of Julius which is not popular or tradi-
tional/ In a foot-note he remarks: 'The allusions in the three parts of Hen, VL
are of a different character, but those in Pt i. occur in scenes admittedly not Shake-
speare's, while all the allusions in Parts 2 and 3 are found word for word in the
older plays, The^ Contention and the True Tragedy, in which plays Shakespeare's
share is much more than doubtful. . . . Most of the [later] allusions are clearly
traceable to Plutarch. It is not contended that Shakespeare was unacquainted with
North's Plutarch before 1599.'
Bathurst (p. 79) : From the verse, I should say positively that [Jul, Cos,] is not
so late as 1602. It is mostly unbroken, like the Histories. Antony's speech,
'O pardon me, thou bleeding piece of earth,' III, i, 283, is remarkably unbroken
and antiquated in the metre; his speech, '0 mighty Caesar,' lb., 1. 170, much the
reverse. Between the two we have instances of the weak ending; and so in
Brutus's soliloquy:
'All the interim is
Like a Phantasma.'
■
It is worth while to compare the last speech [V, v, 88-93] ^th that oi Ant, b'
Cleo., in pari materid.
Both Dyce and Staunton follow Collier in assigning Jul. Ctes. to a date prior
to 1603.
Haluwell (Folio Edition, xiii, 374): Jul, Ctts, was written in or before the year
1601, as appears from the following lines in Weever's Mirror of Martyr's, printed in
that year, — alines which unquestionably are to be traced to a recollection of Shake-
speare's drama, not to that of the history as given by Plutarch:
'The many-headed multitude were drawne
By Brutus speech, that Cssar was ambitious
When eloquent Mark Antonie had showne
Hb Vertues, who but Brutus then was vicious?'
This interesting allusion disposes of the various theories which have assigned the
composition of Jul, Ctes, to a later date. [Halliwell saw fit, however, to modify
this assertion, and in his Outlines, ed. ii, 1883, he thus refers to these lines: 'There
is supposed to be a possibility, derived from an apparent reference to Jul, Ccu, in
Weever's Mirror of Martyr* s, that this tragedy was in esdstence as early as 1599.
. . . Shakespeare's was not, perhaps, the only drama of the time to which the lines
of Weever were applicable.' — Ed.]
HxTDSON (Life, etc., ii, 222) : It seems to me that in Jul, Cas. the diction is more
gliding and continuous, and the imagery more round and amplified, than in the
dramas known to have been of the poet's latest period. . . . Take a sentence from
the soliloquy of Brutus just after he has pledged himself to the conspiracy:
"Tis a common proof
That lowliness is young ambition's ladder,
\
286 APPENDIX
Whereto the dimber-upward turns his face;
But, when he once attains the upmost round,
He then unto the ladder turns his back,
Looks in the clouds, scorning the base degrees
By which he did ascend.'
Here we have a full, rounded period in which all the elements seem to have been
adjusted, and the whole expression set in order, before any part o£ it was wiittea
down. The beginning foresees the end, the end remembers the beginning, and the
thought and image are evolved together in an even, continuous flow. The thing ifl»
indeed, perfect in its way, still it is not in Shakespeare's latest and hi^best style.
Now compare with this a passage from the WitA. Tale:
'When you speak, sweet,
I'd have you do it ever: when you sing,
I'd have you buy and sell so; so give alms;
Pray so; and for the ordering your a£fairs,
To sing them too: when you do dance, I wish you
A wave o' the sea, that you might ever do
Nothing but that; move still, still so, and own
No other function.'
Here the workmanship seems to make and shape itself as it goes along, thougjit
kindling thought, and image prompting image, and each part neither cooceming
itself with what has gone before nor what is coming after. The very sweetness has
a certain piercing quality, and we taste it from clause to clause, ahnost from word
to word, as so many keen darts of poetic rapture shot forth in rapid successioo.
Yet the passage, notwithstanding its swift changes of imagery and motioo, is
perfect in unity and continuity. Such is, I believe, a fair illustration of what
has long been familiar to me as the supreme excellence of Shakespeare's ripest,
strongest, and most idiomatic style. Ant, br Cleo. is pre-eminently rich in this
quality, but there is enough of it in The Tempest^ WirU. Tale, Corid., and Hen,
VIII. to identify them as belonging to the same stage and period of authwship.
But I can find hardly so much as an earnest of it in Jul. C<es.; and nothing short of
very strong positive evidence would induce me to class this drama with these, as
regards the time of writing. [Hudson, therefore, on the evidence of Halliwell's
quotation from Weever, adopts a date prior to 1601. — Ed.)
FuRNiVALL (Succession of Sh.^s Plays, p. xxxix.) : [We must take into account
that] Shaksi)ere's great patron and friend, Southampton, was declared traitor and
imprisoned in 1601 ; was threatened with death, and in almost daily danger of it till
Elizabeth's own death in 1603 set him free through EJng James; the rebellion and
execution of Essex, Southampton's friend and the cause of his ruin, to whom Shak-
spere had two years before alluded with pride in his Prologue to Hen. F., 1. 30.
At any rate, the times were out of joint. Shakspere was stirred to his inmost
depths, and gave forth the grandest series of tragedies that the world has ever seen:
Hamlet (followed by the tragi-comedy Meas.for Meas.), Jul. Cas., Othello, Madbdk,
Lear, Tro. fir Cress., Ant. 6* Cleo., Coriol., Timon. [In a following 'Trial table'
Fumivall assigns the date 1 601-3 to Jul. Cas.] In a letter to The Academy, 18 Sep-
tember, 1875, Fumivall writes: *I must note, too, how closely Shakespeare's
Julius Casar, 1601, would come home to the ears and hearts of this same London
DATE OF COMPOSITION— FLEA Y 287
audience of z6oi, after the favourite's outbreak against his Sovereign. Ei tu,
Brute? would mean more to them than to us. Indeed, it b possible that the con-
spiracy against Elizabeth may have made Shakespeare choose 1601 as the time for
producing, if not writing, his great tragedy, with its fruitful lesson of conspirators'
ends.' This date he also adopts in the Introd. to the Leopold Shakespeare, p. Ixvii.
In reference to the foregoing conmiunication Wright {Introd,^ p. xlv.), after calling
attention to 'the singular reticence of Shakespeare with regard to contemporary
events,' says: 'To my own mind the coincidence in time between the representa-
tion of the play, assuming the date 1600-160Z to be correct, with the desperate
attempt of Essex, is a coincidence only, so far as regards Shakespeare. Still the
hearers would have their own thoughts, and the play to them might have a mean-
ing which the author did not consciously intend.'
Fleay (5Ar. Soc, Trans., 1874, P* 357) opines that Jul, Cos, as it appears in the
Folio is but an alteration and abridgement, by Ben Jonson, of Shakespeare's
original play. His reasons for so deciding are substantially as follows: In all the
plays, oUier than Jul. Ccbs., wherein the name Anthony occurs, it is spelt with th;
in this play it is, however, either Antony or Anionic, which is the form used by
Ben Jonson in Catiline; again, the number of participles in -ed, with final syllable
pronounced, is out of proportion to that in other plays; certain phrases which appear
only in Jul. Ctts. may be also found in Jonson's works, e. g., 'come home to you,'
I, ii, 328, b not found elsewhere in Shakespeare with just this shade of meaning,
equivalent to the French ' chez toV; Jonson, in Catiline, has, however, ' I'll come home
to you,' in, i, [ed. GiflFord, p. 252]; 'quality and kind,' I, iu, 73, is not used by
Shakespeare, who speaks of 'quality and brain,' 'quality and name.' Jonson,
Eoery Man In His Humour, has, 'Spirits of our kind and quality,' II, i; 'bear
me hard,' which occurs three times in Jul. C<bs. and in no other of Shakespeare's
plays, is used by Jonson, who has: 'Ay, though he bear me hard I yet must do him
right.' — Catiline, IV, v, [ed. Gifford, p. 318]. The large proportion of short lines
where no pause is required is an evidence of abridgement for representation.
This is quite unlike Shakespeare in his complete work; but may be seen in the
surreptitious quartos of Hamlet and Rom. £r Jul. The niunber of once-used words is
not great, which is in Jonson's manner, since we know his dislike to strange words
as shown by the last Act of The Poetaster. It is probable, Fleay thinks, that Shake-
speare worked with Jonson on Sejanus in 1602, and what then more likely than
that Jonson should be chosen to remodel Shakespeare's play if needed in a form
shorter than originally written. The practice of following up a successful play by
others is well-known. * Is it not, then, highly probable,' asks Fleay, * that this play,
produced about 1601 originally, should be revived in 1607, the date of Lord Ster-
ling's Julius C(Bsar and of C(Bsar*s Revenge, ... or if it were produced in 1607, as
Malone believes, that the other play was then published in rivalry to it? In any
case I think it likely that some production or reproduction was at that date, and
another after Shakespeare's death, with Jonson's alterations. There is a stilted
feeling about the general style of this which is not the style of Jonson, but just
what one would fancy Shakespeare would become with an infusion of Jonson.'
As regards the resemblance between the quarreling scene, in The Maid's Tragedy,
and that between Brutus and Cassius, Fleay decides that Beaumont and Fletcher's
play 'was probably produced in 1609, the year after Philaster [which is imitated
from Cymb.]. It is, therefore, not improbable that Jul. Ctts. was reproduced in the
year after, or, at any rate, about the same time as Cmyh., that is, in or close on 1607,
288 APPENDIX
just as Shakespeare's fourth period began.' Fleay caUs attentum to the like me
of the word 'lane/ meaning narrow conceits, in the line as in the Fdio, ' the lane of
children/ III, i, 48, and a passage in Jonaon's Staple of News; but herein he has
been anticipated by Steevens both in the interpretation and illustcation (see note
ad loc, cU.). The Folio reading has not, moreover, been accepted by any editor
since Johnson's emendation ' law,* Fleay also notices (as did Malone) the similarity
between that passage in V, v, 'His life was gentle, and the elements So mixed in
him,' etc., and the lines in Cynthia* s Revdls (acted in 1600): 'A creature of a most
divine temper: one in whom the humours and elements are peaceably met without
precedency.' — ^11, iii. ' Surely,' adds Fleay, ' Shakespeare did not deliberately copy
Jonson: but if he wrote before him, Jul, Cess, must come before 1600, into the
time of the historical plays. This agrees with the date of allusion discovered by
Halliwell, but the paucity of rh3rmes, number of short lines, and brevity of the
play are conclusive as to its not having been produced in its present state at that
date. It has been abridged by some one for theatrical representation — if not by
Jonson, by some one else.' The final step in Fleay's argument is concerned with
that passage in Jonson's Discoveries, which has already been the source of so
much conmient, wherein Jonson, in illustration of the many errors of the man whose
memory he honoured ' this side of idolatry,' quotes a line presumably as it originally
appeared in this play: 'as when he said in the person of Caesar, one speaking to
him, "Cssar, thou dost me wrong." He replied, "Caesar did never wrong but
with just cause."' From this Fleay deduces the following: '(i) That a line m
Jid, Cos,, as it originally stood, has been altered from its first form as quoted by
Jonson into: "Know Caesar doth not wrong, nor without cause WUl he be satis-
fied " [as it now stands in the Folio text, HI, i, 56]. (2) That this alteration had been
made in the acting a^y, . . . though Jonson's statement of its being an alteration
was not published till after his death in 1637. (3) That Jonson gives this as one of
"many" instances. We cannot now find these in Shakespeare's works, but it is a
fair inference that other similar corrections have been made. (4) These alterations
were not commonly known; such an opportunity for what our forefathers called
"merry jests" would never have been lost. We have, then, a play in which one
error at least has been corrected; and an author to whom this correction was pri-
vately known — a play in which there is a deficiency of some thousand lines as
compared with the others of the same class by the same author; ... a play with
various peculiar phrases and usages of words; and the same critic-author in whose
works these peculiar words and phrases are found. Add to these considerations
. . . the probability that these two writers had worked together on Sejanus, and
I think there is a case made out that the play of Jtd, Cck, as we have it was cor-
rected by Ben Jonson, whether it had been produced by Shakespeare in 1 600-1
in a diflFerent form or not. If it had, ... it would be written by him as a con-
tinuation of the series of Histories immediately after Hen, F, to which play the
general style of Jul. Cas. seems to be more like than to any other work of Shake-
speare. ... If the allusion [in Hamlet j III, ii, 109-11 1] is to Shakespeare's play,
it distinctly points to an acting of Caesar's part by an inferior player: which would
give us a reason for the ill-success of the piece at its first production. Hamlet's
speech — " Be the players ready? " — so strongly contrasts Polonius with the good
actors, that he must, I think, be referring to some actual performer. ... Of
course, as I hold the alterations in this play ... to have taken place principally
at the ends of speeches, and especially at the ends of scenes, the proportion oi
rhymes has been too seriously interfered with to be of any use by way of com-
DATE OF COMPOSITION-'FURNIVALL^INGRAM 289
parison with other plays of Shakespeare.' — [This article is reprinted in Fleay^s
Shakespeare Manual^ ch. xi, pp. 262-270. In his Life of Shakespeare, 1886, he
adopts a date anterior to 1601 as the most likely on account of the allusions in
Mirror of Martyrs and Hamlet , the Quarto of which appeared in 1601. — Ed,]
FuRNiVALL (jSh. Soc. Trans,^ 1874, P* 5^3) characterises the whole of Fleay's
theory as 'mere vagary'; he shows by numerous examples from other plays that
Fleay's assertion, in regard to certain phrases and words peculiar to /«/. Cess.
and plays of Jonson, is not founded on fact and can thus be di^roved; that 'the
spelling of the name Antony is easily accounted for, because the hero's Latin name
Antonius b also given to him in the play, as it also is in Sejanus; that there is no
evidence for the statement that Shakespeare and Jonson worked together on
Sejanus beyond Jonson's words in his recast play: "this book, in all nimibers, is
not the same with that which was acted on the public stage; wherein a second pen
had good share: in place of which, I have rather chosen to put weaker, and, no
doubt, less pleasing, of mme own, than to defraud so happy a genius of his right by
my loathed usurpation." Is it likely that a play of which Shakespeare, about the
best part of his middle time, wrote "good share," would fail; and that when
Jonson re- wrote this "good share," the play would succeed? (Dr Nicholson has
since shown cause to believe that Sheppard was Jonson's helper, as Sheppard claims
that he "dictated" to Jonson when he wrote Sejanus,) . . . Fleay asks us to
believe that Shakespeare wrote Jul. C<bs. in i6oo~i (which is no doubt true),
and that at the very time he was engaged on his other Roman Plays, Coriol. and
Ant, 6* C7«o., in 1606-8, he let Ben Jonson alter his Jul. Ctes, in 1607. Is not this
too great a demand on our credulity? Again, as to the " very important argument "
from Jonson's DiscanerieSy it makes dead against Fleay^s theory. For, as Mr Hales
well remarked to me, if Ben Jonson had really revised Shakespeare's Jul. C<es,^
he would certainly have told us that he, the great Ben, had set his friend's ridicu-
lous passages all right. Jonson was not the man to hide his light imder a bushel.
The only point in the whole paper,' concludes Fumivall, 'which I can at present
accept is the justification of the Folio reading "lane," III, i, 48; and this is taken
without acknowledgement from Steevens.'
J. W. Hales {Sh. Soc, Trans,, 1874, P- 505) '- Of external evidence in favour of
Fleay's theory there is not one trace, nor is there a single fragment of definite
internal evidence.
Professor Ingram (Sh. Soc. Trans, , 1874, p. 450) has compiled a table of the
chronological order of Shakespeare's plays, based on the percentage of 'light
endings' (that is, lines ending with words such as am, has, since, though) and
'weak endings' (such words as and, bid, from, if), 'From this table,' says Ingram,
'the following results seem to be deducible: (i) During the first three-fourths (or
thereabouts) of Shakespeare's life, he used the light endings very sparingly, and
the weak endings scarcely at all. (2) The last fourth (or thereabouts) is . . . un-
mistakably distinguished from the earlier stages by the very great increase in the
number of light endings, and, still more, by the first appearance in any appreciable
number, and afterwards the steady growth, of the weak endings. (3) Hence in
any discrimination of periods which is founded on metrical considerations, this last
may be called the "weak-ending Period." (4) To this Period Cymb, undeniably
belongs. (5) Jul, Cos, belongs, not to tlus, but to the preceding Period.' [In
19
290 APPENDIX
Ingram's table /«/. C(k, stands twentieth in the list, between Meas.for Meas. and
Oihdlo.]
Wabde (i, 424): That Shakespeare's /«/. Cos., at all events in its original fofm,
had appeared several years previously to 1607 seems to be incontestably pioivtd.
[Thus, also, Warde in his revised ed. of 1899; vol. ii, p. 138. — Ed.]
£lze (p. 351) considers the allusion in Weever's Minor cf Martyrs, i6ox, as
'most unequivocal,' and calls attention to a passage in Weever's Dedkaiian, wherein
the author says that his book had 'lain for two years in his desk ready for the
press,' 'and hence,' remarks Elze, 'Shakespeare's Jul. Cits, must have been written
before i6oz, nay, before 1599. This b a striking proof that Shakespeare's career
began and ended earlier than is generally supposed.'
Stokes (p. 35): The great similarity of style between this play and HamUi and
Een. V. has been pointed out by Gervinus . . . and others, and, I suppose, must have
been felt by nearly every reader. It is not only shown by the many allusions to
Caesar in these plays (allusions, by the by, which show a co-ordinate estimation of
his character), but by the 'minor relations' of these plays. This point b so strong
that, taking into consideration some of the references [mentioned by Malone, G>llier,
Halliwell, and others], there can scarcely be any doubt that the original production
of this play must be placed in 1 599-1 600. It may have been revised afterwards,
and the appearance of several works bearing similar titles suggests, as Mr Fleay
says, its reproduction at that date. [To the apparent allusions to Shakespeare's
Jul, C(gs, Stokes adds the following from a collection of poems on the death of
Elizabeth, entitled Sorrowes Joy, 1603: 'Upon the Death of our Late Queene.
They say a comet woOteth to appeare, When Princes baleful destinie is neare; So
Julius Starre was seene with fiery crest, Before his fall to blaze among the rest,'
&c. With this he compares: 'When beggars die there are no comets seen; The
heavens themselves blaze forth the death of princes.* — II, ii, 36.]
Wright (Clarendon, ed. Introd., p. viii.): That Jul. Cas, was not brought out
before 1600 is rendered probable by the use of the word 'eternal* for infernal in
I, ii, 176 [see Note ad loc.]. At the beginning of the seventeenth century it is
evident that public attention had been directed by the Puritan party to the license
of the players, and very shortly after the accession of James I. an Act was passed
to restrain the abuses of the stage. . . . For some reason or other, whereas in
three plays which were all printed in 1600, Shakespeare uses the word 'infernal,'
he substitutes eternal for it in Jul. Cas.y Hamlet, and Othello^ and my inference b
that he did so in obedience to the popular objections which were urged against the
profanity of the stage, and that the plays in which ' eternal ' occurs as the equivalent
of infernal were produced after 1600. If this inference be sound, it follows that
Jul. C(Bs. was brought out subsequently to 1600, and if Weever almost quoted
from it in 1601, the date of the play is fixed between very narrow limits. [Elze
has, however, shown that Weever*s poem was written at least two years before its
publication . — Ed.J
Verity (Introd., p. ix.): The style, versification, and general tone of Jul.
Cas. belong to the period 1 600-1 601 of Shakespeare's career. . . . Having the
more striking allusion in the Mirror of Martyrs, which points so strongly to
DATE OF COMPOSITION^BOAS^OLIPHANT 29I
1600-Z601, we need not lay great stress upon Dra3rton's lines [in The Baron^s
WarSf 1603].
Boas (p. 457): The frequent references to Caesar in HamUi indicate that Shake-
speare had recently been dwelling on the dictator's career, and the kinship of char-
acter between the Danish Prince and Brutus suggests that they were created about
the same time. The st^e of the drama is similar to that of the best comedies and
English history-plays. . . . The conceits of the early days have fallen away, and
the pregnant obscurity of the final period is still to come. . . . Thus z6oo-z6oz
may be confidently accepted as the date.
RoLFE (IfUrod.y p. zo), on the strength of Weever's words in his dedication as
noticed by Elze, thinks: 'We may, therefore, safely assume that Jul. Cos, was
written as early as 1599. As it is not included in the famous list of Shakespeare's
plays in Francis Meres's PaUadis Tamia, published September, Z598, it is improb-
able that it was then in existence. Moreover, the internal evidence of metre, style,
etc., favours the date as thus fixed within very narrow limits.'
Brandes (i, 358): There are several reasons for believing that Jul. Cess, can
scarcely have been produced earlier than z6oi. The years 1599 and z6oo are al-
ready so full of work that we can scarcely assign to them this great tragedy as
well; and internal evidence indicates that the play must have been written about
the same time as Hamlet^ to which its style offers so many striking resemblances.
Mark Hunter: Evidence from external sources goes to show that Jul. C(bs.
was produced not much earlier than Z598, and not later than 1599. If the evidence
is to be trusted, Jul. Ccbs. is not a third period play of the middle-tragedy subdivi-
sion, but a second period play, ranking with the later histories. . • . Metrical
tests provide no groimds for dating Jul. C<bs. later than Z599.
Macmuxan: The internal evidence afforded by the study of the play is in
harmony with . . . the external in the Dedication to the Mirror of Martyrs^ that
Jul. CcBs. was composed not later than the year 1599.
SiDGWiCK (p. 95): The date z6oi [as the year of composition of Jul. Cos.] is
confirmed by the internal evidence from style and versification. Judged purely by
its literary and metrical quality it may be placed at the very point of transition
from Shakespeare's first to his second manner — so far as the tragic style is con-
cerned. It is the fiirst of the great series of plays of deep tragic interest.
E. H. C. Oliphant (Mod. Lang. Review^ Jan., 1909, p. Z90) : Jul. Cos. is most
certainly of two dates, though but little of the early work is left. There is plenty of
reason to believe that the play in some form was in existence in 1599, when Weever
penned an allusion to it and Jonson ridiculed a line from it in Every Man Out of
his Humour. The original play, of which traces are visible here and there, must
have been of very early date; witness the passage V, iii, 51-65: *So I am free, . . .
0 my heart.' The only argument used against an early date for the play is its absence
from Meres's list in 1598, but Meres's list does not pretend to be an exhaustive one,
and if this play was as early and as stiff as the few passages still extant serve to
indicate, it is little wonder that it was not mentioned among the round dozen he
292
APPENDIX
honours with notice. That it was greatly curtailed is shown by the frequency with
which characters who are on the stage are allowed to remain mute. Note particu-
larly that the Lepidus of 11, i. (who is not the Lepidus of IV, i.) appears only once
and does not speak; that in V, iii, Strabo [nc], Volumnius, and Ludlius are all
mute; while two non-characters, Labeo and Flavins, are addressed instead of the
two former, and that Lucius is confounded with Lucilius.
MacCallum (p. 172): Owing to Weever's reference we cannot put /«/. Cos.
after Hamlet^ but it seems to have closer relations with Hamld than with Hem. V.
It is not rash to place it between the two, in 1600 or 1601. This does not, however,
mean that we necessarily have it quite in its original form. On the contrary, there
are indications that it may have been revised some time after the date of com-
position.
Recapttulation :
779 Capell 1607 or 1608
790 Malone 1607
799 Chalmers not before 1607
817 Drake 1607
841 Knight among the latest plays
842 Collier before 1603
847 Verplanck after 1607
856 Lloyd after 1603
857 Craik not later than 1607
857 Dyce ) t * ^
860 Staunton! befoie 1603
865 Halliwell ) i_ r ^
-„ r before 1601
872 Hudson )
874 furntvall 1601-1603
874 Fleay 1601
874 Ingram before Othello and after Meas. for Meas,
875 Warde before 1607
876 Elze before 1599
878 Stokes 1599
878 Wright after 1600
895 Verity ) ^^
896 Boas i
900 RoLFE 1599
900 Brandes before 1601
900 Mark Hunter )
902 Macmillan i ^^
904 SiDGWICK 1601
910 MacCallum .' 1600 or 1601
SOURCE OF THE PLOT
The basis of nearly all the incidents in Jul. C<zs. is to be foimd in the lives of
Julius Casaty Brutus ^ and Mark Antony as given in Sir Thomas North's translation
of Plutarch's Lives of the Noble Grecians and RomaneSy compared togethery the first
edition of which was issued in 1579; the second, in 1595. North's translation was
SOURCE OF THE PLOT— SKEAT— TRENCH
293
not from the origmal Greek, but from the French of Amyot, Bishop of Auzerre,
whose translation, from a Latin version of the original, was first published in 1559,
and later in 1565. North apparently used the earlier edition. Later editions of
North's translation were issued in 1603, 161 2, 1631, 1657, and 1676. — Skeat
{Preface^ p. ix.) says: 'The edition of 1676 is the latest noticed by Lowndes, and I
doubt if the work has ever been reprinted since.* This may be partly accoimted
for if we remember that a new translation, for which Dryden wrote a preface,
appeared in 1683-6, and no doubt took its place, being frequently reprinted tOI
supplanted in its turn by a superior translation by the two Langhomes in 1770.
And thus it came to pass that the translation by North, long popular and much
esteemed, was gradually pushed aside and fell into very unmerited neglect; a fate
which seems all the harder when we observe that the translation which first sup-
planted it was a very indifferent performance.' — ^To this list may be added a revised
edition of the translation called Dryden's, by A. H. Clough, first issued in 1859,
which since then has been several times re-issued, and is now accepted as the
standard edition of modem times.
Shakespeare's method of using his authority has frequently been illustrated
throughout the Commenlary in the foregoing pages, nevertheless I am sure that no
apology b needed for quoting the following remarks on this point by Archbishop
Trench: '[I do not] think it too much to affirm that [Shakespeare's] three great
Roman plays, reproducing the ancient Roman world as no other modem poetry
has ever done — ^I refer to CoriclanuSf Julius CcBsar, and Antony and Cleopatra —
would never have existed, or, had Shakespeare lighted by chance on these arguments,
would have existed in forms altogether different from those in which they now
appear, if Plutarch had not written, and Sir Thomas North, or some other in his
place, had not translated. We have in Plutarch not the framework or skeleton
only of the story, no, nor yet merely the ligaments and sinews, but veiy much also
of the flesh and blood wherewith these are covered and clothed. How noticeable
in this respect is the difference between Shakespeare's treatment of Plutarch and
his treatment of others, upon whose hints, more or less distinct, he elsewhere has
spoken. How little is it in most cases which he condescends to use of the materials
offered to his hand. Take, for instance, his employment of some Italian novel,
Bandello's or Cinthio's. He derives from it the barest outline — a suggestion per-
haps is all, with a name or two here and there, but neither dialogue nor character.
On the first fair occasion that offers he abandons his original altogether, that so he
may expatiate freely in the higher and nobler world of hb own thoughts and fancies.
But his relations with Plutarch are different — different enough to justify, or almost
to justify, the words of Jean Paul, when in his Titan he calls Plutarch "der bio-
graphische Shakespeare der Weltgeschichte." What a testimony we have to the
true artbtic sense and skill, which with all his occasional childish simplicity the
old biographer possesses. In the fact that the mightiest and completest artist of all
times should be content to resign himself into hb hands, and simply to follow where
the other leads.
' Hb Julius CcBsar will abundantiy bear out what I have just affirmed — a play dra-
matically and poetically standing so high that it only just faUs short of that supreme
rank which Lear and OtheUOf Hamlet and Macbeth claim for themselves, without
rival or competitor even from among the creations of the same poet's brain. It
* North's translation is included in the Temple Classics, published by J. M.
Bent. — Ed.
294
APPENDIX
\
is hardly an exaggeration to say that the whole play — and the same stands good o£
Coriolanus no less — ^is to be found in Plutarch. Shakespeare, indeed, has thrown a
rich mantle of poetry over all, which is often wholly his own; but of the incident
there is almost nothing which he does not owe to Plutarch, even as continually he
owes the very wordmg to Sir Thomas North' — (pp. 51, 52).
MacCallum (p. 164) thinks that ' there has been a tendency to overestimate the
loans of the Roman Plays from Plutarch '; and, after quoting a portion of the above
extract from Trench (beginning 'But his relations with Plutarch' and ending
'to follow where the other leads'), says: 'To thb it might be answered, in the first
place, that Shakespeare shows the same fidelity in kind, though not in degree, to
the comparatively inartistic chronicles of his mother-country. That is, it is in
part ... his tribute, not to the historical author, but to the historical subject.
Granting, however, the superior claims of Plutarch, it is yet an overstatement to
say that Shakespeare is content to resign himself into his hands, and simply to
follow where the other leads. . . . Indeed, however much Plutarch would appeal
to Shakespeare in virtue both of his subjects and his methods, it is easy to see that
even as a "grave learned philosopher and historiographer" he is on the hither side
of perfection. He interrupts the story with moral disquisitions, and is a little apt
to preach, and often, through such intrusions and irrelevandes, or the adherence
of the commonplace, his most impressive touches fail of thdr utmost possible
effect : at least he does not always seem aware of the full value of his details, of their
depth and suggestiveness when they are set aright. Yet he is more excdlent in
details than in the whole: he has little arrangement or artistic construction; he is
not free from contradictions and discrepancies; he gives the bricks and mortar,
but not the building, and occasionally some of the bricks are flawed, or the mortar is
forgotten. And his stories have this inorganic character because he is sddom con-
cerned to pierce to the meaning that would give them tmity and coherence. He
moralises, and only too sententiously, whenever an opportimity offers; but of the
principles that underlie the conflicts and catastrophes which, in his free-and-easy
way he describes, he has at best but fragmentary glimpses. And in all this the
difference between the genial moralist and the inspired tragedian is a vast one — so
vast that, when once we j)erceive it, it is hard to retain a fitting sense of the points
of contact. In Shakespeare, Plutarch's weaknesses disappear or, rather, are replaced
by excellences of precisely the opposite kind. ... In a sense he is more of a philo-
sophic historian than his teacher. At any rate, while Plutarch takes his responsibili-
ties lightly in regard both to facts and conclusions, Shakespeare, in so far as that
was possible for an Elizabethan, has a sort of intuition of the principles that
Plutarch's narrative involves; and, while adding some pigment from his own
t'hought and feeling to give them colour and visible shape, accepts them as his
presuppositions which interpret the story and which it interprets. Thus the
influences of North's Plutarch, whether of North's style or of Plutarch's matter,
though no doubt very great, are in the last resort more in the way of suggestion
than of control.'
Delius (Jakrbuckj xvii, pp. 67-81) has made an exhaustive comparison of the
whole Tragedy with the passages from Plutarch; and arrives at practically the
same conclusions as MacCallum: That Shakespeare's indebtedness to North's
translation is not so great as has been generally supposed. — Lloyd (CrU. Essay;
Singer, ed. ii, p. 573) is, I believe, the first to have suggested that the general tone
SOURCE OF THE PLOT—SYKES
295
of Antony's oration seems to indicate an acquaintance with the speech given to An-
tony by Appian in his history of Ihe Gvil Wars, a translation of which was made by
Bjmniman in 1578 (see note on III, ii, 83). — That there is a resemblance may not
be denied; but if this woriL were known to Shakespeare, he has failed to make any
extensive use of it; this one passage is the single place where any marked similarity
is shown. Plutarch's account of Antony's oration is meagre, to say the least, and
Shakespeare may, therefore, have consulted Appian when his main authority failed
him. Lloyd also opines that Antony's sarcastic iteration of 'honourable,' as
applied to Brutus and Cassius, was suggested by passages in Cicero's Sec&nd
Philips (see note, m, ii, 109); but this is, I think, very doubtful; there was
no translation of the Philippics in Shakespeare's time. Any strong corroborative
proof of Shakespeare's use of Suetonius's Lives of the Twdve Casars is lacking,
albeit both Steevens and Malone quote passages in support of this, notably in
reference to Caesar's exclamation, 'Et tu. Brute?' and to the number of wounds
said to have been received by Caesar; but Philemon Holland's is the earliest trans-
lation of Suetonius, and its date (1606) b by several years later than the date of
composition of Jul. C(BS. — ^Dr Sykes (Inlrod.y xiii.) asserts that, besides Plutarch,
Shakespeare 'knew and used Appian, Dio, Ovid, and possibly Suetonius, Valerius
Maximus, Virgil's Georgics, Boccaccio's Life of Casar^ and Eedes' Latin play.'
That Shakespeare was acquainted with these Latin authors is abundantly shown
throughout his works, but in regard to Dion Cassius's Annals of the Roman People
(Dio in Sykes's list) the case is different. No translation of the Annals appeared
until that by Manning in 1704, and had Shakespeare had sufficient knowledge of
Greek to read this author in the original he need not have resorted to North's
translation of Plutarch, which, by incontrovertible evidence, we know he used.
Dion Cassius must, therefore, I think, be excluded on the same grounds as Sueto-
nius; so likewise Valerius Maximus, a translation of whose 'Acts and Sayings of the
Noble Romans' was first given by Speed in 1678. Quotations from all three of
these writers will be found here and there in the Commentary, not, however, in
proof of Shakespeare's intimate knowledge of their writings, but often as a check
on the historic accuracy of his authority, Plutarch.
The question which naturally presents itself then is: Which edition of North's
translation did Shakespeare use? Any discussion of this point is, however, of com-
paratively recent date, and attention was called to it first by the publication of a
pamphlet by A. P. Paton in reference to a copy of North's Plutarch, ed. 161 2,
which was presented to the Greenock Library in 1870. The book had been for-
merly the property of G. J. Weir, of Greenock, and had been purchased by him in
or about 1814. The following description of the volume, and remarks, so far as
they refer to Jul. Cos., are from Paton's pamphlet:
'At the head of the title-page there is written: "Vive :• ut Vivas :• W S :• pretiu
isV' . . . The Folio is full bound. . . . On one of the backs there has been stamped
W. S. In the body of the book there are only two brief notes, and they are ap-
parently by the W. S. of the Title page. Wherever he got the authority for "Et
tu, Brute,** Shakespeare was mainly adhering to North's Plutarch, and using its
language; and at [the accoimt of the assassination], where he, almost for the only
time and decidedly, differs from the historian, there is written on the margin:
"Brute — Brutus" in brackets. The other note is at the "Ides of March," op-
posite which W. S. has put "March 15," which, considering that, if Shakespeare's,
the one would belong to his youth, and the other to his manhood, bears a resem-
blance to the "March 16" in the Berry Autograph, as does the last part of its
296 APPENDIX
"Shakspere" ... to the "Mv« ut Vivas" here. There are also about ott
hundred and four minute but characteristic MS maiks, by this W. S., to pasBtga
in thirteen out ol the sixty-five Lives contained in the volume, and many of the
marked passages ha\*e been found to coneqxiod with passages in the three Roman
Plays. These passages are not such as another W. S., in Shakespeare's lifetime,
would mark in comparing the History with Shakespeare's Plays, A-«Mming that
they were written before 161 2, (which we do not think), for such a person mmt
then have marked hundreds ol passages in the lives of Cesar, Coriolanas, and
Antony, and would not likely mark any passage at a dbtance from those Lives.
Neither would, nor, we may almost say, could Shakespeare mark these lives to
the extent he used them. He would require to study them bodfly, and have them
by heart, and any marks by him on them must have been at points that had been
overlooked, or where some difference was to be made. In JvH, Ccf . among the
seven marked passages are the following: (i) " ... he said it was better to die
once than always to be affraid of death." [See U, ii, 38, 39.] (2) " ... as for
these fat men and smooth combed heads, quoth he, I never reckon of them; but
these pale-visaged and carion leane people, I feare them most, meaning Brutus and
Cassius." [See I, ii, 211-320.] (3) ''It is reported that he had three-and-twentie
wounds upon his bodie." [See V, i, 60.] In the life of Antonius the following pas-
sage is marked: "He used a maner of phrase in his ^)eech called Asiaticke, which
carried the best grace and estimation at that time, and was much like to his man-
ners and life: for it was full of ostentation, foolish bravery and vaine ambition."
Upton (CffV. O&5.) quotes this passage, and says: "This style our poet has very
artfully and learnedly interspersed in Antony's speeches." ... In Plutarch's
description of the death of Caesar in the lives of Julius Caesar and Brutus there is
nothing to give foundation to the passage where Brutus says: " — ^let us bathe our
hands in Caesar's blood Up to the elbows," m, i, 122, but in the life ol Publicola,
W. S. has put a mark opposite the marginal title: "The confederade confirmed
with drinking of mans bloud," and the passage: "... they all thought good to
be bound one to another, with a great and horrible oath, drinking the bloud of a
man, and shaking hand in his bowels, whom they would sacrifice." ' [Another
passage marked by \V. S. is that wherein mention is made of Bnitus*s style of
speaking being modelled on that of the Lacedaemonians; see note by Lloyd,
III, ii, 6.] W. S. has marked the following passage in the Life of Lycurgus: *For
mine owne opinion, I like well of the Laconians manner of speaking: which is not
to speake much, but when they speake, to touch the matter effectually and to
make the hearers understand them. I think also that Lycurgus selfe, was short
and quick in his talke.' — Skzat (5A.*j Plutarch; Preface, p. xiii.) quotes in part
from the foregoing remarks by Paton, and says: 'On the whole, since there are
these few indications which fairly point to Shakespeare as having been the owner
of the book, and as there is no argument whatever on the contrary side, it seems
quite possible that the claim may be allowed; and there is thus a probability that
the edition of 161 2 is the one which Shakesp>eare actually bought for his own use,
though he no doubt had become acquainted with "North's Plutarch," in an
earlier edition, some years previously. Before 161 2 there were three editions, any
one of which would be equally likely to come under his notice; but he must cer-
tainly have become acquainted with the work before 1603, because there is a clear
allusion to it in one of his earlier plays, viz.: Mid. N. Dream; compare II, i, 75-80
with the Life of Theseus, containing the names Perigouna (see p. 279, 1. 26), £gl€S
(p. 284, 1. 28), Ariadne (p. 283, 1. 18), Antiopa, and Hippolyta (p. 288, 11. 2-4).' —
SOURCE OF THE PLOT— PLUTARCH
297
Since, therefore, so far as the text is concerned, there is, as Skeat remarks, but
little to choose between the editions of 1603 and 161 2, he has in his reprint adopted
that of idi2. — ^Leo, in the Pr^ace to his excellent photo-lithographic reproduction,
Four Chapters from North* s Plutarch j says: 'The question, whether Shakespeare
possessed the edition of 161 2 or not, is one not worthy of discussion. After having
written at least one of the plays, viz., Coridanus, Jul. Cos,, or Ant. & Cleo. before
i6i2j after thus having become acquainted with Plutarch by perusing a former
edition of that author's works, he might have indulged in the luxury of buying a
second copy of a newly published edition, but he cannot have made use of that edition
when he wrote the plays, since at that time it was not yet printed/— Of the three
editions which Shakespeare might have used, that is, 1579, 1595, and 1603, Leo de-
cides upon that of 1595, for the following reasons: (i) The edition of 1603 contains,
among other additions to the text, the Life of Augustus Casofy which if known
to Shakespeare would have been the basis of some 'highly interesting touches in
the likeness of Octavius Caesar,' and 'if these be wanting, we are entitled to believe
that the painter had no opportunity of seeing them, i. e., he made use of an edition
into which this new biography of Octavius was not yet admitted.'
(2) In the passage in Coriol., Act 11, p. 14 in the Folio, 'Of the same House
Publius and Quintus were. That our best Water, brought by Conduits hither,'
the words in North's Plutarch, ed. 15791 stand thus: 'Of the same house were
Publius and Quintus, who brought to Rome their best water they had by conducts.'
In the edition of 1595 this last word is spelt conduites, as in the Folio. On this,
however, Leo does not lay much stress, since Shakespeare uses this same form,
conduits, in plays prior to the year 1595. No one will, I think, wish to contest the
superiority of either of these two editions, the one over the other, as the source
of Shakespeare's Roman plays; Leo declares that that of 1603 is the worse printed
of the three early editions. With Leo's rejection of the edition of 161 2 I concur,
albeit somewhat reluctantly, since Dr Skeat in his volmne, Shakespeare* s Plutarch,
and Dr Aldis Wright, in his Introduction to the Clarendon edition, have adopted
the text of 161 2; and the final judgement of two such scholars is not to be lightly
set aside. Where all is, however, conjecture, may not each of us be at liberty to
construct a story to explain this puzzle of the late date and the MS notes by
W. S.? Perhaps, then, the early edition of North's Plutarch, which had served its
turn with Shakespeare, had become so thumbed and tattered with constant use
that when this later edition of 161 2 appeared he purchased it and to its fresh
pages transferred some of the notes from his working copy; this will possibly
accoimt for the rarity of the written notes; a mark would have been siifficient re-
minder for one familiar with what he had previously set down in full. All this is,
however, such stuff as dreams are made of.
The following extracts are from North's Plutarch, ed. 1595, as given in Leo's
facsimile. I have not, however, retained the ancient form of the printed u for v
and viu versd, or the long /;
The Life of Julius Casar
At that time, the feast Lupercalia was celebrated, the which in olde time men
say was the feast of sheapheards or heard men, and is much like
unto the feast of the Lyc^ians in Akcadia. But howsoever it is, I, i, 77.
that day there are divers noblemen's sonnes, yoimg men (and some
of them magistrates themselves that goveme then) which run naked through the
dtie, striking in sport them they meete in their way, with leather thongs, haire
298 APPENDIX
and all on, to make them give place. And many noUe wcMnen and gentle
also goe ol purpose to stand in their way, and doe put forth their handes to be
stricken, as schoUers hdd them out to their schoolemaster, to be
I, U, 13. stricken with the ferula: perswading themadves that, being witfc
childe, they shall have good ddiverie, and alao being baiifn, thit
it will make them to conceive with childe. Cmsw sate to bcholde that sport
upon the pulpit for orations, in a chaire of golde, ^>parelled in triomphiiig
manner. AfiUmius who was Consull at that time, was one of them thst
ranne this holy course. So when he came into the mazket pbce,
I* ii» aS5- the people made a lane for him to runne at libertie, and he came
to Ceuar, and presented him a Diadeame wreathed about with
laurell. Whereupon there rose a certaine cry of reioycing, not vay grett,
done onely by a few, appointed for the purpose. But when C^ssar refused the
Diadeame, then all the people together made an outcry of ioy. Then Amimku
offering it him again, there was a second shout of ioy, but yet ci a few. But
C(tsar refused it againe the second time, then all the whole people shouted,
having made this proofe, found that the people did not like of it, and thereupon
rose out of hb chaire, and commanded the crown to be caned unto Jupiter in the
Capitoll. After that, there were set up images of Ctuar in the dty, with Diadems
upon their heades, like kings. Those, the two 'Mbunes, Flama
I, i, 74. and MaruUus, went and pulled downe, and furthermore, meeting
with them that first saluted CtBsar as king, they committed them to
prison. The people followed them rekncyng at it, and called them Brutes: becanse
of Brutus, who had in old time driven the kings out of Rome, and that brous^t the
kingdome of one person, unto the government of the Senate and people. Cmsar
was so offended withall, that he deprived MaruUus and Namm
I, U, 306. of their Tribuneships, and accusing them, he spake alio against the
people, and called them Bruti and Cumam, to wit, beasts and fooles.
Hereuppon the people went straight unto Marcus Brutus, who from his father
came of the first Brutus, and by his mother of the house of the ServUians, a noble
house as any was in Rome, and also nephew and sonne in law of Marcus Cato,
Notwithstanding, the great honors and favor Ctesar shewed unto him, kept him
backe that of him selfe alone, hee did not conspire nor consent to depose him of his
kingdome. For Ccuar did not only save his life, after the batlell of Pharsalia, . . .
but furthermore, he put a marvellous confidence in him. For he had already pre-
ferred him to the Pretorship for that yeare, and furthermore was appointed to be
Consult, the fourth year after that, having through Cttsars friendship, obtained it
before Cassius, who likewise made sute for the same: and CtEsar also, as it b re-
ported, sayd in this contention, indeed Cassius hath alleaged best reason, but yet
shall he not be chosen before Brutus, . . . Now they that desired chaunge, and
wished Brutus onely their Prince and Governor above all other: they durst not
come to him them selves to tell him what they would have him
I, ill, 160. to doe, but in the night did cast sundry papers into the Pretor's
seate, where hee gave audience, and the most of them to this effect.
Thou sleepest, Brutus, and art not Brutus indeede. Cassius finding Brutus aml»-
tion sturred up the more by these seditious bils, did pricke him
n, i, 53-54. forward and egge him on the more, for a privat quarrel he had
conceived againt Casar. . . . Casar also had Cassius in great
gealousic, and suspected him much: whereuppon he sayd on a time to
his friends, what will Cassius do, think ye? I like not his pale looks. An
SOURCE OF THE PLOT---PLUTARCN 299
other time when Cttsars friends complained unto him of Antonius and Dola'
beUa, that they pretended some mischief e towards him: he answered
them againe, as for those fat men and smooth-comed heads, qu[oth] '
hee, I never reckon of them; but these pale visaged and carian
leane people, I feare them most, meaning BrtUus and Cassius. '
[This is also mentioned in the Life of Brutus^ § 6.)
Certainely, destiny may easier be foreseene, then avoyded: considering the strange
and wonderfull signes that were sayd to be seene before Casars
death. For, touching the fires in the element, and spirites running I, iii, 28-30.
up and downe in the night, and also the solitary birdes to be seene
at noene dayes sitting in the great market place: are not all these signes per-
happes worth the noting, in such a wonderfull chaunce as hap-
pened. But Strabo the Philosopher writeth, that divers men were I, ill, 27.
seene going up and downe in fire: and furthermore, that there
was a slave of the souldiers, that did cast a marvellous burning flame out of hb
hand, insomuch as they that saw it thought he had bene burnt,'
but when the fire was out, it was found he had no hiut. Casar 1, iii, 17-ao.
self also doing sacrifice unto the goddes, foimd that one of the n, ii, 48.
beastes which was sacrificed had no heart: and that was a strange
thing in nature, how a beast could live without a heart. Furthermore there was
a certain Soothsayer who had given Ctssar warning long time
afore, to take heede of the day of the Ides of March, (which b n, ii, 24.
the fifteenth of the moneth), for on that day he should be in
great daunger. That day being come, Casar going unto the Senate house, and
speaking merily unto the Soothsayer, tolde him, the Ides of
Marche be come: so be they, softly aimswered the Sooth sayer, m, i, 6, 7.
but yet are they not past. And the very day before, Casar supping
with Marcus Lepidus^ sealed certaine letters, as he was wont to n, ii, 41-43.
do at the bord: so talke falling out amongest them, reasoning what
death was best: hee, preventing their opinions, cried out aloud, death xmlooked for.
Then going to bed the same night, as hb maner was, and lying with hb wife
Calptimiaf all the windowes and dores of hb chamber flying open, the noise awoke
him, and made him afraied when saw such light: but more, when he heard hb
wife Calptimiaf being fast a sleepe, weepe and sigh, and put forth
many fumbling lamentable speaches. For shee dreamed that C<gsar n, ii, s, 6.
was slaine, and that she had him in her armes. Others also do deny
that shee had any such dreame, as, amonest other, TUus Livius writeth that it
was in this sort. The Senate having set upon the top of Cttsars house, for an
ornament and setting forth of the same, a certaine pinnacle: Calpumia dreamed
that shee saw it broken down, and that shee thought shee lamented and wept for
it. Insomuch that, Caesar rising in the morning, shee prayd him if
it wer possible, not to go out of the dores that day, but to adiome n, ii, 14.
the session of the Senate, untill an other day. And if that hee made
no reckoning of her dreame, yet that he would search further of the soothsayers
by their sacrifices, to know what should happen him that day. Thereby it seemed
that Cas<u^ likewise did feare and suspect somewhat, becatise his
wife Calpumia untill that time, was never given to any feare and n, ii, x8.
superstition: and then for that lA saw her so troubled in minde
with thb dreame shee had. But much more afterwards, when the Soothsayers
having sacrificed many beasts one after an other, tolde him that none did like
300 APPENDIX
them: then he detennined to send AnUmnu to adiorne the nriminn of the
Senate.
But in the meane time came Decius BrutuSy snrnamed AUmms^ m wiioin Oam
put such confidence, that in his last will and tfstamfnt he hid
n, U, 68. ^^xnnted him to be his next heire, and yet was of the oonqnacy
with Cassius and Brutus: he fearing that if Ctesar did acfiome the
session on that day, the conspiracy would out, laug^ied the fioothsayots to aconie,
and leproved C(tsar, saying: that he gave the Soiate occasion to mislike with
him, and that they might thinke hee mocked them, <«*fMlwitig
I» iiif 9S-9B* that by his commaundement they were assembled, and that thcj
were ready willingly to graunt him all things, and to prodaime
him king of all the provinces of the Empire of Rome out of Italy, and that he
should weare his Diadem in all other places both by aea and land.
xoT^xxo. ^^ furthermore, that if any man should tdl them from him they
should depart for that present time, and retume againe when Cd-
pumia should have better dreames: what would his enemies and ill willen say,
and how could they like of his friends words? And who could perswade them
otherwise, but that they should thinke his dominion a slavery unto them and tyran-
nicall in him selfe? And yet if it be so, sayd he, that you utterly mislike of this
day, it is better that you goe your selfe in person, and sahiting the Senate, to dis-
misse them till an other time. Therewithal he took Ctesar by the hand, and
brought him out of his hotise.
C(tsar was not gone farre from his house, but a bondman, a stranger, did what
hee could to speake with him: and when he saw he was put backe by the great
prease and multitude of people that followed him, he went straight into his house, and
put him self into Cdpurnicu hands, to be kept till Casar came backe againe, telling
her that he had great matters to impart unto him. And one Arte-
n, iii, x-xs. midorus also, borne in the He of GNiDOS,a doctor of Rhethoricke in
the Greeke tongue, who by meanes of his profession was very familiar
with certaine of Brutus confederates, and therefore knew the most part of all their
practices against Ccuar: came and brought him a little bill, written with his owne
hand, of all that he ment to tell him. He marking how Cttsar received all the
supplications that were offered him, and that hee gave them straight to his men
that were about him, pressed nearer to him, and sayed: Ctuof,
m, i, 11-14. reade this memoriall to your selfe, and that quickly, for they be
matters of great waight, and touch you nearly. Casar tooke it cf
him, but could never read it, though he many times attempted it, for the number
of people that did salute him: but holding it still in his hand, keeping it to him
selfe, went on withall to the Senate house. Howbeit other are of opinion, that it
was some man else that gave him that memoriall, and not ArUmidarus, who did
what he could all the way as he went to give it CcKar, but he was alwayes repulsed
by the people. For these things, they may seem to come by chaunce: but the
place where the murther was prepared, and where the Senate were assembled, and
where also there stood up an image of Pompey dedicated by him selfe amongcst
other ornaments which he gave unto the Theater: all these were manifest proof es,
that it was the ordinaunce of some god that made this treason to be executed,
specially in that very place. It is also reported, that Cassius (though otherwise hee
did favour the doctrine of Epicurus) beholding the image of Pompey, before they
entred into the action of their traiterous enterprise: hee did softly call uppon it
to aide him. But the instant danger of the present time, taking away his former
SOURCE OF THE PLOT— PLUTARCH 301
reason, did sodainly put him into a furious passion, and made him like a man halfe
besides him selfe. Now AtUoniuSj that was a faithfull friend to Cttsar,
and a valiant man besides of his handes, him Decius Brutus Alhinus HI, i, 33.
entertained out of the Senate house, having begunne a long tale of
set purpose. So Ciesar comming into the house, all the Senate stood up on their
feete to doe him honor. Then part of Brutus company and confederates stoode
round about Caesars chayre, and part of them also came towardes
him, as though they made sute with MeteUus CimbeTf to call home m, i, 41-57.
his brother againe from banishment: and thus prosecuting still their
sute, they followed Ctssar, till hee was set in his chaire. Who, denying their
petitions, and being offended with them one after an other, because the more they
were denied the more they pressed uppon him, and were the eamester with him:
MeteUus at length, taking his gowne with both hb hands, pulled it
over his necke, which was the signe given the confederats to set uppon m, i, 89.
him. Then Casca^ behinde him, strake him in the necke with his
sword, howbeit the wound was not great nor mortaU, becatise it seemed the feare
of such a devilish attempt did amaze him and take his strength from him, that he
killed him not at the first blow. But C(Bsar turning straight unto him, caught
hold of his sword, and held it hard: & they both cried out, Cttsar in Latin: O vile
traitor Casca, what doest thou? And Casca in Greeke to his brother, brother,
helpe mee. At the beginning of this stur, they that were present, not knowing
of the conspiracy, were so amazed with the horrible sight they saw: they had
no power to flie, neither to helpe him, not so much, as once to make an outcry.
They on the other side that had conspired his death compassed him in on everie
side with their swords drawen in their hands, that Cissar turned him no where
but hee was stricken at by some, and still had naked swords in his
face, and was hacked and mangled among them, as a wilde beast m, i, aa8.
taken of hunters. For it was agreede among them, that every man
should give him a wound, becatise all their parts should be in this murther: and
then Brutus gave him one wound about his privities. Men report also, that
Casar did still defend him selfe against the rest, nmning every way
with his body: but when he saw Brutus with his sword drawen in ' '
his hand,'then he pulled his gowne over his head, and made no more
resbtaunce, and was driven either casually, or purposedly, by the counsell of the
conspirators, against the base whereupon Pompeys image stoode, which ran all
of a goare bloud till he was slain. Thus it seemed that the image tooke just
revenge of Pompeys enemy, being throwen downe on the ground at hb feete,
and yeelding up his ghost there, for the number of woimds he had upon him. For
it b reported, that he had three and twenty wounds upon his body: and divers of
the conspirators did hurt themselves, striking one body with so many blowes.
When Citsar was slaine, the Senate (though Brutus stood in the middest amongst
them, as though he would have saied somewhat touching thb fact) presently ran
out of the house, and flying, filled all the city with marvellous feare and tmnult.
. . . But Antonius and LepiduSy which were two of C<tsars chief est
friends, secretly conveying them selves away, fled into other mens ^» *»
houses, and forsooke their own. Brutus and hb confederates on xx3-"5'
the other side, being yet hot with this murther they had committed, j^ .
having their swords drawen in their hands, came all in a troupe to- ,2-.*- Jg
gether out of the Senate, and went into the market place, not as
men that made countenaunce to flie, but otherwise boldly holding up their heads
302
APPENDIX
like men of courage, and called to the people to defend their liberty, and ita]fed
to speake with every great personage whom they met in their way. . . .
The inaX morning, Brutus and his confederates came into the market place to
speake mito the people, who gave them such audieaoe, that it
m, ii, 1-40. seemed they neither greatly reproved nor allowed the fact: for fay
their great silence they shewed, that they were soiy for Cmsan death
and also that they did reverence Bruius. Now the Senate granted generall pardon
for all that was past; and, to padfie every man, ordained besides, that Ccsais
funerals should bee honored as a god, and established all things that he had done:
and gave certain provinces also and convenient honors unto Brutus and his ooii-
federates, whereby every man thought all things were brought to
^ ' good peace and quietnes againe. But when they had opened Ceesars
testament, and found a liberall legade of money, bequeathed unto
every citizen of Rome, and that they saw his body (which was brought into the
market place) all bemangled with gashes of swords: then there was no order to
keepe the multitude and common people quiet, but they plucked up fonnes,
tables, and stooles, and layed them all about the body, and setting them
a fire, burnt the corse. Then when the fire was well kindled, they tooke the
firebrands, and went unto their houses that had slain Ces(Zf , to set them a
fire. Other also ran up and down thee dty to see if they could meete with
anie of them, to cut them in peeces: howbeit they could meete with never
a man of them, because they had locked themselves up safely in their houses.
There was one of C<tsars friends called Cinnat that had a marvellous strange and
terrible dreame the night before. He dreamed that C<tsar bad him to supper, and
that he refused, & would not go: then that Casar tooke him by the hand, and led
him against his will. Now Cinna, hearing at that time that they burnt Casars
body in the market place, notwithstanding that he feared his dreame,
m, ill. and had an ague on him besides: he went into the market place
to honor his funerals. When he came thither, one of the meane sort
asked him what his name was? He was straight called by his name. The first
man tolde it to another, and that other unto an other, so that it ran straight
through them all, that hee was one of them that murthered Casar: (for indeed
one of the traitors to Casar was also called Cinna as him selfe) wherefore taking
him for Cinna the murderer, they fell uppon him with such fury that they presently
dispatched him in the market place. This sturre and fury made Bruius and CaS'
sius more afraied, then of all that was past, and therefore within few dayes after,
they departed out of Rome. . . .
But lC<jKars] great prosperity and good fortune that favoured him al his lifetime,
did continue after in the revenge of his death, pursuing the murtherers both by sea
and land, till they had not left a man more to be executed, of all them that were
actors or counsellors in the conspiracy of his death. Furthermore, of all the
chaunces that happen imto men upon the earth, that which came to Cassius
above all other, is most to be wondred at: For he, being overcome
V, ill, in battel at the iomcy of Philippes sleu him selfe with the same
49f 50 sword with which he strake CcBsar. Againe, of signs in the element,
the great comet, which seven nights together was scene very bright
n, ii, 36, 37. after Ctzsars death, the eight night after was never seen more. . . .
But above all, the ghost that appeared unto Brutus shewed plainely,
that the gods were offended with the miulher of Casar. The vision was thus.
Brutus being ready to passe over his army from the city of Abydos to the
SOURCE OF THE PLOT— PLUTARCH
303
other coast lying directly against it, slept every night (as his manner was) in
his tent; and being 3ret awake, thinking of his affaires (for by report hee was
as careful a Captaine, and lived with as litle sleepe, as ever man
did) he thought he heard a noise at his tent dore, and looking IV, iii,
towards the light of the lampe that waxed very dimme, he saw a hor- 3x9-331.
rible viaon of a man, of a wonderful greatnes and dreadf ull look, which
at the first made him marvellously afraid. But when he saw that it did him no
hurt, but stoode by his bed side and sayd nothing: at length he asked him what he
was. The image aunswered him: I am thy ill angell, Brutusy and thou shalt see
me by the city of Philifpes. Then Bruius rq;>lied againe, and sayd: well, I shall
see thee then. Therewithall, the spirite presently vanished from him. After that
time Brutus f being in battdl neare unto the dty of Philifpes, against AtUonius
and Octavius Ctssar, at the first battell he wan the victory, and overthrowing
all them that withstoode him, he drave them into young Casars
camp, which he tooke. The second battell being at hand, this V, y, 23-26.
spirit appeared again imto him, but spake never a word. There-
uppon Brutus, knowing hee should die, did put himself to all hazard in battell,
but yet fighting could not be slaine. So seeing his men put to
flight and overthrowen, he ranne unto a little rocke not farre off, V, y, 60, 6x.
and there setting his swordes point to his brest, fell upon it, and
slue him selfe, but yet as it is reported, with the hdpe of his friend that dispatched
him.
The Life of Brutus
Now when Cassius felt his friendes, and did stirre them up against Cttsar: they
all agreed, and promised to take part with him so Brutus were the
chiefe of their conspiracie. For they told him that so high an enter- ' '
prise and attempt as that, did not so much require men of manhood
and courage to draw their swords: as it stood them upon to have a man of such
estimation as Brutus, to make every man boldly thinke, that by his onely pres-
ence the fact were holy, and just. If he tooke not this course, then that they
should goe to it with fainter hartes, and when they had done it, they should
be more fearefull: because every man would thinke that Brutus would not have
refused to have made one with them, if the catise had bene good and honest.
Therefore Cassius, considering this matter with himselfe, did first of all speake to
Brutus, since they grew straunge together for the sute they had for
the Prsetorshippe. So when he was reconciled to him againe, and that I, ii, 40-193.
they had imbraced one another: Cassius asked him if he were deter-
mined to be in the Senate house the first day of the moneth of Marche, because he
heard say that Ctesars friendes should move the councell that day, that Caesar
should be called king by the Senate. Brutus aunswered him, he would not be
there. But if we be sent for sayd Cassius: how then? For my selfe then sayd
Brutus, I meane not to hold my peace, but to withstand it, and rather dye than
lose my libertie. Ca55tfi5 being bold, and taking hold of this word: Why, quoth he,
what RouAiNE is he alive that will suffer thee to dye for the libertie? What,
knowest thou not that thou art Brutus? Thinkest thou that they be cobblers,
tapsters, or suchlike base mechanicall people, that write these billes and scrowles
which are found dayly in thy Prsetors chair, and not the noblest men and best
citizens that do it? No, be thou well assured, that of other Praetors they looke for
giftes, common distributions amongest the people, and for common playes, and to
304 APPENDIX
see fensers fi^^t at the sharpe, to shew the people pastime: but at thy hmda
they specially require (as a due debt unto them) the taking away of the tynumie,
being fully bent to suffer any extremitie for thy sake, so that thoa wilt shew thy
selfe to be the man thou art taken for, and that they hope thou art. Thereupon
he kissed Brutus ^ and imbraced him: and so each taking leave oi other, thcj
went both to speak with their friendes about it. Now amongest Pompep
friendes, there was one called Caius UgariuSf who had bene accused unto
Citsar for taking part with Pampey, and CiEsar disdiaiged him.
' ' But Ligarius thanked not CcKsar so much for his diadi&ige, as
' he was offended with him for that he was brou^t in daunger by
his t3rrannicall power. And therefore in his hart he was alway his mortall
enemie, and was besides verie familiar with Bruius, who went to see him bexng
sicke in his bed, and sayd unto him: O Ugarius, in what a time
*' art thou sicke? Ligarius, rising up in hb bed, and taking him
45- 09- |jy ^g j^gjj^ hand, sayd xmto him: Brutus, sayd he, if thoa
hast any great enterprise in hand, worthy of thy selfe, I am whole. After that
time they began to feele all their acquitaunce whom they trusted, and layed their
heades together, consulting upon it, and did not onelie picke out their friendes, but
all those also whom they thought stout enough to attempt any desperate matter,
and that were not affrayed to lose their lives. For this cause they durst not
^ . acquaint Cicero with thdr conspiracie, although he was a man whom
' ' they loved dearely, and trusted best: for they were affrayed that he
* being a coward by nature, and age also having increased his feare,
he would quite tume and alter all their purpose, and quench the heate of their
enterprise, the which specially required hot and earnest execution, seeking by
perswasion to bring all things to such safetie, as there should be no periU. . . .
And they thought good also to bring in an other Brutus to ioyne with [them],
sumamed Alhinus: who was no man of his handes himselfe, but because he was
able to bring good force of a great number of slaves, and fensers at the sharpe,
whom he kept to shew the people pastime ^ith their fighting, besides also that
Casar had some trust in him. Cassius and Labeo told Brutus Albinus of it
at the first, but he made them no aimswere. But when he had spoken with
Brutus himselfe alone, and that Brutus had told him he was the chief ringleader
of all this conspiracie: then he willingly promised him the best aide he could.
Furthermore, the onely name and great calling of BrutuSy did bring on the most
of them to give consent to this conspiracie. Who having never
' * taken othes together, nor taken or given any caution or assuraunce,
nor binding themselves one to an other by any religious othes:
they all kept the matter so secret to themselves, and could so cimningly handle
it, that notwithstanding the goddcs did reveal it by manifest signes and tokens
from above, and by predictions of sacrifices: yet all this would not be beleeved.
Now Brulus, who knew very well that for his sake all the noblest, valiantest,
and most couragious men of Rome did venture their lives, waighing with himself
the greatness of the daunger: when he was out of his house, he did so frame and
__ . fashion his countenaimce and lookes, that no man could disceme
II 1
* ' he had anything to trouble his minde. But when night came that
he was in his owne house, then he was clean chaunged. For, either
care did wake him against his will when he would have slept, or else oftentimes of
himselfe he fell into such deepe thoughtes of this enterprise, casting in his minde all
the daungers that might happen: that his wife lying by him, founde that there
SOURCE OF THE PLOT-PLUTARCH 305
was some marvellous great matter that troubled his minde, not being wont to be
in that taking, and that he could not well detennine with himselfe. His wife
Porcia (as we have told you before) was the daughter of Cato^ whom Brutus maried
being his cosin, not a mayden, but a young widow after the death of her first
husband Bibulus^ by whom she had also a young sonne called BibuluSf who after-
wards wrote a booke of the actes and gestes of Brutus, extant at this present day.
This young Lady, being excellently well seen in Philosophie, loving her husband
well, and being of a noble courage, as she was also wise: because she would not aske
her husband what he ayled before she had made some proofe by her selfe, she took
a litle rasour, such as barbers occupie to pare men's nayles, and causing her
maydes and women to go out of her chamber, gave herself a great gash withall in
her thigh, that she was straight all of a goare bloud, and incontinently after, a
vehement fever tooke her, by reason of the pajme of her wounde. Then perceiving
her husband was marvellously out of quiet, and that he could take no rest, even
in her greatest payne of all, she spake in this sort unto him. I being,
O Brutus, (sayd she) the daughter of Cato, was maried unto thee, ' '
not to be thy bedfellow and companion in bed and at borde onelie,
like a harlot, but to be partaker also with thee, of thy good and evill fbrtime.
Now for thy selfe, I can find no cause of fault in thee touching our matche: but
for my part, how may I shewe my duetie towardes thee, and how much I would do
for thy sake, if I cannot constantlie beare a secret mischaunce or grief with thee,
which requireth secrede and fidelity? I confesse, that a woman's wit commonly
is too weake to keepe a secret safely: but yet, Brutus, good education, and the
companie of vertuous men, have some power to reforme the defect of nature.
And for my selfe, I have this benefit moreover: that I am the daughter of
Cato, & wife of Brutus. This notwithstanding, I did not trust to any of these
things before: imtill that now I have found by experience, that no paine
nor griefe whatsoever can overcome me. With those wordes she shewed
him her woimde on her thigh, and told him what she had done to prove
her selfe. Brutus was amazed to heare what she sayd unto him, and lifting
up his handes to heaven, he besought the goddes to give him the grace he
might bring his enterprise to so good passe, that he might be foimde a husband,
worthie of so noble a wife as Porcia: so he then did comfort her the best he could.
Now a day being appointed for the meeting of the Senate, at what time they
hoped CiBsar would not fayle to come: the conspiratours determined then to put
their enterprise in execution, because they might meete safelie at that time without
suspition; and the rather, for that all the noblest and chief est men of the citie would
be there. Who, when they should see such a great matter executed, would every
man then set to their handes, for the defence of their libertie. Furthermore, they
thought also, that the appointment of the place where the councell should be
kept, was chosen of purpose by divine providence, and made all for them. For it
was one of the porches about the Theater, in the which there was a certaine place
full of seates for men to sit in, where also was set up the image of Pompey, which
the citie had made and consecrated in honour of him: when he did beautifie that
part of the citie with the Theater he built, with divers porches about it. In this
place was the assembly of the Senate appointed to be, just on the fifteenth day of
the moneth of March, which the Romaines call, Idus Martias: so that it seemed
some god of purpose had brought Ctgsar thither to be slaine, for revenge of Pompeys
death. So when the day was come, Brutus went out of his house with a dagger by
his side under his long gowne, that no body saw nor knew, but his wife onely. The
20
}
3o6 APPENDIX
other ocmsiniatoun were all assembled at Cassius house, to bring his sonne into
the market place, who on that day did put on the mans gowne, called Toga Virills,
and from thence they came all in a troupe together unto Pampeys porche, looking
that Ctuar would straight come thither. But here is to be noted, the wonderful!
assured constande of these conspiratours, in so daungeious and waightie an enter-
prise as they had undertaken. For many of them being Praetors, by reason of their
office, whose duetie is to nunister justice to every body: they did not ondy with
great quictnesse and courtesie heare them that spake unto them, or that pleaded
matters before them, and gave them attentive eare, as if they had no other matter
in their heades: but moreover, they gave just sentence, and carefully dispatched
the causes before them. So there was (me among them, who being condemned in a
certaine summe of money, refused to pay it, and cried out that he did appeale
unto C(Bsar, Then BnUus casting his eyes upon the conspiratours, sayd, Cttsar
shall not let me to see the law executed. Notwithstanding this, by chaunce there fell
out many misfortunes unto them, which was enough to have marred the enterprise.
The first and chief est was, Casars long tarying, who came very late to the S«ukte:
for because the signs of the sacrifices appeared unluckie, hb wife Cclpumia kept
him at home, and the Soothsayers bad him beware he went not abroad. The second
cause was, when one came unto Casca, being a conspu:atour, and taking him by the
hand, sayd unto him: O Casca, thou keptest it close from me, but BnUus hath
told me all. Casca being amazed at it, the other went on with his tale, and sayd:
why, how now, how commeth it to passe thou art thus rich, that thou doest sue to
be iGdilis? Thus Casca, being deceived by the other's doubtfuU wordes, he told
them it was a thousand to one, he blabbed not out all the conspirade. An other
Senator called PopUius Lenta, after he had saluted Brutus and Cassius more
friendly then he was wont to do: he rounded softly in their eares,
m, i, 19-23. and told them, I pray the goddes you may go through with that you
have taken in hand, but withall, dispatch I read you for your enter-
prise is bewrayed. When he had sayd, he presently departed from them, and left
them both a£Fra3red that their conspirade would out. Now in the meane time,
there came (me of Brutus men post hast imto him, and told him
n, hr. his wife was a dying. For Porcia, being verie carefull and pensive for
that which was to' come, and being too weake to away with so great
and inward grief e of minde: she could hardly keepe within, but was frighted with
every little noyse and crie she heard, as those that are taken and possest with the
furie of the Bacchantes, asking every man that came from the market place what
Brutus did, and still sent messenger after messenger, to know what newes. At
length, Casars comming being prolonged 83 you have heard, Parcues weakenesse
was not able to hold out any longer, and thereupon she sodainly swounded, that
she had no leasure to go to her chamber, but was taken in the middest of her house,
where her speach and senses failed her. Howbdt she socme came to her selfe againe,
and so was layed in her bed, and tended by her women. When Brutus heard these
newes, it grieved him, as it is to be presupposed: yet he left not off the care of lus
country and common wealth, neither went home to his house for any newes he
heard. Now, it was reported that Casar was comming in his litter: for he deter-
mined not to stay in the Senate all that day (because he was affra3red of the unlucky
signes of the sacrifices) but to adiome matters of importaunce unto the
in, i, a6-3a. next session and councdl holden, fayning himselfe not to be well at
ease. When Casar came out of his litter: PopUius Lmta, that had
talked before with Brutus and Cassius, and had prayed the goddes they might
SOURCE OF THE PLOT— PLUTARCH
307
bring this enterprise to passe: went unto Cttsar, and kept him a long time with a
talke. Casar gave good eare unto him. Wherefore the conspiratours (if so they
should be called) not hearing what he sayd to C(Bsar, but conjecturing by that he
had told them a litle before, that his talke was none other but the verie discoverie
of their conspiracie: they were affrayed every man of them; and one looking in
an others face, it was easie to see that they all were of a minde, that it was no
tarying for them till they were apprehended, but rather that they should kill them-
selves with their owne hands. And when Cassius and certaine other clapped their
handes on their swordes under their gownes to draw them: Brutus ^ marking the
coimtenaimce and gesture of Lttna, and considering that he did use himselfe rather
like an humble and earnest suter then like an accuser: he sayd nothing to his
companion (becatise there were many amongest them that were not of the con-
spiracie), but with a pleasaunt countenaimce encoiiraged Cassius, And imme-
diately after, IjBna went from Casar, and kissed his hand: which shewed plainly
that it was for some matter concerning himselfe that he had held him so long in
talke. Now all the Senators being entred first into this place or chapter house
where the coimcell should be kept, all the other conspiratours straight stood about
Cttsars chaire, as if they had had some thing to have sayd unto him. And some
say that Cassius casting his eyes upon Pompeys image, made his prayer unto it,
as if it had bene alive. Trebonius on the other side, drew Ankmius aside, as he came
into the house where the Senate sat, and held him with a long talke without.
When Cessar was come into the hotise, all the Senate rose to honour him at his
comming in. So when he was set, the conspirators flocked about him, & amongst
them they presented one TuUius Cimbeff who made humble sute
for the calling home againe of his brother that was banished. They m, i, 41.
all made as though they were intercessours for him, and took him
by the handes, and kissed his head and brest. CtBsar at the first, simply refused
their kindnesse and in treaties: but afterwardes, perceiving they still pressed on
him, he violently thrust them from him. Then Cimber with both his hands plucked
C(tsars gowne over his shoulders, and Casca that stood behind him, drew his dagger
first, and strake Ccuar upon the shoulder, but gave him no great wound. Casar
feeling himselfe hurt, tooke him straight by the hand he held his-dagger m, and
cried out in Latin : O traitour CascGy what doest thou? Casca on the other side cried
in Greeke, and called his brother to helpe him. So divers running on a heape to-
gether to flie upon Cttsart he looking about him to have fled, saw Brutus with a
sword drawen in his hand ready to strike at him: then he let Cascaes hand go, and
casting his gowne over his face, suffered every man to strike at him that would. Then
the ocmspiratours thronging one upon another because every man was desirous to
have a cut at him, so many swordes and daggers lighting upon one body, one of them
hint an other, and among them Brutus caught a blow on his hand, becatise he would
make one in murdering of him, and all the rest also were every man of them bloudied.
C(Bsar being slaine in this maner, Brutus j standing in the middest of the house,
would have spoken, and stayed the other Senatours that were not of the conspiracie,
to have told them the reason why they had done this fact. But they as men both
aflrayed and amazed, fled one upon an others necke in hast to get out at the doore,
and no man followed them. For it was set downe and agreed betweene them, that
they should kill no man but Casar only, and should intreate all the
rest to looke to defend their libertie. All the conspiratours, but Bru- * '
tus determining upon this matter, thought it good also to kill '7*"*'**
Antonius, because he was a wicked man, and that in nature favoured tyranny:
3o8 APPENDIX
besides also, for that he was in great estimation with souldien, hmving bene con-
versant ol long time amongest them: and ^)ecially having a minde bent to great
enterprises, he was also of great authoritie at that time, being Consull with Cesar.
But Brutus would not agree to it. First, for that he sayd it was not honest:
secondly, because he told them there was hope of chaunge in him. For he did not
mistrust but that AnUmius, being a noble minded and couragious man (when he
should know that Ciisar was dead), would willingly hdpe his coontrie to iecx>ver lier
libertie, having them an example unto him, to follow their coorage and vertoe.
So Brutus by this means saved AnUmius life, who at that present time disguised
himself and stale away. . . .
There, [in the Capitol] a great number of men being assembled together one
after an other: Brutus made an oration unto them to winne the favour of the people
and to justify that they had done. All those that were by, sayd they had done wdl,
and cryed unto them that they should boldly come downe from the Capitofl.
Whereupon, Brutus and his oxnpanions came boldly downe into the market place.
The rest followed in troupe, but Brutus went formost, very honourably compassed
in round about with the noblest men of the citie, which brought him from the
Capitoll, through the market place, to the pulpit for orations. When the people
saw him in the pulpit, although they were a multitude of rakdids
J ' of all sortes, and had a good will to make some sturre: yet, being
ashamed to do it, for the reverence they bare unto Brutus, they kept
silence, to heare what he would say. When Brutus began to speake, they gave
him quiet audience: howbeit immediately after, they shewed that they were not
all contented with the murther. . . .
The next day following, the Senate, being called againe to councdl, did
first of all commend AnUmius, for that he had wisely stayed and quenched
the beginning of a dvill warre: then they also gave Brutus and his consorts
great prayses, and lastly they appointed them severall govemements of
Provinces. For unto Brutus they appointed Creta: Afkick, unto Cassius:
Asia, unto Trebonius: Bithynia unto Cimber: and unto the other Dtcius
Brutus Albinus, Gaule on this side the Alps. When thb was done, they came
to talke of Casars will and testament and of his funerals and tombe. Then
Antonius thinking good his testament should be read openly, and
' ' also that his body should be honourably buried, and not in hugger
* mugger, least the people might thereby take occasion to be worse
offended if they did otherwise: Cassius stoutly spake against it. But Brutus went
with the motion, & agreed unto it: wherein it seemeth he committed a second
fault. For the first fault he did was, when he would not consent to his fellow
conspiratours, that Antonius should be slajme: And therefore he was iustly
accused, that thereby he had saved and strengthened a strong and
m, ii, grievous enemy of their conspiracy. The second fault was, when
353-363. he agreed that Caesar's funerals should be as Antonius would have
them: the which indeede marred all. For first of all, when Ccuar^s
testament was openly read among them, whereby it appeared that he bequeathed
imto every Citizen of Rome, 75 Drachmas a man, and that he left his gardens and
arbors unto the people, which he had on this side of the river of Tyber, in the place
where now the temple of Fortune is built: the people then loved him, and were
marvellous sory for him. Afterwards when CcBsars body was brought into the
market place, Antonius making his funerall oration in prayse of the dead, according
to the auncient custome of Rome, and perceiving that his words moved the common
SOURCE OF THE PLOT— PLUTARCH
309
people to compassion: he framed his eloquence to make their harts yeme the more,
and taking Casairs gowne all bloudy in his hand, he layed it open to the sight of
them all, shewing what a nimiber of cuts and holes it had upon it. Therewithal!
the people fell presently into such a rage and mutinie, that there was no more
order kept amongest the common people. For some of them cryed out, kill the
murtherers: others plucked up formes, tables, and stalles about the market place,
as they had done before at the funerals of Clodius, and having layed them all on a
heape together, they set them on fire, and thereupon did put the body of Casar,
and burnt it in the middest of the most holy places. And furthermore, when the
fire was throughly kindled, some here, some there, tooke burning fire brands, and
ranne with them to the murtherers houses that killed him, to set them a fire.
Howbeit the conspiratours foreseeing the daunger before, had wisely provided for
themselves, and fled. . . .
Now the state of Rome standing in these termes, there fell out another chaunge
and alteration, when the young man Odavius Casar came to Rome. He was
the Sonne of Julius CtBsars Nece, whom he had adopted for his sonne, and made his
heire, by his last will and testament. But when Julius CfBsar his adopted father
was slaine, he was in the city of Apollonia where he studied tarying for him, be-
cause he was determined to make warre with the Pakthians: but when he heard
the newes of his death, he returned againe to Rome. . . . After
that, these three, Odavius Casar, AtUonius and LepiduSy made an > » '"S •
agreement betwene themselves, and by those articles devided the .y y.
provinces belonging to the Empire of Rome among themselves, and .qoI-oi
did set up bils of proscription & outlawry, condemning two hundred
of the noblest men of Rome to suffer death, and among that number, Cicero was
one. . . .
Now whilest Brutus and Cassius were together in the city of Smyrna: Brutus
prayed Cassius to let him have part of the money whereof he had
great store, because all that he could rappe and rend of his side he ' '
had bestowed it in making so great a number of shippes, that by *
meanes of them they should keepe all the sea at their conunaundement. Cassius
friends hindered this request, and earnestly disswaded him from it: perswading him,
that it was no reason that Brutus should have the money which Cassius had gotten
together by sparing, and levied with great evill will of the people their subiectes,
for him to bestow liberally upon his souldiers, and by this meanes to win their good
willes, by Cassius charge. This notwithstanding, Cassius gave him the thirde part
of this totall summe. . . .
About that time, Brutus sent to pray Cassius to come to the citie of Sabdis,
and so he did. Brutus imderstanding of his comming, went to meete
him with all his friendes. There, both their armies being armed, IV, ii.
they called them both Emperors. Now, as it commonly hapneth in
great affaires betweene two persons, both of them having many friends and so
many Captaines imder them: there ranne tales and complaints betwixt them.
Therefore, before they fell in hand with any other matter, they went into a litle
chamber together, and bad every man avoide and did shut the dores to them.
Then they began to powre out their complaintes one to the other, and grew hot and
loude, earnestly accusing one another, and at length fell both a weeping. Their
friends that were without the chamber hearing them loud within, and angry
betweene them selves, they were both amased and afraied also least it would
grow to further matter: but yet they were commaunded^ that no man should
310 APPENDIX
Gome to them. Notwithstanding, one Marcus Pkaonius, that had bene a frend and
a follower of Colo while he lived, and tooke upcm him to coimtedeatea
' ' Philosopher, not with wisedome & discretion, but with a oertaine bed-
lem and franticke motion: he would needes come into the chamber,
though the men offered to keepe him out. But it was no boot to let Pkaomms,
when a mad moode or toy toc^e him in the head: ior he was a hot hasty man, and
sodaine in all his doings, and cared for never a Senator oi them all. Now, though
he used this bold manner of speach after the profession of the Cynicke Philosophcn
(as who would say, dogs) yet his boldnes did no hurt many times, because they did
but laugh at him to see him so mad. This Pkaonius at that time, in despite of the
doorekeepers, came into the chamber, and with a certaine scoffing and '^'^Hwg
gesture, which hee coimterfeated of purpose, he rehearsed the venes which M
Nestor sayd in Homer:
My Lords f I pray you hearken both to me.
For I have seene moe yeares than suchie three.
Cassius fell a laughing at him: but Brutus thrust him out of the chamber, and
called him dog, and counterfeate Cynicke. Howbeit his comming in brake their
strife at that time, and so they left each other. . . . The next day after, Bntfvf ,
uppon complaint of the Sasdians, did condenme and noted Lucius
TV, lii« a. Pdla for a defamed person, that had been a Praetor of the Rqicaimes,
and whom Bruius had given charge unto: for that he was accused
and convicted of robbery and pilferie in his office. This judgement much misliked
Cassius: because he him selfe had secretly (not many dales before) warned two of
his friends, attainted and convicted of the like offences, and openly had cleared
them: but 3ret he did not therefore leave to employ them in any manner oi service
as he did before. And therefore he greatly leproved Brutus, for
IV, iii, 7, 8. that he would shew him selfe so straight and severe, in such a time
as was meeter to beare a litle then to take things at the worst
Brutus in contrary manner aimswered, that he should remember the Ides of Marche,
-^ at which time they slue lulius CcKar: who neither pOed nor polled
' ' the country, but oncly was a favorer and suborner of all them that
did robbe and spoile, by his countenaunce and authority. And if
there were any occasion whereby they might honestly sette aside iustice and equity:
they should have had more reason to have suffered Cttsars friendes, to have robbed
and done what wrong and iniury they had would, then to bear ^ith their owne
men. For then sayd he, they could but have sayed we had been cowardes, but now
they may accuse us of iniustice, besides the paines we take, and the daunger we
put our selves into. And thus may we see what Brutus intent and purpose was.
[The following account of the vision which appeared to Brutus is more circum-
stantial than that in the Life of Casar:]
But as they both prei)ared to passe over againe, out of Asia into Europe:
there went a rumor that there appeared a wonderfull signe imto him. Bruius
was a carefull man, and slept very litle, both for that his diet was moderate, as
also because he was continually occupied. He never slept in the day-time, and in
the night no longer then the time he was driven to be alone, and when everybody
else tooke their rest. But now whilest he was in wane, and his head ever busily
occupied to thinke of his affaires, and what would happen: after he had slumbered
a litle after supper, he spent all the rest of the night in dispatching of his waightiest
causes, and after hee had taken order for them, if hee had any leysure left him, he
would reade some booke till the third watch of the night, at what time the Cap-
SOURCE OF THE PLOT— PLUTARCH 311
taines, petty Captaines, and Colonels, did use to come to him. So, being ready to
goe into Europe, one night very late (when all the campe tooke quiet rest) as hee
was in his tent with a litle light, thinking of waighty matters: he thought he heard
one come in to him, and casting his eye towards the dore of his tent, that he saw a
wonderf ull straunge and monstruous shape of a body comming towards him, and
sa3rd never a word. So BriUus boldly asked what he was, a god or a man, and what
cause brought him thither. The spirit aunswered him, I am thy evill spirit,
Brutus: and thou shalt see me by the city of Phuifpes. Brutus
being no otherwise* afraied, replied againe unto it: well, then I shall ' '
see thee againe. The spirite presently vanished away: and Brutus
called his men unto him, who tolde him that they heard no noise, nor saw anything
at all. Thereupon Brutus returned againe to think on his matters as he did before:
and when the day brake, he went tmto Cassius, to tell him what vision had appeared
tmto him in the night. Cassius being in opinion an Epicurean, and reasoning
thereon with Brutus, spake to him touching the vision thus. In our sect, Brutus,
we have an opinion, that we doe not alwayes feele or see, that which we suppose we
doe both see and fede: but that our senses being credulous and therefore easily
abused (when they are idle and unoccupied in their owne obiects) are induced to
imagine they see and coniecture that which in trueth they doe not. . . .
With these words Cassius did somwhat comfort and quiet Brutus, When
they raised their campe, there came two Eagles that, flying with a marvel-
lous force, lighted uppon two of the foremost ensignes, and alwaies
followed the souldiers, which gave them meat, and fed them, untill V, i, 91-96.
they came neare to the city of Phujppes: and there, one day ondy
before the battell, they both flew away. Now Brutus had conquered the
most part of all the nations of that countrey; but if there were any other
dty or Captaine to overcome, then they made all deare before them, and so
drew towardes the coastes of Thassos. . . . The Romains called the valley between
both camps, the Philifpian fields: and there were never seene two so great armies of
the Romains, one before the other ready to fight. In truth, Brutus army was inferior
to Octavius CasarSf in number of men: but for bravery and rich furni-
ture, Brutus army far excelled Casars, For the most part of their V, i, 10-14.
armors were silver & gilt, which Brutus had bountifully given them:
although, in all other things, he taught his Captaines to live in order without ex-
cesse. Brutus . . . first of all mustered his army, and did purifie it in the fields, •
according to the maner of the Romains. . . . Notwithstanding, being busily occu-
pied about the ceremonies of this purification, it is reported that
there chanced certain unlucky signs unto Cassius. For . . . there V, i, 98.
were seene a marvellous number of fowles of prey, that feed upon
dead carkasses: and bee-hives also were found, where Bees were gathered together
in a certaine place within the trenches of the campe. . . . The which began
somewhat to alter Cassius mind from Epicurus opinions, and had
put the souldiers also in a marvellous feare. Thereuppon Cassius IV, iii, 333.
was of opinion not to try this warre at one battell, but rather to delay
time, and to draw it out in length, considering that they were the stronger in
money, and the weaker in men and armors. But, Brutus in contrary manner, did
alway before and at that time also, desire nothing more, then to put all to the hazard
of battell, as soone as might be possible: to the end he might dther quickly restore
his countrey to her former liberty, or rid him forthwith of this miserable world,
being still troubled in following and maintaining of such great armies together.
312
APPENDIX
. . . Thereupon it was presently determined they should fight battel! the next
day. So Brutus^ all supper-time, looked with a chearefull countenaunce, like a man
that had good hope, and talked very wisely of Philosophy, and after supper went
to bed. But touching Cassius, Messala reporteth that he supped by him selfe, in
his tent with a few of his frindes, and that all supper time he looked very sadly,
and was full of thoughts, although it was against his nature: and
V, i, 85-90. that after supper he tooke him by the hand, and holding him fast
(in token of kindnesse, as his manner was), told him in Greek:
Messala^ I protest unto thee, and make thee my witnes, that I am compelled against
my minde and will (as Pompey the great was) to leopard the liberty of our countrey
to the hazard of a battell. And yet we must be lively, and of good corage, con-
sidering our good fortime, whom we should wrong too much to mistrust her, al-
though wee follow evill counsell. Messala writeth, that Cassius having spoken
these last wordes unto him, he bad him farewell, and willed him to come to supper
to him the next night following, because it was his birthday. The
V, i, 18. next morning, by breake of day, the signall of battell was set out in
Brulus and Cassius campe, which was an arming scarlet coat: and
both the Chieftaines spake together in the middest of their armies. There Cassius
began to speake first, and sayd: The gods grant us, O Brulus,
* ' that this day we may win the field, and ever after live all the rest
of our life quietly, one with another. But sith the gods have so
ordayned it, that the greatest & chiefest things amongest men are most uncertaine,
and that if the battell fall out otherwise to day then we wish or looke for, we shall
hardly meete againe, what art thou then determined to doe, to flie, or die? Brutus
aunswered him, being yet but a yoimg man, and not over greatly experienced in
the world: I trust, (I know not how) a certaine rule of Philosophy, by the which I
did greatly blame and reprove Colo for killing of himselfe, as being no lawfull nor
godly acte, touching the gods: nor concerning men, valiant, not to give place and
yeeld to divine providence, and not constantly & patiently to take whatsoever it
pleaseth him to send us, but to draw back and flie: but being now in the middest of
the danger, I am of a contrary mind. For if it be not the will of God that this battell
fall out fortunate for us, I will looke no more for hope, neither seeke to make any new
supply for war again, but wil rid me of this miserable world, and content me with
my fortune. For, I have up my life for my coxmtrey in the Ides of March, for the
which I shall live in an other more glorious world. Cassius fell a laughing to heare
what he saied, and imbracing him, come on then saied he, let us goe and charge our
enemies with this minde. For either we shall conquer, or we shall not neede to feare
the Conquerors. After this talke, they fell to consultation among their friends for
the ordering of the battell. Then Brutus praied Cassius he might have the lead-
ing of the right wing, the which men thought was farre meeter for Cassius: both
because he was the elder man, and also for that he had the better experience. . . .
Now Anlonius men did cast a trench from the marishe [marsh] by
V, ii, 2. the which they lay, to cutte of Cassius way to come to the sea: and
CcBsarj at the least his army stirred not. ... In the meane time
Brutus, that ledde the right wing, sent litle bils to the Colonels and Captaines
of private bandes, in the which hee wrote the word of the battell :
V, iii, 6-9. and he him selfe, riding a horse backe by all the troupes, did sp>eak
to them, and incoraged them to sticke to it like men. So by this
meanes very few of them imderstood what was the word of the battell, and
besides, the most part of them never taryed to have it tolde them, but ranne
SOURCE OF THE PLOT— PLUTARCH
313
with great furie to assaile the enemies: whereby through this disorder, the legions
were marvellously scattered and dispersed one from another. . . .
Furthermore, the voward, and the middest of BrtUus battell, had already put all
their enemies to flight that withstoode them, with great slaughter: so that Bruius
had conquered all on his side, and Cassius had lost all on the other side. For noth-
ing undid them, but that Brutus went not to helpe Cassius, thinking he had over-
come them, as him selfe had done: and Cassius on the other side taried not for
Brutus, x\\\r\V\r\g he had been overthrowen as him selfe was. . . . Now Brutus
returning from the chase, after he had slaine and sacked Casars men: he wondred
much that he could not see Cassius tent standing up high at it was wont, neither the
other tents of his campe standing as they were before. . . . This made Bruius at
the first mistrust that which had hapned. So he appointed a number of men to
keepe the campe of his enemy which he had taken, and caused his men to be sent
for that 3ret followed the chase, and gathered them together, thinking to lead them
to aide Cassius, who was in this state as you shall heare. First of all, he was marvel-
lous angry to see how Brutus men ran to give charge upon their enemies, and taried
not for the word of the battell, nor commandement to give charge: and it grieved
him beside, that after he had overcome them, his men fell straight to spoile, and
were not carefull to compasse in the rest of the enemies behinde. But with tarying
two long also, more than through the valiantnesse or foresight of the Captaines his
enemies: Cassius found him selfe compassed in with the right wing of his enemies
army. Whereuf^pon his horsemen brake immediately, and fled for life towardes
the sea. Furthermore, perceiving his footemen to give grotmd, hee
did what he could to keepe them from flying, and took an ensigne from V, iii, a-5.
one of the ensigne bearers that fled, and stucke it fast at his feete:
although with much a do he could scant keepe his owne guard together. So
Cassius him selfe was at length compelled to flie, with a few about him, unto a
little hill, from whence they might easily see what was done in all
the plaine: howbeit Cassius him selfe saw nothing, for his sight was V, ill, 14-50.
very bad, saving that he saw (and yet with much a do) how the
enemies spoiled his campe before his eyes. He also saw a great troupe of horsmen,
whom Brutus sent to aide him, and thought that they were his enemies that fol-
lowed hhn: but yet he sent Titinnius, one of them that was with him, to go and
know what they were. Brutus horsemen saw him comming a far ofif, whom when
they knew that he was one of Cassius chief est frends, they shouted out for joy:
and they that were familiarly acquainted with him, lighted from their horses, and
went and embraced him. The rest compassed him in round about a horsebacke,
with songs of victory and great rushing of their hamesse, so that they made all the
field ring againc for ioy. But this marred all. For Ca55itt5, thinking in deede that
Titinnius was taken of the enemies, he then spake these words: desiring too much
to live, I have lived to see one of my best friendes taken, for my sake, before my
face. After that, he got into a tent where nobody was, and took Pyndarus with him,
one of his freede bondmen whom he reserved ever for such a pinch, since the cursed
battel of the Parthians, where Crassus was slain, thou^ he notwithstanding
scaped from that overthrow: but then, casUng his doke over his head, and holding
out his bare necke unto Pindarus, he gave him his head to be stricken off. So the
head was found severed from the body: but after that time Pinda-
rus was never seene more. Whereuppon some tooke occasion to say, V, Ui, 90-99.
that he had slaine his maister without his commandement. By
and by they knew the horsemen that came towardes them, and might see TUin^
314
APPENDIX
nius crowned with a garland of triumphe, who came before with great speed unto
Cassius, But when he perceived by the cries and teares of his friendes which tor-
mented them selves, the misfortune that had chatmced to his Captaine Cassius, by
mistaking: he drew out his sword, cursing him selfe a thousand times that he
had taried so long, and so slue him selfe presently in the fielde. BriUus in the meane
time came forward still, and tmderstoode also that Cassius had been ov^rthrowen:
but he knew nothing of his death, till he came very neare to his camp. So when
he was come thither, after he had lamented the death of Cassius, caU-
' ' ing him the last of all the Rohaines, being unpossible that Rome
'* should ever breede againe so noble and valiant a man as he: he
caused his body to be buried, and sent it to the city of Thassos, fearing lest his
fimerals within his campe should cause great disorder.
[The second battle of Phiiippi was separated from the first by nearly three weeks;
Shakespeare has, however, merged the accounts, as given by Plutarch, into one
action.]
For the day before the last battell was given ... the selfe same night, it is
reported that the monstrous spirit which had appeared before unto
V, ▼, 33-26. Brutus in the city of Sasdis, did now appeare againe unto him in the
selfe same shape & forme, and so vanished away, and said never a
word. . . . Then sodainely, one of the chiefest Knights he had in all his armie,
called Camulatius . . . came hard by Brutus on horsebacke, and rode before his
face to yeeld him selfe unto his enemies. Brutus was marvellous
V, ill, 12a. sorie for it: wherefore, partly for anger, and partly for feare of greater
treason and rebellion, he sodainly caused his armie to march, being
past three of the clocke in the after noone. . . .
There was the sonne of M. Cato slaine, valiantly fighting amongst the lusde
youthes. For notwithstanding that he was verie wearie, and overharried, yet would
he not therefore flie, but manfully fighting and laying about him,
Y, Iy, 5-1 1, telling aloud his name, and also his fathers name, at length he was
beaten downe amongst many other dead bodies of his enemies, which
he had slaine rounde about him. So there were slaine in the field all the chiefest
gentlemen & nobility that were in his armie: who valiantly ranne into any daunger
to save Brutus life. Amongst whom there was one of Brutus friends
V, iv, iS-34' called Lucilius^ who seeing a troupe of barbarous men making no
reckoning of al men else they met in their way, but going all together
right against Brutus, he determined to stay them with the hazard of his life, and
being left behind, told them that he was Brutus: and because they should belee\'e
him, he prayed them to bring him to AntoniuSy for he said he was affraide of
Casafj and that he did trust Antonius better. These barbarous men being very glad
of this good happe, and thinking themselves happie men: they caried him in the
night, and sent some before unto Antonius, to tell him of their comming. He was
marvellous glad of it, and went out to meete them that brought him. Others also
imderstanding of it, that they had brought Brutus prisoner: they came out of all
parts of the campe to see him, some pitying his hard fortune, and others saying, that
it was not done like himselfe so cowardly to be taken alive of the barbarous people,
for feare of death. When they came neere together, Antonius staied a while be-
thinking himselfe howe he should use Brutus. In the meane time LucUius was
brought to him, who stoutly with a bold countenance said. Antonius, I dare assure
thee, that no enemy hath taken or shall take Marcus Brutus a live: and I beseech
God keepe him from that fortune. For wheresoever he be found, alive or dead: he
SOURCE OF THE PLOT— PLUTARCH 315
will be found like himselfe. And now for my selfe, I am come unto thee, having
deceived these men of armes here, bearing them down that I was Brutus^ and do not
refuse to suffer any torment thou wilt put me to. LucUius words made them all
amazed that heard him. Antonius on the other side, looking upon all them that
had brought him, said unto them: My companions, I think ye are sorie you have
failed of your purpose, and that you thinke this man hath done you great wrong:
but I do assure you, you have taken a better bootle then that you followed. For,
in stead of an enemy, you have brought me a friend: and for my part, if you had
brought me Brutus alive, truely I can not tell what I should have done to him.
For, I had rather have such men my friends, as this man here, then enemies. Then
he embraced LucUius^ and at that time delivered him to one of his friendes in
custodie; and LucUius ever after served him faithfully, even to his death.
Nowe Brutus having passed a little river, walled in on every side with hie rockes,
and shadowed with great trees, being then darke night; he went no
further, but stayed at the foote of a rock with certain of his Captain and ' '
friendes that followed him : and looking up to the firmament that was full of starres,
sighing, he rehearsed two verses, of the which Vdumnius wrote the one, to this effect.
Let not the wight from whom this mischief e went
(0 Jove) escape without dew punishment.
And saith that he had forgotten the other. Within a little while after, naming
his friendes that he had seene slaine in batttell before his eyes, he fetched a greater
sigh then before: specially when he came to name Labio and Flavius, of the which
the one was his Lieutenant, and the other Captaine of the pioners of his campe.
In the meane time, one of the companie being a thirst, and seeing Brutus a thirst
also: he ranne to the river for water, and brought it in his sallet. At the selfe same
time they heard a noise on the other side of the river. Whereupon Volumnius
tooke Dardanus, Brutus servant, with him, to see what it was: and returning straight
againe, asked if there were any water left. Brutus smiling, gently tolde them all
was drunke, but they shall bring you some more. Thereupon he sent him againe
that went for water before, who was in great danger of being taken by the enemies,
and hardly scaped, being sore hurt. Furthermore, Brutus thought there was no
great number of men slaine in battell, and to knowe the truth of it,
there was one called StatiliuSf that promised to goe through his V, ▼, 5, 6.
enemies (for otherwise it was impossible to goe see their campe) and
from thence if all were well, that he would lift up a torch light in the aire, and then
return againe with speede to him. The torch light was lift up as he had promised,
for Statilius went thither. 'Sowe Brutus seeing Statilius tarie long after that, and
that he came not againe, he said: if Statilius be alive, he will come againe. But
his evill fortune was such, that as he came backe, he lighted in his
enemies hands and was slaine. Now, the night being farre spent, V, v, 8-33.
Brutus as he sate bowed towards Clitus, one of his men, and told him
somwhat in his eare, the other answered him not, but fell a weeping. Thereupon
he proved Dardanus, and said somewhat also to him: at length he came to Volum-
nius himselfe, and speaking to him in Greeke, praied him for the studies sake which
brought them acquainted together, that he would helpe him to put his hand to his
sword, to thrust it in Mm to kill him. Vdumnius denied his request, and so did
many others: and amongst the rest, one of them said, there was no tarying for
them there, but that they must needs flie. Then Brutus^ rising up, we must flie
in deede, said he, but it must be with our handes not with our feete. Then taking
every man by the hand, he said these words tmto them with a cheerefull counte-
3i6 APPENDIX
nance. It reioyceth my heart, that not one of my friends hath fafled me at my
neede, and I doe not complame of my fortune, but only for my coun-
' tries sake: for, as for me, I thinke myself happier than they that have
overcome, considering that I leave a perpetuall fame of our courage and man-
hoode, the which our enemies the conquerors shall never attaine unto by force
nor money, neither can let their posteritie to say, that they being nau^ty and
tmiust men, have slaine good men, to usurp tyrannical] power not pertaining to
them. Having said so, he praied every man to shift for themselves, and then he
went a litle aside with two or three only, among the which Siralo was one, with wh<mi
he came first acquainted by the study of Rhethoricke. He came as neere to him
as he could, and taking his sword by the hilts with both his handes,
' * and falling downe uppon the point of it, ranne himselfe through.
Others say, that not he, but Siralo (at his request) held the sword in his hand, and
turned his head aside, and that Brutus fell downe upon it: and so ranne himselfe
through, and dyed presently. MessaUif that had beene Brutus great friend, became
afterwards Octavius Cttsars friend. So, shortly after, Casar being at
» * ' *''* good leasure, he brought StratOf Brutus friend, unto him, and weeping
said: Casar, behold, here is he that did the last service to my Brutus. Casar wel-
comed him at that time, and afterwardes he did him as faithfull service in all his
affaires as any Grecian else he had about him, until the battle of Acnuic
[The following passages, from the Life of Marcus Antonius, supplied Shakespeare
with a few more details:]
When he [ArUonius] saw that the people were very glad and desirous also to heare
C(Bsar spoken of, and his praises uttered, he mingled his oration with lamentable
words, and by amplifying of matters did greatly move their hearts and affections unto
pity and compassion. In fine to conclude his oration, he unfolded
' ' before the whole assembly the blouddy garments of the dead, thrust
through in many places with their swords, and called the malefactors
cruel] and cursed murtherers. With these words he put the people into such a fury,
that they presently tooke CtBsars body, and burnt it in the market place, with such
tables and fourmes as they could get together. Then when the fire was kindled,
they tooke firebrands, and ran to the murtherers houses to set them a fire, and to
make them come out to fight. Brutus therefore and his accomplices, for safety
of their persons, were driven to flie the city.
Also this account of the Triumvirate and Proscriptions:
So Octavius Ccssar would not leane to Cicero, when he saw that his whole travell
& endevor wap onely to restore the common wealth to her former liberty. There-
fore he sent certaine of his friends to AntoniuSj to make them friends
IV, i, 3-9. againe: and thereupon all three met together (to wit, Ccuar, Anlo-
nius, and Lepidus) in an Hand environed round about with a litle river,
and there remained three daies together. Now as touching all other matters, they
were easily agreed, and did devide all the empire of Rome betweene them, as if it
had bene their own inheritance. But yet they could hardly agree whom they
would put to death: for every one of them would kill their enemies, and save their
kinsmen and friends. Yet at length, giving place to their greedy desire to be
revenged of their enemies, they spumed all reverence of bloud and holines of friend-
ship at their feete. For Casar left Cicero to Antonius wil, ArUonius also forsooke
Lucius C(Bsar^ who was his Uncle by his mother: and both of them together suffered
Lepidus to kill his own brother Paulus. Yet some writers afl&rme, that Ccuar and
ArUonius requested Paulus might be slaine, and that Lepidus was contented with it.
THE
TRAGEDY OF
JVLIVS CMSAR,
[By Sir William Alexander, Earl of Sterline.]
I <•»
[Reprint of the Edition of 1637.]
317
THE ARGUMENT.
At that time when the Romans travelled with an unjatiable ambition to Jvbdue all
Nations, by who/e overthrow they could conceive any expectation, either of glory or
profit: Cains lulius Oefar, a man of a lofty minde, and given to attempt greai things,
afcending by feverall degrees to the Confuljhip, procured a power to warre againfi
the Gaules: amongfl whom, after a number of admirable battels and victories {by the
approbation of all the world, having purchafed a fingular reputation both for his
courage and skill in Arms) he being long accujlomed to command, was fo drunke
with a delight of Joveraignty, that difdaining the fimplicUy of a private life, he was
fo farre from denuding him/elf e of the authority which he had, that altogether Uranf-
ported with a defire of more, he fent to the Senate, to have his government of the Gaules
prorogated for five years: which Juit being repugnant to the Lawes {as direCUy tending
to tyranny) was by the people publikdy repelled. By which occafum, and fame others
fifing from an emulation between him and Pompey the great, pretending a high in-
dignation, hee incontinent crojfed the Alpes, with fuch forces {though few) as he had
in readinejfe, and with a great celerity came to Rome, which he found abandoned by
Pompey, in whom the Senate had repojed their truft, whomfhortly after, by a memor-
able battell in the fields of Pharfalia he difcomfited: and having by the overthrow of
Scipio, death of Cato, and flight of Pompeyes fonnes, as it were, rooted out all the
contrary faction, he returned to Rome, and indirectly by the meanes of Antonius,
laboured to be proclaimed King: which having rendred him altogether odious; Caius
Caffius, Marcus Brutus, Decius Brutus, Publius Cafca, and divers others {Noble
men) confpired his death, and appointed a day for the fame: at which time, notwitlh
ftanding that Csefar was dijfwaded from going forth, by many monfirous apparitions,
and ominous prefages; yet being per/waded by Decius Brutus Albinus, he went
towards the fatall place, where the Senate was ajfembled.
The Confpirators in like manner had many terrors: amongfl others, Portia the
wife of Marcus Brutus, although Jhee had infinuated her felfe in her husbands fecret
by a notable proofe of extraordinary magnanimity, yet on the day dedicated for the
execution of their defigne, through the apprehcnfion of his danger, Jhe fainted divers
times, whereof Brutus was advertijcd, yet Jhrinked not, but went fortvards with his
confederates to the appointed place, where they accomplijhed their purpofe, every one
of them giving Caefar a wound, and me a ground whereupon to build this prefcnt
Tragedy.
The perjons names who fpeake.
I UNO .
CiE s A R .
Antonius.
Cicero.
Decius Brutus
Caius Cassius.
Marcus Brutus.
Portia.
Calphurnia.
Nu N Ti us .
The Scene in Rome.
318
THE
TRAGEDY OF
JVLIVS CESAR.
Aft I.
Juno, 5
Tliou^ I (a GoddelTe) grace the azure round,
Whilfl birds (all bright with eyes) my Coach do move,
And am with radiant flarres, heavens EmprelTe crown'd,
The thunderers filler, wife of mighty love,
And though I banquet in th'etheriall bowres, lo
Where Ambroiie and Ne<5lar ferves for meate,
And at the meeting of th' Immortall powres,
Am dill advanc'd tmto the highefl feat:
Yet by thofe glorious ihewes of boundlefTe blifTe,
My burden'd minde can no way be relieved: 15
Since immortality affords but this,
That I live ever to be ever griev'd.
In vaine, vaine mortals feeke for helpe at me,
With facred odours on my Altars throwne:
What ezpe(5tation can they have to fee 20
One venge their wrongs, who cannot venge her own?
May Pallas then drowne thoufands if fhe pleafe,
Who metamorphos'd Diomedes mates?
And muil my enemies alwaies live at eafe,
As me to fpight appointed by the fates? 25
Of all the dying race which lives below,
With fuch indignities none could comport,
As wound my bred, whom Gods and men doe know.
To be abus'd by love in many a fort.
Though knowne to me, from others if concealed, 50
His faults might breed me grief e, but yet not (hame;
Where, loe, now both through heaven and earth reveal'd.
Each flandrous Theater doth his fcome prodaime.
If divine foules divinely liv'd aloft.
The world below would imitate them then, 35
319
320
APPENDIX
But bumaniz'd by haunting mortals oft, 36
Where men fhould grow like Gods, Gods grow like men.
My painted Iris in her beauties pride,
Smiles not on Pkabus with fo many hewes,
As love in divers ihapes himfelfe can hide, 40
When he poore Maydes (by Cupid fpurr*d) purfues;
He Danae (a golden Ihower) deceived;
And did (a Swanne) in Ledaes bofome light;
Then (tum*d a Bull) Agenors daughter reav'd;
And lo made a Cow to mocke my fight: 45
But O! I wiih that with fuch wanton Dames,
He flill to fport would as with me remaine;
Not able then to touch celefliall flames,
All (like the dnmkards mother) might be flaine.
Then fuch a troupe as Rheas bofome (lores, 50
Would not hold him and me at endlefTe jarres;
The heavens are pedred with my husbands whores,
Whofe lights impure doe taint the pured (larres.
"Though wrongs, when groffe, are heavy to digefl,
"An Adtors greatnefTe doth fome grief e remove, 55
"Of whom to fufler wrong it (hames one lead:
"If I were wrong'd* I would be wrong'd by I<ne\
But (ah) this long, tormented hath my bred,
A Man, a Boy, a fhepheard, yea, and worfe,
The Phrygian fire-brand, the adultrous gued, 60
Who fird wrought wrong by fraud, and then by force;
He, he was he, whofe verdi<5t mov*d me mod,
Whild partiall fancies judg'd of beauties right;
Nor was it drange though one all judgement lod.
Who had three naked GoddefTes in fight; 65
And yet I know, had not his wandring eyes
The Cyprian bribed by fome lafcivious fmiles,
My pompous birds (in triumph) through the skyes,
Had borne the gold which oft her Nymphs beguiles;
And am I Ihe whofe greatneffe is admir'd, 70
\\Tiom love for wife, whom thoufands court for love?
Whom haughty Ixion to embrace defir'd,
Yet with a cloud deluded did remove?
And what made me a matter to fubmit,
Where my authority might have avail'd? 75
Whild though I promis'd wealth, and Pallas wit,
Yet with a yong man, Venus mod prevail'd;
" But how durd he of one the glory raife,
" Where two contemn'd would needs the wrong repaire?
" It fpites our fexe to heare anothers praife, 80
"Of which each one would be thought onely faire.
To venge my felfe no kinde of paine I fpar'd,
And made his greated gaine his greated loffe:
As Venus gave him Helen for reward,
I gave him Helen for his greated crolTe; 85
ALEXANDER ' S JULIUS C^SAR 32 1
Nor did he long with joy her love enjoy, 86
Whofe fatall flames his Country did confound,
Whilft Annies arm'd for her did Troy dellroy,
And Ne^unes labours leveird with the grotmd;
Whilfl Simois feem'd to be a buriall field, 90
Whofe dreams (as (Ireets) were with dead bodies pav'd,
All Zantkus Plaine (as tum'd a Sea) did yeeld
A floud of bloud, from Heroes wotmds recdv'd;
Whilfl braving thoufands once, though much efleem'd.
By dud and bloud deform'd, of HeOar flaine, 95
(Not like Patrodus by the fword redeemed)
The body bafely was bought backe againe;
Then, by the fame mans fonne who killed his fonne,
Old Priamus furpriz'd, figh'd forth his breath.
And even mod harm'd where he for helpe had runne, 100
The Altar taking, taken was by death.
Though wredling long to fcape the heavens decree,
(Bloud quenching lud) lad parted from the light,
He who lov'd Hden, and was loath'd by me.
Did (as a Sacrifice) appeafe my fpight. 105
Then, having liv'd (if wretches have a life)
Till (in all hers ere dead, oft buried fpi'd)
Though once known both, nor mother then, nor wife,
The fertfle Hecuba (made childelefTe) dy'd.
Thus, by thofe meanes it would have feem'd to fome no
That f corned beauty had beene well reveng'd:
But whild they were o*re-com*d, they did o're-come,
Since they their dates for better dates have chang'd.
I in one part that people did confound.
But did enlarge their power in every place: 115
All war-like Nations through the world renown'd.
From Phrygian mines drive to raife their race.
And yet two traitors who betrayd the red
01 that the heaven on treafon fometime f miles I
Though having word deferv'd, did chance the bed, 120
More happy then at home in their exiles;
Did not Antenor (dealing through his foes)
Neere to th' Euganian Motmtaines build a Towne;
Of which fome nurflings once (hall feeke repofe,
Amidd the waves, and in the depths fit downe: 125
Their Citie (fpoufing Neptune) (hall arife.
The rared Common-wealth that ever was,
Whofe people, if as dout as rich and wife,
Might boad to bring miraculous things to pafTe.
Then falfe Mneas, though but borne t' obey, 130
Did (of a fugitive) become a King:
And fome of his neere Tibers dreames that day,
Would all the world to their obedience bring.
Their ravenous Eagles foaring o're all lands.
By violence a mighty prey have wonne, 135
ai
322
APPENDIX
That baftard brood of Mors with martiall bands, 136
Have conquer'd both the Manfions of the Sunoe;
Tlieir courfe by moimtaines could not be controld,
No; Ne^ne could not keep his bofome free:
Hie parching heate, nor yet the freezing cold, 140
Tlieir Legions limits no way could decree;
Yet, of that City there can come no good,
Whofe riling walles with more then barbarous rage,
Hie builder firil bath'd with his brothers bloud.
Which their prodigious conquefls did prefage. 145
Oft hath that Towne my foule with anguiih fill'd,
Whofe new-borne (late did triumph o're my wrath.
Like my old foe who in his Cradle killed
The Serpents which I fent to give him death.
By SabinSf Albans, Tujcans, oft alTaird, 150
Even in her infancy I tofis'd Romes (late.
Yet (lOl Laomedons falfe race prevailed,
And angry luno could doe nought but hate.
Tben when the gallant GauUs had vanquifh'd Rome,
Who bafely bought her k'berty with gold, 155
A banifh'd man CamiUus chanc'd to come,
And her imballanc'd (late redeemed of old;
Great HannibaU our common caufe purfu'd,
And made his bands within their bounds remaine,
With Confuls and with Pretors bloud, imbru'd, x6o
At Tkrafimenef and at Cannas (layne;
In Romans mindes, (Irange thoughts did doubt infufe,
But whilfl they fear'd the taking of their Towne,
He who could vanquifh, vi(5lory not ufe,
Was by their brafen fate (when high) thrown downe; 165
0 what a torrent of Barbarian bands,
In inundations once their walles did boafl,
Whild Teutons huge, and Cymbers from their Lands,
Like Gyants march'd, a more then monflrous hofte?
But though from parts unknowne to mine Rotne, 170
1 led thofe troupes which all the world admir'd.
Yet did fierce Marius me with them o*re-come.
And I in vaine to venge old wrongs afpir'd;
By meanes more bafe I likewife fought her harmes,
Whilfl lanus Church imported never peace, 175
I raised up abje<5l Spartacus in Armes,
Who neere eclips'd Romes glory with difgrace.
Though I who all the world for helpe have fought,
From Europe, Africke, and from Afia thus,
Gaules, Carthaginians, and the Cymbers brought, 180
Yet did the dammage dill redound to us:
Of heaven and earth I all the pow*rs have prov'd,
And for their wracke have each advantage watched:
But they by forraine force cannot be mov'd:
By Romans, Romans onely may be matched. 185
ALEXANDER'S JULIUS CjESAR 323
And I at lad have kindled dvill warre, 186
That from their thoughts (which now no reafon bounds)
Not onely laws, but Natures laws doth barre;
The Sonne the Syre, the brother brother wounds*
WhO'fl th' Eagles are oppos'd to th' Eagles fo, \, 190
0 what contentment doth my minde attainel
No wound is wrong befloVd, each kills a foe, V
What ever fide doth lofe, I alwayes gaine.
But this my foule exceedmgly annoyes,
That all at one time cannot be fupprefl: 195
"The warre helps fome, as others it dedroyes,
And thofe who hate me moil, fUU profper bed.
Whil'd with their bloud their glory thoufands fpend,
Ah I ones advancement aggravates my woe,
Who vaunts himfelfe from Venus to defcend, 200
As if he daim'd by kinde to be my foe.
1 meane the man whofe thoughts nought can appeafe,
Whil'd them too high a blinde ambition bends,
Whom (as her minion) Fortune bent to pldlfe,
Her rared treafures prodigally fpends; 205
Not onely hath he daunted by the Sword
The Gatds^ the Germans^ and th' Egyptians now,
But of all Lords pretends to be made Lord,
That who command the world to him may bow;
Thus difpofTeiling Princes of their Thrones, 210
Whil'd his Ambition nothing can aiTwage,
That the fubjedled world in bondage grones.
The prey of pride, the facrifice to rage,
"Men raile on lave^ and figh for Saiurnes time,
"And to the prefent, Ages pad preferre, 215
"Then burden would the Gods with every crime,
"And damne the heavens, where onely th' earth doth erre.
Though lave (as dupid) dill with Cupid fports.
And not the humour of proud Ca/ar fpies?
Who may (if forcing thus the worlds chief e Forts) 220
Then Titans eard, more poVrfull, fcale the skies.
Yet led he thrall him too, who none free leaves.
We from the bounds above him mud repell.
To brawle with Pluto in th' lunbragious Caves,
There fince he will be fird, made fird in hell. 225
What? with that Tyrant I will draight be even,
And fend his foule to the Tartarian grove:
Though love will not be jealous of his heaven.
Yet luno mud be jealous of her lave;
And though none in the heavens would do him ill, 230
I'le raife up fome in th' earth to hade his death:
Yea, though both heaven and earth negle<5t my will.
Hell can afford me Miniders of wrath:
lie croiTe Cacytus, and the fmoaking lakes,
To borrow thence my brothers damned bands, 235
324 APPENDIX
The furies ann'd with fire-brands, and with Snakes, 236
Shall plant their hell where Rome fo (lately (lands;
Whil'd Furies furious by my fury made,
Do fpare the dead to have the living pin'd:
01 with what joy will I that Army leade? 240
"Nought then revenge more calmes a wronged minde;
I mud make this a memorable age,
By this high vengeance which I have conceived:
But what though thoufands dye t' appeafe my rage?
So Cajair peri(h, let no foule be fav'd. 245
«
Chorus.
''WeJhoM he loath to grieve the gods,
"Who hold us in a ballance JliU;
And as they will
May weigh us up, or doume; 5
" Thofe who by folly f after pride,
'' And do deride
" The terrour of the Thunderers rods,
"Infeas offinne their foules do droume,
"And others them ahhorre as moft unjuft; 10
" Who want Rdigion do dejerve no truft:
How dare fraile flefh prefume to rife
(Whilft it deferves heavens wrath to prove)
On th* earth to move,
Left that it opening ftraight, 15
Give death and buriall both at once?
How dare fuch ones
Look up unto the skies,
Forfeare tofeele the Thunderers iveight?
"All tV Elements their Makers will attend, 20
"As prompt to plague, as men are to ofend»
All muft be plagued who God difpleafe.
Then whiVft he Bacchus rites did f come.
Was Pentheus torne",
The Delians high difdaine 25
Made Niobe (though turned a flone)
With teares ftill mone.
And (Pallas to appeafe)
Arachne weaves loathed webbes in vaine:
Heaven hath prepared ere ever they begin, 30
A fall for pride, a puni/hment for finne,
Loe, luno yet doth ftill retaine
That indignation once conceived,
For wrong received
From Paris as wefinde; 35
And for his caufe (bent to dif grace
The Trojan race) 37
ALEXANDER' S JULIUS CjESAR 325
Dcih hold a high difdaine, 38
Long layd up in a lofiie minde:
We Jhould abftaine from irritating thofe 40
Wh(^e thoughts (if wronged) not tiU revenged repoje.
ThuSf thus for Vans fond defire,
Who of his fieajures had no part,
For them muft /mart:
Such be the fruits of luft; 45
Can heavenly breafls Jo long time lodge
A Jecret grudge?
Like Mortals thrall to yre,
TiU juftice Jometime feemes uniufi?
"Of all the furies which afflia the Joule, 50
"Luji and revenge are hardeft to controuU:
The Gods give them but rarely reft,
Who do againft their will contend,
A nd plagues do Jpend,
That fortunate in nought, 55
Their Jprits {quite parted from repoje)
May ftill expoje
Thejlormy troubled brejl
A prey to each tyrannicke thought:
"AU Jelfe-accujing Joules no rejt can Jinde ; 60
" What greater torment then a troubled minde?
Let us adore th* immortall powers.
On whoje decree, of all that ends.
The Jlate depends,
That (Jarre from barbarous broiles) 6$
We of our life this little Jpace
May Jpend in peace
Freejrom afflidlions Jhowres;
Or at the leajtjrom guilty toyles;
"Letus oj reft the treajure ftrive to gaine, 70
" Without the which nought can be had but paine.
Aft 2. Scene i.
Julius Cajar, Marcus Antonius,
Now have my hopes attained the long'd for heaven,
In fpight of partiall Envies poyfnous blafls:
My Fortune with my courage hath prov'd even; 5
No Monument of mifcontentment lafls.
Thofe who corrival'd me, by me o're-throwne,
Did by their falls give feathers to my flight:
I in fome comer rather live unknowne
Then ihine in glory, and not Ihine mod bright; xo
What common is to two, reils no more rare.
In all the world no Phcenix is fave one, 12
326 APPENDIX
That of my deeds none challenge might a (hare zj
Would God that I had a<5led all alone:
And yet at lafl I need to moume no more 15
For envy of the Macedonians praife,
Since I have equalled all that went before;
My deeds in number do exceed my dayes.
Some earil (whofe deeds refl regiflred by Fame)
Did from their Conqueds glorious titles bring, 30
But GreatneiTe to be great, mufl have my name,
To be a Cajar is above a King.
Ani. Thofe warre-like Nations, which did Nations fpoile.
Are by thy LiCgions to our laws made thrall;
"What can brave mindes not do by time and toyle? 25
"True magnanimity triumphs o're all.
Caj. Th'out-ragious Gaids who in mod monflrous fwarmes
Went walling Ajiay thundering downe all things,.
And (Macedony quaking at their Armes)
Did infolently make, and un-make Kings: 30
Thofe Gauls who having the worlds Conqueroiirs foil'd,
(As if the world might not have match'd them then)
Would facrilegioully have Ddphos fpoiVd,
And warr'd againd the Gods, contemning men;
Yea, thofe whofe Ancedors our City bum'd, 35
(The onely people whom the Romanes fear'd)
By me {Romes nurfling) match 'd, and o're-match*d moum'd:
So what they fird eclipfd, againe they clear'd.
Then, as to Subjects having given degrees,
The Gatds no more prefuming of their might, 40
I (wounding Neptunes bofome with wing'd trees)
Did with the world-divided Britains fight;
The Germans from their birth inur'd to warre,
Whofe martial! mindes dill haughtie thoughts have bred,
Whird neither men, nor walls, my courfe could barre, 45
(Masked with my banners) faw their Rhene nmne red;
The Eademe Realmes when conquering now of late,
My comming, and o're-comming was but one;
With little paine ear*d Pompey was call'd great.
Who fought foft bands whofe glorious dayes were gone: 50
But what though thoufands fet ones praifes forth.
For fields which (hadows, and not fwords, obtained;
The rate (too eafie) vilifies the worth:
"Save by great paines, no glory can be gain'd:
From dangers pad, my comfort now proceeds, 55
Since all who durd gaine-dand I did o're-come:
And, in few words to comprehend my deeds,
Rome conquered all the world, and Cajar, Rome,
Ant, Loe thofe who driv*d your vertue to fuppreflfe,
(As whofe great axdions made them jealous dill) 60
Whird labouring but too much to make you leffe,
Have made you to grow great againd your will : 62
ALEXANDER'S JULIUS CjESAR 327
Great Pompeys pompe is pad, his glory gone, 63
And rigorous Caio by himfelfe lyes kill'd;
Then daftard Cicero more your honours none, 65
Thus all your foes are with confufion fill'd.
The Senatours who could not be aiTwag'd,
Long to your prejudice their pow'r abus'd,
Till at their great ingratitude enrag'd,
I fwore our fwords would grant what they refus'd. 70
When having fcap'd, endangered, and defpis'd,
Brave Curio and I did to your Camp refort,
In old bare gownes Qjlkt fome bafe flaves) difguis'd,
All ligh*d to fee us wrong'd in fuch a fort.
CaJ. The highefl in the heaven who knows all hearts, 75
Do know my thoughts as pure as are their Starres,
And that (conflrain'd) I came from forraine parts
To feeme undvill in the civill warres.
I mov'd that warre which all the world bemoanes,
Whil'ft urg*d by force to free my felfe from feares; 80
Still when my hand gave wounds, my heart gave groanes;
No Romans bloud was fhed, but I fhed teares:
But how could any elevated fpright,
Who had for honour hazarded his blood,
Yeeld willingly (by foes outragious fpight) 85
To be defrauded of th' expe<5ted good:
When as a multitude of battels wonne,
Had made Romes Empire, and my glory great;
And that the Gauls (oft vanquilh'd) had begun
To beare the yoke which they difdain'd of late. 90
Then glorious Pompey, my proud fonne-in-law,
And Cato (who flill crolT'd what I defign'd)
From favouring me the people did with-draw,
And had a fucceiTour for fpight aifign'd;
Not that he fhould fucceed in dangerous broils; 95
But (even through envy) as they had ordain'd,
That he might triumph fo of all my toils.
And rob the glory which I dearly gain'd;
With fuch indignity who could comport,
When prizing honour dearer then the light? xoo
No (whil'ft my foule refts foveraigne of this fort)
None (hall have power to rob me of my right:
And yet by love who all the world conmiands,
To ufe fuch violence I did miflike:
And would have oft abandoned all my bands, 105
If that mine enemies would have done the like;
But yet the multitude, which floting ftill
(As waves with windes) are carried with conceits.
With nought but my difgrace would bound their will,
And I committed all unto the fates: xio
Yet when at Rubicon I ftood perplex'd.
And weigh'd the horrour of my high attempt, 112
328 APPENDIX
My flormy foule a thoufand fancies vex'd, 113
Which refolution buried in contempt.
Ani, "Nought in a Captaine more confounds his foes, 1x5
"Then of a ventrous courfe, the fwift effetfts,
"Since (fo quite cruih'd) ere they their thoughts difpofe,
"All good advice a care confufd negledts.
Though when you march'd to Rome, your pow'r was fmall.
The fudden news fo thundred in each eare, 120
That (as if heaven had fakie upon them all)
It bred amazement, and th' amazement feare.
"Some fecret delliny (as when was feene)
"Doth guide mens actions, and their judgement bounds:
"Thofe who by hods could not have frighted beene, 125
''A ihadow, or a rumoiu: oft confounds:
"All haflie dangers fo furprife the minde,
"That feare prevents the refolutions power,
"Or elfe the fates make curious Reafon blinde,
"When heavens determined have a fatall houre. 150
Great Pompey (loe) who was growne ag'd in armes.
And had triumphed o're all the worlds three parts,
Whiril (quite difcourag'd, by imagined harmes)
Fled Romet though without reach of th' enemies darts.
As to a torrent all gave place to you, 135
And whom they call'd a rebell made their Lord;
Yoiu: fucceflbur Domitius (forced to bow)
Did trufl your favour, more then feare your fword.
When in th' Iberian bounds you did arrive.
There, Adverfaries (who did vainly vaunt) 140
Had all th' advantage that the ground could give,
Of vi(5luals plenty, which with us were fcant.
Yet the celerity that you had us*d,
Did fo difcourage their difordred band,
That (as love in their breafls had feare infus'd) 145
They had no flrength againfl our ilrokes to Hand.
And when Rotnes Generall with brave legions flor'd,
Seem'd to poffeffe all that his foule requir'd,
Whird us to daunt, both famine and the fword.
The Sea, the Land, and all in one confpir*d; 150
Then, for your offices they did contend,
As thofe who of the vicflory were fure.
And (where they might th' affaires of (late attend)
In Rome for lodgings fondly did procure.
Yet memorable now that day remaines, iSS
When all the world was in two Armies rang'd,
Whil'ft Mars went raging through th' ^matkian plaines,
And to defpaires high expe<5lations chang'd;
When Pompey s partie had the battell loft;
(As Lyons do their prey) you did purfue 160
The fcattred remnant of that ruin*d hoft,
On which new heads ftill Oike a Hydra) grew. 162
«
ALEXANDER'S JULIUS CJESAR 329
Though vidlory in Africke fatall feem'd 163
To any Army that a Sdpio led,
Yet, jrou Ihew'd there (for worth m warre edeem'd) 165
That Rome a better then a Sdpio bred;
And all our Enemies were confounded thus,
Who us in number ever did furmount;
But CcBjar and his fortune were with us,
Which we did more then many thoufands count. 170
C<bJ. The fweetefl comfort which my conquefls gave.
Was that I fo might do to many good:
For, every day fome Romanes life I fave.
Who in the field to fight againfl me flood.
Thus, may my minde be judg'd by the event, 175
Who (even when by my greatefl foes aflaird)
To winne the battell never was more bent,
Then prompt to pardon when I had prevailed.
Not covetous of bloud, of fpoyls, nor harmes,
I (even when vidtor) did infult o're none, 180
But layd afide all hatred with my Armes,
A foe in fight, a friend when it was gone:
''Of clemency I like the praife, more then
''Of force, which mortals with affliction lodes;
Strength oft may prove the word thing that's in men, 185
And pity b the bed thing in the Gods.
Sterne Cato (dill affe(fling to be free)
Who either death or life (if given) disdain'd,
Thy death I envy, who didd envy me.
The glory that I (faving thee) had gain'd. 190
Yet I to Rents and dignities redore.
Even thofe who long my mine had defign'd.
And 01 it doth delight my minde farre more,
By benefits, then by condraint to binde.
Ant. I would have all my foes brought to their ends, 195
CaJ. I rather have my foes all made my friends.
Ant. Their bloud whom I fufpedl'd fhould quench all drife.
C(tJ. So might one do who lik'd of nought but life.
Ant. Still life would be redeemed from dangers forth.
C(tJ. Not with a ranfome then it felfe more worth. 200
Ant. Then life to man, what thing more deare fucceeds?
CaJ. The great contentment that true glory breeds.
Ant. Men by all meanes this blad of breath prolong.
CaJ. Men fhould drive to live well, not to live long.
And I would fpend this momentary breath 305
To live by fame for ever after death:
For, I afpire in fpight of fates to live.
Ant. I feare that fome too foone your death contrive.
C(bJ. Who dare but lodge fuch thoughts within their mindes?
Ant. Thofe whom the ihadow of your GreatneiTe blindes. 310
Caf. The bed are bound to me by gifts in dore.
Ant. But to their Countrey they are bound farre more. 312
330
APPENDIX
C(bJ, Then loath they me as th* Enemy of the ftate? 213
Ant, Who freedome love, you (as ufurper) hate.
CaJ. I by great battels have enlarged their bounds. 215
Ant, By that they thinke yoiu: pow'r too much abounds.
CdtJ, From doing wrong, yet I refraine my will.
Ant, They feare your pow'r, becaufe it may do ill.
CaJ, The prefent (late (lill mifcontentment brings
To fadlious mindes affecting matters flrange, 220
Which (burdens to themfelves) do loath all things,
And fo they change, regard not what they change.
In populous Townes where many do repaire,
(Who at their meeting what they pleafe do touch)
They further then their bounds extend their care: 225
"The idle who do nothing, muft thinke much.
Loe, Rome (though waded all with raging warres)
Whird private grudge pretended publike good,
Equality (dill rude) engendring jarres.
Did prove too prodigall of Roman blood. 230
Though yet now at the lad attaining red,
Whird all (obeying one) may banifh teares:
It (if condrain*d) even fcoms (as bad) the bed,
This word neceffity fo wounds the eares.
The infolent with vile feditious words, 235
(Who trembled whiFd they heard the Trumpets found)
Stirre now their tongues, as we did then our fwords,
And what Mars fpar'd, make Mercury confound.
"The people thus in time of peace agree
"To ciurbe the great men dill, even in that forme, 240
" As in calme dayes they do disbranch the Tree,
"Which (hrowded them of late againd a dorme.
But now I look'd (brave deeds appeafmg fpight)
That burded Envy fhould for anguifli dye,
Darke fhadows (as afham'd) do vanilh quite, 245
When at his height bright Phcshus cleares the skie.
And though their hatred deeply they difguife.
Yet can they not fo hide enflam'd defires,
But that their fpight reds fparkling through their eyes.
And boads to burd out draight in op>en fires. 250
Ant. Since fird (great Cafar) I difcem'd thy worth,
On all thy a<5lions I did dill attend;
And what fome whifpcr mud fpeake freely forth:
" Franke admonitions do become a friend.
The men who do fufp>e<d that you afpire 255
Of government the prefent forme to change.
All in their foules your mine do confpire,
And their affe<5lions farre from you edrange.
Since chad Lucretia (by proud Tarquin dain'd)
Wafli'd with her bloud the violated bed, 260
Whil'd by his pow'r Rome bafely was condrain'd,
All to obey which his curd braine had bred. 262
ALEXANDER'S JULIUS CjESAR 331
This government which fome tyrannicke call, 263
Doth found fo odious in the peoples eares,
That they as Tyrants vile, detefl them all, 265
Whofe greatneiTe gives them any caufe of feares.
C(bJ, I not affedt the title of a King
For love of glory, or deiire of gaine,
Nor for refpedi of any private thing.
But that the State may by my travels gaine. 270
You know Sibylla's books which never faile,
In many mindes have an opinion bred.
That o're the Patihians Rome cannot prevaile,
Till by a Prince her valorous Bands be led:
''For, as confufion is the fruit (we finde) 275
"Of thofe affaires which divers thoughts difpofe,
''So Soveraignty matched with a gallant minde,
" Breeds reverence in ones owne, feare to his foes.
And 01 it grieves me, that thefe (leps of otirs
Have trod fo oft on many a millions necks, 280
Whil*ft yet the Parlhian vilipends our pow'rs.
And all our vidtories (not vanquiih'd) checks;
Ah! (hould a Generall of the Roman race
Be by Barbarians kill'd? and not reveng'd?
And fhould his Enfignes, iignes of oiu: difgrace, 285
Refl in the ranke of conquered reli(5ts rang'd?
No, no, (wretch'd Crajfus) now thy felfe content,
He padfie thy Ghofl with Parthians fpoyles.
My boyling fancies have beene alwayes bent
To match the matchleiTe, daunt th' undaunted foiles. 290
Ant. With vi<5tories quite cloi'd, will you not then •
Your fafety once, more then new warres refpedl?
Caf. No, though I have furmounted other men,
My fancies yet do greater things affedt:
In emulation of my felfe at lafl, 295
I even with envy look on my owne deeds;
And (bent to make the new furpaiTe things pad)
Now to my minde dale praife no pleafure breeds.
AfU. The world hath feene thee (great man) for Romes good.
In danger oft of many a dangerous fhelfe, 300
Whirfl for her glory thou engag'd thy bloud.
Of others carefull, careleiTe of thy felfe.
Citf. Though whil'fl in th' Aprill of my blooming age,
I from the vulgar rate redeem'd my name.
Some with my deeds did burden youths hot rage, 305
And an ambitious appetite of Fame,
Yet (ince the coldneCTe of declining yeares,
Boads to congeale the bloud which boil'd of late,
Whil'ft loe, my life the Sunne of glory cleares.
Who now of all the world am knowne mod great; 310
I cannot covet that thing which I have.
332 APPENDIX
I have all honour that can be requir'd: 3x2
And now (as that which wants) would onely crave
To tafte the pleafures of a life ret3rr'd:
But (fave to ferve the State) for nought I ftrivc, 315
For, 01 (negledting th' ecchoes of renowne)
I could ccmtent my felfe imknowne to live
A private man, with a Plebeian gowne:
Since (Anthonie) thus for the (late I care,
And all delights which Nature loves difdaine, 320
Go, and in time the peoples mindes prepare.
That, as the refl, I may the title gaine;
Yet indiredUy at the firil aiTay
To what their doubtfull mindes do mod incline,
But as without my knowledge, that they may 325
All marke your minde, and yet not thinke of mine.
ExeutU. 337
A£l 2. Scene 2.
Cicero, Decius, Brutus.
Did I furvive th' impetuous Sciila^s rage.
And in a torrent of de(lru<5Uon flood,
Whil'fl Tyrants did make Rome a tragicke (lage 5
Through a voluptuous appetite of bloud?
So^'d I confufion in a time fo bad.
Of liberty and honour once to taile.
That bondage now might make my foule more fad
By the remembrance of my fortunes pad? 10
What though I once (when firfl by Fame made knowne)
From CaiUines flrange treafon did preferve
This Towne (when free from foes) thraird by her owne.
Since now the world from equity doth fwerve?
A fparke of that confpiracy I fpie 15
As yet not quenched to have our (late imbroil'd.
Which Rome to bume makes many flames to flie:
Thus one was fpar'd, that we might all be fpoil'd.
O worthy CalOy in whofe matchleiTe minde
Three (rarely matched) things Nature did reveale, 20
Wit, Honefly, and Courage, which deiigned
A Citizen for Plato's common-weale:
Whirft courteous Pompey did things as a friend.
Thou as a wife-man fpoke, and dill fore-told
To what all Cafars deeds would tume in th* end, 25
If that his pride were not in time controld.
And had we him (as wifely thou advis'd)
Given to the Germans whom he had injurM,
We had not now beene thus like ilaves defpifd.
To fee Rome's glory, and our owne obfcur'd: 30
But yet I may (disbending former cares)
ALEXANDER'S JULIUS C/ESAR 333
A fpace comport with that proud Tyrants pow'rs; 32
Age gives affurance by my hoarey haires,
Ere he Romes freedome, death will me devour.
But all whofe youth and fprite might have attain'd 35
Thofe dignities which Ca/ar hath undone:
01 ye have loH as much as he hath gain'd,
Whofe rifing hopes mufl be retrenched fo foone.
Dec. Though innovations at the firil feeme (Irange,
Yet oft experience approbation brings, 40
And if with upright thoughts we weigh this change,
From thence the fafety of our City fprings;
As doth a ihip, when tofifd by feverall windes,
More danger runne whil'fl Pylots do contefl,
So was our City vex'd by differing mindes, 45
Who did interpret laws as pleas'd them befl;
Whim for one fickneiTe divers drugges are us'd,
Whofe pow'rs (repugnant) in digeflion jarre,
Th' impatient patients perifh, when abus'd,
So did we long whil'ft croCfd by dvill warre; 50
But now great Cafar from tempefluous windes,
Romes fcattered mines recolle<5ls of late:
A Pilot meet to calme tumultuous mindes,
A fit Phyfitian for an aguifh State.
Cic. The State from flormes fecure by drowning proves, 55
Now whil'fl defpaire doth doubtfull feares appeafe;
He (with the life) the fickneiTe quite removes:
Thus is the Phjrfick worfe then the Difeafe.
This Conmion-weale (as all the world did fpie)
Was by proud fpirits in civill warres involved, 60
Yet like black Clouds which would obfcure the skie,
Thefe timiid humours fuddenly difTolv'd;
And no difgrace unto the flate redounds,
But to th' Ambitious men that it abus'd.
Who (had their pow'r like Cafars wanted bounds) 6$
Would (whil'ft they rul'd) have greater rigour us'd.
All parts (we fee) bred people of all kindes.
And as advanced fome bad men did abide,
In pow'r their equals, and of better mindes,
Some alwayes vertuous were to curbe their pride; 70
But fince that facred liberty was lofl.
The publike pow'r to private ends one tumes:
And (as his lawlefTe wa3res did alwayes boafl)
The Conmion-weale by violence o*re-tumes.
Dec, Though what jrou burden Ca/ar with were true, 75
Neceifity hath purg'd his part from crime.
Who was (foes force to fhunne) forc'd to purfue,
And urg'd by danger to attempt in time.
To th' enemies envy more obliged he reds,
Then to his wit which no fuch courfes fcan'd: 80
For when quite barr'd from ufing of requefls,
334
APPENDIX
Th' occaiion then invited to command. 82
His thoughts when cahne, to dorm fond foes did tempt:
"True worth difdaines to fuffer open wrong:
''A gallant courage kindled by contempt 85
" Bums with revenge, whiril fury makes one flrong.
Cic, O Decius, now a wrong accoimt you call,
The purpofe, not th' event, declares the minde:
Tread backe the (leps of all his actions pad,
And what he compalTd had beene long deiign'd. 90
As by fome fprite infpir'd, proud Scilla faid,
That there in Ca/ar many Marians were,
And Rome in time was wam'd to be afraid
Of that evill-girded youth, with fmooth-comb'd haire;
Then when (as flill to quietneiTe a foe) 95
The memory of Marius he renewed,
By re-ere<ding Tyrants flatues fo,
His thoughts all bent to tyranny were view'd.
That people-pleafer might have beene perceiv'd,
By courteous complements below his rank, 100
Who G&vifhing forth gifts) the world deceived.
And to gaine more then his, of his prov*d franke.
Though nought at all indulgent to his wife,
By proftrated pudicity difgrac'd;
Yet did he fave th' adultrous Clodius life, 105
To footh the multitude, whofe Heps he trac'd.
Dec, "Thefe be the meanes by which Ambition mounts,
"Without moft humble, when within mod high,
" As if it fled from that thing which it hunts,
"Still wailing mod, when it for moft doth plie. no
Cic. Then he (ftill tyranny bent to embrace)
Was thought conjoyn*d with Catiline to be.
And, had wife Cato*s counfell taken place.
Might with the reft have fuffered death by me.
Yet having deeply div*d in fome mens foules, 115
With fa<5tious followers being pined oft,
He got the Conful-fhip which nought controuls,
And matching pride with pow'r, did look aloft;
To flatter them who now muft flatter him,
His ix)w'r to make unlawfull laws prevail'd, 120
And thofe to croffe who fcom'd he fo fhould clime.
He fumilh't was with force, where reafon fail'd:
But yet becaufe he could not be afl'ur'd
To rule alone according to his will,
To goveme France^ he craftily procured, 125
So to be ftrengthened with an Army ftill.
As Rome firft warr'd at home, till being ftrong,
She thought her power might forraine Realmes o're-come:
So CcB/ar warr'd againft ftrange Nations long,
Till that he thought his Might might conquer Rome. 130
Then having all that force or fate allignes.
ALEXANDER'S JULIUS CjESAR 335
Of difcontentment he did caufe pretend, 132
So to diflemble fore-conceiv'd defignes:
"One foone may finde a fault that would offend:
But when he firil in a prodigious dreame, 135
His mother feem'd incelluoufly to ufe,
It might have fhown to his eternal] (hame,
How of his birth the bounds he did abufe.
Dec. And yet I thinke (avoyding threatned harmes)
He by conflraint imbark'd in dvill broyles: 140
Did he not covenant to quite his Armes,
As not deiirous of his Countries fpoiles?
Cic, Durd he with thofe who had his charge confin'd,
Stand to capitulate, as if their mate,
Where (as his Soveraigne) to obey their minde, 145
It was his duty, and their due of late.
What? what? durfl he whom (bound to keep the law)
The people in authority did put
The fword which they had given, againll them draw;
When it was fharpned firfl their throat to cut? 150
That had not come which all oiu: anguifh breeds,
If he imforc'd when as his charge expir'd;
mi that the Senate cenfur'd had his deeds,
Had from his Province peaceably retir'd.
No, he hath but betray'd his native Towne, 155
Thofe bands, by which fhe did him firil preferre,
T' enlarge her borders, and his owne renowne,
Thofe hath he us'd to tyrannize o're her.
My paffions (ahl tranf ported as you fee
With an exceffive love to my deare foile) 160
Of my hearts flore have made my tongue too free,
By flaming forth what in my bred doth boile.
Dec. That C(Bjars part might judly be excus'd,
Loe, with the caufe alledg'd, his courfe accords.
Of which that mildeneffe which he fince hath us'd, 165
A tedimony to the world affords.
Though forced to fight, he alwaies had great care
To fave oiu: Citizens as each man knowes.
And will'd his Captaines Romans dill to fpare;
Barbarians bodies obje<5ls were for blowes, 170
Of th' adverfaries after bloudy drife.
When oft he might have made fome Captives fmart,
Not onely was he liberall of their life,
But pardon'd them, even to take Potnpeys part;
At that infortimate PharfaHan field, 175
When he feciurely might have us'd the fword.
He both did fpare all th' enemies that would yeeld.
And them to rents and dignities redor'd:
Then when th* Egjrptians (fo to get reliefe)
Brought to his fight pale Pompey*s bloud-Ieffe head, z8o
He tedifi'd with teares his inward griefe.
336 APPENDIX
And grac'd his Statues after he was dead. 182
Thofe his proceedings plamely may approve,
That he againfl his will did make this warre;
And to his Country beares a tender love, 185
Who could comport to reyne his rage fo farre.
Cic, Thofe favours fain'd, by him beflow'd, or due,
(As is ones cuflome whofe high heart afpires,)
Were fpent on many that who them did view
Might love his courfe, fo kindling their delires: 190
But where he thus pleased fome, he fpoil'd whole hofls,
And the Barbarians all to Rome not wrought
Such harme as he, who, of hb goodneffe boafls.
Yet her beil men hath to confufion brought;
That great man, whom earll fortune ne're did fayle, 195
Who flill prevail'd, though warring without right,
Now in a good caufe, for the common-weale
With Cajof did infortunately fight.
Whilfl fled from Ltshos with his wretched wife,
Three bafe-bome Groomes (can fortune change fo foone?) 200
Stood to confult upon great Pompeys life,
And did what thoufands durd not once have done;
Then he whofe knees had oft been kifs'd by Kings,
(Mofl highly happy, had he dy'd in time)
By one of his owne flaves, with abjedt things 305
His funerals had performed; what monflrous crime
Romes greatefl Captaine to entombe alone?
The Roman who arrived with reafon faid:
The fatall glory was too great for one,
And to have part of that lafl honour (laid; 210
The teares beftow*d by Cajar on his head,
Forth from a guilty minde, remorfe had throwne:
Or elfe he wept to fee his enemie dead
By any others hands then by his owne.
That conllant Cato, who even death did fcome, 215
And for a coward once had Cajar brav*d,
(Who liv*d as if to grace all mortals borne)
Would rather perifh then by him be fav*d.
He juflly whilft more jufl, himfelfe more ftrong
Then Cetjar thought, who for no juftice car'd; 220
And fince difcovering what he cloak'd fo long,
Said, that the other, and not he was fnar'd.
Thus Cctjar conquered all but Cato's minde,
Who to a tyrant would not owe his breath:
But in fuch fort his famous courfe confined, 225
Then Cafars life, more glorious was his death:
Thofe great men thus brought to difaflrous ends.
The author of their death make me defpife,
Who to ufurpe all pow*r while as he tends,
By treading good men downe, doth drive to rife. 230
Now made mod great by leffening all the great,
He proudly doth triumph in Rome, o're Rome: 232
ALEXANDER' S JULIUS CjESAR 337
And we mud feeme to like the prefect flate, 233
Whofe doubtfull breath depends upon his doome.
Yet had I not enlarged my griefes fo long, 235
To you whom Cajar doth pretend to love;
Save that (I know) touch'd with the conmion wrong:
^A jufl difdaine all generous mindes mud move.
Dec, Had Ca]ar willingly refign'd his Armes,
And rendred Rome her liberty at lafl, 240
When as from foes he fear'd no further harmes,
But had repair'd his jull difpleafures pafl,
More then for all that could be done for me,
He (hould have had an Altar in my bred,
As worthy (for his vertuous deeds) to be 245
Fear'd by the bad, and honoured by the bed:
But fince (though conqu'ring all the world by might)
He (to himfelfe a flave) would make Komt thrall, -
His benefits are loathfome in my fight.
And I am griev'd that he deferves to fall; 250
My fancies move not in fo low a fphere.
But I difdaine that one Romes Crowne requires;
Yet it is bed that with the time we beare,
And with our pow'r proportion our defires.
Though fird diiTembling, fo your minde to try, 255
I told what fame to Cafars praife relates;
Yet was I pleas'd, that moe were griev'd then I:
"All mifcontented men are glad of Mates.
Cic. Since tyranny all liberty exiles.
We mud oiu: felves (no more our felves) difguife; 260
Then, leame to maske a mourning minde with fmiles.
And feeme to like that which we mod defpife.
Yet all our deeds not Cajars humour pleafe.
Who (fince midruding once) edeemes us dill.
When dumb difdainefull, flatterers when we praife, 265
If plaine, prefumptuous, and in all things ill:
Yea, we, whofe freedome Cafar now redraines,
As his at tenders all his deps mud trace;
And know, yet not acknowledge his difdaines.
But dill pretend an intered in his grace: 270
Though all my thoughts deted him as a foe.
To honour him, a thoufand meanes I move.
Yet but to fave my felfe, and plague him fo:
"No hate more harmes then it that lookes like love.
His pride is by prepod'rous date growne fuch, 275
That by the better fort, he is abhorr'd;
The gods are jealous, and men envy much
To fee a mortall man fo much ador'd.
Dec. Well, Cicero let all meanes be entertained,
That may embarke us in his bofomes deepes, 280
Till either willingly, or then condrain'd.
He judly quite what he unjudly keepes. Exeunt, 282
338 APPENDIX
Chorus.
M
M
M
M
M
U
U
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««
«<
M
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M
U
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THi /ff« of 0Mri is It&e a ^/e,
IFibMir vAi7/f rone ftemligf d orro^r,
DWA Ihem emfoy ike Ua/i refoft;
When Vutjm4ike made limk (we Jet) 5
Of eeery hamd His ike prey.
And hy eack wmde is biemme €way;
Tea, ikouffifrom naUmce Jcafd free,
(Tkms time trimmpks, and Uades aU tkraU)
Tei ddk U lamgmi/k and decay: zo
01 wkHJl tke coMTOie hottejt boOes,
And thai our lifefeemes hejt io he.
It is viik dangers compajt JHU;
WkSJt it eack IHUe ckange appaUes,
Tke body, force, witkout eflfoHes, 1$
"It tk^ owne diftempWatyre oft JpciUs,
"And even, tkomgk none ii ckance io kiU,
"As nature faHes, tke bodyfaOes,
Of wkick Jove deatk, nougkt bounds tke toyies;
Wkat is tkis moving Tow'r in wkick we trufit 20
A little winde dos'd in a doud of dujt.
And yet fome Sprites tkougk being pent
In tkisfraile prifons narrow bounds,
{WkUft wkat migkt ferve, dotk not content;)
Doe alwaies bend tkeir tkougkts too kigk, 25
And ayme at all tke peopled grounds;
Then wkUfi their brefls Ambition wounds.
They feed as fearing ftraight to dye,
Tei build as if theyJliU might live,
Whiljl famijh'd for fames empty founds: 30
Offuch no end the travell ends.
But a beginning gives, whereby
They may be vex^d worfe then before;
For, whiljl they Jlill new hopes contrive,
" The hoped good more anguijh fends, 35
" Then the pojfefs^d contentment lends;
As beajls not tajle, but doe devour e.
They fwallow much, and for more Jlrive,
Whiljl JliU their hope Jome change attends:
"And how can Juch but Jlill themjelves annoy, 40
" Who can acquire, but know not how C enjoy?
Since as ajhip amidft the deepes.
Or as an Eagle through the ayre,
OJ which no way th' imprejsion keepes,
Mojl Jwijt when Jeeming leajl to move: 45
Tkis breath oJ which we take Juch care,
Doth tojfe the body every where, 47
ALEXANDER'S JULIUS CjESAR 339
Thai U may hence with hafte remeve: 48
** Life flips andfleepes alwayes away^
** Then hence^ and as it came, goes bare, 50
Whofe fteppes behinde no trace doe leave;
Whyfliould heaven-banifli^d Joules thus love
The cau/Cf and bounds of their exile,
As reJUeJfe ftrangers where they fir ay?
A nd with Juch paine why Jhould they reave 55
That which they have no right to have,
Which with them in a little while,
Asfummers beauties mufi decay.
And can give nought except the grave?
" Though all things doe to harme him what they can, 60
'*No greater enemie then himfelfe to man;
WhUfi oft environed with his foes,
Which tkreatned death on every fide,
Great Csfar parted from repofe,
(As Atlas holding up the Starrest 65
Did of a world the weight abide;
Butfince a prey tofoolijh pride,
More then by all the former warres.
He now by it doth harm*d remaine,
And of his fortune doth diffide: 70
Made rich by many Nations wreake.
He {breaking through the liquid barres)
In Ne^tunes armes his Minion forced;
Yet ftill purfu*d new hopes in vaine:
"Would the ambitious looking backe 75
"Of their inferiours knowledge take,
" They from huge cares might be divorced,
"Whilft viewing few, more powW attaine,
"And many more then they to lacke:
" The onely plague from men that reft doth reave, 80
"Is that they weigh their wants, not what they have.
Since thus the great themfelves involve
In Juch a labyrinth of cares,
Whence none tojcape can well rejolve.
But by degrees arejorward led, 85
Through waves of hopes, rockes of dejpaires:
Let us avoyd ambitions Jnares,
And Jarre from Jlormes by envy bred.
Still Jeeke (though low) a quiet reft,
With mindes where no proud thought repaires, 90
Thai in vaine Jhadowes doth delight;
Thus may our Jancies ftill be Jed
With that which Nature Jreely gives;
Let us iniquity deleft.
And hold but what we owe oj right; 95
Th* eyes treajure is th* all-circling lights
Not that vaine pompe Jor which pride ftrives, 97
340
APPENDIX
Whoje glory (hut a poyjnous pefl) 98
To plague the Joule, ddigkts the fight:
*^ Eafe comes with ea/e, where all by peine huy peine, 100
"Refl we in peace, by warre let others raigne.
A61 3. Scene i.
Caius Cafsius, Marcus Brutus,
Now (Brutus) now we need no more to doubt,
Nor with blinde hopes our judgement to fufpend.
That flatt'rers credit (loe) is quite wome out; S
We mufl in time attempt, and not attend:
That race of vidtors which did Reahnes appall,
Ah (vanquifh'd by their vi<5lories at lafl)
Are by their too much liberty made thrall,
Since all their (Irength but down themfelves doth call; xo
And we who by our birth ajnn'd at great things.
Of the worlds miflreiTe mighty minions once,
Who might have laboured to give lawes to Kings,
Lawes from a King, mufl looke for now with grones:
For, fuch of Ca/ar is the monflrous pride, 15
That though he domineers even at this houre.
And to his Clients kingdomes doth divide
With an unlimited tyrannicke pow'r;
Yet of Dictator he difdaines the name.
And feekes a tyrants title with the place, 20
Not for his honour, no, but for our fhame.
As onely bent to bragge of our difgrace.
Marc. Brut, I thought to fee that man (as others are)
Walke re-apparreird with a private gowne,
As one who had unwillingly made warre, 25
To (land himfelfe, not to cafl others downe:
So Silla (though more inhumane then he)
Whilll having all to what his heart afpir'd,
The Soveraignty refign'd, and fet Rome free.
When expe(5lations date was quite expired. 30
By Cajars worth we mud thinke that he too
Will render freedome to this captiv*d (late,
When firfl the world hath view*d what he might doe.
His thoughts are generous, as his minde is great.
Though infolencies oft from courage flow, 35
His dying fury fparkles but a fpace:
"High thoughts which Mars infpires, nought can bring low,
"Till one have us'd the purity of peace.
"Thofe who by violence to all things tend,
"Scarce can themfelves to quietneffe conforme; 40
"Their (lately carriage, and franke words, ofifend,
"Whil'd peace cannot comport with warres rude forme, 42
ALEXANDER'S JULIUS CjESAR 341
I hc^ that Cajar fetling dvill broyles, 43
When wome by cuflome from intefUne rage,
Will flrive to mitigate his Comitries toyles, 45
And all thofe flames which biim*d his bred, alTwage.
Ca, Ca/sius. Thus, of his courfe you by your ownc conceived,
As if like thoughts of both did bound the will:
"Ah, honed mindes are with lead paine deceived,
"Thofe who themfelves are good, dreame not of ill. 50
"To found of fome the dill unfound device,
"Their inclination mud your judgement fway:
"The fquare of vertue cannot meafure vice,
"Nor yet a line when draight, a crooked way.
So Cafar riiing may ufuri)e the State, 55
He cares not by what force, nor by what fleight:
"O! one may foone deceive men, and grow great,
"Who leaves religion, honedy and right.
When as the Senators (no more their owne)
Came to that Tyrant whom ambition blindes, 60
And by high honours Ihew'd how they had ihowne
To gratifie his greatneffe, gratefull mindes;
He (in a Chayre imperioufly plac'd,)
Not daign'd to rife, nor bow in any fort,
As both of them had but their due embraced, 65
When he a haughty, they a hiunble port.
But if he thus, ere we be throughly thrall*d,
Dare fo difdainefully fuch great men ufe,
When in a regall Throne by us endalVd,
Then will he breake that which he now doth bruife. 70
Was he not fird who ever yet began
To violate the facred Tribimes place,
And puniih'd them for punching a man
Who had tranfgrefs'd the lawes in time of peace?
The lawes which doe of death all guilty hold, 75
Whofe a<5lions feeme to tyranny inclined,
So earned were our Ancedors of old,
To quench a tyrants light before it fhin'd:
And (hall our Nephewes (heires of bondage) blame
Vs dadard parents who their hopes deceived, 80
Who faw, who fuff'red, who furviv'd fuch ihame,
Not leaving dead, what we when borne received?
By Cajars friends, to an aflembly brought,
The Senators intend to call him Kmg.
Brut, I'le not be there. Cajf, But what if we be fought 85
To ayde (as Pretors) fuch a publike thing?
BriU, I will refid that violent decree;
None of Romes Crowne ihall long fecurely boad:
For, ere that I live thrall'd, I'le fird dye free,
"What can be kept when liberty is lod? 90
Cajf, 01 with what joy I fwallow up thofe words,
Words worthy of thy worth, and of thy name: 92
342
APPENDIX
But ififidus) doe not feare, this caufe affords 93
In danger many, but few mates in fame;
When Anthony proud Cajars image crown'd, 95
By iilent forrow all the people told
In what a depth of woes their thoughts were drown'd,
That bondage-bragging Comet to behold.
What doe thofe fcroules throwne in thy chaire import:
Which, what thou art, to brave thy courage, brings? loo
Be thofe the fancies of the vulgar fort?
No, none but noble mindes dreame of great things;
Of other Pretors people looke for ihowes.
And diflributions whofe remembrance dyes,
Whilil bloudy Fencers fall with mutuall blowes, X05
And Africkes monflers doe amaze their eyes;
But from thy hands they liberty attend,
(By birth-right due) the glory of thy race.
And bent for thee, their bloud will frankely fpend.
So thou fucceed in thy great Parents place. no
He {Rome redeeming) Tarquin did o'rethrow,
Though from his birth obey'd, and without (Irife;
A rifing tyrant then bring boldly low,
To what eztinguifh'd was, who would give life.
Brui. I weigh thy words with an affli<5led heart, 115
Which for compaf&on of my Country bleeds:
And would to God that I might onely fmart.
So that all others fcap'd what mifchiefe breeds;
Then, never man himfelfe from death did free,
With a more quiet and contented minde, Z20
Then I would perilh, if I both could be
To Cafar thankefuU, to my Country kinde:
But though that great mans grace to me enlarged.
May chalenge right in my affe<5lions (lore,
Yet muft the greatefl debt be firft difcharg'd, 125
I owe him much, but to my Country more.
This in my bred hath great diffenfion bred :
I Cafar love, but yet Romes enemy hate,
And as love lives, I could be mov'd to (bed
My bloud for Cafar ^ Ccefars for the State. 130
I for my fathers death loath'd Pompey long,
Whilfl juft difdaine did boyle within my brefl:
Yet when he warr*d to venge the common wrong,
I joyn'd with him, becaufe his caufe was befl.
A minde to raigne if Cafar now reveale, 135
I will in time precipitate his end :
Thus (never arm*d but for the Common-weale)
I help'd a foe, and now mud hurt a friend.
Caf. Left of his favour thou the poyfon prove,
From fwallowing of fuch baites in time now fpare, 140
" No tyrant (trufl me) can intirely love,
"Nor none who for himfelfe doth onely care: 142
ALEXANDER'S JULIUS CjESAR 343
He by this courfe doth cunningly intend 143
(Thy vertue flack'd) to undermine thy minde:
Thy well-knowne courage purposed to disbend, 145
Thus (though with iUken bonds) he would thee binde;
Thb of each tyrant is the common tread,
To wreake all thofe in whom moil worth he findes;
Or (whilft that terrours tolTe his jealous head)
By fubtilty to ihare the greateft mindes: 150
As, for the Pretor-ihip when we did flrive,
Then both were held in hope, that fo deceived,
Each th' others harmes might fludy to contrive
Through emulation and difdaine conceived.
Thus fubtile Cajar by fuch fleights hath toild 155
To fow dilTenfion, that we both might paufe
Of private wrongs, and (by fuch meanes imbroil'd)
Still courting him, negle<5l the common caufe.
But nought mufl make us th' one t' another flrange,
Who ihould in time the tyrants courfe reflraine: x6o
Let other men lament, we mufl revenge,
I fcome to beare a fword, and to complaine.
Bffi/. Though Cajar (now) I mufl confpire thy fall,
My heart to thee yet never harbour'd hate;
But (pardon me) who ever make it thrall, 165
From bondage Bruius mufl redeeme the flate.
Of this my courfe what ever others judge,
Here, I protefl it is for good defign'd;
My thoughts are guilty of no private grudge,
For, reafon and not fury moves my minde; 170
Nor doth ambition now enflame my brefl.
With a prodigious appetite to raigne,
That when I have made Ca/ar Pluto's guefl,
I in his roome a Monarch may remaine:
No, if that glory did my fancies charme, 175
To which (blind-folded) tyrants doe afpire,
I needed not to doe, nor fuffer harme.
But with lelTe paine might compalTe my defire:
For, if I would but temporize a fpace,
TQl time or death diminilh Cafars might, 180
He thinkes that I deferve to have his |)lace.
And I could make my day fucceed his night;
Yet doe I not for glory feeke fo much
As to attaine it by my Countries Ihame:
But, 01 1 would (my zeale to it is fuch) 185
That it may fcape, incurre a kinde of blame.
Yea, fo that I may free with honoured wounds
My foile that's dearer then my foule to me,
I could my felfe live banilh'd from that bounds.
Which at fo deare a rate I would fet free. 190
Caf, What man doth breath of Mars his martiall race.
But will with Brutus facrifize his bloud, 192
344 APPENDIX
And (charg'd with Armes) ere tyranny take place, xg3
Dare venture all things for his Countries good,
Can any judgement be deceived fo farre, 195
But it already dearely may behdd,
How that this change Romes greatnefle foon will marre,
And raze the Trophees which Ihe rear'd of old.
Of old in Rotne, all thofe who once had wome
The peace-importing gowne, or war-like fhield, 300
(Of dignities as capable all borne,)
Duril ayme at ought that liberty could yeeld;
Thofe in afifaires to deale, who would fet forth,
Were not difcourag'd by their birth, though bafe;
And poverty could not hold backe true worth, S05
From having honour both by warre and peace:
Then emulation violently driv'd
All gallant mindes to tempt great a<5lions flill;
In vertues love, who friendly rivals liv*d,
Whild in their bofomes Glory balme did flill: 2ZO
Fabricius firfl was from the Plow advanced.
The Rudder of the Common-weale to hold.
Yet by no meanes his private wealth enhanc'd.
As rich in vertue flill, as poore in gold.
Rude Marius too, to match red Mars in fame, 2x5
Forth from the viilgar drofle his race removed,
And loe, of Cicero the ridiculous name.
As famous as the Fabians now hath proved.
Each abje<5l minde difdain'd to be obfcure.
When flill preferment followed lofty cares, 220
And that one might by dangers paft, procure
Fame for himfelfe, and honour to his heires:
But fmce that flate by Ca/ar is o*re-tum'd,
Whiin all our lives upon ones lippes depend,
Of brefls which once with love of glory bum'd, 225
The foaring thoughts this wholly doth disbend;
Advancement now doth not attend defert,
Bui flowes from fancies of a flattVed minde;
Which to bafe hirelings, honour doth impart,
Whilfl envy*d worth no fafe retreat can finde. 230
" All proud ufurpers moll addi<5led prove,
"To them whom without caufe they raife too high,
"As thinking thofe who fland but by their love,
" To entertaine the fame, all meanes mufl try.
"Where they, whofe vertue reapes a due reward, 235
" Not building onely on the givers grace,
" Doe by deferts not gaine fo great regard,
" Whiin they maintaine, as they obtaine their place.
" And if a worthy man to worke great things,
" Wing*d with a tyrants favour, raife his flight, 240
"The highefl courfe to him mofl harme (lill brings,
"Who till he fall, cannot have leave to light. 242
ALEXANDER'S JULIUS C^SAR 345
"Thofe who by force would have th' afifecflion mov'd, 243
" When willingly men hold fuch gallants deare,
" Doe rage that any Ihould be freely lovM, 245
** Whofe vertue makes their vice more vile appeare.
The man who now to be preferred afpires,
Mud by bafe flattery in a fervile forme,
So foothing Cajar^ feale all his defires,
And in fome ihadow lurke to fcape a (lorme. 250
A number now of that proud Rebels foes,
Who grieve to fee the ground whence growes their griefe.
Would in obfcurity entombe their woes,
So waiting, and not working for reliefe.
But we whofe lofty mindes difdaine to lowre, 255
Like them who feeke but their owne fafety thus;
When (hall we ufe high indignations pow'r.
Which (as brave Romans) worthy is of us?
Brut. Since no indignity you will endure,
I fee our mindes doe fympathize in this; 260
Should we by fu£F'ring, feek to live fecure,
Whofe a(5tion mud amend what is amiffe?
No, no fuch abje(5t thought mud daine our bred,
Whofe a<5live thoughts reach further than difcourfe,
Whild but like beads, affecfting food and red, 265
Where men by reafon flould diredt their courfe;
Like thofe of other parts, not rais'd by drife.
If Cajar had been bom, or chus*d our Prince,
Then thofe who durd attempt to take his life,
The world of treafon judly might convince. 270
Let dill the States which flourifh for the time,
By fubje(5ls be inviolable thought.
And thofe (no doubt) commit a mondrous crime,
Who lawfull Soveraignty prophane in ought:
And we mud thinke (though now thus brought to bow) 275
The Senate King; a fubje<5l Cafar is;
The Soveraignty whom violating now,
The world mud damne, as having done amiffe.
We will (deare Ca/sius) for our Countries fake,
(Whatever follow) give, or fuifer death, 280
And let us now advife what courfe to take,
Whild nought but th' a3rre can beare away our breath.
Caf. I thinke this matter needs not many words.
Since but one deed can bound the common ihame;
Li Cajars body we mud Iheath our fwords, 285
And by his death our liberty redaime;
But fince his fortime did confound them all.
Who in the fields to match him did begin;
Whild he by thoufands made their bands to fall,
With hoary legions alwayes us'd to winne: 290
As PompeySy Scipio^s, and Petreius ghods,
In lightleffe ihades can by experience tell, 292
346 APPENDIX
Who after fatall proofes of num'rous hoafls, 293
All famous (though infortunately, fell:)
And fince (provided for the Parthian warre) 295
His Annie arm'd attends on his decree,
Where we (fequedred from fuch forces farre)
Would (if fufpeAed) foone prevented be:
With fome few friends whom all things to aCTay,
A love to us, or to their Country bindes, 300
We to his wreake mufl walke another way,
Whilil, ere our tongues, our hands doe tell our mindes:
Now when moil high, and therefore hated moil.
The gathered Senate feeks to make him King,
We muil goe give the blow before we boad, 305
And him to death, Rome out of bondage bring.
Br%d, In all this courfe I onely one thing blame,
That we ihould fleale, what we may judly take.
By cloathing honour with a cloake of fhame.
Which may our caufe (though good) more odious make. 310
O! I could wiih with honourable wounds
To match Romes enemy in the battels dufl:
No fweeter Muficke then the Trumpets founds,
When right and valour keepe a confort juil:
Then, free if quicke, elfe dead, no harme more fear'd, 315
I alwayes fo contentment might attaine;
What tombe to men more glorious can be rear'd,
Then mountaines made of foes whom they have daine?
But how are my tranfported thoughts growne fuch.
That they dif daine a meafure to admit? 320
Whilil (bent not what to doe, but to doe much)
On Glories Throne, Ambition flrives to fit.
No, to the State me from my felfe I give,
Free from particulars, as who expofe
Fame, life, and all for it, and whilil I live, 325
So Rome may gaine, I care not what I lofe.
I'le never reil till he for ever reft.
Who gives my Country fuch a caufe of griefe:
And that to doe no forme I will detcfl,
Nor for my fame endanger Romes relief e: 330
But (worthy Cafsius) ere we further doe.
Let our friends mindes firil well be underilood,
Of which I hope to have afTiflance too.
Who will not venture for his Countries good?
Caf. Now whilil my foule refls raviih'd in a trance, 335
I thinke I fee great Rome her courage raife,
Then beat the ayre with fongs, th' earth with a dance,
And crowne thy vertues with deferved praife. 338
ALEXANDER'S JULIUS CjESAR 347
Aft 3. Scene 2.
Marcus Brutus, Portia.
My dearefl halfe, my comfort, my delight,
Of whom one fmyle may fweeten all my fow'rs:
Thou in my bofome us'd to powre thy fpright, S
And where I was didd fpare afi&i<5lions pow'rs.
When broils domeflicke did didurbe thy reft,
Then flill (till finding) faining fome reliefe;
Thou with calme words difguif'd a flormy brefl,
loyes frankly fharing, and engroflmg griefe; xo
Still tendering me with a refpe<5Uve care,
What might offend, was by no meanes made knowne:
But (with loves colours all things painted faire)
What might have made me glad, was gladly (howne.
How com'd thou then thy courage thus to lofe, 15
That thou canfl look fo fad, and in my fight?
Lend me (dear Love) a portion of thy woes;
"A burden (when divided) doth grow light;
I fee the Rofes fading in thy face.
The Lilies languilh, Violets take their place. 20
Port, Thou hail (deare Lord) prevented my defigne,
Which was to aske of thee, what makes me pale;
If Phabus had no light, could Phahe fhine?
No, with the caufe of force th' effe<5ts mud faile.
The mirrour but gives backe as it receives, 25
By jud refemblance the obje<5led forme,
And what impreflion the ingraver leaves.
The waxe retains, dill to the damp conforme.
I am the mirrour which refle(5ts thy minde.
As forc'd from thoughts, or flowing from thine eyes; 30
I take the date in which thy date I finde;
Such is my colour as thy countenance dyes.
Then how can I rejoyce, whird thou art fad,
Whofe bread of all thy croffes is the fcroule?
I am dill as thou art, if griev'd, or glad, 35
Thy bodies fhadow, th' effence of thy foule:
On that great Planet which divides the yeares,
Of fields inferiour as the fruit depends.
And as it vanifh doth, or pleased appeares,
In th' earths cold bofome, life begins, or ends; 40
Sunne of my foule, fo I fubfid by thee,
Whofe ihining vertue leades me as a thrall:
From care-bred clouds if that thy face be free,
I rife in joyes, but if thou faint, I fall.
Brut, With all my courfe this coimt'nance bed accords, 45
Who as you know, yet never from my birth.
348 APPENDIX
Light geflures us'd, nor did delight in words, 47
Whofe pleafant (Iraines were onely tum'd to mirth.
My melancholy Nature feeds on cares,
Whim fmothred forrow by a habite fmokes: 50
'^ A thought-full bread (when burdened with affaires)
" Doth make a filent mouth, and fpeaking looks;
As for my paleneffe, it imports but good:
"The bodies humbling doth exalt the minde,
Where fatneffe (come from food) but ferves for food: 55
In fattefl bodies, leaned fprits we finde.
Ah! fince I faw th' abhorr'd Thejfalia's bounds,
All drench'd with bloud of Senatours and Kings,
(As if my foule yet fmarted in their wounds)
A fecret forrow of ten-times me dings: 60
But fmce thy Father (braving paine with blows)
In the mod hideous forme affronted death.
To him my minde a fad remembrance owes,
Which forrow Ihall exa(5t whil'd I have breath.
Yet grieve I that I gave thee caufe of griefe, 65
Who thoughtd fome new milhap did me difmay;
To fuch old fores one word can give relief e;
But Time in end may weare my woes away.
Pof. Why ihould'd thou fo from me thy thoughts concede?
From thine own foule between whofe breads thou fleep'd, 70
To whom (though fhowne) thou dod them not reveale.
But in thy felfe more inwardly them keep*d?
And thou cand hardly hide thy felfe from me,
Who foone in thee each alteration fpie,
I can comment on all that comes from thee: 75
"True love dill looks with a fufpitious eye.
Within our bofome reds not every thought,
Tun'd by a fympathie of mutuall love?
Thou marr'd the Muficke if thou change in ought,
Which (when didemper'd) I do quickly prove. 80
Soule of my foule, unfold what is amiffe.
Some great difader all my thoughts divine,
Whofe curioufneffe may be excused in this.
Since it concerns thy State, and therefore mine.
BrtU. I wonder that thou dod thy frail tie Ihow! 8$
" By Nature women have beene curious dill,
And yet till now thou never crav*d to know
More then I pleased to fpeak of my free will.
"Nought fave the wife a man within the walls,
"Nor ought fave him without (he fliould embrace: 90
"And it not comely is, but th* one enthralls,
"When any fexe ufurpes anothers place.
Deare, to their wonted courfe thy cares inure,
I may have matters which import the State,
Whofe op'ning up might my difgrace procure, 95
Whofe weight for femall thoughts would be too great.
•
ALEXANDER'S JULIUS CjESAR 349
Fori. I was not {fir%dus) matched with thee, to be 97
A partner onely of thy boord, and bed:
Each fervile whore in thofe might equall me,
Who but for pleafure, or for wealth did wed. ico
No, Portia fpouTd thee minding to remaine
Thy Fortunes partner, whether good or ill:
" By loves flri(5t bonds whirfl mutuall duties chaine,
''Two breads mufl hold one heart, two fouls one will;
"Thofe whom jufl Hymen voluntarily bindes, 105
" Betwixt them fhould conmiunicate all things,
" But chiefly that which moil doth move the mindes,
"Whence either pleafure, or difpleasure fprings.
If thus thou feek thy forrows to conceale
Through a difdaine, or a miflrufl of me, no
Then to the world what way can I reveale,
How great a matter I would do for thee?
And though our feze too talkative be deem'd,
As thofe whofe tongues import our greated pow'rs,
For fecrets ilill bad Treafurers efleem'd, 115
Of others greedy, prodigall of ours;
" Good education may reforme defe(5ls.
And this may leade me to a vertuous life,
(WhiFfl fuch rare patterns generous worth refpe(5ls)
I CcUo's daughter am, and BnUus wife. 120
Yet would I not repofe my trufl in ought,
Still thinking that thy croffe was great to beare.
Till I iny courage to a tryall brought.
Which fuffering for thy caufe can nothing feare:
For firft to try how that I could comport 125
With fleme affli<5lions fprit-enfeebling blows.
Ere I would feek to vex thee in this fort.
To whom my foule a dutious reverence owes.
Loe, here a wound which makes me not to fmart.
No, I rejoyce that thus my (Irength is knowne: 130
Since thy diflrelTe flrikes deeper in my heart,
Thy griefe (lifes joy) makes me negledl mine owne.
Brut. Thou mufl (deare love) that which thou fought'fl receive.
Thy heart fo high a faile in flormes ilill beares,
That thy great courage doth deferve to have 135
Our enterprife entrufled to thine eares;
This magnanimitie prevailes fo farre.
That it my refolution mud controule.
And of my bofome doth the depths unbarre.
To lodge thee in the centre of my foule. 140
Thou feed in what edate the State now ilands.
Of whofe drong pillars Cct/ar fpoyl'd the bed,
Whil'd by his owne, preventing others hands.
Our famous Father fell amongd the red.
That proud ufuri)er fondly doth prefume 145
To re-eredl deteded Tarquins throne,
350
APPENDIX
Thus the worlds MiftreHe all-commanding Eom€^ 147
Mud entertaine no Minion now but one.
All thofe brave mindes who mark where he doth rend,
Swell with difdaine, their Countries fcome to fee; 150
And I am one of thofe who foone intend
(His death or mine procured) to be made free.
Fori, And without me, canil thou refolve fo foone,
To try the danger of a doubtfull Urife?
As if defpair'd, and alwayes but undone, 155
Of me growne weary, weary of thy life.
Yet fmce thou thus thy ra(h defigne hail Ihowne,
Leave Portia* s portion, venter not her part,
Endanger nought but that which is thine owne.
Go where thou lik'ft, I will hold Rill thy heart. 160
But left by holding of thy beft part back,
The other perifh't, aggravate my grones:
Who would be fo thought guilty of thy wrack.
Take all thy Treafure to the Seas at once.
Like AJid's Monarchs wife, who with Ihort haires, 165
(Sad fignes of bondage) paft flill where he paft,
To weare away, or beare away thy cares,
I'le follow thee, and of thy fortune tafte.
Thefe hands which were with mine own bloud imbrued.
To ftrike another, may more ftrength afford, 170
At leaft when thou by th' enemies art purfu*d,
I*le fet my felfe betwixt thee and each Sword;
But if too great a priviledge I claime,
Whofc a(5tions all fhould be difpofd by thee.
Ah ! pardon (Brutus) and but onely blame 1 75
This flrcame of paflions that tranfported me.
Brut. Thou ask'fl what thou Ihouldfl give, forgive deare Mate,
This ventrous courfc of mine, which mufl have place,
Though it make Fortune T>Tant of our State,
Whofc fickle foot-fteps Vertue grieves to trace. 180
And wonder not though thus to thee I prove,
Since private duties now all pow*r have loft;
I weigh not glory, profit, plcafure, love.
Nor what refpcc^ may now import me moft:
So to the land of which I hold my life, 185
I may performe that worke which I intend.
Let me be call'd unkinde unto my wife:
Yea, worft of all, ingrate unto my friend.
" As an inftindl by Nature makes us know,
*' There are degrees of duty to be paft, 190
"Of which the firft unto the Gods we owe,
"The next t' our Countrey, to our friends the laft.
From Rome of old proud Tyrants bent to drive.
Did th' author of my race with ardent zeale,
Make thofe to dye, whom he had made to live, 195
And fpoird himfelfe to raife the Common-weale?
ALEXANDER' S JULIUS CtESAR 351
To fettle that which Cajaar now o're-thiows, 197
(Though vertues nurferie, (lately whil'fl it flood)
He with the Tyrant inter-changing blows,
On Glories Altar o£Fered Fame his bloud. 200
And did that man to crofle the common foe,
Then damne his Sonnes to death? and with dry eyes.
And is his fpedall heire degener'd fo,
In abje(5l bondage that he bafely lyes?
No, his poderity his name not flaines, 205
But even to tr^ his (leps doth fall draw neare;
Yet, of his fprit in us fome fpark remaines.
Who more then life, our liberty hold deare.
Port, Then profecute thy courfe, for I protefl.
Though with fome griefe, my foule the fame approves; 210
This refolution doth become thy bred.
In honours fpheare where heavenly Vertue moves:
And do this enterprife no more deferre.
What thee contents, to me contentment brings,
I to my life thy fafety do preferre, 215
But hold thy honour deare above all things.
It would but let the world my weaknefle fee.
If I fought my delights, not thy defires,
Though griefe it give, and threaten death to me.
Go follow forth that which thy Fame requires. 220
Though Nature, fexe, and education breed.
No power in me, with fuch a purpofe even,
I mufl lend help to this intended deed.
If vows and pray'rs may penetrate the heaven:
But difficulties huge my fande findes, 225
Nought, fave the fucceffe, can defray my feare:
Ah! Fortune alwayes frownes on worthy mindes,
As hating all who truil in ought fave her.
Yet I defpaire not but thou may*ft prevaile,
And by this courfe to eafe my prefent grones, 230
I this advantage have which cannot faile:
He be a free-mans wife, or elfe be nones:
For, if all profper not as we pretend.
And that the Heavens Romes bondage do decree,
Straight with thy liberty my life fhall end, 235
Who have no comfort but what comes from thee;
My Father hath me taught what way to dye.
By which if hindred from encountring death.
Some other meanes, I (though more (Irange) mud try:
For, after Brutus none diall fee me breathe. 240
B^iU. Thou for my caufe all others eard didd leave.
But now forfak'd thy felfe to joyne with me,
''Ore generous love no pow'r weake paf&ons have,
Againd thy minde thou dod with mine agree.
He (lince by thee approved) fecurely go, 245
And .'ilipend the dangers of this life:
«
352
APPENDIX
Heavens make my enterprife to piofper fo, 247
That I may once prove worthy fucfa a wife:
But ah! of all thy words thofe grieve me mod.
Which bragge me with the dating of thy daycs; 250
Hliat? thou^ I in f o good a caufe were k>fl,
"None flies the fate which iUbliih'd for him Hayes.
Do not defraud the world of thy rare worth.
But of thy Bruius the remembrance love;
From this faire prifon flrive not to breake forth, 255
Till firft the fates have forc'd thee to remove.
Port. The heavens (I feare) have our confufion fwom.
Since this ill Age can with no good accord.
Thou and my Father (ah!) (hould have beene borne,
When Vertue was advanced, and Vice abhorr'd. 260
Then, ere the light of Vertue was dedin'd.
Your worth had reverenced beene, not throwne away,
Where now ye both have but in darknefle fhin'd.
As Starres by night, that had beene Sunnes by day.
Brut, My treafure, drive to padfie thy brefl, 265
Led forrows but (inidroufly prefage
That which thou would*d not wiih, and hope the bed.
Though Vertue now mud a<d on Fortunes Stage.
Exeunt, 269
Chorus.
Then liberty ^ of earthly things
What more delights a generous hreftf
Which doth receive^
And can conceive S
The matchlejjfe treafure that it brings;
It making men fecurely rejlj
As all perceive f
Doth none deceive^
WhWfl from the fame true courage fprings, 10
But feared for naughty doth what feemes beft:
" Then men are men, when they are all their owne,
**Not, but by others badges when made knowne:
Yet fltould we not mif pending houreSj
A freedome feeke, as oft it falls, 15
With an intent
But to content
Thefe vaine delights, and appetites of ours;
For, then but made farre greater thralls ,
We might repent 20
As not flill pent
In Jlrufler bounds by others powers,
Whil'fl feare licentious thoughts appalls:
**0f all the Tyrants that the world affords,
*^Ones owne ajfeiflions are the fiercejl Lords: 25
ALEXANDER ' S JULIUS CjESAR 353
As Libertines thoje onely live, 26
Who {from the bands of vice fet free)
Vile thoughts cancell,
And would excell
In all that doth true glory give, 30
From which when as no Tyrants be
Them to repeU,
And to compeU
Their deeds againjl their thoughts tojlrive,
They hlejl are in a high degree: 35
**For,fuch of fame thefcrouls can hardly fill,
** Whofe wit is bounded by anothers wiU,
Our Ancejlors of oldfuch prov'd,
(Who Rome from Tarquines yoke redeemed)
They firjl obtain % 40
And then maintained
Their liberty fo dearly lov*d;
They from all things which odious feem^d
{Though not conJlrain*d)
Themf elves rejlrain^d, 45
Arid willingly all good approved,
Bent to be much, yet ivell efteem'd;
"And how could fuch but ayme at fame great end,
" Whom liberty did leade, Glory attend?
They leading valorous legions forth, 50
{Though wanting Kings) triumphed o*re Kings,
AndJliU afpir'd,
By Mars infpir*d,
To conquer all from South to North;
Then lending fame their Eagles wings, 55
They all acquired
That was required.
To make them rare for rarefi things,
The world made wUneJfe of their worth:
Thus thofe great mindes who domineered o*re all^ 60
Did make them/elves firjl free, then others thrall,
But we who hold nought but their name.
From that to which they in times gone
Did high afcend,
Mufi low defcend, 65
And bound their glory with our Jhame,
WhiVJl on an abject Tyrants Throne,
We {bafe) attend.
And do intend
Vs for our fortune Jlill to frame, 70
Not it for us, and all for one:
"As liberty a courage doth impart,
"So bondage doth disbend, elfe breake the hearty
Yet, 0/ who knows but Rome to grace
Another Brutus may arifet 75
as
354
APPENDIX
Who may effea ^
What we affea,
And Taiqmnes JUps make Cefar trace;
Though feeming dangers to de/pife
He doth fuf pea 80
Whatweexpea
Which from his breafi hath banijh'd peace^
Though fairdy he his f cares di/gui/e:
"Of Tyrants even the wrongs revenge affords^
"AU feare but theirs ^ and they feare all mens fwords. 85
Aft 4. Scene i.
Decius Brutus Alhinus, Marcus
Brutus, Caius Cafsius.
Deare Coiin, Cafsius did acquaint mine eares
With a deiigne which tolTd my minde a fpace; 5
"For, when (Irange news, a llrangers breath firfl beares,
"One Ihould not ilraight to ralh reports give place.
I would not then difcover what I thought,
Led he to trap my tongue, a (hare had fram'd.
Till firfl with thee I to conferre was brought, 10
Whom he for Patron of his purpofe nam*d.
"One ihould look well to whom his minde he leaves,
"In dangerous times when tales by walb are told,
" Men make themfelves unnecefTar'ly flaves,
"Of thofe to whom their fecrets they unfold. 15
Mar. Brut. As Cafsius told thee, griev'd for Romes diflresse,
Which to our fhame in bondage doth remaine,
We flraight intend what ever we profeffe,
With Cafars bloud to wafh away this flaine.
Though for this end a few fufficient are, 20
To whom their vertue courage doth impart,
Yet were we loth to wrong thy worth fo farre.
As of fuch glory to give thee no part.
Since both this caufe, yea, and thy name thee binde.
In this adventrous band to be compris'd, 25
There needs no Rhetoricke to raife thy minde,
To do the thing which thou fhouldft have devis'd.
Dec. Brut. I thought no creature ihould my purpofe know.
But he whofe int*rell promised mutuall cares:
"Of thofe to whom one would his fecret fhow, 30
"No greater pledge of trull then to know theirs;
As when two meet whil'fl mask'd (though mod deare friends)
With them (as ftrangers) no refpe<5t takes place,
But ftraight when friend-fliip one of them pretends.
The other likewife doth un-cloud the face. 35
ALEXANDER' S JULIUS CjESAR 355
So as thou firfl, I'le now at lail be bold: 36
My brefl with the fame birth long bigge hath gone,
But I to others durfl it not unfold,
Nor yet attempt to compafife it alone;
But fince this courfe, at which I long did paufe, 40
On fuch great pillars now fo (trongly (lands,
Whofe countenance may give credit to a caufe,
It hath my heart, and it ihall have my hands.
Ca. Cajf, To our deiignes propitious fignes are fent,
So that the Gods would give us courage thus: 45
For, all who ever heard of our intent,
Would willingly engage themfelves with us:
Let other men difcourfe of vertuous rites,
Ours but by a<5lion onely ihould be Ihowne:
" Bare fpeculation is but for fuch fprits 50
"As want of pow'r, or courage keq)s unknowne.
"In thofe who vertue view, when crown'd with deeds,
"Through Glories glaiTe, whofe beauties long have fhin'd,
"To be embraced an high deiire ihe breeds,
"As load-ftones iron, fo ravilhing the minde: 55
What though a number now in darknefle lyes.
Who are too weak for matters of fuch weight?
We who are eminent in all mens eyes.
Let us fUll hold the height of honour flraight.
Mar. Brut. Earll (that our fa<5Uon might be fliengthned thus) 60
I labour'd much to purchafe all their powers,
Whom hate to Cajar^ love to Jbomt^ or us,
Might make imbarke in thofe great hopes of ours;
By (ickneffe then imprifon'd in his bed,
Whil'ft I Ligarius fpy'd whom paines did pricke, 65
When I had faid with words that anguifh bred:
In what a time Ligarius art thou lick?
He anfwered flraight as I had Phyiicke brought,
Or that he had imagin'd my deiigne,
If worthie of thy felfe thou would'fl do ought, 70
Then Brutus I am whole, and wholly thine:
Since he by Ca/ar was accus'd of late
For taking Pompey*s part, yet at this houre
He (though abfolv^d) doth flill the Tyrant hate,
Since once endanger'd by his lawleffe pow'r: 75
Thus (of great fprits ezafperating fpites)
Heaven of our courfe the progrefle doth diredl.
One infpiration all our foules incites.
Who have advis'dly fwome for one effedl.
Dec. Brut. So I with Cicero did conferre at length, 80
Who (I perceive) the prefent (late deteds,
And though old Age diminifh'd hath his (Irength,
In him a will to free his Countrey reds.
Mar. Bru. That man whofe love dill to his countrey (hin'd.
Would willingly the common-wealth redore: 85
3S6 APPENDIX
Then he (I know) though he conceals his minde, 86
None Gr/or more difHkes, nor likes us more:
Yet to his cuflody He not commit
The fecrets of our enterprife fo foone:
"Men may themfdves be of ten-times not fit 90
"To do the thinp which they would wilh were done.
He fliU was timorous, and, by age growne worfe,
Might chance to lay our honour in the dull;
All Cowards mufl inconAant be kA force,
With bold defignes none fearfull breails (hould trufL 95
Then, fome of ours would hold their hands fUn pure.
Who (ere they be fufpedted) for a fpace,
Amid'ft the tumult may remaine fecure.
And with the pec^e mediate our peace:
But who then TuUius fitter for that tume, xoo
Whofe eloquence is us'd to charme their eares?
His hanifliment they in black Gownes did moume.
Whom all do honour for his worth and yeares.
Cat, Caff. Thofe (tudious wits which have throu^^ dangers gone,
"Would Rill be out, ere that they enter in: 105
"Who mufe of many things, refolve ci none,
"And (thinking of the end) cannot begin.
"The minde which looks no further then the eye,
"And more to Nature tnxils, then unto Art,
"Such doubtfull fortunes fitted is to try: no
"A furious a<ftor for a defp'rat part.
We have enow, and of the bed degree,
Whofe hands unto their hearts, hearts t' us are true.
And if that we feek moe, I feare we be
To hide, too many, if difclos'd, too few; 115
Let us advife with an induflrious care
(Now ere the Tsrrant intercept our mmdes)
The time, the place, the manner, when, and where
We (hould en-trufl our Treafure to the windes;
And fince our flates thb doth in danger bring, 120
Let every point be circumfpedily weigh'd,
"A circumflance, or an indifferent thing,
"Doth oft marre all, when not with care conveigh'd.
Mar, Brut. As for the time, none could be wifh'd more fit,
Then b the prefent to performe our vow, 125
Since all the people mufl allow of it.
By recent anguiih mov'd extreamely now.
When reprefented in his triumph pall,
Great Cato*s mangled intrails made them weep.
And defp'rat Scipio whU'd he leap't at la(l 130
To feek a Sandiuary amidil the deep.
Then all thofe great men whom in feverall parts,
Bent for Ronies freedome, Cafar did o're-throw,
Bid by their pidtures pierce the peoples hearts,
And made a piteous (though a pompous) ihow; 135
ALEXANDER'S JULIUS CjESAR 357
How could they but conceive a jufl difdame 136
To be upbraided in fo flrange a fort,
Whil'fl he who onely by their lofTe did gaine,
Of their calamitie did make a fport?
But yet his purpmfe grieves them mod of all, 140
Since that he flrives to be proclaim'd a King:
And not contents himfelfe to make us thrall,
But would even all our heires to bondage bring.
Thus whiVft the people are with him difpleas'd,
We bed may do what to our part belongs: 145
For, after this they may be bed appeas'd,
If, whird their wrath doth lad, we venge their wrongs;
And (fince we nought intend but what is right,
Whird from our Countrey we remove difgrace)
Let all be adled in the Senates fight, 150
A common caufe, and in a common place.
Let thofe whofe guilty thoughts do danme their deeds,
In comers like^J/in^rvaV birds abide.
That which our Countrey good, us glory breeds.
May by the lights of heaven and earth be try'd. 155
The Senatours by our example mov*d.
Pleased with this adlion which imports them too,
To have the yoke of tyranny remov'd,
May at the lead confirme that which we do;
So all the Senatours were faid of old, 160
King Romulus in peeces to have tome,
Who then to tyrannize was growne too bold,
And ere tum'd God humanitie did fcome.
Dec, Brut. Yea, what though Cafar were immortall made,
As Romulus f whofe deitie him revives? 165
I rather as a God adore him dead, •
Then as a King obey him whil'd he lives.
Cat, Caff. That place indeed, mod for oiu: glory makes;
A Theater worthy of fo great an adl,
Where in their fight from whom mod pow'r he takes, 170
We of the Tyrant vengeance may exa<5l.
But I mud recommend tmto yoiu: minde,
A courfe (though dri<$l) of which we mud allow,
Led it o're-throw all that we have defign'd,
Since pad recovery, if negle(5ted now. 175
There is AtUonius, Cctjars greated friend,
A man whofe Nature tyranny afiFe<fls,
Whom all the Souldiers daily do attend.
As one who nought but to command refpe<5ls.
I feare that he when we have Cctjar flaine, 180
The grieved fadlion fumifh with a head:
So when we end, we mud begin againe
With one who lives worfe then the other dead.
And in my judgement I would thinke it bed.
When facrific'd the proud ufurper lyes, 185
358 APPENDIX
That this feditious enemy of reft i86
Should fall with him, with whom he firfl did rife:
Thus, of our liberty we now may lay
A folid ground, which can be fhak't by ncme:
"Thofe of their purpofe who a part delay, 190
"Two labours 'have, who might have had but one.
lia/f. Bnd. I cannot (Cafsius) condefcend to kill
(Thus from the path of juflice to decline)
One faultlelTe yet, led after he prove ill.
So to prevent his guiltinefle by mine; 195
No, no, that neither honed were, nor jud.
Which rigorous forme would but the world affright.
Men by this meane, our meaning might midrud.
And for a little wrong damne all that's right:
If we do onely kill the common foe, 200
Our Countries zeale mud then acquire due praife.
But if (like Tyrants) fiercely raging fo.
We will be thought that which we raze to raife;
And where we but intend to aide the State,
Though by endangering what we hold mod deare, 205
If (laying him (as arm'd by private hate)
We to the world all partiall will appeare,
Ah, ah I we mud but too much murder fee,
Who without doing ill cannot do good:
And, would the Gods, that Rome could be made free 210
Without the (bedding of one drop of bloudi
Then, there is hope that ArUhonie in end,
Whil*d fird our vertue doth dire<5t the way,
Will O^gu'd with us) the h'berty defend.
And (when brought back) will blu(h, as once adray. 215
Ca. Caff, Well Brutus ^ I proted againd my will,
From this black cloud, what ever temped fall,
That mercy but mod cruelly doth kill,
Which thus faves one, who once may plague us all.
Dec, Brut. When Ca/ar with the Senatours (its downe, 220
In this your judgements generally accord,
That for affedb'ng wrongfully the Crowne,
He lawfully may penfh by the Sword:
No greater harme can for our courfe be wrought,
Then by protradling the appointed time, 225
Led that, which a6ted would be vertue thought,
Be (if prevented) condru'd as a crime;
Can one thing long in many mindes be pent?
"No, purpofes would never be delayd,
" Which judg'd by th* iffues Fortune doth comment, 230
"If profp'ring, reafon, treafon if betrai'd.
There may amongd our felves fome man remaine,
Whom (if afraid) his pardon to procure.
Or (if too greedy) for the hope of gaine.
Time to difclofe his conforts may allure. 235
ALEXANDER'S JULIUS CjESAR 359
Then for our recxMnpeace we mine reape, 236
If ought our courfe thus made abortive marre,
For, if dif covered once, we cannot fcape:
"As tyrants eares heare much, their hands reach farre.
Ca, Cafsius. The brefl in which fo deep a fecret dwels, 340
Would not be long charg'd with fo weighty cares:
For, I conjecture, as their count'nance tels,
That many know our mindes, though we not theirs:
Even but of late one, Cafca came to fee
Who curious was to have our purpofe knowne, . 245
And fiaid to him, that which thou had'ft from me.
To me by Brutus hath at length been (hown.
Then Litna once came to us in like fort.
And wilh'd that our defigne might prof per wdl;
But yet to hafle did eamellly exhort, 250
Since others tdd what we refus'd to tell.
Whilfl flrangers reft familiar with our minde.
And ere we them, doe all our purpofe fpy.
Make forward fad, or we will come behinde:
"Fame (wing'd with breath) doth violently flye. 255
Mar, Brut. Their words but burfl from tales uncertaine forth,
For, whilfl confidering of their bondage thus,
Of Cafars tyranny and of our worth,
They thinke this ihould be d<me, and done by us.
Such conjurations to confirme of old, 260
Some drinking others blouds, fwore on their fwords.
And curfing thofe who did their courfe unfold,
Vs'd imprecations, execrable words;
And yet, then this, though voluntarHy vow'd.
Free from all bonds, fave that which vertue bindes, 265
More conflantly no courfe was ere allowed.
Till that the end mud manifed our mindes.
And fince fo many frankely keep their faith.
What fird intended to accompliih bent.
No doubt in fpight of fickle fortunes wrath, 270
A happy fuccefle (hall our foules content.
Might fome few Thebans from the Spartans pride.
By divers tyrants deaths redeem their Towne?
And one Athenian who his vertue try'd.
By thirty tyrants mine, get renowne? 275
And to the Greekes are we inferiours growne,
That where they have fo many tyrants fpoil'd,
There cannot one be by us all o'rethrowne,
Whofe date yet flaggoing may be foon imbroil'd?
I am refolv'd, and with my thoughts decree, 280
What ever chance to come, or fweet, or fowre,
I (hall my fofle from tyranny fet free.
Or then my felfe free from the tyrants pow'r.
Dec. Brut. By Lepidus invited this lad night,
Whild CxBjar went to fuppe, and I with him, 285
36o APPENDIX
Of all deaths (hapes to talke, we tooke delight, 286
So at the table to beguile the time:
And whilfl our judgements all about were try'd,
Straight Cajot^ (as tranfported) to the red,
With a mod fudden exclamation cry'd: 390
O! of all deaths, imlook'd for death is bed:
It from our felves doth deale our felves fo fad.
That even the minde no fearefull forme can fee,
Then is the paine ere apprehended pad;
"Sowre things ere taded, would fird fwallowed be. 395
The threatned dediny thus he divined:
(It would appeare) divinely then infpir'd;
For, now I hope that he (hall (hortly finde
That forme of death which he himfelfe defir'd.
Cat. CaJ. Whild of our band the fury flames mod hot, 300
And that their will to end this worke is fuch,
Led Ca/ars abfence difappoint the plot,
Which would of fome abate the courage much;
It (Decius) were exceedingly well done.
That to his lodging you addred your way, 305
Him by all meanes to further forward foone.
Led him fome fudden chance may move to day.
Dec. Brut, There, where the Senate minds this day to fit,
Stand ail prepared, not fearing danger more.
And for the Sacrifice when all is fit, 310
I'le bring an offring hallowed of before. Exeunt,
Aft 4. Scene 2.
Cajary Calphurniay Decius Brutus,
Long-lookt-for Time that fliould the glory yeeld,
Which I through Neptunes trudleffe raign have fought;
And through the dud of many a bloudy field, 5
As by all dangers worthy to be bought.
Thy comming now thofe lowring ftiadowes cleares,
My hopes horizon which did long o're-cad;
This day defrayes the toyles of many yearcs,
And brings the harved of my labours pad. 10
The Senators a Meffenger have fent
Mod eamedly entreating me to come
And heare my felfe difcem*d by their confent
To weare a Crowne o*re all, excepting Rome;
Thus, they devife conditions at this houre 15
For him, of whom Mars hath made them the prey.
As Subjetfis limit could their Soveraignes pow'r.
Who mud have minde of nought but to obey;
But having pacifi'd thofe prefent things,
I minde to leade my valorous legions forth 20
ALEXANDER'S JULIUS CjESAR 361
To th' orientall Realmes (adoring Kings) 21
Who can afford all that is due to worth.
Then fwimme my thoughts in th' ocean of delight,
Whilfl on the pillow of foft praife repos'd;
Thofe eyes to gaze upon my glories light, 25
Which Envy opened, Admiration dos'd.
Col. Ah, though your fancies great contentment finde,
Whilfl thus the world your vertue doth advance;
Yet a prepoft'rous terrour flings my minde,
And braggs me with I know not what mifchance; 30
My wavering hopes o're-ballanc'd are with feares,
Which to my foule imiflrous fignes impart;
And om'nous nmiours fo affault mine eares,
That they almofl make breaches in my heart.
Car/. What? do foil'd Pampeys floting followers flrive 35
To recolle<5l their mines from the dull?
Dare they who onely by my toUerance live.
More to their flrength, then to my favour trufl?
Or do'fl thou feare his fonnes deje(5led flate,
Who fleales infamous flying through thofe flouds, 40
Which his great father, Admirall of late,
Did plant with fliips, till all their waves feem'd woods;
Or makes his brothers death his hopes grow more,
Since (by them flraited in a bloudy flrife)
I who in all the battels given before, 45
Did fight for vidlory, then, fought for life;
Or, whilfl to march to Parihia I prepare.
Doth a fufpition thus affRA thy fprite:
By Craffus fortune mov'd, who perifh'd there,
The fcomed prey of the Barbarians fpight? 50
To thofe with Ca/sius who from thence retired,
Amongfl my bands a place I will allow,
Whofe foes fhall finde (bad fate at lafl expired,)
Though the fame fheep, another fheep-heard now;
Doe not imagine matters to bemone, 55
For, whilfl there flands a world, can Cafar fall?
Though thoufand thoufands were conjur'd in one,
I, and my fortune might confound them all.
Cal. No, none of thofe my minde doth mifcontent,
Who undifguis'd flill like themfelves remaine: 60
Vnlook't-for harmes are hardefl to prevent:
There is no guard againfl concealed difdaine;
But, in whom fiuther can your trufl repofe.
Whom danger now o're all by all attends?
"Where private men but onely feare their foes, 65
"Oft Kings have greatefl caufe to feare their friends;
"For, fince mofl trufled, fitted to betray,
"Thofe unto whom ones favour force affords,
"Mofl dangerous ambufhes with eafe may lay,
"Whilfl falfefl hearts are hid with fairefl words. 70
362 APPENDIX
And fome report (though privately) yet plaine, 71
That Dolabella and Ankmius now,
By your dedrudlion doe intend to gaine
That which you keep by making all men bow.
Caf. No corpulent fanguinians make me feare, 75
Who with more paine their beards then th' enemies flrike,
And doe themfelves like th' Epicurians beare
To Bacchus, Mars, and Venus borne alike;
Their hearts doe alwaies in their mouthes remaine,
As (Ireames whofe murmuring fliowes their courfe not deep, 80
Then dill they love to fport, though grolTe, and plaine,
And never dreame of ought but when they fleep:
But thofe high fprites who hold their bodies downe,
Whofe vifage leane their refUeffe thoughts records:
Whilfl they their cares depth in their bofomes drown, 85
I feare their Ulence more then th' others words.
Thus Ca/sius now and Brutus feeme to hold
Some great thing in their minde, whofe fire oft fmoaks;
What Bruius would, he vehemently would;
Thinke what they lid, I like not their pale lookes: 90
Yet with their worth this cannot well agree,
In whom bright vertue feemes fo much to fhine:
Can thofe who have received their lives from me,
Prove fo ingrate, that they doe thirfl for mine?
Dare Ca/sius (match'd with me) new hopes conceive, 95
At th* Helle/pofU, who fortime durfl not try,
And Oike a daflard) did his Gallies leave,
In all (fave courage) though more flrong then I?
Shall I fufpe<5l that Brutus feekes my bloud,
Whofe fafety dill I tendred with fuch care, 100
Who when the heavens from mortals me feclude.
Is onely worthy to be Cctfars heire?
Cd. "The comers of the heart are hard to know;
Though of thofe two the world the bed doth deeme,
Yet doe not trud too much to th* outward (how, 105
For, men may differ much from what they feeme.
** None oft more fierce then thofe who look mod milde,
" Impiety fometime appeares devout.
And (that the world the more may be beguil'd)
"Even vice can cloath it felfe with vertues cote. no
Though it would feem (all hatred now laid downe)
They on your favour onely (hould depend.
Yet no refpe<5l can counteqwife a Crowne:
"Ambition hath no bounds, nor Greed no end.
Mov'd by vindicflive hate, or emulous pride, 115
Since fome your perfon, fome your place purfue;
All threatned dangers to prevent, provide.
And ufe for fafety, what to State is due.
Caf. No armour is tht can hold treafon out.
Cat. To fright your foes with bands be back'd about. 120
ALEXANDER'S JULIUS CjESAR 363
CnJ, So dadard t3rrants drive themfelves to beare. X2i
Col, It better is to give, then to take feare.
Cdr/. No guard more flrong then is the peoples love.
Cal, But nought in th' earth doth more inconilant prove.
Cdr/. Guards ((hewing feare) to charge me men might tempt. 125
Col, Guards would put them from hope, you from contempt.
CaJ, My bred from terrour hath been alwaies cleare.
Co/. When one lead feares, oft danger lurks mod neare.
C«/. I rather dye then feare: at lad life goes.
Co/. Yet, death mud grieve, when forc'd by vaunting foes. 130
CaJ. I will not crolTe my prefent pleafures fo,
By apprehending what may chance to come.
This world affords but too much caufe for woe;
And forrowes dill mud harbour'd be by fome.
By joyes in time we mud embrace reliefe, 135
That when they end, we in fome meafure may
By their remembrance mitigate the griefe
Which dill attends all thofe on th' earth that day.
I thinke the Senate is affembled now,
And for my comming doth begin to gaze, 140
Let me condignely once adome my brow.
And fead mine eares by drinking in due praife.
Co/. Stay, day (deare Lord) retire thy deps againe.
And fpare a fpace to prorogate whole yeares;
Let not this ominous day begin thy raigne, 145
Which fatall and unfortunate appeares.
An Adrologian through the world renown'd,
Thy horofcopes jud calculation layes.
And doth affirme (as he by fignes hath found)
That Marches Ides doe bragge to bound thy dayes; 150
Walke not abroad where harmes may be received
(By great neceffity fince no way forc'd)
For, (though his judgement may be farre deceiv'd)
"In things that touch thy life, fufpedl the word.
CaJ. Whild I reform'd the Calendar by fits, 155
Which did confound the order of the yeare;
I waded through the depths of all their wits.
Who of the darres the myderies would cleare.
Thofe pregnant fprites who walke betwixt the Poles,
And lodge at all the Zodiackes feverall fignes, 160
Doe'^reade drange wonders wrapt in th' azure fcroules.
Of which our deeds are words, our lives are lines.
By fpeculadon of fuperior pow'rs.
Some Natures fecrets curious are to know.
As how celediall bodies rule o're ours, 165
And'what their influence doth worke below.
Yea, they fometime may brave conje(5tures make
Of thofe whofe parts they by their birth doe prove,
Since naturally all inclination take
From Planets then predominant above; 170
364 APPENDIX
And yet no certainty can fo be had, 171
Some vertuoufly againfl their Starres have flriv'd.
As SocraieSf who grew (though borne but bad)
The mod accomplifh'd man that ever liv'd.
But of the houre ordained to clofe our lights, 175
No earth-clog'd foule can to the knowledge come;
For, O! the deflinies farre from our fights,
In clouds of darknelTe have involved our doomel
And fome but onely guelTe at great mens falls,
By bearded Comets, and prodigious Starres, 180
Whofe fight-diflnufling (hape the world appalls,
As dill denoimcing terrour, death, or warres.
The time uncertaine is of certaine death.
And that fantaflicke man farre pad his boimds:
"With doubt and reverence they fhould manage breath, 185
"Who will divine upon conje<flured grounds.
Cal. But this all day hath prey'd upon my heart,
And from the fame of cares a tribute daim'd;
Doe not defpife that which I mud impart,
Though but a dreame, and by a woman dreamM. 190
I thought (alas) the thought yet wounds my bread,
Then whild we both (as thofe whom Morpheus weds)
Lay foftly buried (with a pleafant red)
I in thy bofome, thou within the beds:
Then from my foul drange terrours did with-draw 195
Th* expe<5led peace by apprehended harmes;
For, I imagined, no, no doubt I faw,
And did embrace thee bloudy in mine armes.
Thus whild my foule by forrowes was furcharg'd,
Of which huge weight it yet fome burden beares, 200
I big with griefe, two Elements enlarg'd,
Th' ayre with my fighes, the water with my teares.
Caf. That which I heard, with thy report accords,
Whild thou all feem'd difTolv'd in griefe at once,
A heavy murmuring made with mangled words, 205
Was interrupted oft by tragicke grones.
The memory, but not the judgement frames
Thofe raving fancies which didurbe the braine,
Whild night diffolves all dayes defignes in dreames,
"The fenfes deeping, foules would dirre in vainc. 210
From fuperditious feares this care proceeds.
Which dill would watch o're that which thou dod love,
And in thy minde thus melancholy breeds,
WTiich doth thofe drange imaginations move.
Cal. Ah, in fo light account leave off to hold 215
Thofe fatall warnings, which our mindes fhould leade
To fearch darke matters, till we may unfold
What dangers huge doe hang above thy head.
With facred Garlands he who things divines,
By th' intrails of the confecrated bead, 220
ALEXANDER'S JULIUS CjESAR 365
Doth in the offring fee finiflrous fignes, 921
And I entreat thee doe not hence make hade.
C«/. When I in Spaine againfl yong Pampey went,
Thus, the diviner threatned me before,
Yet did I profecute my firll intent, 225
Which with new lawrels did my browes decore.
Cal. And 3ret you hardly there (as I doe heare)
From danger (farre engag'd) redeemed your life;
But tokens now more monftrous doe appeare.
And I fufpe<5t farre worfe then open Urif e. 230
Caf, Lefl I too much feeme wedded to my will,
(As others counfels fcoming to allow)
With jealous eyes lie fearch about me ftill,
And even miHrufl my felfe to trull thee now;
Yet if I (lay, the Senators deceived, 235
May my beginning flraight begin to hate;
So might I periih, feeking to be fav'd:
'* By flying it, fome fall upon their fate.
But here one comes who can refolve me much,
With whom I ufe to weigh affaires of weight; 240
Whence com'ft thou Decius, that thy halle is fuch?
Is ought occurr'd that craves our knowledge flraight?
Dec, I come to tell you how the Senate Hayes,
Till that yoiu: prefence blefle their longing fight.
And to conclude what is propos'd, delayes, 245
Since your applaufe can onely make it right:
They your contentment to procure intend,
And all their thoughts feeme at one obje(fl bent.
Save that amongfl themfelves they doe contend.
Who you to pleafe, (hall rared wayes invent. 250
Caf. Then that, no treafure to my foule more deare.
Which to enjoy from hence I long to part.
But yet I know not what arreds me here.
And makes my feet rebellious to my heart;
From thee (deare friend) I never doe conceale 255
The weightied fecrets that conceme me mod;
And at this time I likewife mud reveale,
How heavens by fignes me with dedru<dion boad:
To fuperdition though not eard indin'd,
My wife by dreames doth now prefage my fall, 260
It a footh-fayer likewife hath divin'd:
The Sacrifice prodigious feemes to all,
So that till this difadrous day be gone,
All company I purpofe to difufe.
And to the Senators will fend fome one, 265
To paint my abfence with a faire ezcufe.
Dec. Brut, Doe not repofe on fuperditious fignes.
You to fufpe<5l the people thus to bring,
Whild Soveraigne-like you limit their defignes,
Seeme not a tyrant, feeking to be King: 270
366 APPENDIX
How can we fatisfie the worlds conceit, 371
Whofe tongue Hill in all eares your praife prodaimes?
Or fhall we bid them leave to deale in (late,
Till that Calpkurnia firil have better dreames?
If that this day you private would remaine, 375
The Senate to diiTolve your felfe mufl goe,
And then incontinent come backe againe,
When you have (howne to it fome reverence fo.
Caf. With thy advife (as pow'rfull) I agree.
The Senatours fhall have no caufe to grudge: 280
A little fpace, all part a fpace from me,
And rie be fhortly ready to diflodge.
Ca/ar alone.
Whence comes this huge and admirable change,
That in my brefl hath uncouth thoughts infus'd 285
Doth th' earth then earll yeeld terrors now more flrange,
Or but my minde lelTe courage then it us'd?
What fpightfull fate againfl my (late contends,
That I mud now to fancied plagues give place,
By foes not mov'd, afraid amongfl my friends, 390
By warre fecure, endangered but by peace?
When flrongefl troopes to fight with me did come,
Then did my heart the highefl hopes conceive,
I warr'd with many, many to o're-come;
The greateil battels, greatefl glory gave. 395
As th' enemies numbers, flill my courage grew;
Through depths of dangers oft times have I pafl,
Yet never did thofe boundleffe labours rue,
To have none greater firfl, none equall laft:
When bragging Gauls mov'd by their neighbours fals, 300
Had from the fields, no, from my fury fled;
And hid themfelves with Armes, their Armes with walles,
Whilft I my troupes before Alexia led;
Then, though there fwarm*d forth from the botmds about,
Huge hofls to compafTe me enflam'd with wrath, 305
That the befiegers (all befieg*d about,)
Seem'd drawne by danger in the nets of death.
No way I who could with the pride comport,
That thofe Barbarians by vaine vaunts bewrayed,
Did re-affault th* afl'aulters in fuch fort, 310
That words by woimds, woimds were by death repayd.
Of thofe within the towne (to eafe their toyles)
Till quite o're-com'd, their comming was not knowne.
Who (Iraight (upbraided by the barb'rous fpoiles)
Did yeeld themfelves, as if with them o*re-throwne, 315
By liquid legions whilft with tumid boafts
The Trident-bearer ftriv'd my fpoiles to beare; 317
ALEXANDER'S JULIUS OESAR 367
Though threatned thrife amid'd his humid hoils, 318
Still courage fcom'd to thinke of abje(5t feare.
I us'd thofe Pyrats who had me decdv'd, 320
Still as my fervants (thundring threatnings forth)
And gave them money more then they had crav'd,
Whofe ignorance too meanely priz'd my worth:
Yet gathering fhips, I llay'd not long a ihore,
But trac'd their fleps, though they not pav'd the way, 325
And taking them (as I had vow'd before)
By nought but death their ranfome would defray;
Then when (without th' advice of others mindes)
Through hoary waves I pail alone by night,
Whilft in a little Barke againd great windes, 330
That even the Pilot look't not for the light;
The waves themfelves afimder feem'd to teare,
That in their gravell I might chufe a grave,
And cryftall arches did above me reare,
That I a Tombe fit for my flate might have, 335
WhiUl dangers feem'd to merit Cajars death,
As Neptune rais'd his head, I rais'd my heart;
And (hewing what I was with condant breath,
To weake Amidas courage did impart.
Was I not once amid'd large Nilus flote, 340
Whnd me to wotmd, a wood of darts did flye,
Yet fwim'd fo careleiTe of my enemies ihot,
That in my hand I held fome papers dry?
With open dangers thus in every place,
I (whilfl oft compafs'd both by Sea and Land,) 345
Did undifinay'd looke horrour in the face,
As borne for nought, but onely to command.
But iince a world of vi(ftories have fill'd
With Trophees Temples, Theaters with my praife.
That bath'd with balme which glories bayes had flill'd, 350
With friends in peace, I look'd to fpend my dayes.
The chambers muficke now afrights me more.
Then Trumpets founds when marching in the field,
And Gowns (though fignes of peace) worfe then before
The pompous fplendoiu: of a flaming fhield. 355
Thofe thoughts of late which had difdain'd to doubt,
Though I alone had march'd amongil my foes,
Loe, whilfl amongd my friends well back'd about.
They, then the eyes more danger now difclofe.
If any chance, to meet a number brings, 360
I infurredtions feare from common wrath.
Yea, if two talke a part of private things.
Straight I fufpecft that they confpire my death;
When fudden rumours rife from vulgar fmoake;
(Whilft th' inward motions roule my reftleflc eyes,) 365
I at each comer for an ambufh looke,
And ftart aftoniih'd, left fome tumult rife. 367
368 APPENDIX
When light (first lightning) doth encourage toyles, 368
I dill defpaire to re-enjoy the night,
And when mine eyes th' umbragious darkeneffc fpoils, 370
I never looke to grace them with the light;
For, when the light with ihadowes makes a change,
To flatter mortals with a dreame of reft,
What ugly Gorgons, what Chimera's ftrange
Doe bragge the little world within my breft? 375
The time which ihould appeafe impetuous cares,
Doth double mine, who view moft when quite blinde;
I apprehend huge horrours and defpaires,
Whilft th' outward objedts not diftnuft my minde:
Now of my conquefts what delight remaines? 380
Where is the peace purfu*d by many a ftrife?
Have I but taken paine to purchafe paines?
And fought by dangers for a dangerous life?
Is this the period of afpiring powers,
In promised calmes to be moft plaguM by ftormes? 385
Lurke poyfnous Serpents under faireft flowers.
And hellifh fiuies under heavenly formes?
It will not grieve my ghoft below to goe,
If ciromivented in the warres I end.
As bold Marcellus by Romes greateft foe, 390
Who gave his afhes honour as a friend;
Or like t' Epaminondas in his death,
0! would the Gods I had amidft alarmes.
When charged with recent fpoiles, been fpoilM of breath,
Whilft I to Pluto might have march'd in armes; 395
Yet, life to end, which nought but toyles affords,
I'le pay to death the tribute that it owes;
Straight with my bloud, let fome come dye their f words,
Whofe naked breft encounter (hall their blowes:
But ah! how have the furies feaz'd my breft, 400
And poyfon'd thus my fprite with defp'rate rage?
By horrid Serpents whilft quite barr'd from reft.
No kinde of comfort can my cares affwage;
No, AtropoSj yet fpare my thrced a fpace,
That to the Stygian ftreames ere walking downe, 405
I may of honour have the higheft place.
And if I fall, yet fall beneath a Crowne.
Whilft eares are bended to applauding fliouts,
My thoughts divided are within my breft,
And my tofs'd foule doth flote between two doubts, 410
Yet knowes not on what ground to build her reft.
The Senators, they have this day defign'd,
To (hew the world how they efteeme my worth;
Yet doe portentuous fignes perturbe my minde.
By which the heavens would point my danger forth: 415
The Gods from me with indignation gone,
In every thing characft'red have my death: 417
ALEXANDER'S JULIUS C^SAR 369
And mud both heaven and earth confpire in one, 418
To quench a little fparke of fmoaking breath?
My fafety would that I fhould (lay within 420
Till this difaflrous day give darkeneile place,
But daring honour would have me begin
To reape the glory of my painefull race,
And I'le advance in fpight of threatned broyles.
For, though the fates accompliih what we dreame, 425
When onely death hath triumphed of my fpoyles,
I then (though breathlefle) dill (hall breathe with fame. Ex^,
Chorus.
What fury thus dothfiU the breft
With a prodigi&us rajh dejire,
Which hanijhing their Joules from rejl.
Doth make them live who high afpire, 5
(Whiljl it within their bofome boyles)
As Salamanders in the fire;
Or like to Serpents changing fpoyles,
Their withered beauties to renew?
Like Vipers with unnaturaU toyles, 10
Of Juch the thoughts themf elves Purfue,
Who for all lines their lives doefquare,
Whiljl like Camelions changing hue.
They ondyfeed on empty ayre:
" To pajje ambition greatejl matters brings, 1$
"And (Jave contentment) can attaine all things.
This active pajsion doth dijdaine
To match with any vulgar minde,
As in baje breafls where terrours raigne.
Too great a guefl to be confined; 20
It doth but lofty thoughts frequent,
Where it a fpatunis field may finde,
Itfdfe with honour to content.
Where reverenced fame doth lowdeft found;
Thofefor great things by courage bent, 25
{Farre lifted from this lumpijh round)
Would in the Jphere oj Glory move,
Whiljl lofty thoughts which nought can binde,
All rivals live in vertues love;
"On abjedl preyes as th* Eagles never light, 30
"Ambition poyfons but the grealefl fprite.
And of this reJUeJfe Vultures brood,
{If not become too great a flame)
A little fparke dothfometime good,
Which makes great mindes {affecting fame) 35
To fuffer flill all kinde of paine:
Their fortune at the bloudy game, 37
24
370
APPENDIX
Who hazard would for hope of gaine, 38
Vfdejfe fir ft bum*d by thirft of praife?
The learned to a higher ftraine, 40
Their wits by emulation raife,
As thofe who hold appiaufes deare;
And what great minde at which men gaze.
It fdfe can of ambition deare.
Which is when valu'd at the higheft price, 45
A generous errour, an heroiche vice?
But when this frenzie flaming bright,
Doth fo the foules offome furprife,
That they can tafte of no delight^
But what from Soveraignty doth rife, S^
Then, huge affliction it affords;
Such muft (themf elves fo to difguife)
Prove prodigall of courteous words,
Give much to fome, and promife all.
Then humble feeme to be made Lords, 55
Yea, being thus to many thrall,
Muft words impart, if notfupport;
To thofe who cruOt'd by fortune fall;
And grieve themf elves to pleafe each fort:
"Are not thofe wretch'd, who oWe a dangerous fnare, 60
**Do hang by hopes, whilft ballam^d in the ayre;
Then when they have the Port attained.
Which was through Seas of dangers fought.
They (loe) atlaftbut lojfe have gained.
And by great trouble, trouble bought: 65
Their mindes are married ftill wUhf cares.
To bring forth many a jealous thought;
With fearching eyes, and watching eares,
To learne that which it grieves to know.
The breft that fuch a burden beares, 70
What huge affldions doe o'reihrow?
Thus, each Prince is (as aU perceive)
No more exalted then brought low,
"Of many, Lord, of many, flave;
" That idoU greatnejfe which th' earth doth adore, 75
"Is gotten with great paine, and kept with more:
He who to this imagined good,
Did through his countries bowels tend,
Negledingfriendfkip, duty, bloud.
And all on which truft can depend, 80
Or by which love could be conceived,
Doth finde of what he did attend.
His expectations farre deceived;
For, fince fufpeaing fecret fnarcs,
His foule hath ftiU of reft beene reav'd, 85
Whilft fquadrons of tumultuous cares,
Forth from his breft extort deep grones. 87
ALEXANDER'S JULIUS C£SAR 371
Thus Cir/sr now ol life defptiics, 8S
Whofe lot his hope eiceedcd ooce;
And who can kxig wcD keep an ill woone State? 90
^Thofe peiiih mull by fome whom all men hate.
Aft 5. Scene i.
Marcus BrtUus, Chorus, AntoniuSy Caius
Ca/sius, Marcus TuUius Cicero.
Are generous Romans fo degener'd now,
That they from honour have eftrang'd their hands? 5
And, us'd with burdens, do not blufh to bow,
Yea (even though broken) ihake not off their bands;
This glorious worke was worthy of your paine.
Which now ye may by others dangers have;
But what enchaunts you thus, that ye abflaine 10
That which ye (hould have taken, to receive?
Where be thofe inundations of delight.
Which ihould burfl out from thoughts o're-flow'd with joy.
Whn'fl emulous Vertue may your mindes incite.
That which we give you bravely to enjoy; 15
Or quite conformed unto your former (late,
Do fliU your mindes of fervitude allow.
As broken by adverfitie of late,
Not capable of better fortune now?
Loe, we who by the Tyrants favour flood, 90
And griev'd but at the yoke which you out-rag'd,
Have our advancement, riches, red, and bloud,
All liberally for liberty engag'd.
Chor. Thou like thy great Progenitour in this,
Had glory to thy felfe, t' us freedome brought; 9H
"Then liberty what greater treafure is?
"Ought with it mUch, without it much feemet nought:
But pardoo us (heroicke man) though we
To high perfe<5lion hardly can afpire,
Though every man cannot a Brutus be, A^
"What none can imitate, all mud admire*
At this drange courfe (with too much light made blimUf)
We our opinions mud fufpend a fpaoe,
"When fudden chances do difmay the minde,
"The Judgement to the Paffion fird gfvef \AMff., 44
AtU, What wonder now though thSt mtid \mAmrtni% tUtA
Have ^th amazemcot dos'd your (udipem^t tn,
Which O (I feaze) (hall great ocnfufioa hrtM'f
When Cafars toyls did end, Roma M U««(fn:
The mod fufpitjous mtndes bad wK tMiwry'd, 4^
That Romans itventK^d lor ihtk worth hry m,
372
APPENDIX
Woiild have prefum'd to kill, or to have griev'd 42
An hallow'd body inhumanely thus;
Who woiild have once but dream'd of fuch defpight?
What (Irange hodilitiel in time of peace 45
To kill, though not accused, againfl all right,
A facred man, and in a facred place?
Cai, Cajf, If Cajar as a Citizen had liv'd,
And had by Law decided every flrife.
Then I would grant thofe treafon had contriv'd, 50
Who went without a Law to take his life;
But to pervert the Laws, fubvert the State,
If all his travels did dire<5lly tend.
Then I mufl fay, we did no wrong of late:
"Why (hould not Tyrants make a Tragicke end? 55
Cho, Since deflinies did Ca/ars foule enlarge.
What courfe can we for his recovery take?
Aht th' unrelenting Charons reflleiTe Barge
Stands to tranfport all o*re, but brings none back:
"Of lifes fraile glafTe (when broken) with vaine grones, 60
"What earthly power the mines can repaire;
"Or who can gather up, when fcattred once,
"Ones bloud from th* earth, or yet his breath from th' ayre?
Let us of thofe who paiTe oblivions floud
Oblivious be, fmce hope of help is gone, 65
And fpend our cares where cares may do mofl good.
Left Ronte waile many, where (he wailes but one.
Ant. Still concord for the Common- weale were befl.
To reconcile divided thoughts againe:
"Then difcord to great Townes, no greater pefl, 70
Whofe violence no reverence can reftraine.
Yet often-times thofe wane wits have err'd.
Who would buy wealth and eafe at any cofl:
"Let honefty to profit be preferred,
"And to vile peace warre when it wounds us mod; 75
But feeking peace, what furety can we finde?
Can faithleffe men give faith, juft feares to flay?
" No facred band Impiety can binde,
Which fweares for truft, feeks truft but to betray;
"What help'd it Cafar, that we all had fwome 80
His body flill from dangers to redeeme?
"Thofe who are once perjur*d, hold oaths in fcome?
**A11 are mofl franke of what they leafl efteeme.
Mar. Brut. None needs in States which are from Tyrants free,
Loath*d execrations to confirme his will, 85
Where willingly men would with good agree,
And without danger might defpife all ill ;
All odious oaths by thofe are onely crav'd,
Whofe fuit from Reafon doth a warrant want,
Whirft who deceive (afifraid to be deceiv'd) 90
Seek of men thrall'd, what none whil'fl free would grant.
ALEXANDER' S JULIUS CjESAR 373
When Cajof had prevaird in France and Spainef 92
His Fortune building on his Countries wracke,
(Of liberty a ihadow to retaine)
We gave him all that he was bent to take. 95
The Senate had referv'd nought but a (how,
Whofe courfe to it by Cafar was imposed,
Who lifted up, by bringing others low,
Of OflSces, and Provinces dkpofd:
Then that our faded hopes might never fpring, 100
When bent to try the Parthians wooden Ihowre,
He for five yeares difpofd of every thing,
Even in his abfence leaving us no pow'r,
O how fome aggravate our deed with hatet
Who durfl his body wound, or with bloud flaine; 105
Though confecrated by conflraint of late,
Yea, but reputed holy, yet prophaine.
And did forget how he (a wondrous cafe)
The Tribuneihip did violate with fcome,
Which our fore-fathers (free) in time of peace no
Advifdly had inviolable fwome.
Did he not once appropriate (fwolne with wrath)
The publike treafure to his private ufe?
And to the Tribune boldly threatned death.
Who did refifl, griev*d at that great abufe. 115
Twixt Romans and a Tyrant what availes
A Covenant whirfl Right reds trod on thus?
''Who can build further when the ground once fails?
Could we fave him who fought to mine us?
Cic. So abfolutely good no man remaines, 120
Whofe naturall weaknefTe may not him o're-come;
" Even Vertues dye from Vice may take fome flaines,
''And worthy minds may of groiTe faults have fome:
"As in fine fruits, or weeds, fat earth abounds,
"Even as the Labourers fpend, or fpare their paine, 125
"The greatefl fprits (difdaining vulgar bounds)
"Of what they feek the highefl height mufl gaine;
"They (that bright glory may be fo enjo/d)
"As onely borne to be in aifUon flill,
"Had rather be (then idle) ill imploy'd: 130
"Great fprits mufl do great good, or then great ill;
The worlds chiefe treafure which bright Rayes do arme.
Huge evill procured (though onely fram'd for good)
Till that fond youth whom his owne wifh did harme,
Was kiird by fire, and buried in a floud. 135
By rules of Reafon whil'fl he rightly liv'd.
When lawfully ele(5ted by the State,
What glorious deeds by Cajar were atchiev'd.
Which all the world as wonders mufl relate?
But when of right he biuied all refpedls, 140
(As blinde Ambition had bewitch'd his minde)
374
We at dK irft, he at dK lift <fid iwie;
WU'ft Oe Nmdjms «kk fciafrKr a love.
He vkk oar boada^e boaqaeted kii fighft, 145
And for a vUe (laiirif iae joyci to pni>fe)
VVlth aD ov mxs ««dd fvcetCB hB dd«^
Bow cndd bcm bkb («kk vcrtaoaB aiJaliQ as ^ofe
V\'ho ai that CooBtxia vcale axe jealoai ftfl.
Bat ftoadj to aD ftooas that Stain opofe, 159
TVe Slatg dcfliuyei lefoiale to kJ?
M
B onhfarr that wlach too kog vc lack:
Peace gnm to joftke pov'r, it, to afl good,
Wboe wane bieeds wvong, and wobk afl kavie of wnde. 155
This CHie hath eaperieac'd with pvat paiae,
V\liat gmity troabks rife Cram drfll ftx9e,
Wlddi hjr her nmcs icsiibed icmaine.
Since firfl the Gracdd gaire mntratiop fife.
When SdOa once, and Jfarwr (mad thnmgh pride) 160
Did drive who (hoold the Doft tynnnicke prove.
What mrmnrabie mif erics wcxe tzy'd.
From Ramami mindes no time can e'le icnMifC?
Then laft by C^/ar, and his Sonne in law.
What thonfanrk Qiofts to PImio wcxe di^patch'd? 165
Ah! that the work! thoTe hofts (fivkied law.
Which, joyn'd in one, no world ai woflds had match'd:
Yet with this wit which we have deaxly boogjit.
Let OS abhorxe aD that may bieed f och brails.
Left when we have our fdvcs to mine broa^t, 170
In end Barbarians bcare away our fpoyis.
Cko. Rome to thofe great men hardly can afford
A recompence, according to tbexr worth,
Who ^ a Tyrants o*rc-throw) have rcftor'd
The light of liberty which was put forth; 175
Yet (by due prailes with their merits c\-en)
Let us acknowledge their illuftrious mindes;
And to their charge let Provinces be given:
" Still vcrtue grows, when it prcfcrremcnt findes.
Ant, Tbofe barbarous Realms by wbofe refpetftrve will, 180
Of Cafars Conquells monuments are (howne:
As if they held them highly honour'd ftill,
Who warr*d with Cafar though they were o*rcthrown.
Can this difgrace by their proud mindes be borne,
Whil'fl we difhonour, whom they honour thus? 185
And IhaJl we not (whil*ll as a Tyrant tome)
Give him a tombe, who gave the world to us?
Mud his Decrees be all reduc'd againe,
And thofe degraded whom he grac'd of late,
As worthy men unworthily did gaine xgo
ALEXANDER' S JULIUS CjESAR 375
Their roomes of reputation in the State? 191
As if a Tyrant we him damne fo foone,
And for hb murd'rers do rewards devife,
Then what he did, mud likewife be undone,
For which I feare, a foule-confuiion rife. 195
Cho. Ah I (brave AnUmius) fow not feeds of warre,
And if thou alwayes do'fl delight in armes,
The haughty Partkians yet undaunted are,
Which may give thee great praife, and us no harmes.
Detefl in time th' abhominable broils, 300
For which no Conquerour to triumph hath com'd,
Whil'fl this wretch'd Towne (which flill fon^e party fpoils)
Mud loath the Vidlor, and lament th' o're-com'd:
And fhall we ilill contend againil all good,
To make the yoke where we (hould bound abide? 305
Mud dill the Commons facrifize their bloud.
As ondy borne to ferve the great mens pride?
Ant. Whird I the depths of my affedtion found,
And r^e but th' obligations which I owe,
I finde my felfe by oaths, and duty bound, 310
All Cafars foes, or then my felfe t' ore-throw.
But when I weigh what to the State belongs,
The which to plague no paflion (hall get place.
Then I with griefe digeding private wrongs,
Warre with my felfe to give my Countiey peace. 315
Yet whil'd my thoughts of this lad purpofe mufe,
I altogether dif-aifent from this.
That Cafars fame, or body we abufe.
To deale with Tyrants as the cudome is.
Led guilty of ingratitude we feeme, 320
(If guerdoning our benef adlors thus)
Great Cafars body from difgrace redeeme.
And let his adts be ratified by us.
Then for the publike-weale which makes us paufe.
Towards thofe that have him kill'd t' extend regard, 325
Let them be pardon'd for their kinfmens caufe:
'' Remiflion given for evill b a reward.
Ca, Cajf, We (land not vex'd like Malefadlors here,
With a dejedled and remorfefull minde.
So in your prefence fupplicants t' appeare, 330
As who themfelves of death do guilty finde;
But looking boldly with a loftie brow.
Through a delight of our defigne conceived.
We come to challenge gratefulneiTe of you.
That have of us fo great a good recdv'd. 335
But if you will fufpend your thoughts a fpace.
Though not the givers, entertaine the gift;
Do us reje(5t, yet liberty embrace:
To have you free Ooe) that was all our drift.
So Rome her ancient liberties enjoy. 240
376 APPENDIX
Let BrtUus and let Cafsius banifh't live; 241
Thus banifhment would breed us greater joy,
Then what at home a Tyrants wealth could give.
Though fome mifconflrue may this courfe of ours,
By ignorance, or then by hate deceived; 245
''The truth depends not on opinions pow'rs,
" But is it felfe, how ever mifconceiv'd.
Though to acknowledge us, not one would daigne,
Our merit of it felfe b a reward,
"Of doing good none (hould repent their paine, 250
"Though they get no reward, nor yet regard.
lie venture yet my fortune in the field,
With every one that Rome to bondage draws;
And as for me, how ever others yeeld,
V\e nought obey, but Reafon, and the Laws. 255
Cic, What fools are thofe who further travcll take,
For that which they even paR recovery know?
Who can revive the dead, or bring time back?
That can no creature who doth live below.
Great Pompey (now) for whom the world flill weeps, 260
Lyes low, negle<5led on a barbarous fhore;
Selfe-daughtered Scipio flotes amidfl the deeps.
Whom, it may be, Sea-monflers do devoure.
Of Libyan Wolves grave Cato feafls the wombes,
Whofe death, of worth the world defrauded leaves; 265
Thus fome that did deferve Maujolean tombes.
Have not a title graved upon their graves.
And yet may Cajar who procured their death.
By brave men flaine be biuied with his race;
All civill warre quite banilh'd with his breath, 270
Let him now dead, and us alive have peace.
"We fhould defifl our thoughts on things to fet,
"Which may harme fome, and can give help to none,
"Leame to forget that which we cannot get,
"And let our cares be gone of all things gone. 275
"Thofe who would flrive all crofTes to o*re-come,
"To prefent times muft ftill conforme their courfe,
" And making way for that which is to come,
" Not medle with things pad, but by difcourfe.
"Let none feek that which doth no good when found; 280
Since Cajar now is dead, how ever dead;
Let all our grief e go with him to the ground.
For, forrow bed becomes a lightleffe (hade;
It were the bed, that joyn*d in mutuall love,
We phyficke for this wounded State prepare: 285
"NegleAing thofe who from the world remove,
"All men on earth for earthly things muft care.
Cho. O how thofe great men friendfhip can pretend,
By foothing others thus with painted windes;
And feeme to truft, where treafon they attend, 290
ALEXANDER'S JULIUS CjESAR 377
Whilfl love their mouth, and malice fills their mindes; 291
Thofe but to them poore fimple foules appeare,
Whofe countenance doth difcover what they thinke^
Who make their words, as is their meaning, cleare,
And from themfelves can never feeme to ihrinke. 295
Loe, how AtUonius faines to quench all jarres,
And whom he hates with kindeneffe doth embrace,
But as he furthered firfl the former warres,
Some feare he flill will prove a foe to pesice.
Now where Calphumia (layes our fleppes addrefTe, 300
Since by this fudden chance her loiTe was chiefe.
"All vifite ihould their neighbours in diflreffe,
''To give fome comfort, or to ihare in grief e. 303
Aft 5. Scene 2.
Calphumia^ Nuntius,
Chorus.
When darkenefle lad imprifoned had myne eyes.
Such monflrous vifions did my heart affright, 5
That (quite deje(5ted) it as flupid dies
Through terrours then contra(5led in the night;
A melancholy cloud fo dimmes my brefl,
That it my mind fit for misfortune makes,
A lodging well difpos'd for fuch a Guefl, 10
Where nought of forrow but th' imprelfion lackes;
And I imagine every man I fee
(My fenfes fo corrupted are by feares)
A Herauld to denounce mifhaps to me,
Who (hould infufe confufion in my eares. 15
01 there he comes to violate my i)eace,
In whom the obje(5t of my thoughts I fee;
Thy meifage is chara<5lred in thy face.
And by thy lookes dire<5led is to me:
Thy troubled eyes refl rowling for reliefe, 20
As lately frighted by fome uglie fight;
Thy breath doth pant as if growne big with griefe,
And flraight to bring fome monflrous birth to light.
Nun, The man of whom the world in doubt remained.
If that his minde or fortune was more great, 25
Whofe valour conquered, clemende retained
All Nations Subje<5t to the Romane State;
Fraud harm'd him more then force, friends more then foes;
Ah! mufl this fad difcourfe by me be made?
Cal, Stay, ere thou further goe defray my woes, 30
How doth my love? where is my life? Nun, dead. Col, dead?
Cho, Though apprehending horrours in her minde.
Now fmce (he hath a certaintie received, 33
3/8 APPENDIX
She by experience greater grief e doth finde:
"Till borne, the paflions cannot be conceav'd. 35
When as a high difafler force affords,
O how that Tyrant whom affli<flion bears,
Barres th' eares from comfort, and the mouth from words,
And when obdur'd fcomes to diilolve in tearesi
Cal, Ah I fmce the lights of that great light are fet, 40
Why doth not darkneffe fpread it felfe o're all?
At lead what further comfort can I get,
Whofe pleafures had no period but hb fall?
O would the Gods I always might confine
Flames in my brefl, and floods within my eyes 45
To entertaine fo great a griefe as mine,
That thence there might fit furniture arife;
Yet I difdaine (though by diilreiTe o'rethrowne)
By fuch extemall meanes to feeke relief e:
"The greatefl forrowes are by filence fhowne, 50
" Whilfl all the Senfes are (hut up with griefe:
But miferie doth fo tyrannick grow
That it of fighes and teares a tribute daimes;
"Ah I when the cup is full, it mufl o'reflow,
"And fires which bume mufl offer up fome flames; 55
Yet though what thou hafl fayd my death (hall be,
(Since funke fo deeply in a melted heart)
Of my lives death report each point to mee.
For every circumdance that I may fmart.
iVtf». What fatall warnings did foregoe his end, 60
Which by his flay to fruflrate fome did try?
But he who fcom'd excufes to pretend,
Was by the deflinies drawne forth to die.
Whilfl by the way he chanc'd to meet with one.
Who had his deaths-day nam'd, he to him faid: 6$
The Ides of March be come; but yet not gone.
The other anfwer'd, and dill conllant flay'd:
Another brought a letter with great fpeed,
Which the confpiracie at length did touch,
And gave it Cajar in his hand to reade, 70
Protefling that it did import him much.
Yet did he lay it up where dill it reds,
As doe the great whom bled the world reputes,
Who (griev*d to be importun'd by requeds)
Of fimple fupplicants negle<5l the fuites: 75
Or he of it the reading did deferre,
Still troubled by attendants at the gate,
Whild fome to Ihow their credit would conferre,
To flatter fome, fome fomething to entreate.
Not onely did the Gods by divers fignes 80
Give Cajar warning of his threatned harmes;
But did of foes didurbe the ralh defignes,
And to their troubled thoughts gave drange alarmes; 83
ALEXANDER'S JULIUS CjESAR 379
A Senator who by fcMne words we find,
To the confpirators (though none of theirs) 85
Had (howne hunfelfe familiar with their minde,
Then chanc'd to deale with Cafar in affaires.
That light their foules did with confufion fill,
For, tliinlcing that he told their purposed deeds.
They (Iraight themfdves, or Cajoir thought to kill: 90
''A guiltie confdence no accufer needs;
But marking that he us'd (when taking leave)
A futers geflure when affording thankes,
Tliey of thdr courfe did greater hopes conceave,
And rang'd them feven according to their rankes. 95
Then Cafof march'd forth to the fatall place;
Neere Pompeys Theater where the Senate was.
Where (when he had remained a litle fpace)
All the confederats flock'd about. Calph, Alas.
Nun, Firil for the forme, MeiMus timber crav'd 100
To have his Brother from exile reflor'd,
Yet with the refl a rude repulfe recdv'd,
Whilfl it they all too eameflly implor'd:
Bold Cimber who in flrife with him did (land,
Did drive to cover with his Gowne his head: 105
Then was the firfl blow given by Cajca^s hand.
Which on his necke a litle wound but made.
And Cafar (darting whild the droke he fpi'd)
By drength from further driking Cajca dai'd,
Whild both the two burd out at once, and cry'd: no
He Traitour Cafcaj and he. Brother aide;
Then all the red againd him did arife
Like defp'rat men, whofe furie force affords.
That Cajar on no fide could fet his eyes,
But every looke encountred with fome Swords; Z15
Yet, as a lyon (when by nets furpriz'd)
Stands drugling dill fo long as he hath drength.
So CiBjar (as he had their pow'r defpis'd)
Did with great rage refid, till at the length
He thus cri'd out (when fpying BrtUus come) 120
And thou my Sonne I then grief e did back rebound:
"Nought but unkindneffe Cajar could o'recome,
''That, of all things, doth give the deeped wound.
Cho. ''Ah I when unkindneffe is, where love was thought,
"A tender paflion breakes the dronged heart: 195
"For, of all thofe who give offence in ought,
"Men, others hate, but for unkinde men, fmart.
Nun, Ah I taking then no more delight in light.
As who difdainfullie the world difclaim'd.
Or if from Brutus blow to hold his fight, 130
As of fo great ingratitude afham'd,
He with his Gowne when covered fird o're all,
As one who ndther fought, nor wilh'd reliefe, 133
38o APPENDIX
Not wronging majeflie, in (late did fall,
No iigh confenting to betray his griefe. 135
Yet (if by chance or force I cannot tell)
Even at the place, where Pompey's (latue flood,
(As if to oave him pardon J Cajar fell,
That in revenge it might exhaud his blood;
But when his corpes abandoned quite by breath, 140
Did fortunes frailties moniunent remaine.
That all might have like int'refl in his death.
And by the fame, looke for like praife or paine:
Then Cajsius, Bruius, and the refl began
With that great Emperours blood to die their hands; 145
"What beafl in th' earth more cruell is then man,
** When o*re his reafon paflion once conmiands?
Col. Whilfl brutiih Brutus, and proud Cafsius thus
Romes greatefl Captaine under trufl deceived,
Where was Anlonius (fince a friend to us) 150
That he not lofl himfelfe, or Cafar fav*d?
Nun. The whole confpiratours remained in doubt.
Had he and Ciefar joyn'd, to be undone,
And fo caused one to talke with him without,
Who fain'd a conference till the fa<5l was done. 155
Then knowing well in fuch tumultuous broiles,
That the firfl danger alwayes is the worfl,
He fled in had, difgub'd with borrowed fpoiles,
For rage and for dlTdaine even like to burfl.
Cal. The Senatours which were affembled there, 160
When they beheld that great man brought to end,
What was their part? to what indin'd their care?
I fear affli(5lion could not finde a friend.
Nun, Of thofe who in the Senate-houfe did fit
(So fad an obje<5t forrie to behold, 165
Or fearing what bould hands might more commit)
E^ch to his houfe a feverall way did hold;
This a<5l with horrour did confound their fight,
And unawares their judgement did furprife:
"When any hadie harmes un-lookt-for light, 170
"The refolution hath not time to rife:
That man on whom the world did once rely.
By all long reverenced, and ador*d by fome,
None to attend him had but two and I.
Cho. ** To what an ebbe may fortunes flowing come? iy$
Why fhould men following on the fmoake of pride,
Leave certaine eafe to feeke a dream'd delight.
Which when they have by many dangers tri'd.
They neither can with fafety keepe nor quite?
"The people who by force fubdu'd remaine, 180
"May pitty thofe by whom oppred they red;
"They but one Tyrant have, whereas there raigne
A Thoufand Tyrants in one Tyrants bred; 183
ALEXANDER' S JULIUS C^SAR 381
What though great Cajar once commanded Kings,
Whofe onely name whole Nations did appall? 185
Yet now (let no man tnifl in wordly things)
A little earth holds him who held it all.
Col. Ah! had he but beleev'd my faithfuU cares,
His State to flabliih who have alwayes flriv'd,
Then (fcaping this confpiracie of theirs) 190
He, honoured flill, and I had happy liv'd.
Did I not fpend of fupplications flore.
That he within his houfe, this day would wafte.
As I by dreames advertised was before,
Which fhew'd what was to come, and now is pad; 195
Whiril the Sooth-fayers facrific'd did finde
A bead without a heart, their Altars daine,
By that prefage my foule might have divin'd.
That I without my heart would foone remaine;
But all thofe terrours could no terrour give 200
To that great minde, whofe thoughts too high dill aym'd;
He by his fortune confident did live,
As, if the heavens, for him had all things fram*d;
Yet though he ended have his fatall race,
To bragge for this, let not his Murtherers drive: 205
For, 0! I hope to fee within Ihort fpace.
Him dead ador'd, and them abhorr'd alive.
Though now his name the multitude refpe(5ls.
Since murdering one who him had held fo deare,
Whil'd inward thoughts each outward thing refledls, 210
Some mondrous diape to Brutus mud appeare.
lud Nemefis mud plague proud Cajsius foone.
And make him kill himfelfe, from hopes edrang'd;
Once all the wrongs by foes to Cctjar done.
May by themf elves be on themfelves revenged. 215
Cho, "Some, Soveraigne of the earth, would fortune prove,
"As if, confusedly, Gods did men advance;
"Nought comes to men below, but from above,
"By providence, not by a daggering chance:
"Though to the caufe that lad forgoes the end, 220
"Some attribute the courfe of every thing,
"That caufe, on other caufes doth depend,
"Which chained 'twixt heaven and earth due ends forth bring;
"Of thofe decrees the heavens for us appoint,
" (Who ever them approves, or doth difprove) 225
"No mortall man can difappoint a point,
" But as they pleafe here moves, or doth remove;
"We, when once come the worlds vaine pompe to try.
"(Led by the fates) to end our journey hade:
"For, when fird borne, we draight begin to dye, 230
"Lifes fird day is a dep unto the lad.
"And is there ought more fwift then dayes, and yeares,
"Which weare away this breath of ours fo foone, 233
382 APPENDIX
" Whil'fl Lachefis to no requefl gives eares,
"But fpinnes the threeds of life till they be done? 235
"Yet foolifh worldlings following that which flies,
"As if they had aiTurance of their breath,
"To fraile preferrement fondly ftrive to rife,
"Which (but a burden) weighs them downe to death.
Nun. There's none of us but muft remember ilill, 240
How that the Gods by many a wondrous figne,
Did (hew (it feem'd) how that againfl their will,
The deflinies would Ca/ars dayes confine.
A monilrous flarre amidil the heaven hath beene,
Still fince they firfl againfl him did confpire; 245
The folitary birds at noone were feene,
And men to walke environM all with fire:
What wonder though the heavens at fuch a time,
Do brave the earth with apparitions flrange,
Then whirfl intending fuch a monilrous crime, 250
"Unnaturall men make Natures courfe to change?
Cho, Though all fuch things feeme wonderfull to fome,
They may by Reafon comprehended be,
For, what, beyond what ufuall is, doth come.
The Ignorant with wondring eyes do fee. 255
Thofe baflard Starres, not heritours of th' ayre.
Are firfl conceived below, then borne above.
And when fore-knowing things, fprits take mofl care.
And by illufion, fuperflition move.
Yet this, no doubt, a great regard fhould breed, 260
When Nature hath brought forth a monflrous birth,
In fecret Chanufters where men may reade
The wrath of heaven, and wickedneffe of th* earth.
The NaturalliRs, and th* Aftrologians skill
May oft, encountring, manifed like care: 265
Since th* one looks back, the other forward ftill.
One may tell what, the other why things are.
Nun. Shall forrow through the waves of woes to faile.
Have ftill your teares for Seas, your fighs for winds;
To miferie what do bafe plaints availe? 270
A courfe more high becomes heroicke mindes.
" None are o're-come, fave onely thofe who yeeld.
From froward Fortune though fome blows be borne.
Let Vertue ferve Adverfity for fhield:
"No greater griefe to griefe then th' enemies fcome; 275
This makes your foes but laugh to fee you weep.
At lead thefe teares but for your felfe beftow,
And not for that great fprit, whofe fp>oyls heavens keep;
For, he no doubt, reds deified ere now.
Col. I onely waile my life, and not his death; 280
Who now amongft th' immortals doth rep>ofe,
And (hall fo long as I have bloud or breath, 2S2
ALEXANDER'S JULIUS CtESAR
383
To fumiih forth the elements of woes.
I care not who rejoyce, fo I lament.
Who do to darkneile dedicate my dayes,
And fince the light of my delight is fpent,
Shall have in horrour all ApoUo's rayes.
(I will retyre my felfe to waile alone,
As tniflie Turtles mourning for their Mates)
And (my misfortune alwayes bent to mone)
Will fpume at pleafures as empoyfon'd baits;
No fecond guefl fhall preiTe great Cafars bed,
Warm'd by the flames to which he firfl gave life,
I thinke there may be greater honour had,
When Cafars widow, then anothers wife.
This had afforded comfort for my harmes,
If I (ere chanc'd abandoned thus to be)
Had had a little Cafar in mine armes.
The living pidture of his S3rre to me.
Yet doth that Idoll which my thoughts adore.
With me of late mofl flridtly matched remaine.
For, where my armes him fometimes held before,
Now in my heart I (hall him dill retaine.
That (though I may no pretious things impart)
Thy deitie may by me be honoured oft.
Still offring up my thoughts upon my heart,
My (acred flame (hall alwayes mount aloft.
283
28s
290
29s
300
Exeunt,
30s
308
Chorus.
What fools are thofe who do repoje their trufi
On what this majfe of mifery affords?
And {bragging hut ofth* excrements of duff)
Of life-teffe Treafures labour to be Lords:
Which like the Sirens fongs, or Circes charmeSt
WUhJhadows of delight hide certaine harmes.
Ah! whir ft they f port on pleafures ycie grounds ^
Oft poyfon'd by Profperitie with Pride,
A fudden ftorme their floting joyes confounds,
Whofe courfe is ordred by the eye-leffe guide,
Who fo inconftantly her felfe doth beare
Th* unhappie men may hope, the happy feare.
The fortunate who bathe inflouds of joyes.
To perifh oft amidft their pleafures chance,
And mirthleffe wretches wallowing in annoyes.
Oft by adverfUie themfdves advance;
Whil^ff Fortune bent to mock vaine worldlings cares.
Doth change defpaires in hopes, hopes in defpaires.
That gallant Grecian whofe great wit fo foone,
Whom others could not number, did oWe-come,
10
IS
20
384 APPENDIX
Bad he not beene undone, had heene undone^ 22
And if not banijh*df had not had a home;
To himfeare courage gave (what wondrous change!)
A nd many doubts are folution firange, 25
He who told one who then was Fortunes childe,
As if with horrour to congeale his bloud:
That Caius MsLiius farre from Rome exil'd.
Wretched on the ruines of great Carthage flood;
Though long both plagu*d by griefey and by dif grace, 30
The Conful'Jhip regained, and dy*d in peace.
And that great Pompey (all the worlds delight)
Whom of his Theater then tV applaufes pleas' d,
WkiVft praife-traf ported eyes endeer^d his fight.
Who by youths toyles Jhotdd have his age then eas'd, 35
He by one blow of Fortune loft farre more
Then many battels gayned had before,
Suchfudden changes fo difturbe thefoule,
That ftill the judgement baUanc'd is by doubt;
But, on a Round, what wonder though things roule? 40
Andfince within a Circle, turne about?
WhiVft heaven on earth ftrange alterations brings.
To fcorne our confidence in worldly things.
And chanced there ever accidents more ftrange.
Then in thefe ftormy bounds where we remaine? 45
One did a Jheep-hooke to a Scepter change.
The nurceling of a Wolfe o^re men did raigne;
A lUtle Village grew a mighty Towne,
Which whiVft it had no King, held many a Crowne,
Then by how many fundry forts of men, 50
Hath this great State beene ruVd? though now by none.
Which fir ft obeyed but one, then two, then ten,
Then by degrees returned to two, and one;
Of which three States, their ruine did abide,
Two by Two's tufts, and one by Two mens pride. 55
What revolutions huge have hapned thus.
By fecret fates all violently led.
Though feeming but by accident to us.
Yet in the depths of heavenly breafts fir ft bred,
As arguments demonftrative to prove 60
That weaknejfe dwds below, and pow'r above.
Loe, profprous Caefar charged for a fpace,
Both with ftrange Nations, and his Countreys fpoyls.
Even when he feem'd by warre to purchaje peace.
And rojes of Jweet reft, from thornes of toils; 65
Then whiVft his minde and fortune fwclVd moft high.
Hath beene conftrain'd the laft diftrejfe to trie.
What warnings large were in a time fo Jhort,
Of that darke courfe which by his death now fltines?
It, fpeechlejfe wonders plainly did report, 70
//, men reveal' d by words, and gods by fignes.
ALEXANDER'S JULIUS C^SAR 385
Yei by the chaynes of deftinies wkiVft hound , 72
He Jaw the /word f but could not /cape the wound.
What curtaine o*re our knowledge errour bringSy
Now drawnf now open*df by the heavenly ho/l, 75
Which makes us /ometime /harpe to/ee/maU things,
And yet quite blinde when as we/hotdd/ee tno/l.
Thai curious braines may re/l amaz*d at U^
Who/e ignorance makes them pre/ume 0/ wit;
Then let us live, /ince all things change below, 80
When raised mo/l high, as tho/e who once may /all,
And hold when by di/a/lers brought more low,
The minde /lill /ree, what etfer el/e be thrall:
" Tho/e (Lords 0/ Fortune) /weeten etfery State,
" Who can command them/elves, though not their /ate, 85
FINIS.
as
386 APPENDIX
CHARACTER OF CiESAR
Plutarch, Life of Casofy § i6 (ed. Skeat, p. 57), gives the following account of
Oesar's appearance and habits: 'Concerning the constitution of his body, he was
lean, white, and soft-skinned, and often subject to headache, and otherwise to
the falling sickness (the which took him the first time, as it is reported, in Corduba,
a city of Spain) : but yet therefore he yielded not to the disease of his body, to make
it a cloak to cherish him withal, but contrarily, took the pains of war as a medidne
to cure his sick body, fighting always with his disease, travelling continually, living
soberly, and commonly lying abroad in the field. For the most ni^ts he slept in
his coach or litter, and thereby bestowed his rest, to make him always able to do
something: and in the day time he would travel up and down the country to see
towns, castles, and strong places. He had always a secretary with him in the
coach, who did still write as he went by the way, and a soldier behind him that
carried his sword. He made such speed the first time he came from Rome, when he
had his office, that in eight days he came to the river of Rhone. /^e was so excel-
lent a rider of horse from his youth that holding his hands behind him, he would
gallop his horse upon the spur. In his wars in Gaul, he did fiuther ezerdse himself
to indite letters as he rode by the way, and did occupy two secretaries at once
with as much as they could write: and as Oppius writeth more than two at a time.
As it is reported, that Csesar was the first that devised friends might talk together
by writing cyphers in letters, when he had no leisure to qpeak with them for his
urgent business, and for the great distance besides from Rome. How little account
Cassar made of his diet, this example doth prove it. Caesar supping one night in
Milan with his friend Valerius Leo, there was served sperage [asparagus] to his
board, and oil of perfume put into it instead of sallet-oil. He simply eat it, and
found no fault, blaming his friends that were offended: and told them, that it had
been enough for them to have abstained to eat of that they misliked, and not to
shame their friend, and how that he lacked good manners that found fault with
his friend. Another time, as he travelled through the country, he was driven by
foul weather on the sudden to take a poor man's cottage, that had but one little
cabin in it, and that was so narrow that one man could but scarce lie in it. Then
he said to his friends that were about him: "Greatest rooms are meetest for great-
est men, and the most necessary rooms for the sickest personi." And thereupon he
called Oppius that was sick to lie there all night: and he himself, with the rest of
his friends, lay without, under the casing [eaves] of the house.'
Suetonius (ch. xlv, trans. Holland): Of stature he [Cssar] is reported to have
beene tall; of complexion white and deare; with limbs well trussed and in good
plight; somewhat full faced; his eies black, lively, and quick; also very healthfull,
saving that in his latter daies he was given to faint and swonne sodainly; yea, and
as he dreamed, to start and be affrighted: twice also in the midst of his martiall
affaires, he was surprized with the falling sicknes. About the trimming of his body,
he was over-curious: so as he would not onely be notted and shaven very precisely,
but also have his haire plucked, in so much as some cast it in his teeth, and twitted
him therewith. Moreover, finding by experience, that the deformity of his bald
head was oftentimes subject to the scoffes and scomes of backbiters and slaunderers,
hee tooke the same exceedingly to the heart: and therefore he both had usually
drawnc downe his haire that grew but thin, from the crowne toward his forehead:
and also of all honours decreed unto him from the Senate and People, he neither
CHARACTER OF CjESAR-^LLOYD-^LINDNER 387
received nor used any more willingly, than the privilegde to weare continually
the triumphant Lawrel guirland. Men say also, that in his apparel he was noted for
singularity, as who used to goe in his Senatours purple studded robe, trinuned with
jagge or frindge at the sleeve hand: and the same so, as hee never was but girt over
it, and that very slack and loose: whereupon arose (for certaine) that saying of
Sulla, who admonished the Nobles oftentimes. To beware of the boy that went
girded so dissolutely. — [ed. Whibley, p. 48.]
Lloyd (ap. Singer, viii, p. 504): The leading characteristic ascribed to Csesar [by
Shakespeare] is a somewhat overcharged tendency to Thrasonical arrogance, which,
however, is saved from the ridiculous by a manifest sincerity that lies below, — ^by
a true magnanimity that subsists with professions of high pitched dignity of senti-
ments that are not base counterfeits, but simply exaggerations. It is by com-
parison with this rather strained expression of devotion to an ideal principle of
worthy self-respect that we are prepared to accept the more attempered form of the
like characteristic in Brutus, without an uneasy suspicion of vapouring or vain
parade. ... It is not only on public occasions that Cassar in the play falls into
this tone of turgid ostentation, it is quite as marked in hb private intercourse with
his wife Calpumia; yet throughout the picture we trace the originally simpler
lineaments of character that are thus clouded and overlaid, and the change that
has been wrought by change of position is indicated by the frank anecdote of the
challenge he once gave on the banks of the Tiber, and the defeat he owned so
freely; placed as it is in such immediate contrast with the angry ill-humour and
suspicion, as he comes sad away from the unsuccessful stratagem of the offered
crown at the Lupercal. In the play itself allusion is made to the change in Caesar's
character, in respect to an entertainment of once contemned superstitions, which
is one of the incidents that beset the self-satisfied and successful, no less than the
as distinctly declared accessibility to flattery, and the self-condemning littleness of
spirit that hankers after a title. . . . Julius Csesar enters but three times, and the
action of the piece is extended more than as much again after his assassination.
Still the piece is rightly called by his name; it is his fate and fortune that give
commencement to the action, and the influence and predominance of his character
are observable to the end. Antony, over his bleeding body, predicts the agency of
his unplacated spirit in the civil conflicts to ensue; it is ever present to the imagina-
tion of Brutus, and actually decides at last, by visible intervention, the fated battle-
field of Philippi, and walks abroad, believed to turn, and therefore really turning,
the swords of his slayers into their proper entrails. Otherwise it is Brutus on whom
the interest and sympathy of the play converge and become continuous throughout
its course, making him thus, in a certain sense, its hero.
Lindner has taken this spiritual dominance of Ctesar as the subject for an
article in the Jakrbuch for 1866 (vol. ii, pp. 90-95) in order to demonstrate the
dramatic unity in Shakespeare's tragedy, and that it is properly called Julius
Casofy since he and his influence on the lives of the others arc the main themes.
In this connection Lindner contrasts the Ajax of Sophocles, wherein as long as
Ajax was alive he is a giant in body, a child in spirit; after his death, a non-entity,
merely a cause for the contention of others. As long as Csesar lives, he is a weakling,
a phantom with many infirmities; after his death, a spiritual power, more fearful
than even in life. * We may thus see,* continues Lindner, * that the tragic difficulty
and artistic treatment of Shakespeare's tragedy is not to be measured by that of
388 APPENDIX
Ajax. Contrasted to Caesar, the thought which represents the dead Ajaz does not
merit as much space as two acts, and, to say the least, the whole r61e of Menalaus is
superfluous. But in Csesar the last half of the Tragedy has a basis mudi firmer than
the first part.' Lindner thus concludes: 'To sum up: I am convinced that it was
the design of the poet to make known the vital force of Caesar as continued by
Octavius; the more expressed design, that the actor of Octavius should recall to the
audience, up to a certain point, the bodily appearance of Caesar. Shakespeare has
given many hints which point to this. Cassius in the present play calls him ''a
peevish schoolboy worthless of such honour"; in iln/. 6* Cho. he is a weak drunk-
ard, who cannot endure anything, and Cleopatra teases Antony with the orders of
the beardless Emperor.'
MfziERES (p. 360) : Shakespeare presents us with a convendiMial Caesar, very
different from that of Plutarch — a proud and arrogant Caesar, whose dictatorial
language forms a marked contrast to the simplicity of the Commenlaries so well
preserved by the Greek historian. He does not tell us of those lofty thoughts which
engaged the mind of the master of the world up to the very hour when the swords
of the conspirators struck him down, ^bove all,|he does not give sufficient promi-
nence to his generosity, his clemency, and thlt high-minded liberality] which,
justly estimating its enemies, takes no precautions against them!\ It is but a weak
justification of Shakespeare's conception to urge, as have several critics, that, having
taken the life of Brutus as his main subject, he had the right to show only the weak
side of Caesar, his vanity, his ambition to reign, and his insolence, in order to furnish
a motive for the conspiracy. The decision to tell but a part of the truth does not
excuse him who makes the decision. The poet was under no obligation to follow
the plan which he has adqpted, and we do not render his work immune from
blame in appealing to a choice which depended upon him alone to make. At all
events, it must be observable that here, contrary to his usual custom, he is lacking
in impartiality. I am quite aware that he shows himself impartial in the ad-
mirable oration of Antony. To be just, it is not sufficient to praise Caesar dead; it is
not sufficient even to give his name to the piece in order to attest his greatness.
This might have appeared of equal advantage in the r61e of Caesar living.
Gervinus (p. 719): The poet, if he intended to make the attempt of the re-
publicans his main theme, could not have ventured to create too great an interest
in Caesar; it was necessary that he be kept in the background, and to present that
view of him which gave a reason for the conspiracy. According even to Plutarch,
whose biography of Caesar is acknowledged to be very imperfect, Caesar's character
altered much for the worse shortly before his death, and Shakespeare has repre-
sented him according to this suggestion. With what reverence Shakespeare
viewed his character as a whole we learn from several passages of hb works, and
even in this play from the way in which he allows his memory to be respected as
soon as he is dead. In the descriptions of Cassius we look back upon the time when
the great man was simple, natural, undissembling, popular, and on an equal footing
with others. Now he is spoiled by victory, success, power, and by the republican
courtiers who surround him. ... All around him treat him as a master; his wife,
as a prince; the Senate allow themselves to be called his Senate; he assumes the
appearance of a king even in his house; even with his wife he uses the language of a
man who knows himself secure of power, and he maintains everywhere the proud,
strict bearing of a soldier, which is represented even in his statues. If one of the
CHARACTER OF CjESAR-— HUDSON 389
changes at which Plutarch hints lay in this pride, this haughtiness, another lay in
his superstition. In the suspicion and apprehension before the final step he was
seized, contrary to his usual nature and habit, with misgivings and superstitious
fears. . . . These conflicting feelings divide him, ... his pride, his defiance of
danger struggle againt them, and restore his former confidence which was natural
to him, and which causes his ruin, just as a like confidence, springing from another
source, ruined Brutus. The actor must make his high-sounding language appear as
the result of this discord of feeling. Sometimes they are only incidental words
intended to characterise the hero in the shortest way. Generally they appear in
the cases where Caesar has to combat with his superstition, where he uses effort
to take a higher stand in his words than at the moment he actually feels. He
speaks so much of having no fear that, by this very thing, he betrays his fear.
Even in the places where his words sound most boastful, where he compares him-
self to the north-star, there is more arrogance and ill-concealed pride at work
than real boastfulness. It is intended there with a few words to show him at the
point when his behaviour could most excite those free spirits against him. It was
fully intended that he should take but a small part in the action. . . . The poet
has handled this historical piece like his English historical plays. He had in his
eye the whole context of the Roman civil wars for this single drama, not as yet think-
ing of its continuation xskAni.tr Cleo. He casts a glance back upon the fall of Pom-
pey, and makes it evident that Caesar falls for the same reason as that for which
he had made Pompey fall. In the triumph over him men's minds rise up at first
against Caesar, the conspirators assemble in Pompey*s porch, and Caesar is slain in
front of his statue. As his death arose out of the civil war, so dvil war recom-
mences at his death, just as Antony predicts. In this S3anbolic sense Caesar, after
his death, has a share in the action of the play which does not bear his name without
a reason.
Hudson (ii, 224) : As here represented, Caesar is, indeed, little better than a
grand, strutting piece of puff-paste; and when he speaks, it is very much in the style
of a glorious vapourer and braggart, full of lofty airs and mock-thunder, than
which nothing could be further from the truth of the man, whose character, even in
his faults, was as compact and solid as adamant, and at the same time as limber and
ductile as the finest gold. Certain critics have seized and worked upon this as
proving that Shakespeare must have been very green in classical study, or else very
careless in the use of his authorities. To my thinking it proves neither the one nor
the other, though I am not quite clear as to what it does prove.
It is true, Caesar's ambition was, indeed, gigantic, but none too much so, I suspect,
for the mind it dwelt in. And no man ever framed hb ambition more in S3anpathy
with the great force of Nature or built it upon a deeper foundation of political
wisdom and insight. Now this 'last infirmity of noble minds' is the only part of
him that the play really sets before us; and even this we do not see as it was, because
it is here severed from the constitutional peerage of his gifts and virtues; all those
transcendent qualities which placed him at the sununit of Roman intellect and
manhood being either withheld from the scene or thrown so far into the back-
ground that the proper effect of them is mainly lost. Yet we have ample proof
that Shakespeare understood Caesar thoroughly. In fact, we need not go beyond
Shakespeare to gather that Julius Caesar's was the deepest, the most versatile, and
most multitudinous head that ever figured in the political affairs of mankind.
And, indeed, it is clear from this play itself that the Poet's course did not proceed at
390
APPENDIX
1
all from ignorance or misconception of the man. For it is remarkable that, though
Caesar delivers himself so out of character, yet others, both foes and friends,
deliver him much nearer the truth; so that, while we see almost nothing of him
directly, we nevertheless get, upon the whole, a pretty just reflection of him.
Especially in the marvellous speeches of Antony and in the later events of the
drama, both his inward greatness and his right of mastership over the Roman
world are fully vindicated. For, in the play as in the history, Caesar's blood just
hastens and cements the empire which the conspirators thought to prevent.
They soon find that in the popular sympathies, and even in their own dumb
remorses, he has ' left behind powers that will work for him.' He proves, indeed, far
mightier in death than in life; as if his spirit were become at once the guardian angel
of his cause and an avenging angel to his foes. And so it was in fact. For nothing
did so much to set the people in love with royalty, both name and thing, as the
reflection that their beloved Caesar, the greatest of their national heroes, the
crown and consmnmation of Roman genius and character, had been murdered for
aspiring to it. Thus their hereditary aversion to kingship was all subdued by the
remembrance of how and why their Caesar fell; and they who before would have
plucked out his heart rather than he should wear a crown, would now have plucked
out their own, to set a crown upon his head. Such is the natural result when the
intensities of admiration and compassion meet together in the human breast.
I am moved to add, though it is not strictly pertinent to my theme, that the man
Julius Csesar was in no sort a philosophic enthusiast or patriotic dreamer. With
his clear, healthy, practical mind, which no ideal or sentimental infatuation could
get hold of, he stood face to face with men and things as they were. It was not in
his line, therefore, to bid old 'Time run back and fetch the age of gold.' He knew —
he would not have been Julius Caesar if he had not known — that it was both criminal
and weak to suppose that the great wicked Rome of his day was to be crushed back
into the smaller and better Rome of a bygone age. If he sought to imperialize the
State, and himself at its head, it was because he knew that Rome, as she then was,
must have a master, and that himself was the fittest man for that office. We all
now see what he alone saw then, that the great social forces of the Roman world had
long been moving and converging irresistibly to that end. He was not to be deluded
with the hop)e of reversing or postponing the issue of such deep-working causes.
The great danger of the time lay in struggling to keep up a republic in show, when
they already had an empire in fact. And Caesar's statesmanship was of that high
and comprehensive reach which knows better than to outface political necessities
with political theories. For it is an axiom in government, no less than in science,
that Nature will not be the servant of men who are too brain-sick or too proud to
perceive and respect her laws. Great Caesar understood this matter thoroughly
in reference to the political state of his time; and his ambition, if that be the right
name for it, was but the instinct of a supreme, administrative faculty for adminis-
trative modes and powers answerable to the exigency.
Now I feel morally certain that the Poet understood all this perfectly. I have
no doubt he knew the whole height and compass of Caesar's vast and varied capacity.
And I sometimes regret that he did not render him as he evidentiy saw him, inas-
much as he alone perhaps of all the men who ever wrote could have given an
adequate expression of that colossal man.
This seeming contradiction between Caesar as known and Caesar as rendered by
him is what, more than anything else in the drama, perplexes me. I am something
at a loss how to account for it. Shall we say that, upon the plan of making Brutus a
CHARACTER OF CjESAR^DOWDEN^STAPFER
391
dramatic hero, no other course was practicable? Was it that the great sun of Rome
had to be shorn of his beams, else so ineffectual a fire as Brutus could not command
the eye?
I have sometimes thought that the policy of the drama may have been to repre-
sent Cesar not as he was indeed, but as he must have appeared to the conspirators;
to make us see him as they saw him, in order that they too might have fair and equal
judgment at our hands. For Cssar was literally too great to be seen by them, save
as children often see bugbears by moonlight, when their inexperienced eyes are
mocked with air. And the Poet may well have judged that the best way to set us
right towards them was by identifying us more or less with them in mental position,
and making us share somewhat in their delusion. For there is scarce anything
wherein we are so apt to err as in reference to the characters of men when time has
settled and cleared up the questions in 'which they lost their way*; we blame
them for not having seen as we see; while, in truth, the things that are so bathed in
light to us were full of darkness to them; and we should have understood them bet-
ter had we been in the dark along with them. Csesar, indeed, was not bewildered
by the political questions of his time; but all the rest were, and, therefore, he seemed
so to them; and, while their own heads were swimming, they naturally ascribed his
seeming bewilderment to a dangerous intoxication. As for his marvellous career of
success, they attributed this mainly to his good luck; such being the common
refuge of inferior minds when they would escape the sense of their inferiority.
Hence, as generally happens with the highest order of men, his greatness had to \j
wait the approval of later events. He, indeed, far beyond any other man of his \l
age, 'looked into the seeds of time'; but this was not nor could be known till time
had developed those seeds into their fruits. Why, then, may not the Poet's idea
have been so to order things that the full strength of the man should not appear
in the play, as it did not, in fact, till after his fall? This view, I am apt td think,
will both explain and justify the strange disguise — a sort of falsetto greatness —
under which Cssar exhibits himself.
DowDEN (p. 285) : In Shakespeare's rendering of the character of Csesar, which
has considerably bewildered his critics, one thought of the poet would seem to be
this, that imless a man continually keeps himself in relation with facts, and with
his person and character, he may become to himself legendary and mythical. The
real man Caesar disappears for himself under the greatness of the Csesar m3rth. He
forgets himself as he actually is, and knows only the vast legendary power named
Caesar. He b a numen to himself, speaking of Caesar in the third person, as if of some
power above and behind his consciousness. And at this very moment — so ironical
is the time-spirit — Cassius is cruelly insisting to Brutus upon all those infirmities
which prove this god no more than a pitiful mortal.
Staffer (p. 327): It is easily seen that in carefully preserving these details [of
infirmity mentioned by Plutarch and Suetonius] and in adding even further mala-
dies, such as fever and deafness, Shakespeare's intention was to bring into promi-
nent notice this clay, this dust, this mud on which Hamlet was one day to philoso-
phize. . . . But I think it is possible to penetrate deeper into the poet's thought
than this. Not only in body, but also in mind was Csesar becoming enfeebled in
those last days of his life; he was superstitious and frightened, he had lost all
foresight and firmness of purpose, and took refuge in a grandiloquent and empty
declamation; his mental collapse was everywhere evident. And yet, when the
392
APPENDIX
}
. ».
conspirators put a violent end to this poor exhausted spirit, which was d3ring of
itself, the Republic gained absolutely nothing: the Emperor is no more, but the
empire is begun — Csesar is dead, long live Cssar! By this Shakespeare, with a
depth of insight and observation, before which thought stands astounded and
abashed, meant to show that the days of liberty in Rome were irrevocably ended,
and that for the future the cause of her bondage would no longer be the conunand-
ing genius of a ruler, but the inward alteration in the public mind and diqx>sition.
. . . It is not the spirit of any one man, but the spirit of a new era about to begin —
the spirit of CtBsarism — that fills Shakespeare's play and gives it its unity and
moral significance. [See note on HI, ii, 54.]
MouLTON (Sh, as Dram. Art., p. 176): Under the influence of some of (Tssar's
speeches we find ourselves in the presence of one of the masterspirits of mankind;
other scenes in which he plays a leading part breathe nothing but the feeblest
vacillation and weakness. ... It is the antithesis of the outer and inner life that
explains this contradiction in Caesar's character. Like Macbeth he is the embodi-
ment of one side and one side only of the antithesis; he b the complete type of the
practical — though in special qualities he is as unlike Macbeth as his age is unlike
Macbeth's age. Accordingly, Csesar appears before us perfect up to the point where
his own personality comes in. The military and political sphere, in which he has
been such a collossal figive, call forth practical powers, and do not involve intro-
spection and meditation on foundation principles of thought. . . . The tasks
of the soldier and statesman are imposed upon them by external authority and
necessities, and the faculties exercised are those which shi4)e means to ends.
But at last Caesar comes to a crisis that does involve his personality; he attempts
a task imposed on him by his own ambition. He plays in a game of which the
prize is the world and the stake himself, and to estimate chances in such a game
tests self-knowledge and self-command to its depths. How wanting Caesar is in
the cultivation of the inner life is brought out by his contrast with Cassius. The
incidents of the flood and the fever, retained by the memory of Cassius, illustrate
this. The first of these was no mere swimming match; the flood in the Tiber was
such as to reduce to nothing the difiFerence between one swimmer and another.
It was a trial of nerve, and as long as action was possible Caesar was not only as
brave as Cassius, but was the one attracted by the danger. Then some chance
wave or cross-current renders his chance of life hopeless, and no bufleting with
lusty sinews is of any avail; that is the point at which the passive courage bom of
the inner life comes in and gives strength to submit to the inevitable with calm-
ness. This Caesar lacks, and he calls for rescue. Cassius would have felt the water
close over him and have sunk to the bottom and died rather than accept aid from
his rival. In like manner, the sick bed is a region in which the highest physical and
intellectual activity is helpless; the trained self-control of a Stoic may have a sphere
for exercise even here; but the god Caesar shakes and cries for drink like a sick girl.
It is interesting to note how the two types of mind, when brought into personal
contact, jar upon one another's self-consciousness. The intellectual man, judging
the man of action by the test of mutual intercourse, sees nothing to explain the
other's greatness, and wonders what people find in him that they so admire him
and submit to his influence. On the other hand, the man of achievement is uneasily
conscious of a sort of superiority in one whose intellectual aims and habits he finds
it so difficult to follow — yet superiority it is not, for what has he done? Shake-
speare has illustrated this in the play by contriving to bring Caesar and his suite
CHARACTER OF CjESAR-^MOULTON
393
across the 'public place' in which Cassius is discoursing to Brutus. Cassius feels
the usual irritation at being utterly unable to find in his old acquaintance any
special qualities to explain his elevation. Similarly, Caesar, as he casts a passing
glance at Cassius, becomes at once uneasy. 'He thinks too much/ is the exclama-
tion of the man of action. The practical man, accustomed to divide mankind into a
few simple types, is always uncomfortable at finding a man he cannot classify.
Finally, there is a climax to the jealousy that exists between the two lives: Cssar
complains that Cassius ' Looks quUe through the deeds of men.* There is another
circumstance to be taken into account in explaining the weakness of Caesar. A
change has come over the spirit of Roman political life itself — such seems to be
Shakespeare's conception. Caesar on hb return has found Rome no longer the
Rome he had known. Before he left for Gaul, Rome had been the ideal sphere for
public life, the arena in which principles alone were allowed to combat, and from
which the banishment of personal aims and passions was the first condition of
virtue. In his absence Rome has gradually degenerated; the mob has become the
ruling force, and introduced an element of uncertainty into political life; politics
has passed from science into gambling. A new order of public men has arisen,
of which Cassius and Antony are the types; personal aims, personal temptations,
and personal risks are now inextricably interwoven with public action. This is a
changed order of things, to which the mind of Caesar, cast in a higher mould, lacks
the power to adapt itself. His vacillation is the vacillation of unfamiliarity with
the new political conditions. He refuses the crown 'each time gentlier than the
other,' showing want of decisive reading in dealing with the fickle mob; and on his
return from the Capitol he is too untrained in hypocrisy to conceal the angry spot
upon his face; he has tried to use the new weapons which he does not understand
and has failed. It is a subtle touch of Shakespeare's to the same effect that Caesar
is represented as having himself undergone a change of late: 'Quite from the main
opinion he held once.' To come back to the world of which you have mastered the
machinery and to find that it is no longer governed by machinery at all, that
causes no longer produce their effects — this, if anything, might drive a strong
intellect to superstition. And herein consists the pathos of Caesar's situation. The \
deepest tragedy of the play is not the assassination of Caesar, it is rather seen in )
such a speech as this of Dedus:
'I can o'ersway him; for he loves to hear
That unicorns may be betray 'd with trees,.
And bears with glasses, elephants with holes,
Lions with toils, and men with flatterers;
But when I tell him he hates flatterers.
He says he does, being then most flattered.
Let me work.' — ^11, i, 227.
Assassination is a less piteous thing than to see the giant intellect by its very )
strength unable to contend against the low cunning of a fifth-rate intriguer. (
Such, then, appears to be Shakespeare's conception of Julius Caesar. He is the
consummate t3rpe of the practical: emphatically the public man, complete in all
the greatness that belongs to action. On the other hand, the knowledge of self
produced by self-contemplation is wanting, and so, when he comes to consider the
relation of his individual self to the state, he vacillates with the vacillation of a
strong man moving amongst men of whose greater intellectual subtlety he is dimly
consdoiis: no unnatural conception for a Caesar who has been founding empires
394
APPENDIX
abroad while his fellows have been sharpening their wits in the party contests of a
decaying state.
Brandes (i, 361): In dealing with the great figure of Caesar . . . Shakespeare
follows faithfully the detached, anecdotic indications of Plutarch, but he, strangely
enough, seems to miss altogether the remarkable impression we receive of Caesar's
character which, for the rest, the Greek historian was not in a position fully to
understand. We must not forget the fact, of which Shakespeare, of course, knew
nothing, that Plutarch, who was bom a century after Qesar's death, at a time
when the independence of Greece was only a memory, and the once glorious Hellas
was part of a Roman province, wrote his comparative biographies to remind
haughty Rome that Greece had a great man to oppose to each of her greatest sons.
Plutarch was saturated with the thought that conquered Greece was Rome's
lord and master in every department of the intellectual life. ... He wrote about
his great Romans as an enlightened and unprejudiced Pole might in our days write
about great Russians. He, in whose eyes the old republics shone transfigured,
was not especially fitted to appreciate Caesar's greatness. Shakespeare, having so
arranged his drama that Brutus should be its tragic hero, had to concentrate his
art on placing him in the foreground and making him fill the scene, . . . and,
therefore, Caesar was diminished and belittled to such a degree, unfortunately, that
this matchless genius in war and statesmanship has become a miserable caricature.
. . . [We cannot] fall back upon the argument that Caesar after his death be-
comes the chief personage of the drama, and as a corpse, as a memory, as a spirit,
strikes down his murderers. How can so small a man cast so great a shadow!
Shakespeare, of course, intended to portray Caesar as triumphing after his death.
He has changed Brutus's evil genius, which appears to him in the camp and at
Philippi, into Caesar's ghost; but this ghost is not sufficient to rehabilitate Caesar in
our estimation. Nor is it true that Caesar's greatness would have impaired the
unity of the piece. Its poetic value, on the contrary, suffers from his pettiness.
The play might have been immeasurably richer and deeper than it is had Shake-
speare been inspired by a feeling of Caesar's greatness. Elsewhere in Shakespeare
one marvels at what he has made out of poor and meagre material. Here history
was so enormously rich that his poetry is become poor and meagre in comparison
with it. Just as Shakespeare (if the portions of i Hen. VI. which deal with La
Pucelle are by him) represented Jeanne d'Arc with no sense for the lofty and simple
poetry that breathed around her figure, ... so he approached the characterisation
of Caesar with far too light a heart and with imperfect knowledge and care. As
he had made Jeanne d'Arc a ^itch, so he makes Caesar a braggart. Caesar! If, like
the schoolboys of later generations, he had been given Caesar's Gallic War to read
in his childhood, this would not have been possible to him. Is it conceivable that,
in what he had heard about the Commentaries^ he had naively seized upon and
misinterpreted the fact that Caesar always speaks of himself in the third p>erson,
and calls himself by his name? . . . What enchanted every one, even his enemies,
who came in contact with Caesar was his good-breeding, his politeness, the charm
of his personality. . . . Shakespeare conveys no idea of the wealth and many-sided-
ness of his gifts. He makes him belaud himself with unceasing solemnity. Caesar
had nothing of the stolid pomposity and severity which Shakespeare attributes
to him. He united the rapid decision of the general with the man of the world's
elegance and lofty indifference to trifles. . . . Caesar as opposed to Cato — and
afterwards as opposed to Brutus — is the many-sided genius who loves life and action
CHARACTER OF CjESAR-^ALLEN 395
and power, in contnulistinction to the narrow Puritan who hates such emancipated
spirits, partly on principle, partly from instinct. What a strange misunderstanding
that Shakespeare — himself a lover of beauty, intent on a life of activity, enjo3anent,
and satisfied ambition, who always stood to Puritanism in the same hostile
relation in which Cssar stood — should of ignorance take the side of Puritanism
in this case, and so disqualify himself from extracting from the rich mine of Cesar's
character all the gold contained in it. In Shakespeare's Caesar we find nothing of
the magnanimity and sincerity of the real man. He never assumed a hypocritical
reverence towards the past, not even on questions of granmiar. He grasped at
power and seized it, but did not, as in Shakespeare, pretend to reject it. Shake-
speare has let him keep the pride which he, in fact, displayed, but has made it un-
beautiful and eked it out with hypocrisy. ... It was because of Shakespeare's
lack of historical and classical culture that the incomparable grandeur of the
figure of Cesar left him immoved.
J. C. Allen (Poet Lore, vol. xiii, p. 574): We must remember that Shakespeare,
like every writer of his time, was a romanticist. Being such, he naturally gave to
his characters a poetic consistency. The hero looked a hero, the villain looked a
villain. Dwarfs, deformed persons, and those having physical defects were shown
to have moral defects to match. From Plutarch Shakespeare learned that Caesar
was of delicate frame and subject to epileptic fits. From the same writer
he received the impression that the emperor was self-conceited and overbearing,
foolishly ambitious, vain, and unable to conceal his personal feelings. These
data, of which some are insignificant, some inaccurate, and the others false, are the
basis on which he constructed the title-r61e of his play. Shall we blame Shake-
speare for superficiality in thus fitting a character to those external appearances
which, after all, as often conceal as they reveal the man? By no means. He
did not know Caesar, and had to use what data came to his hand. He was not
writing history for instruction, but a play for amusement. He chose that con-
ception of Caesar which was picturesque in preference to that which was misty,
without knowing which was the truer view; and the scattered references to the
same character in other plays show that he was not convinced the portraiture in
this instance was correct. Had he really known the greatness of the man, he would
have concealed his external defects. As it was, he ascribed to him a soul appro-
priate to the frail and mean tenement in which it was housed. We see, then, in this
subject the limitations both of genius and of the dramatic art. The playwright, like
the scene-painter, must use a large brush. Accuracy and subtle discrimination
are not dramatic excellences, however desirable they may be in literature and
delightful in plays, when we read them in an easy-chair. It is only an evidence of
Shakespeare's greatness that he instinctively obeyed the rule of seeking dramatic
excellence first, and then, with a delicate touch, making his plays immortal as a
literary classic. We see, too, how his genius was conditioned by the spirit of the
time, and probably strengthened by its harmony with that spirit. He was a
romanticist because it was an age of romanticism. Living, as he did, in the
Elizabethan period, he pictiued Elizabethans in his plays. Always they were
Elizabethan heroes, villains, or clowns. It was unfortunate that Julius Caesar
would not fit into any of these categories.
Maciollan (Introd., p. xxv.): Though the nobler side of Caesar's character is
not entirely ignored, the general impression produced by Shakespeare's representa-
396
APPENDIX
tion of him falls far below the real greatness of the founder of the Roman Empire,
and we have to account for this discrepancy on historical or dramatic grounds.
In the first place, it must be noticed that it did not suit Shakespeare's design to
represent Csesar in all the grandeur of his historic position and greatness of char-
acter, enhanced, as it might have been, to the highest pitch by poetic art and
dramatic power. Had he done so, the figures of the conspirators would have been
completely dwarfed, and their great deed would have i^peared to be a brutal and
entirely inexcusable murder. The poet's aim was to produce in the first part of the
play an even balance in our S3anpathies, so that they should waver to and fro,
inclining alternately to Cssar and the conspirators. This design is dearly mani-
fested by the skilful management of the scenes in which we are induced at one time
to share the anxiety of Calpumia for her husband, and at another to listen with
agonised suspense to the rumours that the air conveys, or seems to convey, to Portia
from the Capitol.
MacCallum (p. 226): The impression Julius Caesar makes on the unsophisti-
cated mind, on average audiences, and the elder school of critics is undoubtedly
an heroic one. It is only minute analysis that discovers his defects, and though
the defects are certainly present and should be noted, they are far from sufficing to
make the general effect absurd or contemptible. It was not so that Shake^>eare
meant them to be taken. For he has invented for his Caesar not only these trivial
blemishes, but several conspicuous exhibitions of nobility which Plutarch no-
where suggests; and this should give pause to such as find in Shakespeare's portrait
merely a wilful or wanton caricature. Thus, in regard to the interposition of
Artemidorus, Shakespeare read in North: 'Caesar tooke it [the scroll] of him, but
coulde never reade it, though he many times attempted it, for the multitude of
people that did salute him.' Compare this with the scene in the play:
^Ari, Hail, Caesar! read this schedule.
Dec, Trebonius doth desire you to o'er-read,
At your best leisure, this his humble suit.
AH. O Caesar, read mine first; for mine's a suit
That touches Caesar nearer: read it, great Caesar.
Cos, What touches us ourself shall be last served.' — ^IH, i, 8.
Can one say that Shakespeare has defrauded Caesar of his magnanimity? Or,
again, observe in the imaginary conclusion to the unrecorded remonstrances of
Calpumia, how loftily he refuses to avail himself of the little white untruths that,
after all, pass current as quite excusable in society. They are beneath his dignity.
He turns to Decius:
^C<ts. And you are come in very happy time.
To bear my greeting to the senators
And tell them that I will not come to-day:
Cannot, is false, and that I dare not, falser:
I will not come to-day: tell them so, Decius.
Col. Say he is sick.
Ccts. Shall Caesar send a lie?
Have I in conquest stretch'd mine arm so far,
To be afeard to tell graybeards the truth?
Decius, go tell them Caesar will not come.' — ^11, ii, 70.
CHARACTER OF CjESAR^AYRES 397
But this last instance is not merely an example of Shakespeare's homage to Cesar's
grandeur and his eagerness to enhance it with accessories of his own contrivance.
It gives us a clue to the secret of his additions both favourable and the reverse,
and points the way to his conception of the man. For observe that this refusal of
Cesar's to make use of a falsehood is an afterthought. A minute before he has,
also in words that Shakespeare puts in his mouth, fully consented to the proposal
that he should feign illness. He pacifies Calpumia:
'Mark Antony shall say I am not well;
And, for thy humour, I will stay at home.'
This compliance he makes to his wife, but in presence of Decius Brutus he recovers
himself and adopts the stricter standard. What does this imply? Does it not mean
that, in a certain sense, he is playing a part and aping the immortal to be seen of
men? . . . Shakespeare has a large tolerance for the practical statesman when
dowered with patriotism, insight, and resolution; and will not lightly condemn him
because he must use sorry tools, and take some soil from the world, and is not
unmoved by personal interests. Provided that his more selfish aims coincide with
the good of the whole, and that he has veracity of intellect to understand, with
steadiness of will to satisfy, the needs of the time, Shakespeare will vindicate for
him his share of prosperity, honor, and desert. And this seems to be, in a glorified
version, his view of Caesar. The only serious charge he brings against him in the
play, the only charge to which he recurs elsewhere, is that he was ambitious.
But ambition is not wholly of sin, and brings forth good as well as evil fruit.
H. M. Aykes (p. 188): Shakespeare's Caesar is admittedly not Plutarch's; his
Calpumia, his Portia are Plutarch's, and no more; his Antony, his Brutus, his Cas-
sius— by reason of the contrasts of character his art sets before us — are more,
but his Caesar has ever seemed something less and different. Nowhere does one
get so complete a sense of the greatness of Caesar as in Plutarch. Lucan's Caesar is
great in his almost diabolical competence beside the helplessness of Pompey, but
Lucan showers upon him a constant flood of villification and depreciation. Sueto-
nius deals out his gossip curtly; Dion Cassius leaves a pale, second-hand impression;
Appian is slow, though of historical value. But Plutarch is writing lives, not
history. Plutarch sets Caesar forth as, above everything else, astute; as a man
marked to rule, thrusting his way with unerring political sagacity into popular
favor; cultivated, brave, of inhuman energy, and renowned for a clemency designed
to be something more than its own reward; a man of humor and of pithy utterance;
toward the close of his life somewhat under the domination of his adherents, and
restless in the desire for fiuther achievements. . . . Another trait which dis-
tinguished Caesar from the valiant knight-errant is his wily political forehandedness,
which Plutarch does not allow us to forget. Like a wrestler he 'striveth for tricks
to overthrow his adversary.' . . . Such, briefly, is the impression one bears
away of the heroic largeness of Plutarch's Caesar: not always the master of events,
but provided always with resources to meet them; versatile, witty, competent,
expeditious, sagacious, clement. Plutarch has framed an enduring literary portrait
of the man. How much now of this Caesar appears in Shakespeare? Let us examine
afresh his r61e. The noise and chatter of a holiday is hushed by Caesar's voice com-
manding the performance of a trivial piece of superstition, which in Caesar's mouth
is Shake^>eare's invention. . . . Many of our impressions of Caesar we gain
through the eyes of his enemies: of the Tribunes, whose sympathies are with the
neglected memory of Pompey; of Cassius, the sarcastic victim of personal pique,
398
APPENDIX
who finds Cssar no more than a man, no conqueror over physical fatigue and dis-
ease; of Casca, who whimsically comments on Caesar's melodramatic demagoguery.
Meanwhile a word from Caesar himself. He distrusts, not fears — ^his name is not
liable to fear — Cassius's meagre, reflective asceticism. Then the sudden relapse
from his lofty arrogance: 'Come on my right hand, for this ear is deaf.' The in-
difference to fear is consistent with Plutarch, the pomposity and the hiunan in-
firmity are Shakespeare's. . . . Our total impression of Shakespeare's Oesar is
not, of course, limited to his own brief part nor to the speeches of his enemies.
Under the spell of Antony's eloquence he stands before us the conqueror, the true
friend, and the people's lover. At Philippi he stalks mighty yet, and his ^nrit
prevails. Shakespeare has, that is, at times, suggested the heroic qualities of the
man, although the striking episodes of his career ... fall outside the period which
Shakespeare has chosen to dramatize. And he has, indeed, done Caesar little wrong
in touching here and there on his human infirmities in the interests of the design of
the play as a whole. His error comes, if error there be, in the words he puts into
Caesar's mouth. We may, then, turn to a consideration of his pomposity of manner
and of language. Two elements at least enter into the explanation of this: the
first, a piece of traditional literary psychology; the second, possibly a specific
dramatic tradition. Suetonius says: ' Caesar left behind him in the minds of cer-
taine friends about him, a suspition, that he was neither willing to have lived any
longer, nor cared at all for life: because he stood not well to health, but was ever
more crasie' {quod valetudine minus prosper a uieretur). — ^Trans. Holland; § 86.
. . . It is, of course, not meant to say that Caesar toward the end of his life was mad
in any other sense than that in which a world conqueror must always appear mad
when judged by an average sanity. ... It is not, however, necessary to go beyond
the domain of literature for ^he description of this phenomenon. Classical drama
makes frequent use of An;, the infatuation, the judicial blindness laid by the gods
on those whose destruction they are meditating. [As illustrative of this, Ayres
quotes: Sophocles, Ajax^ 11. 758-761; 11. 470-472; 479, 480; 127-133; Ani, fir Cleo.,
Ill, xiii, 111-115.] It is this judicial blindness which makes Caesar scorn to read
Artemidorus's letter just because it touches himself nearly, though he has ample
reason to take every precaution for his personal safety. His action, and it is im-
portant to remember that Shakespeare seems here to be following none of his
sources, springs from the same C/9piT, the desmesure^ which kept Roland till too late
from sounding his horn in the pass of Roncevaux. Nor is it necessary to assume,
in order to make these citations from the classics bear on Shakespeare, any intimate
acquaintance on his part with Greek tragedy. The idea may be considered a
literary commonplace. ... In the Latin Julius CcBsar of Marc Antoine Muret,
written before the middle of the sixteenth century, the episodes connected with
Caesar's death are, as might be expected, selected and presented under the in-
fluence of the plays that go under the name of Seneca. Calpumia's dream and
Brutus's mental struggles lend themselves admirably to such a method. The
character of Caesar, and this is our main point, is carefully modelled on that of
Hercules. It is to the opening and the close of the Herades (Etceus that Muret
has chiefly resorted for the form and much of the language of the corresponding
portions of his play. His borrowings cover, however, the whole range of the so-
called Senecan plays. . . . What we have gained by the comparison of Muret's
play with its Senecan models is briefly this: we have seen the character of Caesar as
it passes into the drama of the Renaissance, carefully modelled on the braggart
Hercules of Seneca; and, along with the addition to his character of this pompous
CHARACTER OF CjESAR^MERIVALE
399
boastfulness, his contempt of death, as it appears in Plutarch, emphasized by
reason of its coincidence with the pervasive Stoicism of Seneca's dramas. . . .
Further, [we see] Oesar, who in Plutarch is a man of pithy and pregnant utterance,
elaborately transformed into a Hercules-like braggart, but with his Plutarchian
stoicism unimpaired. Both these characteristics are somewhat reinforced by
Lucan, himself partly perhaps under the same Senecan influence. Not all these
points will remain constant through succeeding treatments of the subject. As
the Senecan form is modified, many will inevitably disappear. We shall find,
however, preserved with considerable fidelity, down to and beyond the date of
Shakespeare's play, the character of the braggart Caesar which we have here ob-
served in the making. ... On turning to Gr^vin's \Pesary acted in 1558,] we are
instantly aware that some of the superficial characteristics of the Senecan Hercules
have disappeared; Csesar no longer prays to be caught up to heaven, nor does his
voice comfort Calpumia with the news of his translation to the stars. . . . Where
Muret's C«esar could throw aside dread with a phrase, ' At enim timere Caesaris
nunquam fuit,' Gr6vin's needs a deal of rhetoric to calm his nerves. ... So far
as the character of Caesar is concerned, we have little in Gr6vin's play, save for a
rhetorical diffuseness resulting in greater emphasis on Caesar's premonitions of
impending danger, which was not contained in the tragedy of his master, Muret.
. . . The tradition which, we saw taking shape in [the latter's] play under the
influence of Seneca appears now in England in the Julius CtEsar of Sir William
Alexander. One might surmise that the author was quite aware of the tradition he
was in, for he resorts for the first act of his play to Juno's monologue at the opening
of the Hercules Furens of Seneca, ingeniously substituting Caesar for Hercules as
the object of Junonian ire. It is not impossible that he also knew Muret's play.
... On the whole, his conception of Caesar's character . . . depends more
directly on [that of Gamier in Carnelie, 1574,] and the Senecan tradition inaugiurated
by Muret. Let us now see what the Marlowesque tradition makes [of the character
of Caesar]. The anonymous play, Ccesar and Pompey, or C(Bsar*s Revenge^ has
sometimes been very tentatively identified with the Henslowe play of 1594.
Whether this identification is just or not, or whether the play belongs to a date
anterior to 1606, need not immediately concern us. ... In form and temper, at
any rate, it belongs with the plays of the early 90's. Most striking is the sustained
and successful imitation of Marlowe's style. . . . Between this play and Shake-
speare's there seems to be no immediate connection. But it is not with questions of
direct influence on Shakespeare that we have to do. Our study has aimed merely to
trace from its fountain head in Seneca a stream of tradition continuing to Shake-
speare's time and beyond, under the baptism of which Caesar has become Hercules
and speaks with his braggart's voice. In its developed form the character closely
resembles Tamburlaine, triumphing over a world too lost in amazement at his
wondrous victories to make effectual resistance; the heaven-storming conqueror
whose lairge utterance is filled with the pomp and circumstance of his own greatness.
Such, then, we may . . . more than guess to have been the Elizabethan stage Caesar.
And if such it were, we readily see how Shakespeare must of necessity endow him
with a little strut, a touch of grandiosity, if his audience is to believe that Caesar
stands before them.
*
[The four following extracts relate to the chairacter of the Julius Caesar of
history:]
Mertvale (ii, 394) : For the historian the survey of Caesar's character derives
400 APPENDIX
its chief interest from the manner in which it illustrates the times wherem he
occupied so prominent a place. The disposition and conduct of the great man we
have been contemplating correspond faithfully with the intellectual and moral
development of the age of which he was the most perfect representative. He
combines Uterature with action, humanity with sternness, free-thinking with
superstition, energy with voluptuousness, a noble and liberal ambition with a fear-
ful want of moral principle. In these striking inconsbtendes, which none but him-
self could blend in one harmonious temperament, he represented the manifold
conflicting tendencies which appeared in various proportions in the character of the
Roman nobility, at a period when they had thrown off the formal restraints of their
Etruscan discipline, and the specious indulgence of Hellenic cultivation lured them
into vice, selfishness, and impiety.
MoiofSEN (Bk, V, ch. xi; p. 456) : In his chltracter as a man as well as his place
in history, Caesar occupies a position where the great contrasts of existence meet
and balance each other. Of the mightiest creative power and yet at the same time
of the most penetrating judgment; no longer a youth and not yet an old man;
of the highest energy of will and the highest capacity of execution; filled with
republican ideals and at the same time bom to be a king; a Roman in the deepest
essence of his nature, and yet called to reconcile and combine in himself as wdl
as in the outer world the Roman and the Hellenic types of ciilture — Cesar was the
entire and perfect man. Accordingly, we miss in him, more than in any other his-
torical personage, what are called characteristic features, which are, in reality,
nothing more than deviations from the natural course of human development
What in Caesar passes for such at the first superficial glance is, when more closely
observed, seen to be the peculiarity not of the individual, but of the epoch of
culture or of the nation; his youthful adventures, for instance, were common to
him with all his more gifted contemporaries of like position, his impoetical but
strongly logical temperament was the temperament of Romans in general. . . .
Caesar was a perfect man just because he more than any other placed himself
amidst the currents of his time, and because he more than any other possessed the
essential peculiarity of the Roman nation — practical aptitude as a citizen — ^in
perfection; for his Hellenism in fact was only the Hellenism which had been long
intimately blended with the Italian nationality. . . . The Roman hero himself
stood by the side of his youthful predecessor not merely as an equal, but as a supe-
rior; but the world had meanwhile become old and its youthful lustre had faded.
The action of Caesar was no longer, like that of Alexander, a joyous marching on-
ward towards a goal indefinitely remote; he built on, and out of, ruins, and was
content to establish himself as tolerably and as securely as possible within the
ample but yet definite bounds once assigned to him. With reason, therefore, the
delicate poetic tact of the nations has not troubled itself about the unpoetical
Roman, and has invested the son of Philip alone with all the golden lustre of poetry,
with all the rainbow hues of legend. But with equal reason the political life of
nations has during thousands of years again and again reverted to the lines which
Caesar drew; and the fact that the peoples to whom the world belong still at the
present day designate the highest of their monarchs by his name, conveys a warning
deeply significant and, unhappily, fraught with shame.
Froude (p. 537): In person Caesar was tall and slight. His features were more
refined than was usual in Roman faces; the forehead was wide and high, the nose
CHARACTER OF C^SAR^FERRERO
401
large and thin, the lips full, the eyes dark gray like an eagle's, the neck extremely
thick and sinewy. His complexion was pale. His beard and mustache were kept
carefully shaved. His hair was short and naturally scanty, falling off towards the
end of his life and leaving him partially bald. His voice, especially when he spoke
in public, was high and shrill. ... Of C«esar it may be said that he came into the
world at a special time and for a special object. The old religions were dead from
the Pillars of Hercules to the Euphrates and the Nile, and the principles on which
human society had been constructed were dead also. There remained of spiritual
conviction only the common and human sense of justice and morality; and out of
this sense some ordered system of government had to be constructed under which
quiet men could live and labour and eat the fruit of their industry. . . . Such a
kingdom was the Empire of the Qesars — a kingdom where peaceful men could
work, think, and speak as they pleased, and travel freely among provinces ruled
for the most part by Gallios who protected life and property, and forbade fanatics
to tear each other in pieces for their religious opinions. 'It is not lawful for us to
put any man to death' was the complaint of the Jewish priests to the Roman
governor. Had Europe and Asia been covered with independent nations, each with
a local religion represented in its ruling powers, Christianity must have been stiffed
in its cradle. If St Paul had escaped the Sanhedrin at Jerusalem, he would have
been torn to pieces by the silversmiths at Ephesus. The appeal to Caesar's judg-
ment-seat was the shield of his mission, and alone made possible his success. And
this spirit, which confined government to its simplest duties, while it left opinion
unfettered, was especially present in Julius Caesar himself. From cant of all kinds
he was totally free. He was a friend of the people, but he indulged in no enthu-
siasm for liberty. He never dilated on the beauties of virtue or complimented, as
Cicero did, a Providence in which he did not believe. He was too sincere to stoop
to unreality. He held to the facts of this life and to his own convictions; and as he
found no reason for supposing that there was a life beyond the grave, he did not
pretend to expect it. He respected the religion of the Roman state as an institu-
tion established by the laws. He encouraged or left unmolested the creeds and
practises of the uncounted sects or tribes who were gathered under the ea^e.
But his own writings contain nothing to indicate that he had any religious belief
at all. He saw no evidence that the gods practically interfered in human affairs.
He never pretended that Jupiter was on his side. He thanked his soldiers after a
victory, but he did not order Te Deums to be sung for it; and in the absence of these
conventionalisms he perhaps showed more real reverence than he could have dis-
played by the freest use of the formulas of pietism. He fought his battles to
establish some tolerable degree of justice in the government of this world; and he
succeeded, though he was murdered for doing it. Strange and startling resem-
blance between the fate of the founder of the kingdom of this world and of the
Foimder of the kingdom not of this world, for which the first was a preparation.
Each was denounced for making himself a king. Each was maligned as the friend
of publicans and sinners; each was betrayed by those whom he had loved and
cared for; each was put to death; and Caesar also was believed to have arisen again
and ascended into heaven and become a divine being.
Ferkero (ii, 343): Caesar was a genius — a man whose powers have seldom or
never been equalled in history. He was at once student, arUst, and man of action,
and in every sphere of his activity he left the imprint of greatness. His soaring yet
intensely practical imagination, his wonderfully dear-cut and well-balanced intelli-
26
402 APPENDIX
gence, his untiring energy and lightning quickness of decision, his marvellous das-
ticity of temper and iron-power of self-control, his indifference even at the moments
of greatest strain to anything of the nature of sentiment or mysticism, would have
made him at any time in the world's history one of the giants of his age. Under
twentieth-century conditions he might have become a ci4)tain of industry in the
United States, or a great pioneer, or mine-owner, or empire-builder in South
Africa, or a scientist or man of letters in Europe with a worldwide influence over
his contemporaries. In the Rome of his day both family tradition and personal
inclination forced him into politics. Political life is always perilous to a man of
genius. There is no sphere of activity which is so much at the mercy of unforeseen
accidents or where the effort put out is so inconunensurable with the result obtained.
In the field of Roman politics C«esar succeeded in becoming a great general, a great
writer, a great character. He failed to become a great statesman, . . . but he was a
great destroyer. In him were personified all the revolutionary forces, the magnif-
icent but devastating forces of a mercantile age in conflict with the traditions of an
old-world society. . . . There is hardly a stranger irony in history than that
the rulers of Germany and Russia should have assumed the title of thb prince of
revolutionaries. For we fail to grasp the true significance of Caesar's career till we
discern that, like Pompey and Crassus and the other great figures of his day, his
mission was primarily destructive — to complete the disorganization and dissolution
of the old world, both in Italy and the provinces, and thus make way for a stabler
and juster system. ... It is in this rdle of Titanic destroyer, therefore, that we must
admire him, a r61e which demanded almost superhuman qualities of conception and
achievement.
CHARACTER OF BRUTUS
Plutarch {Lije ofBruiuSy § 22; ed. Skeat, p. 1 29) : Brutus for his virtue and valiant-
ness was well-beloved of the people and his own, esteemed of noblemen, and hated of
no man, not so much as of his enemies; because he was a marvellous lowly and gentle
person, noble-minded and would never be in any rage, nor carried away with pleas-
ure and covetousness, but had ever an upright mind with him, and would never
yield to any wrong or injustice; the which was the chief est cause of his fame, of his
rising, and of the goodwill that every man bare him: for they were all persuaded
that his intent was good. For they did not certainly believe that, if Pompey him-
self had overcome Caesar, he would have resigned his authority to the law, but
rather they were of the opinion that he would still keep the sovereignty and
absolute government in his hands, taking only, to please the people, the title of
Consul, or Dictator, or of some other more civil ofl&ce. ... It was said that
Antonius spake it openly divers times, that he thought, that of all them that had
slain Caesar, there was none but Brutus only that was moved to do it, as thinking
the act was commendable of itself: but that all the other conspirators did conspire
his death for some private malice or envy, that they otherwise did bear unto him.
Lloyd (ap. Singer, viii, 508): Brutus, it may be thought, is altogether too
refined and scrupulous for any efficient action whatever in such a world as this;
how much then, above all, for one which at every step trenches on the equivocal.
. . . The deference that has been paid to his moral qualities and influence betray
him as disastrously into an overestimate of his judgment and capacity; he relies
CHARACTER OF BRUTUS^GERVINUS
403
upon the force of his dry inflexile oratory with as ill result as on his generalship.
. . . There remains to him the dignity of pure intention, high motives, courage
untarnished, sensibility most lively and refined, preference of public to private
interest, and of failure by noble means, to success degraded by any baseness other
than that of the original deed of blood which was sanctified to him by ancestral
example and the fundamental maxims of the state.
Gervinus (ii, 329): Considered in himself , Brutus is of much too moral and too
pure a nature to be fit for the hard and often dirty work of politics, like the gross
degenerate Faulconbridge or the sharp Cassius. At the first hint, when Cassius
initiates him into his ideas of a conspiracy, he feels that he is drawn into a foreign
element: 'Into what dangers,' he asks, .>< ^•'
'would you lead me, Cassius,
That you would have me seek into myself
For that which is not in me?'
His own inward voice calls him not to this deed. It is true, the necessities of the
time weigh upon him and prepare for him heavy sorrows; the rising ambition ol
Caesar has made him reflective, thoughtful, and sorrowful, but as ever, he has kept
the emotions of his soul concealed; to combat these sufferings or the cause of them
the strong sufferer is not disposed. When he assiu-es Cassius that he would not
'repute himself a son of Rome,
Under these hard conditions as this time
Is like to lay upon us,'
he probably thinks only of voluntary banishment. But this man, in himself little
created for politics, is yet placed under a constitution that allows no rest from
politics, and he is brought up in principles which necessitate active life. He pos-
sesses, like Hamlet, a cultivated mind, and, according to Plutarch as well as Shake-
speare, he carries books about with him even in the camp; he is a lean thinker, as
Caesar in Plutarch describes not only Cassius but Brutus also; but, according to his
'own testimony, which Shakespeare found in Plutarch, he could not endiu-e the
Ciceros, men whose cultivation advantaged nothing, whose finest principles
were never living ones; and Shakespeare has represented him quite in this
spirit. Next to his human duties, consonant with the ideas of all antiquity,
stand his political duties; next to the virtue of the 'individual stands in
equal rank the honoiu- of the patriot. ... To these, his political principles,
Cassius now applies himself in order to draw him into a conspiracy against Caesar.
From this moment his anxiety as to the condition of the time and state rises to
a great internal struggle. . . . We have seen Macbeth shaken by a similar revolu-
tion, by similar phantasms and fearful dreams, and he drove them away as soon as
possible; we have seen Hamlet disturbed and ruined by them; in Brutus, none but
the actor can show them to us, and he only very faintly; they are repressed by a
strong mental power which calmly weighs the principles of action in the disputed
point, and decides with stem composing accordingly. When Brutus exclaims
against the 'dangerous brow of conspiracy,' we see his whole nature opposed to it,
but after he has once acknowledged it as necessary, he teaches the practice of it3
dangerous arts. . . . When the human relation between him and Caesar is opposed
to the relation toward his coimtry in which he is placed by the republican spirit in-
herited from Junius Brutus, it is irremediable but that the restoration of public
404
APPENDIX
freedom must be his first duty. The purest motives decide the inward strug^e in
favour of patriotism; even his bitterest foes acknowledge this. Gesar must &dl as
a sacrifice to his country, its weal, and its freedom; necessity, not hatred, justice, not
personal feeling, arm those hands against him which Brutus, after the deed, would
chide if he could. No impure motive, such as Cicero's ambition, is to be per-
mitted. . . .
Now in this inward struggle, and in the dedsion which Brutus arrived at, there
lies a double error which may be viewed both from a moral and a political side.
Brutus appears in Shakespeare, and even in Plutarch, united in a doser friendship
with C«esar than history proves to have been the case. His brother-in-law Cassius
says to him:
'When thou didst hate him worst, thou lovedst him better
Than ever thou lov'dst Cassius.'
His enemy, Antony, calls him ' Caesar's angel. ' The poet has rather strangdy put
in the mouth of the falling Caesar, at sight of Brutus, the Latin words, Et tu, Brute?
to give greater emphasis to the painful surprise of his fatheriy friend, who would
never have expected to have seen Brutus among the number of his murderers.
Was it really suitable to the personal relations of this feeling and noble man that
he should imagine Caesar's death to be the only means for restoring the freedom of
the state? Do not the words of Antony fall upon him with fearftd weight, that
'when the noble Caesar saw him stab,
Ingratitude, more strong than traitors' arms.
Quite vanquished him: then burst his mighty heart.'
Must he not have been struck dumb when the same Antony cast this reproach in
his face, that while exdaiming 'Hail, Caesar I' and flattering him to his face, they
had malidously killed him? The stain of assassination adheres to Brutus, a crime
which no political duty, no opposite duty whatever, can outweigh. This stain
cleaves closer to the Mover' of Caesar than to Caesar's personal enemy, Cassius,
and to him, therefore, to Caesar's good angel, the spirit of the murdered man sub-
sequently appears as his evil and revenge-announcing genius. If, from political
grounds, the deed of Brutus is nobler, it is in a human respect more unnatural than
that of Cassius, in whom it is represented as less noble, but more natural. Shake-
si)eare has not allowed considerations such as these to escape from the laconic
Brutus, but they are contained emphatically in the things themselves, espedally
in the contrast of Antony. What is this voluptuary, this man of loose morals,
this Epicurean, this racer and gambler, of whom it is presumed that at the best
he will ' take thought and die for Caesar,' perhaps also laugh at his death if he es-
capes, what is he compared to Brutus? In spirit and capacity, indeed, he is much
more than the imsuspecting Brutus imagines, but in a moral point of view he is
only an abandoned and unprincipled man. So far as we see him act in this play,
his flattery of the murderers to their faces places him on an equality with them
in their flattery of Caesar; we cannot blame the art which he yields to drcumstances,
compassing his worst ends with the air of the utmost honour, stirring up the people
by his eloquence in spite of the order that he should say nothing against the mur-
derers; we cannot blame the cunning with which, pretending to be a plain, blunt
man, he applauds the honourable republicans, whom he at the same time stamps as
traitors, while he mockingly extols the superiority of the orator Brutus, having
already annihilated his speech and his deed; we cannot, we say, blame this art
CHARACTER OF BRUTUS— GERVINUS 405
and cunning any more than the hyi>ocritical artifices of those who allured Caesar
into the net. But how low does this man sink when, contrasted with Brutus's
unselfishness, patriotism, mild forbearance, and saving of blood, we see the triumvir
subsequently indifferent to the fate of his political enemies, altering to the prejudice
of the people that will of Caesar's with which he had roused them to revolt, suing
Lepidus as a beast of burden, and himself silently submitting to the young Octavius?
And yet we must confess that even this wretch, on the score of htunanity, recom-
nnends himself to us besides the corpse of Caesar more than even the noble Brutus.
Like Brutus, he was the friend of Caesar; to him also Caesar had been just and
faithful; his death touches him truly and sincerely; he testifies to this when he is
alone and when he is with the servant of Octavius; he ventures even to show his
sorrow to the murderers; his heart is truly 'in the coffin there, with Caesar,' and
only to this real and undissembled sorrow the great effects of his artful speech are
due. However great from a political point of view Brutus's patriotism and upright
intentions may appear in spite of his murderous act, equally estimable, in a moral
sense, is the sincere fidelity of Antony toward his deceased friend, who can help
him no fiurther, in spite of his faithless projects against the conspirators whom it is
dangerous to opix)se. The contrast which Shakespeare has instituted between
Antony and Brutus is one of cutting acuteness, and there is even a double edge
given to it with regard to the political error of the action itself. When Brutus,
after conquering his inward reluctance, decides for Caesar's death, he tells us the
grounds of this decision in a soliloquy (Act II, sc. i) which in its whole tone has
much resemblance with the chief monologue in Hamlet. ... He must confess
that 'the quarrel will bear no colour for the thing he now is,' he will, therefore,
'fashion' it thus:
'that, what he is, augumented.
Would run to these and these extremities,'
and, therefore, as 'a serpent's egg,' he must be killed ' in the shell.' But this, indeed,
for a man as upright and conscientious as Brutus, must be considered as looking
too deeply into an uncommitted fault; in the great exploit to which he aspires an
inherited ambition as refined, as popular is at work as in Caesar's aspirations after
dominion; and remorse is in him just as much disjoined from power as he fears
may be the case with Caesar. No man is constituted a judge over thoughts. If it
is lawful to condemn on suspicion and presumption, then the people too were right
in tearing the poet Cinna to pieces on a presumption. Had Brutus waited for these
'extremities,' it is possible that fate might have touched Caesar, that an involim-
tary revolution and not a planned conspiracy, not the conspiracy of a friend, might
have overthrown him. Brutus might have been mistaken in Caesar; this is, indeed,
a mere possibility not to be proved; but that he erred in Antony is certain, and this
certainty makes the possibility of the other error the more probable. He considers
Antony as a harmless voluptuary, as ' Caesar's arm,' which could do nothing 'when
Caesar's head were off'; he knows that they shall 'have him well to friend.' In
all these opinions about Antony he is entirely deceived, although he had been
thoroughly warned by Cassius; and yet he decreed Caesar's death upon a suspicion.
He solemnly promised Rome that, if the restoration of the republic were to follow,
she should have her wish from Brutus's own hand. Uncertain whether this good
would follow the restoration, he commits a certain crime; a necessary part of this
crime, the removal of Antony, he leaves undone; and the consequence is that,
through this very Antony, the intended restoration is frustrated. In silence.
406 APPENDIX
before the battle oC Fbilippi, he must hear from Antony the moral rq>roadi of
assassination; he must hear from Cassius the blame of having unseasonably spared
the man whose tongue had otherwise not thus offended.
^ We have shown that the nature of Brutus in itself would never have compelled
Jiim to such a deed of violence; it was too gentle and magnanimous. But in these
veiy qualities was that love of honour rooted whidi led him to listen to the call
of patriotism that urged him on; in them was nxjted the tractability, the want of
obstinacy and selfishness, which rendered him accessible to counsel and reminder
from without; and finally, that unsuspidousness whidi induced him to leave those
counsds untested. He yidded too quickly to the man who spoke from personal
hatred to Caesar; he accepted too trustingly the call of men who used him as a cover-
ing for their own moral nakedness; he read too credulously the papers they threw
in his way as the voice of the Roman people. This call of his country stirred
him as strongly as Lady Macbeth's taunt of manhood had stung Macbeth. The
calm man, like that impassioned one, accepted his task; not that, like Mad>eth, he
plunged into it madly, but he made a wrong dioice between the impulses of his
nature within and the call of honour without. He sinks under this error without
acknowledging it. As this could not be expressed in any reflection of the man who
had once fallen into the error, the poet has made it evident by a paralld which
indicates a wonderful depth of thought. In the episode concerning Portia, Shake-
speare has dosdy copied Plutarch, almost without adding or omitting anything.
And yet by the mere introduction of this, light is obtained in a wonderful manner, ^
'Which by reflection reveals Brutus's concealed internal sensations after thedeed.^./,^' *
Portia b represented by the poet as the feminine, tender counterpart of Brutus.
Altogether womanly in her care and watchfulness over her husband, as Cato's
daughter and as Brutus's wife, she feels a call to share the pc^tical plans of her con-
sort, just as he, the descendant of the andent Brutus, thinks he must not deny him-
self to the cause of freedom. By a self-inflicted wound she proves her vocation, her
courage, her ability to be silent and to bear, and her proof succeeds. She now
presses into the counsels of her husband, takes her share in his grief and in his
secret, and becomes a passive conspirator. But no sooner is thb accomplished than
her suppressed womanhood comes to light, as the subjugated humanity had done in
Brutus when he would not have Antony slain. She overrated her woman*s strength
when she forced herself into the conspiracy, as he in his sphere overrated his
[x>wers when he placed himself at the head of the conspirators. On the first failure
of her expectations Portia's heart breaks and she commits suidde. As quickly
mastered by anxiety, Brutus flies from Rome with Cassius, after Antony's success,
both of them like *■ madmen '; this sep^aration drives Portia to despair, and her death
reacts upon Brutus's inward agitation, which in his usual manner he conceals to the
last. The gloom, which overwhelms him from this time forth, reacts again upon the
evil issue of his cause; he betrays himself first of all in the severe manner with which
he reprimands Cassius. The discord between the leaders cannot be hidden from the
lookers-on and cannot have an encouraging effect; to spare his broken-hearted
friend, Cassius too quickly abandons his opposition to the plan of battle, and the
consequences are fatal. Poweriully as Brutus commands himself in the hour that
decides their fate, differently as he rules his passions and hb inward agitation from
Macbeth, yet is he, like him, distracted, absent, f)eevish, and forgetful. Hb evil
genius app>ears to him, not torturing and tormenting him as Richard's did, only
paralyzing his courage in the passing moment of its apparition, but returning again
and announcing his last hour. Antony was right in supposing that both the
CHARACTER OF BRUTUS^HUDSON 407
republican leaders feigned courage, but did not possess it. The mistakes which
caused the loss of the battle, historical as they are, seem used by the poet to show
the analogy between the crime and its punishment. Distrust of good success had
too quickly driven Cassius to self-destruction. 'Mistrust, melancholy's child,
showed to the apt thoughts of men, the things that are not; error, soon conceived,
never comes to a happy birth, but kills the mother that engendered it. ' These are
words which may apply also to the mistrustful error which showed Brutus things
in reference to Caesar that were not. By joining the conspiracy the honourable
man took a step for the sake of honoiu- and patriotism which his moral principles
would have forbidden; quite corresponding to this is his end. His philosophy
taught him to bear the issue patiently, but when Cassius held before him the
ignominy of being led in triumph by the conqueror his feeling of honoiu- led him to
turn away from his moral principles at the instigation of this same Cassius, who first
stimulated his feeling of honour against Cssar; he resorts with passive courage to
self-destruction, which he had once esteemed cowardly.
Hudson (Li/«, etc., ii, 231): Brutus heads a plot to assassinate the man who,
besides being clothed with the sanctions of the law as the highest representative of
the State, has been his pmonal friend and benefactor; all this, not on any ground of
fact, but on an assiuned probability that the crown will prove a sacrament of evil
and transform him into quite another man. A strange piece of casuistry indeed!
biit nowise unsuited to the spirit of a man who was to commit the gravest of crimes
purely from a misplaced virtue. And yet the character of Brutus is full of beauty
and sweetness. In all the relations of life he is upright, gentle, and pure; of a sen-
sitiveness and delicacy of principle that cannot bosom the slightest stain; his
mind enriched and fortified with the best extractions of philosophy; a man adorned
with all the virtues which, in public and private, at home and in the circle of
friends, win respect and charm the heart. Being such a man, of course, he could
only do what he did under some sort of delusion. And so, indeed, it is. Yet this
very delusion serves, apparently, to ennoble and beautify him, as it takes him and
works upon him through his virtues. At heart he. is a real patriot, every inch of him.
But his patriotism, besides being somewhat hidebound with paiUKUui pride, is of the
.Speculative kind, and dwells where his whole character has been cbkfly formed, in a
world of poetical and philosophic ideals. He is an enthusiastic student of books.
Plato IS his favourite teEicEer7smd'Eelas studiously framed his life and timed his
thoughts to the grand and pure conceptions won from that all but divine source. . . .
I Brutus's great fault lies in supposing it his duty to be meddling with things that he
\ does not understand. Conscious of high thoughts and just desires, but with little
gift of practical insight, he is ill fitted to 'grind among the iron facts of life.' In
truth, he does not really see where he b; the actual circiunstances and tendencies
amidst which he lives are as a book written in a language he cannot read. The char-
acters of those who act with him are too far below the region of his principles and
habitual thinkings for him to take the true cast of them. Himself incapable of
such motives as govern them, he just projects and suspends his ideals in them, and
then misreckons upon them as realizing the men of his own brain. So, also, he clings
to the idea of the great and free republic of his fathers, the old Rome that has
ever stood to his feelings touched with the consecrations of time, and glorified with
the high virtues that have grown up under her cherishing. But, in the long reign
of tearing faction and civil butchery, that which he worships has been substau-
tially changed, the reality lost. Caesar, already clothed with the titie and the
4o8 APPENDIX
power of Imperator for life, would change the form so as to agree with the sub-
stance, the name so as to fit the thing. But Brutus is so filled with the idea of that
which has thus passed away never to return that he thinks to save or recover the
whole by preventing such formal and nominal change.
* And so his whole course is that of one acting on his own ideas, not on the facts
that are before and aroimd him. Indeed, he does not see them; he merely dreams
hb own meaning into them. He is swift to do that by which he thinks his country
ought to be benefited. As the killing of Cssar stands in his purpose, he and his asso-
ciates are to be ' sacrificers, not butchers.' But, in order to [obtiun] any sudi effect as
he hopes forjys coimtrymen generally mtist regard the act in the same light as he
intends it. JThat they will do this, is the very thing which he has, in fact ^ no reason
to condude; notwithstanding, because it is so in kis idea^ thoefore he trusts that
^the conspirators will 'be called puigers, not murderers.' ><Meanwhfle the plain
truth is, that if his countrymen had been capable of regarding the deed as a sacrifice,
they would not have made nor permitted any occasion for it. It is certain that
unless so construed the act must prove fruitful of evil; all Rome is fuU of things
proving that it cannot be so construed; but this is what Brutus has no eye to see.
So, too, in his oration, ' to show the reason of our Cssar's death,' he speaks, in calm
and dispassionate manner, just those things which he thinks ought to set the
people right, and himself right in their eyes; forgetting all the while that the deed
cannot fail to make the people mad, and that popular madness is not a thing to be
reasoned with. And for the same cause he insists on sparing Antony, and on per-
mitting him to speak in Caesar's fimeral. To do otherwise would be unjust, and so
would overthrow the whole nature of the enterprise as it lives in his mind. And,
because in his idea it ought so to be, he trusts that Antony will make Caesar's
death the occasion of strengthening those who killed him; not percdving the
strong likelihood, which soon passes into a fact, that in cutting off Caesar they have
taken away the only check on Antony's ambition. He ought to have foreseen that
Antony, instead of being drawn to their side, would rather make love to Cesar's
place at their expense.
Thus the course of Brutus serves no end but to set on foot another civil war,
which naturally hastens and assures the very thing he ought to prevent. He
confides in the goodness of his cause, not considering that the better the cause, the
worse its chance with bad men. He thinks it safe to trust others, because he knows
they can safely trust him; the singleness of his own eye causing him to believe that
others will see as he sees, the purity of his own heart, that others will feel as he feels.
Here, then, we have a strong instance of a very good man doing a very bad thing;
and, withal, of a wise man acting most unwisely, because his wisdom knew not its
place; a right noble, just, heroic spirit bearing directly athwart the virtues he
worships. On the whole, it is not wonderful that Brutus should have exclaimed, as he
is said to have done, that he worshipp>ed Virtue, and found her at last but a shade.
So worshipp>ed, she may well prove a shade indeed! Admiration of the man's
character, reprobation of his proceedings — which of these is the stronger with
us? And there is, I think, much the same irony in the representation of Bru-
tus as in that of Caesar; only the order of it is here reversed. As if one should
say, *0 yes, yes! in the practical affairs of mankind your charming wisdom of the
closet will doubtless put to shame the workings of mere practical insight and
sagacity.'
Shakesp)eare's exactness in the minutest details of character is well shown in the
speech already referred to; which is the utterance of a man philosophizing most
CHARACTER OF BRUTUS^CLARKE
409
unphflosophically; as if the Academy shoiild betake itself to the stump, and this,
too, without any sense of the incongruity.
C. G. Clarke (Gentleman's Maga., March, 1878, p. 318): Brutus is the philos-
opher of patriotic duty and of abstract general good. He is a stoic philosopher,
with a heart swayed by the gentlest and most benevolent emotions. He cultivates
self-abnegation, self-devotion, self-immolation where the common weal demands
his individual sacrifice. At the call of public benefit he is ever ready to surrender
private satisfaction. His friendship for Cssar, his affection for Portia, his wife, are
merged in his love of country. For the sake of Rome's advantage he willingly
yields his single Roman content, welfare, or even life. His sentiments are calm,
sober, dispassionate, almost phlegmatic. Here are a few of them, as illustrations
of the peculiar feature of his philosophy. In one place he remarks:
'That we shall die, we know; 'tis but the time
And drawing days out that men stand upon.'
His own nature, schooled to a stem impassiveness by the stoical teaching of his
philosophy, is self-shown when he speaks of himself as one
'That carries anger as the flint bears fire
Who, much enforced, shows a hasty spark,
And straight is cold again.'
He thus forcibly describes a conceived intention:
' Between the acting of a dreadful thing
And the first motion, all the interim is
Like a phantasma, or a hideous dream:
The genius and the mortal instruments
Are then in council; and the state of man,
Like to a little kingdom suffers then
The nature of an insurrection.'
Elsewhere he says:
'The abuse of greatness is, when it disjoins
Remorse from power.'
Adding:
«>'
'Tis a common proof
That lowliness is young amibition's ladder;
Whereto the climber upward turns his face;
But when he once attains the topmost round.
He then unto the ladder turns his back.
Looks in the clouds, scorning the base degrees
By which he did ascend.'
It is Brutus who makes that very acute remark:
'When love begins to sicken and decay.
It useth an enforced ceremony.
There are no tricks in plain and simple faith;
But hollow men, like horses hot at hand,
Make gallant show and promise of their mettle;
But when they should endiu-e the bloody spur.
They fall their crests, and, like deceitful jades,
Sink in the trial.'
4IO
APPENDIX
And his is the celebrated aphorism — instinct with the very quintessence of wisdom
— or philosophy in promptitude:
'There is a tide in the affairs of men
Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune:
Omitted, all the voyage of their life
Is bound in shallows, and in miseries.'
I think no one character in all the dramas of Shakespeare delivers nobler phik)8-
ophy , in the guise of axiom and rule of conduct, than the illustrious Marcos Brutus,
and his prominent mental characteristic b sententiousness.
DowDEN (p. 283): Brutus b the political Girondin. He b placed in contxast
with hb brother-in-law Cassius, the political Jacobin. Brutus b an idealist; he
lives among books; he nourishes himself with philosophies; he b secluded from the
impression of facts. Moral ideas and principles are more to him than concrete
realities; he b studious of self-perfection, jealous of the purity of hb own character,
unwilling that so dear a character should receive even the apparent stain of mis-
conception or misrepresentation. He b, therefore, as such men are, too much given
to the explanation of hb conduct. Had he lived he would have written an apology
for hb life, educing evidence with a calm superiority to prove that each act of hb
life proceeded from an honorable motive. Cassius, on the contrary, b by no means
studious of moral perfection. He b frankly envious, and hates Oesar. Yet he b
not ignoble. Brutus loves him, and the love of Brutus b a patent which establishes
a man's nobility:
'The last of all the Romans, fare thee welll
It b impossible that ever Rome
Should breed thy fellow.'
And Cassius has one who will die for him. Titinius crowns the dead brow of the
conspirator:
* Brutus come ap>ace.
And see how I regarded Caius Cassius.
By your leave, gods — this is a Roman's part:
Come Cassius' sword, and find Titinius* heart.*
Cassius has a swift and clear conception of the fact. He is not, like Brutus, a
theorist, but *a great observer,* who 'looks quite through the deeds of men.*
Brutus lives in the abstraction, in the idea; Cassius lives in the concrete, in the
fact.
Snider (ii, 247): In ordinary times of civil repose we should say of Brutus:
What a noble citizen! No one could be more ready to fulfill his duties to his
family, to his fellow-men, and to his country. But it must be recollected that these
duties were the prescribed usages, customs, and beliefs of hb nation; they were given
to him — transmitted from hb ancestors. But, when prescription no longer points
out the way, such a man must fall, for he has no intellectual basb of action. Still,
the morality of mankind in general is prescriptive, and does not rest upon rational
insight; they follow the footsteps of their fathers. Hence it is that most people
think that Brutus is the real hero of the play, and that it is wrongly named. But
this was certainly not Shakespeare*s design, for it was very easy to construct a drama
CHARACTER OF BRUTUS^STAPFER 411
in which Brutus should appear as triumphant by having it terminate at the assas-
sination of Caesar, with a grand flourish of daggers, frantic proclamations of
liberty, and 'sic semper tyrannis.' Shakespeare, however, takes special pains not
to do any such thing, but to show the triumph of Caesar's thought in the destruction
of the conspirators. Still, Brutus remains the favorite character with the multi-
tude, because they do not, and cannot, rise above this standpoint, and to-day he b
often taken as the great prototype of all lovers of liberty.
The effect of intellectual weakness combined with strong moral impulses appears,
then, to be the meaning of this character. It is amazing to observe its contradic-
tions and utter want of steadiness of purpose; nor are they at all exaggerated by
the Poet. This man, who could assassinate his best friend for the public good, can-
not, when a military leader, conscientiously levy contributions for his starving
soldiers, 'for,' says he, 'I can raise no money by vile means.' That is, he would
sacrifice that very cause, for which he committed the greatest crime known to man,
to a moral punctilio. This may be moral heroism, but it is coUossal stupidity.
Furthermore, in every instance in which Cassius and he differed about the course
to be pursued, Brutus was in the wrong. He, out of moral scruples, saved Antony,
against the advice of Cassius; this same Antony afterward destro3red their army and
with it their cause. Moreover, in the battle of Philippi, the fatal termination of the
conflict was fought in disregard of the judgment of Cassius. And, finally, he
dies with a contradiction upon his lips, for he says that Cato was a coward for
committing suicide, and then declares that he will never be taken captive to Rome
alive, and shortly afterwards falls upon his own sword.
Perhaps, however, he came to the conclusion that his country needed his death,
for he said in his celebrated speech: 'I have the same dagger (which slew Caesar)
for myself when it shall please my country to need my death.'
Stapper (p. 366) : Brutus had a passion for reading and for books, but there are
many different ways of liking books and reading; some, for instance, delighting in
them as materials for dreamy speculation, as did Hamlet and all his posterity down
to Werther, Ren6, and Obermann; others prizing them for the sake of the mental
culture they afford, like Cicero and other men of letters; others, again, for the satis-
faction of a craving after knowledge, like Terentius Varro and scientific men
of all periods. But Brutus was influenced by none of these motives; what he^
asked for from books was food for moral meditation and their aid in perfecting
himself in virtue. Philosophical writers were those he valued above all others, and
among these his especial favourite was Plato.
He was greatly given to self-examination and self-study, contemplating and
observing himself so intently that the one great preoccupation of his life might be
said to be how to make himself a more noble character. To be noble, that is, to be
just, upright, brave, generous, and all the rest, implies, indeed, in one word the
fulfilling of the whole duty of man; still, in this very habit of making one's own per-
sonality the centre of the world, and of regarding things in general only in connec-
tion with oneself, there liu-ks a kind of moral egoism and the germ of a very serious
^{ai]|n|;. ^By dint of so entirely directing his attention inwards, Brutus became
blind to outward things, and lost the sense of reality. His idealism led him, when
confronted by the needs and requirements of practical life, to commit very grave
oversights; he observed facts badly, and had no good sound judgment, and was '
of all men the one who could least understand and read the characters of others:
witness, for example, his enthusiastic praises of Cicero's son on account of a few
412
APPENDIX
brilliant hopes to which he had at first given rise, and he was quite unable to
penetrate beneath the deceitful surface and to discover the 3roung man's rssfntinl
mediocrity.
His self-engrossed and meditative habits so isolated him from the outer worid
as to make him oblivious of the duties of friendship, for whidi Cassius gently
reproached him (Act I, sc. ii.)* The reason, however, was no lessening of affection
on his part, only that —
'Poor Brutus, with himself at war.
Forgets the shows of love to other men.'
In striking contrast with Henry V, who, on the eve of the battle of Agincourt,
visited his soldiers to cheer and inspire them with the same courage and ^irit
that glowed within himself, Brutus was always reading and pondering. We see him
in Shakespeare, on the eve of the battle of Philippi, seated in his tent, taking up a
book and begging his servant to draw sweet strains from his instrument to soothe
^away his cares. In Plutarch, he is the same; on the day before the battle of Phar-
sala, when every one else thought only of the great struggle which was to dedde the
fate of the Republic and of the world, he was able to abstract his mind from all
siuTounding drciunstances, and 'wrote all day long till night, writing a compen-
dium of Polybius.'
Men of this temperament are not the predestined leaders of a party, and Brutus
would never of himself, or from the unassisted promptings of his own nature, have
become the head of the conspiracy against Caesar. He would have let things follow
their course, silently grieving in his heart at the direction they were taking, but
doing nothing to prevent it. When he hears the shouts of the people, he says
calmly —
'I do fear the people
Choose Cssar for their king.'
Cassius, eager and impetuous, catches at the expression, exclaiming —
* Ay, do you fear it?
Then must I think you would not have it so.'
But Brutus answers gently —
*I would not, Cassius; yet I love him well.'
And in this melancholy regret and dreamy sadness Brutus, if left to himself, would
have passed his days.
Brutus was an eminently lovable person, which is rarely the case with those
who inspire very great respect, for men's hearts, it must frankly be confessed, arc
not, as a rule, attracted by moral perfection; it is, indeed, admired and venerated —
but coldly and at a distince. The comparison is too humiliating for j)oor humanity
to feel very great interest in the sight of irreproachable virtue; and so true is this,
that Aristotle forbade the tragic poets to present blameless and altogether perfect
heroes, lest they should weary their audience. But in order to bring the Brutus of
history within this excellent rule, Shakespeare has no occasion to make any altera-
tions; all he had to do was to clothe in the language of poetry the features of his
character given by Plutarch.
Brutus was in reality a sensitive nature, gentle and tender-hearted as a woman;
he had great apparent self-control, but it was due to his reason as a philosopher
CHARACTER OF BRUTUS— MOULTON
413
which triumphed over his nature by an heroic effort of will, and this man of iron
was, in truth, only a reed, and a reed that never grew so rigid as not at times to be
felt to tremble. Nothing less resembles the real Brutus than the stiff, inexorable
stoic of the school of Seneca that Voltaire has drawn with superficial eloquence
in cold and rigid lines. He was beloved of the people and of his friends, 'because
he was a marvelous lowly and gentle person,' as North has it.
MouLTON (5A. 05 Dram. ArLf p. 171) : The force in Brutus's character is obvious:
it is rather its softer side that some readers find difficulty in seeing. But this
difficulty is in reality a testimony to Shakespeare's skill, for Brutus b a stoic, and
what gentleness we see in him appears in spite of himself. It may be seen in his
culture of art, music, and philosophy, which have such an effect in softening the
manners. Nor is this in the case of the Roman Brutus a mere conventional culture :
these tastes are among his strongest passions. When all is confusion around him
on the eve of the fatal battle he cannot restrain his longing for the refreshing tones
of his page's lyre; and, the music over, he takes up his philosophical treatise at the
page he had turned down. Again, Brutus's considerateness for his dependents is
in strong contrast with the harshness of Roman masters. On the same eve of the
battle he insists that the men who watch in his tent shall lie down instead of stand-
ing, as discipline would require. An exquisite little episode brings out Brutus's
sweetness of demeanour in dealing with his youthful page; this rises to womanly
tenderness at the end, when, noticing how the boy, wearied out and fallen asleep,
is lying in a position to injure his instrument, he rises and disengages it without
waking him.
Brutus's relations with Portia bear the same testimony. Portia is a woman
with as high a spirit as Lady Macbeth, and she can inffict a woimd on herself to
prove her courage and her right to share her husband's secrets. But she lacks the
physical nerve of Lady Macbeth; her agitation on the morning of the assassination
threatens to betray the conspirators, and when these have to flee from Rome the
stispense is too much for her and she conmiits suicide. Brutus knew his wife better
than she knew herself, and was right in seeking to withhold the fatal confidence;
yet he allowed himself to be persuaded: no man would be so swayed by a tender
woman unless he had a tender spirit of his own. In all these ways we may trace an
extreme of gentleness in Brutus. But it b of the essence of his character that this
softer side is concealed behind an impertiu-bability of outward demeanor that
belongs to his stoic religion: this struggle between inward and outward is the
main featiu-e for the actor to bring out.
Brutus's nature is developed on all its sides; in his character the antithesis of the
outer and inner life disappears. It reappears, however, in his action; for Brutus
is compelled to balance a weighty issue, with public policy on the one side, and on
the other not only justice to individual claims, but further the claims of friend-
ship, which is one of the fairest flowers of the inner life. And the balance dips
to the wrong side. If the question were of using the weapon of assassination
against a criminal too high for the ordinary law to reach, this would be a moral
problem which, however doubtful to modem thought, would have been readily
decided by a stoic. But the question which presented itself to Brutus was dis-
tinctly not this. Shakespeare has been careful to represent Brutus as admitting
to himself that Caesar has done no wrong: he slays him for what he might do.
It is true that Shakespeare, with his usual 'dramatic hedging,' softens down this
immoral bias in a great hero by representing him as both a Roman of the nation
414
APPENDIX
which beyond all other nations exalted the state over the individual, and a Brutus
representative of the house which had risen to greatness by leading violence against
tyranny. But Brutus's own conscience being judge, the man against whom he
moves is guiltless; and so the consdotis sacrifice of justice and friendship to policy
is a fatal error which is soiu-ce sufficient for the whole tragedy of which Brutus is
the hero.
J. M. Brown (p. 114): In Hamlet Shakespeare showed how futile the thinker
is when thrown into a sphere of action. In Brutus he reveab how great the influence
of spotless probity may be before it enters into action, how vain it is amid the in-
tricate cares of office and leadership. Apart from power, kept out of action 'his
countenance like richest alchymy/ changes 'offence' to 'virtue and worthiness.'
How gentle and considerate he is to his servants! He will not break the slumbers
of his page Lucius even in the midst of his 'hideous dream' of assassination or in
his sore tribulation before the great battle that is to decide his late and Rome's.
How humane he is in his relations with Portia I 'Musing and sighing/ 'staring
with ungentle Jooks, ' he will not answer her loving entreaties to have his confidence;
but 'with an angry wafture of his hand' 'gives sign for her to leave him'; he had,
to begin with, a mettlesome and moody nature, but he has brought it under control.
She knows this and, kneeling, she tells him how. she stabbed her thigh to show what
she would endure for him. And in admiration of her courage he entrusts the dark
secret to her. But nowhere is the depths of his tender love for her shown more than
when he knows that she is dead. He has quarreled with Cassius and they have wept
out a reconciliation. Then in talking over their anger he calmly says, 'O Cassius,
I am sick of many griefs,' and on being reminded of his stoic philosophy, he adds,
' No man bears sorrow better. Portia is dead.' The question of his friend reveak
the greatness of the loss: ' How 'scaped I killing when I crossed you so? ' Nor will
he be induced to speak of it more.
'With meditating that she must die once
He had the patience to endure it now.*
There is no outcry here, no melodramatic app>eal; the grief is too stem for paltry
words, 'too deep for tears.' 'Even so great men great losses should endure.'
How different is his conduct over Caesar's body with the mark of his own dagger
in it! That last upbraiding look and word of his great friend as he falls has pierced
to his very heart, though he will not show the scar by word or sign. He becomes
voluble in explanation and defence, he overflows in eloquence and action to stifle
the rising pain of remorse. He is satisfied he did right, and yet that look. Hence
the unreal ring that Shakesp>eare gives to his obituary eloquence compared with
the manly heart-broken eloquence of Antony. It sounds like a lesson that has been
conned. There is no genuine belief in it; he is only trying to persuade himself to
believe, as he is trying to persuade the people. Thenceforth there comes upon him
the fatalism of despair, whose voice he cannot stifle —
'That we shall die we know; 'tis but the time
And drawing days'out that men stand upon.'
It reminds us of Hamlet's when he is driven to action.
And when he is not giving expression to this feeling that death is coming, the
sooner the better, there is a falsetto note in his utterances. What painful melo-
drama is his command to bathe their hands in Caesar's blood ' up to the elbows and
CHAR A CTER OF BR UTUS—BERGER 415
besmear their swords' and wave them o'er their heads I How monotonous is his
appeal to the dtizensi And at last he and Cassiiis 'ride like madmen through the
gates of Rome.' Like true conspirators they come to quarrel, almost to blows, in
camp before Sardis. Brutus is ethically in the right, practically in the wrong.
Against the will of Cassius he has pimished an instrument because his hands were
foul with bribery, and he demands money from Cassius to pay his soldiers because
he would rather coin his heart's blood than ' wring from the hard hands of peasants
their vile trash.' The man who could not do this was not fit to be the general of
conspirators. He was too upright.
But in spite of his clinging to uprightness, there haunts him the sense that he
has sullied it. That last look of Caesar follows him wherever he goes; and to that
outraged friendship seems to come defeat after defeat, sorrow after sorrow in
revenge of it, and when the 'deep of night has crept upon their talk' and he sits
alone and sleepless, that haunting vision fixes itself so vividly upon his mind that it
seems to strike his eyeballs as the ghost of the dead Cesar.
Berger (p. 87) : Caesar is but a symbol, and so likewise is Brutus. His relation to
Caesar is identical with that of Judas to his Master. No psychological analysis
— ^rather one of inclinations — ^is necessary to explain the underlying motives of
Judas. The thirty pieces of silver do not explain his action. To Caesar appertains
the personification of power condensed in one man; Brutus belongs in the popu-
listic fancy of men who cannot endure such power; for this reason Dante has placed
him together with Judas in the lowest circle of Hell. Shakespeare, ever sympathetic
to his heroes under constraint of drctunstance as an explanation of their motives,
and to whom it suffices if we are sensible of the ' He must,' if we are unable to analyze
the 'must,' Shakespeare has not expressed the last word in regard to Brutus. It
lies unuttered in the depths of Brutiis's noble and even spiritual being. Another
has sought to put it in words, Friederich Nietzsche, whose penetrating glance here,
as often before, seeks to force its way behind the scenes of popular psychology
to the innermost secret places. . . . The passage, replete with hidden meaning,
is found in the Aphorismus, In Shakespeare* s Honour ^ p. 118 of Joyful Wisdom
(Prdhlichen Wissenschajt)^ ed. 1887. I think it darts a ray of light into the very
centre of Brutus's character; and it is thoroughly characteristic of Nietzsche
himself, who discovers in the relation of Brutus to Caesar a symbol of his own
relations to Richard Wagner. [Berger quotes but a sentence from Nietzsche which
is here given in Italic. The whole Aphorism relates to Brutus, and, in Common's
translation, is as follows]: 'The best thing I could say in honour of Shakespeare,
the man, is that he believed in Brutus and cast not a shadow of suspicion on the
kind of virtue which Brutus represents! It is to him that Shakespeare consecrated
his best tragedy — ^it is at present still called by a wrong name, — to him and to the
most terrible essence of lofty morality. Independence of soul! — thai is the question
at issue! No sacrifice can be too great there: one must be able to sacrifice to it one*s
dearest friend, though he be also the grandest of men, the ornamerU of the world, the
genius without peer, — if one really loves freedom as the freedom of great souls, and if
this freedom be threatened by him: — U is thus that Shakespeare must have felt! The
elevation in which he places Caesar is the most exquisite honour he could confer
upon Brutus; it is thus only that he lifts into vastness the inner problem of his
hero, and, similarly, the strength of soul which could cut this knot! And was it
actually political freedom that impelled the poet to sympathy with Brutus, — and
made him the accomplice of Brutus? Or was political freedom merely a symbol for
4i6 APPENDIX
something inexpressible? Do we perhaps stand before some sombre event or
adventure of the poet's own soul, which has remained unknown, and of which he
only cared to speak s3rmbolically? What is all Hamlet — ^melancholy in com-
parison with the melancholy of Brutus! — and perhaps Shakespeare also knew this,
as he knew the other, by experience! Perhaps he also had his dark hour and his
bad angel, just as Brutus had them! But whatever similarities and secret rda-
tionships of that kind there may have been, Shakespeare cast himself on the
ground and felt unworthy and alien in presence of the aspect and virtue of Brutus:
he has inscribed the testimony thereof in the tragedy itself. He has brought in a
poet in it, and twice heaped upon him such an impatient and extreme conteII^>t
that it sounds like a cry, — ^like the cry of self-contempt. Brutus, even Brutus,
loses patience when the poet appears, self-important, pathetic, and obtrusive, as
poets usually are — persons who seem to abound in the possibilities of greatness,
even moral greatness, and nevertheless rarely attain even to ordinary uprightness
in the philosophy of practice and of life. "He may know the times, hui I know kis
temper y — away with the jigging fool!" shouts Brutus. We may translate this
back into the soul of the poet that composed it.* — Book ii, § g8; ed. Levy, p. 131.
— Berger thus concludes: 'Shakespeare, as an ingenious dramatist of the people,
seeks in Brutus for the warm human motive behind the cold, republican love of
freedom, and finds that which is indicated by Nietzsche in the foregoing.'
BoissiER (p. 309, foot-note) : A very curious statue of Brutus is to be seen at the
Campana Museum. The artist has not tried to idealize his model, and seems
to have aimed at nothing but a vulgar exactness; but we can very well recognize
in it the real Brutus. We can trace in that low forehead and the heavy bones of
the face a narrow mind and an obstinate will. The face has a feverish and sickly
look; it is at once young and old, and b the case with those who have never really
been young. Above all, we perceive in it a strange sadness, that of a man over-
whelmed by the weight of a great and fateful destiny. In the fine bust of Brutus
preserved in the Museum of the Capitol the face is fuller and handsomer. The
sweetness and sadness remain; the sickly look has disappeared. The features ex-
actly resemble those on the famous medal struck during Brutus's last years, and
which bears on the reverse a Phrygian cap between two daggers, with the threaten-
ing legend, Idas Martiae. Michael Angelo commenced a bust of Brutus, of which
the admirable rough model may be seen at the Ufl&zi in Florence. It was not a
fancy study, and we see that he had made use of ancient portraits while idealizing
them.
GoLL (p. 74): If Brutus had possessed Antony's powers when he spoke to the
people, if he had had Cassius's prudence before the battle, if he had been victorious,
and, after victory, had led Rome forward to the golden age of which he dreamed —
the act, the murder would, nevertheless, have been the same; but would history's
judgment not then have been quite dififerent? Is it not rather the qualities lack-
ing in him: his p>oIitical dilettantism, his doctrinaire short-sightedness, his lack of
understanding of the age and its demands — is it not on these that the true premises
of the judgment are based?
If, on the other hand, Brutus had possessed Antony's and Cassius's abilities,
would he, then, have been Brutus, the hero of liberty? Would the murder not
have been far more hideous had it been carried out — not by the Brutus, who, by
virtue of his faults, is ruined by it, but by a Brutus who, through his political
CHARACTER OF BRUTUS— MACCALLUM
417
sagacity, conquered the world through it? In this case would not the ethical judg-
ment have been far more damning?
Here is a yawning gulf which it is not easy to overpass. Are we to let our own
judgment be guided by that of history, the judgment of the world, which esti-
mates the act and asks: What has the man done? Or are we to follow the judg-
ment of ethics, which analyses the motives and asks: What did the man desire to do?
A universally binding answer cannot be given. Each one must here, according
to his bent, choose for himself; possibly he b the more just who never quite forgets
the man in the deed. That is the reason why Shakespeare does not allow history
to speak the last word over Brutus. The ethical judgment utters softer and more
consolatory words over the body of Brutus:
'This was the noblest Roman of them all:
All the conspirators save only he
Did that they did in envy of great Caesar;
He only, in a general honest thought
And common good to all, made one of them.
His life was gentle and the elements
So mixed in him that Nature might stand up
And say to all the world, "This was a man.'''
This was a man ! Yea, as surely as the splendid power of having a conviction and
following it be man's greatest possession. Maybe a play of words is hidden in the
last lines:
'His life was gentle and the elements
So mixed in him that Nature might stand up
And say to all the world, "Thb was a man."'
This was a man — ^but no more. In him the elements of Nature were mixed, as
they are in all human beings, however much he belonged to the best amongst them
all. Brutus desired to be more than man: to be the judge and avenger of justice —
he paid for it with his life, because he was only a man.
And this epitaph, which coincides accurately with Tobtoy's views of life, b per-
haps also a fit and proper epitaph over the political offender himself.
MacCallum (p. 238): Brutus has no quarrel with Caesar as a man, and no
justification b given for the conspiracy in what Caesar has done. On the con-
trary, hb murderer stands sponsor for his character, acknowledges his supreme
greatness, and loves him as a dear friend. But neither, on the other hand, b any-
thing introduced that might divert our S3rmpathies from Brutus by representing
him as bound by other than the voluntary ties of affection and respect. And thb
b the more remarkable that in Plutarch there are two particulars full of personal
pathos which Shakespeare cannot have failed to note, and which lend themselves
to dramatic purposes, as other dramatbts have proved. One of them, employed
by Voltaire, would darken the assassination to parricide. In explanation of the
indulgence with which Caesar treated Brutus, Plutarch says:
'When he was a yoimg man, he had been acquainted with ServOia,
who was extremlie in love with him. And Bicause Brutus was
borne in that time when their love was hottest, he perswaded him
selfe that he begat him.'
And then follows what can be alleged in proof. . . .
27
41 8 APPENDIX
This b a mere casual hint; but the other point finds repeated mention in the life,
and is dwelt upon though explained away in the comparison. It is the dicum-
stance that Brutus had fought on Pompey's side, and that thereafter Caesar had
spared him, amnestied his friends, and loaded him with favours.
'The greatest reproache they could make against Brutus ¥ras:
that Julius Caesar having saved his life, and pardoned all the prisoners
also taken in battell, as many as he made request for, taking him for
his frende, and honoring him above all his other frends, Brutus
notwithstanding had imbrued his hands in his blood.' iXke com-
parison of Dion with Brulus.)
Plutarch, indeed, instances this as the grand proof of Brutus 's superiority to personal
considerations; but it looks bad, and certainly introduces a new element into the
moral problem. At all events, though it involves in a specially acute form that
conflict of duties which the drama loves, and was so used by Shake^)eare's con-
temporaries as early as Muret and as late as Alexander, Shakespeare dismbses it
Attention is concentrated on the single fact that Brutus felt it his duty to take
1 the life of Caesar, and no obligations of kinship or gratitude are allowed to com-
' plicate the one simple case of conscience.
The victim and the sacrificer are thus set before us, each with an unstained record,
and in only those personal relations that arise from warm and reverent friendship.
Of their mutual attachment we are left in no doubt, nor are we ever su£fexed to
forget it. Cassius, in talk to himself, bears witness that Caesar 'loves Brutus'
(I, ii, 31 7). Antony, in his speech to the people, appeals to this as a notorious fact:
' Brutus, as you know, was Caesar's angel :
Judge, O you gods, how dearly Caesar loved him.* — ^in, ii, 185.
But the strongest testimony is Caesar's own cry, the cry of astonishment and con-
sternation, whether from the betrayed when the beloved is the traitor, or from the
condemned when the beloved is the judge:
«
'Et tu Brute? Then fall Caesar!'— Ill, i, 77.
Nor is less stress laid on Brutus's feeling. He avows it in the Forum as before he
had assured Antony that 'he did love Caesar when he struck him.' — III, i, 182.
Cassius tells him:
* When thou didst hate him worst, thou lovedst him better
Than ever thou lovedst Cassius.' — IV, iii, 106.
But here, again, the most pathetic evidence is to be found in the assassination scene
itself. When Brutus stoops in the guise of p)etitioner, we cannot suppose it is
merely with treacherous adroitness:
'I kiss thy hand, but not in flattery, Caesar.' — III, i, 52.
Knowing the man, do we not feel that this is the last tender farewell?
But, though all this is true, it cannot be maintained, in view of the soliloquy
before the conspirators' meeting, that Shakespeare makes Brutus the mouthpiece of
republicanism, as he makes Caesar the mouthpiece of imperialism. The opposition
of principles is present, but it is of principles on a different plane.
Caesar, the spirit of Caesar is, indeed, the spirit of Empire, the spirit of practical
greatness in the domains of war, policy, organization: of this he is the exponent.
CHARACTER OF BRUTUS^MACCALLUM 419
to this he is the martyr. Brutus's spirit is rather the spirit of Io3raIty to duty,
which finds in him its exponent and martyr too.
He b lavishly endowed by nature with all the inward qualities that go to make
the virtuous man, and these he has improved and disciplined by every means in his
power. His standard b high, but he is so strenuous and sincere in living up to it
that he b recognized as no less pre-eminent in the sphere of ethics than Oesar in
the sphere of politics. Indeed, their different ideals dominate and impel both men
in an almost equal degree. And in each case this leads to a kind of pose. It ap-
pears even in their speech. The balanced precision of the one teUs its own tale as
clearly as the overstrained loftiness of the other, and is as closely matched with the
part that he needs must play. Obviously, Brutus does not like to confess that he
has been in the wrong. No more in the a6^pov than in the Emperor is there room
for any weakness. After hb dispute with Cassius he assumes rather unjustifiably
that he has, on the whole, been in the right, that he has been the provoked party,
and that, at worst, he has shown momentary heat. But even thb slight admission,
coming from him, fills Cassius with surprise:
* Brutus, When I spoke that, I was ill-temper*d too.
Cassius, Do you confess so much? Give me your hand.' — ^IV, iii, 116.
The Ideal Wise Man must not yield to anger any more than to other passions, and
it costs Brutus something to own that he has done so. But he minimizes hb con-
fession by accepting Cassius's apology for his rash humor, and promising to over-
look any future offences, as though none could be laid to hb own door. We like
him none the worse for this; his cult of perfection becomes the assumption and
obtrusion of it.
There b a conflict in this sensitive and finely tuned spirit which, with all his
acquired fortitude, betrays itself in hb bearing to Cassius before any foreign sug-
gestion has entered hb mind, which afterwards makes him unlike himself in his
behaviour to hb wife, which drives sleep from his tye& for nights together, which so
jars the rare harmony of hb nature, in Antony's views hb chief perfection, that he
seems to suffer from an insurrection within himself. And it b not hard to under-v
stand why this should be. Morality b the guiding principle of Brutus*s character,
but what if it should be at variance with itself? Now two sets of moral forces are
at strife in hb heart. There are the more personal sentiments of love and reverence
for Caesar and of detestation for the crime he contemplates. Even after hb deci-
sion he feeb the full horror of conspiracy with its 'monstrous visage'; how much
more must he feel the horror of assassinating a friend? On the other side are the
more traditional ethical obligations to state, class, and house. It b almost as fatal
to this visionary to be called Brutus, as it is to the poet to be called Cinna. For
a great historic name spares its bearer a narrow margin of liberty. It should be
impossible for a Bourbon to be other than a legitimbt; it would be impossible for a
Romanoff to abandon the Orthodox Church; it is impossible for a Brutus to accept
the merest show of royal power. The memory of hb stock b about him. Now
Cassius reminds him of hb namesake who would brook the eternal devil in Rome
as easily as a king; now the admonition b fixed with wax upon Old Brutus's statue;
now he himself recalls the share hb ancestors had in expelling the Tarquin. If
such a one acquiesced in the coronation of Caesar, he must be the basest renegade,
or more detached from his antecedents than it is given a mortal man to be. And in
Brutus there is no hint of such detachment. The temper that makes him so
attentive and lojral to the pieties of life, b the very temper that vibrates to all that
420 APPENDIX
is best in the past, and clings to the spirit of use and wont. Let it again be rq)eated
that Brutus reveals himself to Shakespeare very much in the form of a cultured and
high-souled English nobleman, the heir of great traditions and their re^xmsibilities,
which he fulfills to the smallest jot and tittle; the heir also of inevitable preconcep-
tions.
But in Brutus there b more than individual morality and inherited ethos: there
is superimposed on these the conscious philosophic theory with which his actions
must be spared. He has to determine his conduct not by instinct or usage, but by
impersonal, unprejudiced reason. It is to this tribunal that in the last resort he
must appeal; and in that strange soliloquy of his he puts aside all private prefer-
ences on the one hand, all local considerations on the other, and HianiysiNt his
difficulty quite as an abstract problem of right and wrong.
CRITICISMS.
Johnson: Of this tragedy many particular passages deserve regard, and the
contention and reconcilement of Brutus and Cassius is universally celebrated,
but I have never been strongly agitated in perusing it, and think it somewhat cold
and unaffecting compared with some other of Shakespeare's plays; his adherence
to the real story and to Roman manners seem to have impeded the natural
vigor of his genius.
Voltaire (Thealre de CameiUe, ii, 262), in order to demonstrate to his country-
men the superiority of Comeille to Shakespeare, made a translation of the first
three acts of Shakespeare's Jul. C<k,<, and this he appended to Comeille's tragedy of
Cinna, Since both pieces dealt with a conspiracy against a ruler, any person
might thus compare the treatment of the same subject by the two authors. Vol-
taire asserted that his translation was absolutely literal; and as Antony excited the
people by showing them Caesar's rent robes and Caesar's body marred by traitors,
even so Voltaire attempted to arouse his readers by calling attention, in foot-
notes, to the many offences against elegance in diction, and the wounds inflicted
by Shakespeare upon the sacred body of classic tragedy. *Good friends, sweet
friends, let me not stir you up,' cries Antony, and thereby excites them the more;
Voltaire produces much the same effect upon his readers by adding to his trans-
lation a few words wherein he begs them to pity, rather than blame, a people for
ignorance of what constituted good taste. He thus states his view of the situa-
tion: 'It is astonishing that a nation celebrated for its genius and its success in
the arts and sciences can be pleased with so many monstrous irregularities, and
hear with delight on the one hand Caesar expressing himself in heroic terms, or like
a captain in a farce; and on the other hand, carpenters, cobblers, and senators
themselves talking like market people. Our surprise will be less when we realise
that, for the most part, the pieces of Lopez de Vega and of Calderon in Spain are
in the same style. We shall place a translation of the Heraclius of Calderon
beside the Heraclius of Comeille; and shall see the same genius as in Shakespeare,
the same ignorance, the same grandeur, similar marks of imagination, the same
bombast, the same coarseness, a lack of consistency equally striking, and the same
mixture of the cap and bells of Gilles and the tragic buskin of Sophocles. Assuredly,
Spain and England, for more than a century, have not given the cue for applause for
CRITICISMS^HAZLITT
421
pieces which revolt the other nations. There can, moreover, hardly exist a greater
contrast than that between English nature and Spanish nature. How then did
these two different nations join together in a taste so strange? There must be a
reason, and this reason must be due to natural causes. In the first place, the
Spaniards have never known anything better. Secondly, there is a depth of in-
terest in pieces so bizarre and barbarous. I saw the Julius Casar of Shakespeare
acted, and I must admit that from the first scene when I heard the tribune re-
proaching the people for their ingratitude to Pompey and their attachment to
Caesar, Pompey's conqueror, I began to be interested, to be moved. I did not
see any conspirator on the stage who did not excite my curiosity; and, in spite of
so many absurd incongruities, I felt that the piece held me. In the third place,
there is much that is natural: that naturalness is often low, vulgar, and barbarous.
These are no Romans who are talking; they are peasants of a past age conspiring
in a wine-shop; and Cssar, who invites them to drink a bottle with him, does not
in the least resemble Julius Caesar. The absurdity is outlandish, but there is no
weakness. From time to time sublime points glitter and shine forth like diamonds
scattered in the mire. I must admit that I like this monstrous spectacle more than
long confidences of a cold love, or political discussions yet more cold. Finally, a
fourth reason which, joined to the other three, has considerable weight: men in
general love the spectacular; they wish to be spoken to by the eyes; the people
are pleased with pomp and ceremony, . . . and, as has been said before, the
people form a large part. The mind must be very cultured and the taste formed,
as that of the Italians in the sixteenth century and the French in the seventeenth,
in order to wish for nothing but that which is rightly and sagaciously written, and
to insist that a theatrical piece be worthy of the court of the Medici or that of
Louis XrV. Unfortimately, Lopez de Vega and Shakespeare were geniuses at a
time when taste ¥ras quite imformed; they corrupted that of their compatriots, who
for the most part were utterly ignorant. Had we been in the like case we should
have resembled those nations.' — [Lounsbury (Sh. and VoUairCf p. 232) says in
regard to this txanslation, which b not to be confounded with Voltaire's other
tragedy. La Mart de Char: 'The version of Julius CcRsar, taken as a whole, ¥ras
much nearer a travesty than a translation. The French word for the discharge
of this function, as rendered by its corresponding etymological equivalent in
English, expressed both its intention and its character. Shakespeare had been
traduced, not translated. The version had been craftily calculated to mislead the
reader ignorant of the original. But Voltaire ¥ras eminently satisfied with what he
had done. He spoke of it both then and afterward with pride. He boasted con-
stantly of the superiority of the methods he had followed to those of La Place,
whose translation of Shakespeare ¥ras still the only one to which French readers
had access. That translation he censured constantly for its imfaithfulness.
To D'Argental he transmitted his own in August, 1762. "I believe," he wrote,
" that you will be convinced that La Place is very far from having made known the
English drama. Concede that it is well to become acquainted with the excessive
intemperance of its extravagance."* — See, if needful, Mrs Montague, pp. 372 et
seq., and for an exhaustive account and an analysis of Voltaire's translation,
Loimsbury, op, cit., pp. 219-239. — Ed.]
Hazutt {Characters y etc., p. 22): Jul, C<bs. is not equal, as a whole, to either of
Shakespeare's other plays taken from the Roman history. It is inferior in interest
to CorioL, and, both in interest and power, to Ant, 6* Cleo. It, however, abounds
422 APPENDIX
in admirable and a£fecting passages, and is remarkable for the profound knowledge
of character, in which Shakespeare could scarcely faU. If there is any exception
to this remark, it is in the hero of the piece himself. . . .\^iakespcQrehasin this
play and elsewhere shown the same penetration into pohtical character and the
springs of public events as to those of every-day life. For instance, the whole
design to liberate their country fails from the generous temper and overweening
confidence of Brutus in the goodness of their cause and the assbtance of otherTl
[See, also, Hazlitt's note, II, ii, 57.]
Hallam (iii, 87) : In [/«/. Cas\ the plot wants even that historical unity which
the romantic drama requires; the third and fourth acts are ill connected; it
is deficient in female characters, and in that combination which is generally ap-
parent amidst all the intricacies of his fable. But it abounds in fine scenes and
fine passages, the spirit of Plutarch's Brutus is well seized, the predominence of
■^Caesar is judiciously restrained, the characters have that individuality v^ch
Shakespeare seldom misses; nor is there, perhaps, in the whole range of andent
and modem eloquence a speech more fully realising the perfection that orators have
striven to attain than that of Antony.
ScHLEGEL (p. 240) : In the term action, as understood by the andents, we must
include the resolution to bear the consequences of the deed with heroic magna-
nimity, and the execution of this determination will belong to its completion.
The pious resolve of Antigone to perform the last duties of her unburied brother is
soon executed and without difficulty; but, genuineness, on which alone rests its
daim to be a fit subject for a tragedy, is only subsequently proved when, without
repentance and without any s3anptoms of weakness, she suffers death as its pen-
alty. And to take an example from quite a different sphere, is not Shakespeare's
Jvl. Cas.^ as respects the action, constructed on the same prindple? Brutus is
the hero of the piece; the completion of his great resolve does not coQaist in the
mere assassination of Caesar (an action ambiguous in itself, and of which khe motives
might have been ambition and jealousy)! but in this, that he proves himself the
pure champion of Roman liberty by the^lm sacrifice of his amiable life. . . .
(P. 415): Caesar is not the hero of the piece, but BrutusI TKe amiable beauty
of this character, his feeling and patriotic heroism, are f>ortrayed with peculiar
care. Yet the poet has pointed out with great nicety the superiority of Cassias
over Brutus in independent volition and discernment in judging of human affairs;
that the latter, from the purity of his mind and his conscientious love of justice, is
unfit to be the head of a party in a state entirely corrupted; and that these very
faults give an unfortunate turn to the cause of the conspirators. In the part of
Caesar several ostentatious speeches have been censured as unsuitable. But as he
never appears in action, we have no other measure of his greatness than the im-
pression which he makes upon the rest of the characters and his peculiar confidence
in himself. In this Caesar was by no means deficient, as we learn from history
and his own writings; but he displayed it more in the easy ridicule of his enemies
than in pompous discourses. The theatrical effect of this play is injured by a
partial falling off at the last two acts compared with the preceding in external
splendour and rapidity. The first appearance of Caesar in festal robes, when the
music stops, and all are silent whenever he opens his mouth, and when the few
words which he utters are received as oracles, is truly magnificent; the conspiracy
is a true conspiracy, which in stolen interviews and in the dead of night prepares the
CRITICISMS— KNIGHT
423
blow which is to be struck in open day, and which is to change the constitution
of the world, — the confused thronging before the murder of Caesar, the general
agitation even of the perpetrators after the deed, are all portrayed with most
masterly skill; with the funeral procession and the speech of Antony the effect
reaches its utmost height. Oesar's shade is more powerful to avenge his fall than
he himself was to guard against it. After the overthrow of the external splendour
and greatness of the conqueror and ruler of the world, the intrinsic grandeur of
character of Brutus and Cassius is all that remain to fill the stage and occupy the
minds of the spectators; suitably to their name, as the last of the Romans, they
stand there, in some degree alone; and the forming a great and hazardous de-
termination is more powerfully calculated to exdte our expectation than the
supporting the consequences of the deed with heroic fimmess.
Knight {Studies y p. 414) : At the exact period of the action of this drama, Cssar,
possessing the reality of power, was haunted by the weakness of passionately desir-
ing the title of king. Plutarch says: 'The chief est cause that made him mortally
hated ¥ras the covetous desire he had to be called king.' This is the pivot upon
which the whole action of Shakespeare's tragedy turns. There might have been
another mode of treating the subject. The death of Julius Caesar might have
been the catastrophe. The republican and the monarchical principles might have
been exhibited in conflict. The republican principle would have triumphed in
the fall of Caesar; and the poet would have previously held the balancei)etween the
two principles, or have claimed, indeed, our largest S3anpathies for the principles
of Caesar and his friends by a true exhibition of Caesar's greatness and Caesar's
virtues. The poet chose another course. And are we, then, to talk, with ready
flippancy, of ignorance and carelessness — that he wanted classical knowledge —
that he gave himself no trouble? 'The fault of the character is the fault of the
plot,' says Hazlitt. It would have been nearer the truth had he said: the char-
acter is determined by the plot. While Caesar is upon the scene it was for the
poet, largely interpreting the historian, to show the inward workings of 'the
covetous desire he had to be called king': and most admirably, according to our
notions of characterization, has he shown them. Caesar is ' in all but name a king.'
He is surrounded by all the external attributes of power; yet he is not satisfied:
'The angry spot doth glow on Caesar's brow.'
He is suspicious — he fears. But he has acquired the policy of greatness — to seem
what it is not. To his intimate friend he is an actor:
'I rather tell thee what is to be fear'd
Than what I fear; for always I am Caesar.'
When Calphumia has recounted the terrible portents of the night — ^when the
augurers would not that Caesar should stir forth — ^he exclaims:
'The gods do this in shame of cowardice:
Caesar should be a beast without a heart.
If he should stay at home to-day for fear.
No, Caesar shall not: Danger knows full well
That Caesar is more dangerous than he.
We were two lions littered in one day.
And I the elder and more terrible;
And Caesar shall go forth.'
424 APPENDIX
But to whom does he utter this, 'the boastful language/ which so offends Boswdl?
To the servant who has brought the message from the augurers; before him he
could show no fear. But the very inflation of his language shows that he did fear;
and an instant after, when the servant no doubt is intended to have left the scene,
he says to his wife —
'Mark Antony shall say I am not well,
And for thy humour, I will stay at home.'
Read Plutarch's account of the scene between Dedus and Caesar, when Dedus
prevails against Calphumia, and Caesar decides to go. In the historian we have
not a hint of the splendid characterization of Ciesar struggling between his fear
and his pride. Wherever Shakspere found a minute touch in the historian that
could harmonize with his general plan, he embodied it in his character of Cesar.
Who does not remember the magnificent lines which the poet puts into the mouth
of Cesar?
'Cowards die many times before their deaths;
The valiant never taste of death but once.
Of all the wonders that I yet have heard.
It seems to me most strange that men should fear;
Seeing that death, a necessary end.
Will come when it will come.'
A very slight passage in Plutarch, with reference to other circumstances of Cesar's
life, suggested thb: 'When some of his friends did cotmsel him to have a guard
for the safety of his person, and some also did offer themselves to serve him, he
would never consent to it, but said it was better to die once than always to be afraid
of death.' We have already noticed the skill with which Shakspere, upon a very
bald narrative, has dramatized the last sad scene in which Caesar was an actor.
The tone of his last speech is indeed boastful:
* I do not know but one
That unassailable holds on his rank,
Unshaked of motion: and, that I am he.
Let me a little show it.*
That Caesar knew his power, and made others know it, who can doubt? He was
not one who, in his desire to be king, would put on the robe of humility. Alto-
gether, then, we profess to receive Shakspere's characterization of Cesar with a
perfect confidence that he produced that character uf>on fixed principles of art.
It is not the prominent character of the play; and it was not meant to be so. It is
true to the narrative upon which Shakspere founded it; but what is of more im-
portance, it is true to every natural conception of what Caesar must have been at
the exact moment of his fall.
Gervinus (ii, 324): It app)ears that Jul, Cos, was composed before 1603, about
the same time as Handet. Not alone is this confirmed by the frequent external
references to Cesar which we find in Handeiy but still more by the inner relations
of the two plays. These are so remarkable that, if preponderating reasons had
not determined us not to separate the three Roman plays, we must have discussed
Jtd. Ccts.f for the sake of its internal relationship, close by the side of Hamlet and
Macbeihy because it was conceived and written in the same train of thought as
these two pieces. If we enter at once uf>on the connection of these two works with
CRITICISMS^GERVINUS 425
each other, we shall reach the object of our considerations upon Cesar in the
shortest way.
In Hamkl, the impassioned wavering hero looked with envy on the Roman
character of Horatio, who, while he suffered everything, seemed to suffer nothing,
who was the slave of no passion, taking with equal thanks the buffets and rewards
of fortune, his 'blood and judgment well co-mingled.' If we transport this char-
acter from Christian times into heathen ages, and from Denmark into the excited
public life of Rome, we have the main features of Brutus who forms the chief
character in Jul. Cos. Of a phlegmatic temperament, calm and serious, indifferent
to amusement and pleasure, unmoved by passion, 'a lamb that carried anger, as
the flint bears fire,' Brutus is bom to be a stoic, and practises the principles of that
school which prescribes the passive use of life and enjoins the power of endurance.
Of him, as of Horatio, it is said that none knew better how to endure than he, and
Messala and Cassius acknowledge this with admiration. He possesses all the
virtues which constitute a noble nature; he has strengthened in himself all the
virtues which practical life ripens and brings to perfection; he has won for his own
all the virtues which arise out of strength of will and the dominion of the mind
over the passions. In his relations to his wife and servant he is tender and mild,
amiable and full of kindly consideration; in all his relations to society and to the
state he is unselfish, armed with probity, incapable of flattery, unbiased by party
spirit, perfectly upright, and careful for the conunon weal; in his relation to him-
self, in his condemnation of passion, he is discreet and circumspect, never rash in
action or decision, but his resolution once taken, he is invincible in spirit and
action, firm and steady in carrying out his plans, and a stem ruler over inward
emotions. Standing between the immanly irresolute Hamlet and the manly
overstrained Macbeth, the elements are
'So mixed in him, that nature might stand up,
And say to all the world. This was a man!'
That man, whose nature Macbeth also originally possessed, that man, who does
nothing more and nothing less than what becomes a man, and who proves his
manhood, above all, by mastery over himself. Shakespeare has developed this
distinctive feature in Bmtus by great examples. He has endowed him with a
nature as profound and with feelings as powerful and as excitable as Hamlet and
Macbeth, but the poet has concealed the unconunon intensity of these emotions
under the veil of heroic cahnness, and behind the accepted character of the de-
termined politician. We scarcely perceive the uneasiness which disturbs him
within in those passages where, at the beginning of the conspiracy and towards the
conclusion of it, he envies the careless sleep of his boy Lucius. Little adapted for
dissimulation, he tells the conspirators to perform their parts steadily, like clever
actors, and he sets them a good example. When they think their plans are be-
trayed by Popilius Lena, Cassius is about to kill himself, but Bmtus calmly looks
the suspected person in the face and observes that he is not dangerous. He
conceals the project from his wife until he has heroic proof of her discretion. The
early death of this beloved wife overwhelms him with 'grief and blood ill-tempered,'
and makes him more ready to quarrel with Cassius than is his nature, but imme-
diately after he is able to conceal Portia's death from Messala, that the tidings
may not shake his courage. Over the body of Cassius nature demands her rights,
but he puts off the debt of tears until another time that his personal anguish may
not endanger the public cause. All these striking features of a sharply drawn char-
426 APPENDIX
acter are without display and are almost silently indicated in the piece; no more
laconic characterization has Shakespeare ever made use of than in this laomic
Roman who performs the greatest deeds with the utmost simplicity, and uses the
fewest words over the grandest actions.
The play under consideration is a most striking variation on the theme of
Hamlet and Macbeth^ and gives us a new and remarkable proof of the dq>th and
many-sidedness with which Shakespeare thought out and elaborated any problem
he had once seized upon. A deed of as great, nay greater, wei^t than that de-
manded of Hamlet or planned by Macbeth is laid on this pattern of a man, — the
murder of a hero who had increased the greatness of Rome as much as he had
endangered her freedom. It is a deed of a nature doubtful in itself which is
required of him, not one decidedly right or decidedly wrong, like that to which
Hamlet was called and to which Macbeth was tempted. The uncertainty, the
doubt, the discord lay in the other instances in the men themselves, here it lies in
the thing itself, and is only from thence transferred to an even, clear, and rij^t-
judging mind. Hamlet was urged to a just revenge, he was called to punish a
wrong committed, he ventured not to take the first and only step, he scarcely
desired the end, and the means still less. Macbeth feels himself tempted to murder
and treachery, to the performance of a wrong not yet conunitted, he shudders at
both end and means, but as soon as he b resolved, he takes with the first step all the
ensuing ones; as soon as he b determined as to the end, he adopts the means also,
grasping even more than is necessary. Brutus is persuaded by his friends to take
part in a murder and conspiracy, as he himself calls it, for the restoration of freedom;
his task is to prevent an injustice as yet only apprehended on Caesar's part; he
desires the end, but only the means most necessary for attaining it; he takes the
first step, but not the second and third; whereas he should either not have taken
the first, or he should also have taken others. With him it is not a disturbance of
nature in consequence of an unequal temperament, and thus, resulting from this,
a sin of omission, as with Hamlet; it is not a disorderly, exaggerated discord, and,
after its removal, a crime, as with Macbeth, but after the quiet manly consider-
ration of an equivocal task, it is a deed imrepented, but atoned for, which from the
end in view and the means used was a fault, an error, and as such was revenged
upon his own head.
If in Hamlet the aim of the poet was to treat the relation of the intellectual to the
active nature in a thoroughly human sense, in the history of Jul. Ccps. the tendency
is rather political: to depict the collision of moral against political duties. The
struggle between the humanity of a noble and gentle nature and the political
principles of an energetic character, between p>ersonal feelings and public duty,
this is the soul of this play, and the most interesting point of the situation in which
Brutus is placed.
ROmelin (p. 137): Among the Roman dramas, Jul. Cos. is the most complete,
and stands, moreover, in close proximity to the highest achievements of the Poet.
It is not only rich in beautiful detail, but the action throughout is well constructed
and intelligible. Few and far between are the indications that the Poet moved with
a lack of sureness among classic surroundings. Thus, for example, in the first scene
a Tribune of the People ordering them to return to their houses asks whether
they are ignorant of the fact that workpeople must not walk u[X)n a labouring day
without the sign of their profession; such a police regulation in a republic of that
time is inconceivable; likewise that Cicero in a popular gathering should speak in
CRITICISMS^FREYTAG 427
Greek. The sketch of Caesar himself may serve as an example that it is an un-
profitable task — ^if not well-nigh impossible — to place upon the stage a character
celebrated in history. Great historic achievements presuppose that a man in
difficult situations, among many possible and plausible solutions, undeceived by
conflicting cotmseb, chooses with judgment siure and swift and brings to comple-
tion that one which best serves the purpose he is pursuing. Such does not, how-
ever, lend itself to dramatic treatment, especially as it provides too much realistic
detail, and the poet is not usually endowed with that class of intellect necessary for
the pxirpose — he would hardly be a poet if he were. Thus it happens that great men
are commonly shown on the stage using big words. These, however, usually sound
but inflated and Thrasonical, and this especially applies to Shakespeare's Cesar.
That he refers to himself so often in the third person sounds offensively to us;
likewise when he declares it beneath him that the Senate should be told that he
cannot come; Decius must simply say: 'Caesar does not wish to come.' He could
not threaten to 'spurn as a dog out of hb way' a Roman Senator who prayed
pardon for a brother's banishment; when another repeats this request Caesar could
not have replied 'Wilt thou hold up Olympus?' Had the poet read but a single
chapter of Caesar's CommetUaries he would not have assigned to his hero such ill-bred,
bragging words. To us it is somewhat striking that two really great men, Frederic
and Napoleon, did not admire Shakespeare's historic dramas; they knew only too
well that a great victory is not won after the fashion of Henry V. at Agincourt, and
that great men neither speak nor act as Caesar, Antony, and Coriolanus. Further-
more, it will not pass for a portrajral and habit of that period, if the hostile generals
personally encounter before the battle merely in order to abuse each other and
make threats as did the Homeric heroes. In the celebrated tent-scene between
Brutus and Cassius our final feeling is that the contention had gone too far to admit
of a reconciliation quite so sudden. If one friend has accused another of base action
and threatens chastisement, such words cannot be simply wiped out as with a
sponge, and to set matters right again with family lections as an excuse one
should be in a more depressed mood. Even here the full tide of feeling corresponding
to the momentary aim compels the Poet, though submerged in details, to bring
the conflict, each situation and each part, to fullest expression along the proper
lines.
Freytag (p. 253) : Let the judgments be tested which for a hundred years have
been pronounced in Germany on the character of Julius Caesar, and the glad ap-
proval with which our contemporaries accept the noble effects of this piece. Brutus,
the warm-hearted youth, the noble, the patriotic, is hero; an honest commentator
sees in Caesar, the great, the inmiovable character, superior to all, a politician by
profession, rejoices in the ironical, inconsiderate severity with which, from the
introduction forward, the poet has treated Brutus and Cassius as impractical fools,
and their conspiracy as a silly venture of incapable aristocrats. The actor of judg-
ment at length finds in the same Caesar, whom his commentator has held up to
him as a pattern of the possessor of power, a hero inwardly wounded to death, a
soul in which the illusion of greatness has devoured the very joints and marrow.
Who is right? Each of them. And yet each of them has the notion that the char-
acters are not entirely a mixture of incongruous elements, artfully composed or
in any way untrue. Each of them feels distinctly that they are excellently created,
live on the stage most effectively; and the actor himself feeb this most strongly,
even if the secret of Shakespeare's poetic power should not be entirely understood.
428 APPENDIX
Hudson {Lijty etc., ii, p. 242): As a whole, thb play is several degrees inferior
to Corid, Admirable as b the characterization regarded individually, still, in
respect of dramatic composition, the ^Aay does not, to my mind, stand amcmg the
Poet's masterpieces. But it abounds in particular scenes and passages fraught with
the highest virtue of his genius. Among these may be specially mentioned the
second scene of the first Act, where Cassius lays the egg of the conspiracy in Bnitus's
mind, warmed with such a wrappage of instigation as to assure of its being quickly
hatched. Also, the first scene of the second Act, unfolding the l»rth of the Con-
spiracy, and winding up with the interview, so charged with domestic ^ory, of
Brutus and Portia. The oration of Antony in Cesar's funeral b such an inter-
fusion of art and passion as realizes the very perfection of its kind. Adapted at
once to the comprehension of the lowest mind and to the delectation of the highest
and running its pathos into the very quick of them that hear it, it tdb with terrible
efifect on the people; and when it b done we feel that Cesar's bleeding wounds are
mightier than ever his genius and fortune were. The quarrel of Brutus and Cassius
b deservedly celebrated. Dr Johnson thought it ' somewhat cold and unaffecting.'
Coleridge thought otherwise. I am content to err with Coleridge here, if it be
an error. But there is nothing in the play that seems to be more divinely touched
than the brief scene of Brutus and hb boy Ludus. The gentle and loving nature of
Brutus is there out in its noblest and sweetest transpiration. [See note on IV, iii, 293.]
Von Friesen (iii, 218) refers to the view of Gervinus in regard to the similarity
between the characters of Brutus and Hamlet and thus comments: 'There are to
be found, in both great tragedies, points which will not permit the dismissAl of the
conjecture that Shakespeare carried both conceptions in hb inmost being and,
with but a short interval between, brought them both forth. The earlier date of
composition for one as well as the other does not militate against thb conjecture,
and whether one were the older or younger is of no consequence. The principal
similarity between Brutus and Hamlet lies, nevertheless, in their mutual inclination
to regard all questions and circumstances of life from the ideal rather than the
practical side. The depth of nature from which this habit arises exercises upon
us a peculiar magic of attractive power. We feel and suffer with Brutus in the
selfsame way as with Hamlet, although they both proceed from their natural
dispositions and mode of action in complete contrast to each other. Inasmuch
as Brutus condenses his overflowing thoughts and ideas by the energy of hb i^-ill-
power into short brief words, as though in accord with an inflexible resolution,
he could not so lose himself as does Hamlet, who through a similar richness of
thought and feeling is ever ready in wavering indecision for talk ingenious and pro-
found, yet is not in the position to form an energetic resolution. The genius of
Shakespeare has worked most wonderfully towards Nature's handicraft, he has
brought out in the character of Brutus an ever-rising mildness and loveliness, a
determined denial to bitterness and cruelty, in distinction to Hamlet who, with
similar natural talents, loses himself in fanatical bitterness and acrimony, indeed,
even in cruelty. In spite of this marked opposition of one individuality to the
other, nevertheless the innermost source of tragic fate for both b one and the
same. Had Brutus but looked up>on the intrusive resolution, to free his coimtry
from tyranny, not merely from the ideal standpoint, the death of Antonius — prob-
ably also that of Octavius — would have seemed to him an unavoidable necessity.
That this oversight bitterly revenged itself upon him, in the relinquishing of the
interment to Antonius, Shakespeare might well have learned from Plutarch, but
CRITICISMS— DO WDEN—ULRICI
429
the words are the work of his genius as also the conduct of Brutus directly after the
assassination; his speech in the forum, and likewise the energy of his righteous
indignation at the unworthy behaviour of Cassius.
DowDEN (p. 285) : In Jvl, Cos. Shakspere makes a complete imaginative study
of the case of a man predestined to faUure, who, nevertheless retains to the
end the moral integrity which he prized as his highest possession, and who with
each new error advances a fresh claim upon our admiration and our love. To
maintain the will in a fruitful relation with facts, that was what Romeo could not
do because he brooded over things as they reflected and repeated themselves in his
own emotions; what Hamlet could not do because he would not or could not come
into direct contact with events, but studied them as they endlessly repeated and
reflected themselves in his own thinking. Henry V. had been a ruler of men
because, possessing a certain plain genius for getting into direct relation with con-
crete fact, and possessing also entire moral soundness, his will, his conscience, his
intellect, and his enthusiasms had all been at one and had all tended to action.
Shakspere's admiration of the great men of action is immense because he himself
was primarily not a man of action. He is stem to all idealists because he was aware
that he might too easily yield himself to the tendencies of an idealist. . . . But
with his sternness there is mingled a passionate tenderness. He shows us remorse-
lessly their failure, but, while they fail, we love them.
XJLRia (p. 195) : In the historical drama the interest — ^if it is to be historical —
must, above all things, be truly historical, then it will be truly poetic as well. His-
tory, however, in a certain sense does not trouble itself about persons; its chief
interest is in historical facts and their meaning. Now in Jul, Cos. we have abso-
lutely only one point of interest, a true, but variously jointed unity. One and the
same thought is reflected in the fall of Ciesar, in the deaths of Brutus and Cassius,
and in the victory of Antony and Octavius. No man, even though he were as
mighty as Cssar and as noble as Brutus, is sufficiently great to guide history ac-
cording to his own will; every one, according to his vocation, may contribute
his stone to the building of the grand whole, but let no one presume to think that
he can, with impunity, experiment with it. The great Caesar, however, merely
experimented when he allowed the royal crown to be offered to him, and then
rejected it thrice against his own will. He could not curb his ambition — this
history might perhaps have pardoned — but he did not understand her, and at-
tempted that which he, at the time at least, did not yet wish. The consequence
of this error which was entirely his own, the consequence of this arrogant pre-
sumption which the still active republican spirit, the old Roman love and pride
of freedom, stirred up against him, proved his downfall. But Brutus and Cassius
erred also by imagining that Rome could be kept in its glory and preserved from
its threatening ruin simply by the restoration of the republic; as if the happiness,
the power, and the greatness of a state depended upon its form, and as if a single
man could repair a nation's demoralization by a mere word of conunand. And as
Caesar had thought life unendurable without the outward dignity of the rojral
throne, so they imagined life not worth having without the honour of outward
freedom, for they confounded outward with inward moral freedom, or, at all
events, omitted to consider that the former can exist only as the result and ex-
pression of the latter. They, too, experimented with history; Cassius trusted
that his ambitious and selfish will, and Brutus, that his noble and self-sacrificing will,
430
APPENDIX
would be strong enough to direct the course of history. For both felt that the
moral spirit of the Roman nation had sunk too deep to be able in future to govern
itself as a Republic; Cassius knew, Brutus suspected, that the time of the Rq>ublic
was coming to an end. But in their republican pride and feeling their republican
honour hurt, they thought themselves called upon to make an attempt to save it,
they trusted to their power to be able, as it were, to take it upon their shoulders and
so keep its head above water. This was the arrogance which ¥ras added to the
error, and which spurred them on not only to unreasonable undertakings, but to
commit a criminal act; and, therefore, they doubly deserved the punishment ^s^ch
befell them. Antony, on the other hand, with Octavius and Lepidus — the tal>
ented voluptuary, the clever actor and the good-natured simpleton — although not
half so powerful and noble as their opponents, come off victorious, because, in fact,
they but followed the course of history, and knew how to make use of it. Thus
in all the principal parts we have the same leading thought, the same unity in the
(historical) interest, except that it is reflected in various ways. But it also shines
forth in the secondary parts in Portia's death, as well as in the fall of Cato, Cicero,
and the other conspirators; Portia and Cato perish with the noble but erring Brutus,
who desires only what is good; the others with the selfish Cassius, who thinks only
of himself. All perish because they do not understand, but endeavoured arbi-
trarily to make history or, as arbitrarily, went round the problem which had to be
solved in its own time and 'spoke Greek.' Thus history appears represented from
one of its main aspects, in its inner autocratic, active, and formative power, by
which, although externally formed by individual men, it nevertheless controls and
marches over the heads of the greatest of them.
This is the general, ideal point of view from which history I4>pears here to be
conceived, and also to determine the fate of the dramatic characters. The special
historical condition upon which the whole is founded is again one of the transition
stages in political life, one of the most interesting points of history, both in a
poetical and historical respect. As Coriolanus forms the transition from the
aristocratic to the democratic form of government, here it is the transition from
the republican to the monarchical, the latter being demanded by the historical
circumstances as their stimulating and formative principle. This transition,
according to its idea and the position of things, required an intermediate stage
between the republican and the monarchical form, the oligarchical form which
had been aimed at ever since the days of Sulla, but had hitherto not been able to
obtain a legal existence. Regarded from this point of view, Caesar's death was the
necessary consequence of his antihistorical attempt to leap over his intermediate
stage. Caesar was, in reality, right; monarchy had become a necessity, an historical
right. But history will not tolerate any bounds, and where such are made with
violence, they are again corrected by retrogressions, so-called reactions. It was,
accordingly, the oligarchical principle, represented by Octavius, Antony, and
Lepidus, that in reality gained the victory over Caesar — the representative of the
monarchy which was still a thing of the future — as well as over Brutus and Cassius,
the representatives of the Republic which was already a thing of the past. It con-
quered because it had the right of the immediate present on its side.
But it may be asked, What is the meaning of the introduction of spirits into an
historical drama? Does it not, in the present case, appear a mere dramatic bonne
houche for the multitude? Shakspeare found the ghosts in Plutarch, and retained
them in accordance with his principle of following the historical tradition as faith-
fully as possible, but assuredly not merely out of regard for the historical subject-
CRITICISMS— SNIDER
431
matterj but doubtless also because it appeared to him to be an important symbol, a
significant reference to the actual motive and leading thought in the historical
events, and because it, at the same time, seemed to indicate the point where the
historico-political cause meets the ethical and moral cause. This is why Shak-
speare makes the ghost — ^which according to Plutarch appears to Brutus 'as his evil
genius' — assume the likeness of Csesar; this is why — as in Plutarch — ^he makes it
^pear to Brutus and not to Cassius. Brutus is of a peaceful and tranquil dis-
position, truly noble in mind, devoted to the ethical principles of stoicism, desiring
only the good and the welfare of his country, a worthy and faithful husband to his
high-minded wife, a patriot ready for any sacrifice, but little inclined for energetic
action and still less for political activity. Yet he nevertheless allows himself to
be so far deluded by Cassius 's seductive artifices and well-calculated eloquence, by
the republican fame of his own race — which he thinks it his duty to maintain — and
by his own pride in his dignity as a man — which will not bow to any single indi-
vidual, not even to a Csesar — that not only does he not see or ignores the evident
signs of the times, but determines (even though after great inward struggles) to
commit a deed the worth of which, in a political respect, is extremely doubtful,
because extremely doubtful in its consequences, and which, from a moral point of
view, is undoubtedly equal to a crime. For, apart from the fact that every delicate
sense of moral feeling must revolt with horror fi6m a treachorous murder (even
though politically justifiable), Brutus, like Coriolanus, tramples upon the most
natural and the noblest emotions of the human heart — the duty of gratitude, of
esteem, and loyalty to Caesar — for the sake of the phantom-honoiu: of free citizen-
ship. He murders a man who is not only politically great, but who, as a man,
had always proved himself great and noble, and who had more especially over-
whelmed him with kindness, with proofs of his affection and high esteem. On
the other hand, Brutus was the soul of the conspiracy; if his mind became confused,
his courage unnerved, the whole enterprise must inevitably collapse. And it
did collapse because it was as much opposed to the moral law as to the will of
history.
Accordingly, Shakspeare allows the ghost to play a part in the drama in order to
point out this twofold crime. It appears but once and utters a few, pregnant ^^
words; but we continually feel that it is hovering in the background, like a daif:
thundercloud; it is, so to say, the offended spirit of history itself, which, in fact,
not only avenges political crimes, but visits ethical transgressions with equal
severity. This spirit, as it were, perpetually holds up before oiu: view the moral
wrong in the murder of Caesar, as well as the political right which he had on his side
owing to the necessity of the monarchy, and points to the fact that even the
triumph of the oligarchical principle is but transitory, oligarchy itself but a transi-
tion stage. A similar intention induced Shakspeare to introduce the spectral appari-
tions in his Richard Illy for both of these dramas occupy the same historical stage,
both represent turning points in history, the end of an old and the beginning of a
new state of things; they also exhibit a certain affinity from an ethical point of
view.
Snider (ii, 240) : This drama may be said to exhibit the Ethical World of Shake-
speare in its highest form, as well as in its most accurate gradation. Three typical
characters are brought before us participating in the revolution of a great epoch.
Domestic life is placed in the remote background, where, however, in the person
of Portia, it shines through the tempest of political strife with a divine beauty.
432
APPENDIX
We now behold the Poet risiiig to the seienest elevation of historical insight, in
which the nation is only a transitory element in the great movement of Universal
History.
But first it would perhaps be well to enumerate some of the elements ¥rhicfa
belong to this Ethical World of Shakespeare. Those most obvious and most
commonly recognized are the Individual, Family, and State. . . . For in-
stance, a person may assert the right of individual conscience — a certain
valid principle against the majesty of law, which is the command of the State;
or, like Antigone, may prefer duty towards Family to obedience to dvil
authority; or, finally, there may be a still higher collision — ^that between the
defenders of the State on the one hand, and the supporters of the Worid Spirit on
the other. Such is the collision between nations struggling for independence and
their conquerors. . . .
Now, it b just this collision which Shakespeare has presented in J%A, Cos. For
Csesar b the representative of the World Spirit; he appears upon the stage of
Hbtory as the destroyer of hb country's liberties; hence the great conflict <^ hb
life was with the State. It b, indeed, thb fact which has caused him to be ca-
lunmiated by nearly twenty centuries of writers and speakers. But note that
Shakespeare does not join in thb cry of execration. To him Caesar's career b not
political, but worid-hbtorical; not limited to a single state, but having the Worid
as its theatre. To him Caesar stands at the head of that eternal and infinite
movement in whose grasp the nations are playthings. But, on the other hand, let
us not forget that thb movement was nothing external to Rome — ^it was the
movement of Rome herself; the Roman Constitution was sapped perfaiq)s before
the birth of Caesar. He only carried out the unconscious national wiU; he saw what
Rome needed, and possessed the strength to execute it, and thb b hb greatness —
and, in fact, the only real political greatness. That one man can overturn the form
of government permanently, against the will and spirit of a whole people, b
preposterous. That such was not Shakespeare's view is shown by the termination
of the play — the conspirators are overthrown and the supporters of Caesar are
unsuccessful.
There are three leading moments in the drama: First, Caesar in the consumma-
tion of his world-historical career on the pinnacle of his power and glory; second,
the reaction of the State against him, headed by Cassius; third, the negation of this
reaction through the restoration and absolute validity of the Caesarian movement.
Hence we see that Caesar is the real hero, and that the piece is justly entitled Julius
CcBsar. We also see that the collision is between the World Spirit and the Nation,
and that in this struggle three typical characters particip>ate, forming a complete
cyclus of characterization. Caesar represents the world-historical standpoint;
Cassius, the political; Brutus, the moral. Caesar perishes; the ancient national
sentiment rises up for a moment and destroys the individual, for, being of flesh and
blood, an assassin may rush uix>n him and stab him to the heart — but his thought is
not thus doomed to perish. Next to him comes Cassius, whose great mbtake was
that he still had faith in his country — a pardonable error, if any, to mortals! He
did not, and perhaps could not, rise above the purely political point of view; to him
the State was the ultimate ethical principle of the Universe. Hence he did not
comprehend the world-historical movement represented by Caesar, but collided
with it and was destroyed. He is, indeed, a painful, deeply tragic character; with
all his greatness, devotion, and intelligent activity — still finite and short-sighted.
The mistake of Brutus is that he had anything to do with the matter at all — that
CRITICISMSSTAPFER 433
he took a part — or, at least a leading part — in this revolution. The collision lay
wholly beyond his mental horizon; hence he represents nothing objective — ^is the
bearer of no greatest ethical principle, like Caesar and Cassius. He presumed to
lead when he was intellectually in total darkness, trusting alone to his own good
intentions. We do not blame him because he was ignorant, but because he did
not know that he was ignorant. Every rational being must at least comprehend
its own limits — ^must know that it does not know. We may laud the motive, but
lament the deed; still, man, as endowed with Reason and Universality, cannot
run away from his act and hide himself behind his intention, but must take the
inherent consequences of his deed in their total draunference.
Brutus is, no doubt, the ^hinz of the play, and has given much trouble to
critics on account of the contradictions of hb character. He seems both moral and
immoral — to be actuated by the noblest motives for the public good, yet can give
no rational ground for his act. Indeed, we are led to believe that his vanity was
so swollen by the flattery of Cassius that it hurried him unconsciously beyond the
pale of his convictions. Still, Brutus was undoubtedly a good citizen, a good hus-
band, and a good man. But any one of these three relations may come into conflict
with the others. Which, then, is to be followed? If a man has not subordinated
these spheres into a system — which can be done only by Intelligence — ^he cannot
tell what course to pursue. Sometimes he may follow one, sometimes another, for
in his mind they all possess equal validity. Hence such a person can only be in-
consistent, vacillating, and contradictory in his actions; and such a person was
Brutus — a good, moral man, who recognized all duties, but did not comprehend their
limitations, and, hence, fell beneath their conflict.
Staffer (p. 3 i 8) : HatnUl and J id. Cos. stand to each other in a far closer relation-
ship than that implied by stray reminiscences and details; they belong to the same
current of reflections and ideas, and the poet's thought in each lies in the same
direction. In the earlier one, Shakespeare has drawn a noble nature grappling
with a duty enforced in no actual and binding category, and which, from its doubt-
ful and uncertain character, deeply troubles the conscience of the hero, who
questions and considers and weighs it over and over again. Brutus has a pas-
sionate love for justice, but b led astray by the exacting demands of a too delicate
and lofty soul. In the other tragedy the same note is again struck, but with this
considerable variation, that with Hamlet, although the duty is more imperious, yet
his uncertainty is greater; he, too, thirsts after the Ideal, but with him the generous
instincts of the heart are mingled with all the graceful refinements and superb
disgusts, all the baffling turns of an oversubtle brain, and the end of his hesitations
b a rapid moral decadence. Brutus, after hb deliberation, acts resolutely; he
greatly errs, but he preserves our esteem and sympathy to the end. Hamlet —
always deliberating — errs in a far graver manner by never acting at all, and our
respect for him finally goes. Both of them are men of meditative and studious
nature, called by drcimistances to a line of action repugnant to their whole char-
acter. But of thb deep inner affinity that unites Hamlet with Julius CasoTf
there b none between Julius C<Bsar and the two later Roman tragedies. AwUmy
and Cleopatra and CoriolanuSy both written about the same time, proceed from
an entirely new order of thoughts and reflections, thdr motive being the portrayal
of sdfishness, which in the one case presents itself in an amiable, open, and attract-
ive character, and in the other in a proud and reserved one. All these plays are
pre-eminently ethical studies, not hbtorical sketches.
s8
434
APPENDIX
FiEAY {Lift of Sh.f p. 315): The structure of this play is remarkable; the first
three acts and last two have no characters in common except Brutus, Cassius,
Antony, and Ludus; there are, in fact, two plays in one, Casar^s Tragedy and
CiEsar's Revenge. Contemporary plays by other dramatists were produced in a
double pattern, e, |., Marston's Antonio and MdUda, in two parts; Chapman's
Busiy d*AmboiSt in two parts; Kyd's old play of JeronymOt in two parts. All these
were on the stage at the same time as Jul, C<es. Revenge-plays, with ghosts in
them, were the rage for the next four years. That the present play has been
greatly shortened is shown by the singularly large number of instances m which
mute characters are on the stage, which is totally at variance with Shakespeare's
usual practice. The large number of incomplete lines in every possible position,
even in the middle of speeches, confirms this.
MouLTON {Sk, as Dram, Art,, p. 183): To catch the Grouping of Characters in
Jul. C<es. it must be contemplated in the light of the antithesis between the outer
and inner life. In Brutus the antithesis disappears amid the perfect balancing of
his character, to reappear in the action when Brutus has to choose between his
cause and his friend. In Cesar the practical life only is developed, and he fafls
as soon as action involves the inner life. Cassius has the powers of both outer and
inner life perfect, and they are fused into one master-passion, morbid but unselfish.
Antony has carried to an even greater perfection the culture of both lives, and all
his powers are concentrated in one purpose, which is purely selfish. In the action
in which this group of personages is involved the determining fact is the change
that has come over the spirit of Roman life, and introduced into its public policy
the element of personal aggrandisement and personal risk. The new spirit works
upon Brutus: the chance of winning political liberty by the assassination of one
individual just overbalances his moral judgment, and he falls. Yet in his fall he
is glorious: the one false judgment of his life brings him what is more to him than
victory, the chance of maintining the calmness of principle amid the ruins of a fall-
ing cause, and showing how a Stoic can fail and die. The new spirit affects Cscsar
and tempts him into a personal enterprise in which success demands a meanness
that he lacks, and he is betrayed to his fall. Yet in his fall he is glorious: the
assassins' daggers purge him from the stain of his momentary personal ambition,
and the sequel shows that the Roman world was not worthy of a ruler such as Caesar.
The spirit of the age affects Cassius, and fans his passion to work itself out to his
own destruction, and he falls. Yet in his fall he is glorious: we forgive him the
lowered tone of his political action when we see by the spirit of the new rulers how
desperate was the chance for which he played, and how Cassius and his loved cause
of republican freedom expire together. The spirit of the age which has wrought
upon the rest is controlled and used by Antony, and he rises on their ruins. Yet
in his rise he is less glorious than they in their fall : he does all for self; he may claim,
therefore, the prize of success, but in goodness he has no share beyond that he is
permitted to be the passive instrument of punishing evil.
J. M. Brown (p. 25): Though Shakespeare paid no attention to the unities nor
consciously followed the rules of classical art, this play approaches more nearly to a
Greek tragedy in its exclusion of humor, its introduction of the fury or spirit of
revenge, its unfigurative strength of diction, and its statuesque art than any other
of his tragedies. There is none of the exuberance of wisdom and poetry, none of
CRITICISMS-^MINTO 435
the overflow of thought and character, none of the tragic humor that we find
in Hamlet or Lear. We see him holding the reign upon his imagination. His
passion never overcomes him or leads him to heights whence he may contemplate
all existence and its deeper problems. He was too absorbed in realising a
state of society, and a form of character so different from what he knew and
worked in, to give e3q)ression to the racking thoughts that were beginning to
harass his nature. ... [p. 77]: In no other play except Coricl.^ which is also from
Plutarch, has Shakespeare used his original with such reverence as to adopt almost
all its features and tone. He has resorted to no other source for his material. He
seems to have accepted it as entirely ready for the dramatic mould. And in history,
without a doubt, the dramatist is at the mercy of the historian he reads if the
historian is popular; he must retain the traditional facts and even views of the
facts. His whole genius must be spent on the scenes so that they shall be vivid
and easily represented, on the characters and their relations to each other, and on
the wisdom and poetry he puts into their mouths.
And closely as we feel the incidents, and the characters, and even their speeches
in the play follow the narratives of Plutarch, still we recognize that there is a
wealth of genius spent upon it, that Shakespeare has written his undoubted sign-
manual across the page. He has made it so noble and statuesque in its art that
critics almost incline to place it in this respect above his other and greater tragedies.
He has caught the spirit of the staimch Roman republican and interpreted his
ideals so as to ennoble them. He takes the Brutus of Plutarch and, without seem-
ing to change the spirit of the original, makes him 'the noblest Roman of them all,'
he chisels out of the crude and sometimes inconsistent material a statue worthy to
be placed in the shrine of the ages.
To begin with, the relations of Brutus to Caesar are not altogether plain or satis-
factory; if the conquerer is not his friend and adorer, then half the tragedy of the
death is gone. In the narrative the would-be king is made to distrust Brutus, and
to have his mind poisoned by tales against him; he fears 'these pale and lean men,'
meaning both Brutus and Cassius. The poet rejects this feature and makes the
friendship between the two of the noblest; into Cassius he gathers up the offensive
touches of the picture; only to Cassius is the remark about lean men made to apply.
And from some other soiurce than Plutarch (probably Suetonius's lives of the
Cxsars, where the expression is quoted in Greek), however, he introduces the
striking phrase *et tu Brute,' adding hunself, 'then fall Caesar'; who can measure
how much this deepens the tragedy? It turns the assassination as far as Brutus is
concerned from a vulgar conspiracy against an ambitious tyrant into the mistake
of a lofty spirit after long spiritual struggle. The sleeplessness that haimts the
patriot in the original, as only physical fatigue from constant exertion and trouble, is
raised into new significance, it is the result of the conflict within him between friend-
ship and patriotism. The last stroke that Brutus gives the victim b vulgarized in
Plutarch; here it is spiritualized and greatened by the tragic surprise of the loyal
friend disillusioned; here the last moments of the tyrant are made immortal by his
willing surrender of a life that had not an unsullied friendship, a loyal Brutus in it.
MiNTO (p. 304) : There are passages in Jtdius Cctsar and Coriolanus almost as
bombastic as an)rthing to be found in Shakespeare's dramatic predecessors.
Caesar's bearing in the interview with the conspirators, when they beg the repeal
of Publius Cimber's banishment, is not less lofty than Tambiurlaine's inflation,
though more calm and dignified:
436
APPENDIX
'Know Caesar doth not wrong, nor without cause
Will he be satisfied.'
And the speech beginning,
'I could be well moved, if I were as you,'
may not be an ofifence against the modesty of nature, but, taken by itself, is an
ofifence against the modesty of art. The boasts and brags of Coriolanus out-Herod
the Herod of the mysteries. For example (I, i, 200),
'Would the nobility lay aside their truth.
And let me use my sword, I'd make a quarry
With thousands of these quarter'd slaves, as hi^
As I could pick my lance.'
And (IV, V, 112):
'Let me twine
Mine arms about that body, where against
My grained ash an hundred times hath broke
And scarr'd the moon with splinters.'
It is a noticeable drciunstance that these inflated speeches — as well as one or
two in Anlony and Cleopatra — are put in the mouths of Roman heroes. I am
not quite sure that this is not one explanation and justification of them; they may
have been Shakespeare's ideal of what appertained to the Roman character. But
apart from their being true to the Roman manner, they may be justified also on the
principle of variety. It must have been a relief to Shakespeare's mind, ever hungry
for fresh types of character, to expiate in the well-marked, high-astounding ideal;
and it is equally a relief to the student or spectator who may have followed his
career and dwelt with appreciative insight on his varied representation of humanity.
This is the broadest justification; if we consider more curiously, other justifications
make themselves p>alpable. The inflation of Coriolanus and Caesar is not, like Tarn-
burlaine's, presented to us as a thing unquestioned and admired by those around
them, as being, for aught said upon the stage to the contrary, the becoming lan-
guage of heroic manhood. The violent language of Coriolanus is deprecated by his
friends, and raises a furious antagonism in his enemies. Side by side with Caesar's
high conception of himself, we have the humourous expression of his greatness by
blimt Casca and the sneering of cynical Cassius. In the case of Caesar, too, there
is a profound contrast between his lofty declaration of immovable constancy and
the inunediate dethronement of the god to lifeless clay. We must not take the
rant of Caesar, Coriolanus, or Antony by itself simply as rant, and wish, with Ben
Jonson, that it had been blotted out. We must consider whether it does not be-
come the Roman character; we must remember that a varied artbt like Shake-
speare may be allowed an occasional rant as a stretch to powers weary of the
ordinary level; and, above all, we must observe how it is regarded by other person-
ages in the drama — in what light it is presented to the audience.
Mabie (p. 296) : In point of style Jul. Cas. marks the culmination of Shakespeare's
art as a dramatic writer. The ingenuity of the earlier plays ripened in a rich and pel-
lucid flexibility; the excess of imagery gave place to a noble richness of si>eech; there
is deep-going coherence of structure and illustration; constructive instinct has
STAGE HISTORY ^j^j
passed on into the ultimate skill which is bom of complete identification of thought
with speech, of passion with utterance, of action with character. The long popu-
larity of the play was predicted by Shakespeare in the words of Cassius:
llow many ages hence
Shall this, our lofty scene be acted over
In States unborn and accents yet unknown.'
The great impression made by JvX. Cos, in a field which Jonson regarded as his
own probably led to the writing of Sejanus, which appeared two years later, and of
Catiline f which was produced in 1611. A comparison of these plays dealing with
Roman history brings into clear relief the vitalizing power of Shakespeare's
imagination in contrast with the conscientious and scholarly craftsmanship of
Jonson. In Sejanus almost every incident and speech, as Mr Knight has pointed
out, is derived from andent authorities, and the dramatist's own edition of the
play was packed with references like a text-book. The characters speak with
admirable correctness after the manner of their time, but they do not live. Brutus,
Cassius, Antony, Portia, on the other hand, talk and act like living creatures, and
the play is saturated with the ^irit and enveloped in the atmosphere of Rome.
ScHELLiNG (ii, 23): Jul. Cos. is one of the most regularly constructed of the
tragedies of Shakespeare, excelling greater plays in the uniform adequacy of its
diction and in the evenness and finish of its workmanship. Essentially ornate
although the art of Shakespeare b, in this tragedy he seems to have caught by
inspiration the atmosphere of dignity and restraint which we habitually associate
with the republic of ancient Rome; and this even although his picture is made up
at times of details open to stricture at the hands of the classical purist and specialist
in archaeology.
STAGE fflSTORY.
That Jul. Cos. was one of the most popular plays at the time of its composition
we may infer from the maimer in which Digges refers to certain passages in hb
commendatory verses in the Folio. As to its earliest recorded performance, Malone
{Var. '21, vol. ii, p. 450) says: 'It appears by the papers of the late Mr George
Vertue that a play called Casar^s Tragedy was acted at court before the loth of
April in the year 1613. This was probably Shakespeare's Jid. C<ts. It being much
the fashion at that time to alter the titles of his plays.' Malone's conjecture b, no
doubt, borne out by circumstantial evidence, not only as to Shakespeare, but as to
almost all other authors of that time. The extraordinary Diary kept by Philip
Henslowe fiunishes many examples of perversions and phonetic abbreviations of
titles of plays and names of writers with whom he had dealings while proprietor
of the Rose Theatre, between the years 1597 and 1603. A transcript of those
parts of Henslowe's Diary which Malone considered worthy of preservation is given
in the Variorum of '21 (vol. iii, pp. 294-328), and more recently the whole has been
printed under the able editorship of W. W. Greg. Sir Henry Herbert was Master of
the Reveb from 1623 until the closing of the theatres in 1642, hb roll of plays per-
formed at court — ^although it does not cover every jrear — ^is a fair index to the
popularity of those works publicly produced during that period. Under date 31
January, 1636, Julius Casar is entered as having been acted at St James; and this
b the only play by Shakespeare recorded by Herbert within those nineteen years.
438
APPENDIX
Amaog the fifteen old pUjrs enumenited by Downes, the prompter, as forming the
repertoire of the King's Company at the Theatre Ro3ral between 1660 and 1830,
Jmiius Cmsar^ with one or two other of Shakespeare's plays, b mentioned. Downes
also recocds that BeO acted the part of Cesar, frran which fact Genest (i, 339)
argues that this play 'must have been revived abotU 1671/ It is much to be
regretted that the Index to Genest's AccomU tf the Stage from 1660 to 1830 is very
far from complete in its leferences to perfonnances of plays recorded in the pages of
that excellent work. The following Ibt of dates is compQed from a page by page
examination:
Theatre Royal.
Haymarket.
1684, BrMtef...Betterton.
Jan. 14, 1706, Bnf/i(5...Betterton; CiEsar... Booth; Cd-
pkumia,.Mrs Barry; P0f/ia...Mrs Brace-
girdle.
Drury Lane. Jan. 24, 1715, Bnf/i(5...Booth; i4fitoffy...Wi]ks.
Lincoln's Inn Fields. Mardi i, 1718, Bni/f»...Keen; iifitoffy...Quin.
Drury Lane.
Sept. 30, 1725,
«4
««
Nov. 8, 1734, Bnf/f»...Quin.
««
««
April 16, 1736,
C«
««
Jan. 19, 1738. (See vol. iii, p. 526, for account of the cast.)
««
««
April 28, 1738. (For the Shakespeare Monument Fund.)
««
««
Sept. 21, 1738, 2*^ Cd»efi..J^acklin.
««
«<
Sept. 10, 1739.
(«
««
Jan. 17, 1740.
««
««
Mardi 13, 1740.
««
«<
Oct. 4, 1740.
«
«
Dec. II, 1740.
«
41
April 3, 1 741.
Covent Garden.
Nov. 20, 1742.
t«
<t
Jan. 10, 1744-
ti
it
April 18, 1774, 5rtt/Mj...Sheridan.
(t
(i
Oct. 31, 1744, Portia,..MTS Pritchard.
Drury Lane.
March 28, 1744, AfUony...BaiTy,
((
«i
April 30, 1744.
Covent Garden.
April 20, 1744.
«t
l(
Nov. 24,1748, P(>r/w...Peg Woffington.
tt
II
Oct. 19, 1749.
((
II
Nov. 24, 26, 27, 1750. Portia...Veg Woffington.
((
II
Feb. 19, 1751.
(1
U
March 29, 1754.
II
u
Jan. 28, 1755.
II
tt
April 14, 1758, Antony. ..Bdiiry,
(1
II
Jan. 31, 1766. (See vol. v, p. 107; for account of cast.)
<i
II
April 25. 1767.
((
II
May 4, 1773-
Drury
Lane.
Jan. 24, 1780. (.Vted about six times.)
Covent
Garden.
Feb. 29, 181 2, Brutus...}. P. Kemble; Antony...C. Kemble.
[Eighteen performances.]
11
II
Jan. 13, 1813.
Bath.
Dec. 30, 181 2, Brutus...]. P. Kemble.
STAGE HISTORY— BROWN
439
«
«
Bath.
Dniry Lane.
Bath.
Covent Garden.
«
«
It
«
Bath.
Covent Garden.
«
<c
t(
«
Dniry Lane.
Covent Garden.
Sadler's Wells.
Ireland:
Covent Garden. From Feb. 4> i8i4i to May 17, 181 7, J. P. Kemble acted
Brutus sixteen times; the later date is
that of his last appearance in the char-
acter.
June z8, 1819, Cajji«5..Jdacready (his first appearance in
the part).
April 21, 1819.
Dec. 7, 1820. Brfi/iM...Wallack; i4fi<<my...Cooper; Cas-
siu5...BQO\h (the first appearances of
each in these parts).
Dec. 18, 1821, Brfi/s«5...Young. [Genestsays: 'No person
living had seen so good a Brutus as
Young, and in all probability there never
was a better.* — vol. ix, p. 121.]
April 22, 1822.
Dec. 22, 1823, Brfi/tt5...Young; Antony...C. Kemble.
May 23, 1825.
Feb. 19, 1825.
Sept. 26, 1825. [Acted seven times.]
Oct. 2y 1826. Bni/s«5. ..Young.
Oct. I, 1827.
Oct. 26, 1829, Brf</s«5...Young; Poriia,.Mts Faudt.
Spring of 1837, Charles Kemble played Brutus for last time.
Nov. 6, 1862, Phelps acted Brutus for farewell per-
formance.
Smock Alley Theatre, Dublin, season of 1749-50, Bfii/M5...Sheridan; Cassius,,,
Mossop.
" " " Dec. 2, 1763. [Receipts third largest in twenty-two
nights; only exceeded by Mer, cf Ven,]
Sehhakmer records, as early performances in America, the following:
Charleston Theatre. April 20, 1774.
South wark Theatre. Jan. 29, 1791.
New York Theatre. March 14, 1794.
In February, 1856, Jul. Cos. was produced for the first time in Boston at the
Boston Theatre. Among the numerous performances of this play recorded by
T. A. Brown {History of New York Stage) I have selected such as seemed worthy ol
special mention on account of prominence of actors, historic interest, etc. They
are as here given:
Chatham Garden & Theatre. Nov., 1828, Cassius...]. B. Booth.
Bowery Theatre. Dec. i, 1827, Jj/arifc i4ff/<my...Forrest.
Dec. 27, 1839, Brutus...C, Kean.
March 19, 1884, M. Antony. .,B&may.
Nov. 16, 1891, Meiningen Co.
Nov. 25, 1864, Cassius...]. B. Booth, Jr.; Brutus. ..E.
Booth; Antony...]. W. Booth.
26, 1887, Brutus...E. Booth; Casssius...BBXTett.
25, 1871, i4ff/<my...Booth; Cassius...Bamtt; Casar..,
F. Bangs.
Dec. 27, 1876, Br»/f<j...Davenport; Cassius. ..Bziittt; An-
tony...Y. Bangs; Casar...'b/L, Levick.
<i
i<
«
«
«
«
Winter Garden.
Academy of Music. Dec.
Booth's Theatre. Dec.
it
«
440
APPENDIX
In 1898 H. Beerbohm Tree acted Mairh Antony in an elaborate productioD at
Her Majesty's Theatre; two years later the play was reproduced at the same
theatre with a slightly different cast. The scenery and costumes for these pro-
ductions, designed by Sir L. Alma Tadema, were subsequently purchased by Richard
Mansfield and were used in his revival of the play in America at the Grand Opera
House, Chicago, on October 14, 1902. Jul. Cos. is at present included in the
Shakespearean repertoire of R. B. Mantell, wherein he acts the part of Brutus.
Across.
L. TiECK in 181 7 visited London and was present at several performances of
Shakespeare's plays at Covent Garden Theatre, among which was Jul. C€ts.,
wherein J. P. Kemble acted Brutus; Charles Kemble, Antony, and Young, Cassius.
Tieck [Kristische Sckrtflen, iv, 324) describes the production, but, it is to be re-
gretted, in very general terms. This was evidently one of J. P. Kemble's last ap-
pearances in the r61e. Tieck's observation on the inadequacy of his voice in the
quarrel scene is, therefore, hardly surprising. 'Charles Kemble acted the part
of Antonius,' observes Tieck, 'with great intensity, except that his laughter, after
the uprising of the people, was too mischievously exultant [zu schadenfroh],
whereby the intent of the poet was mistaken and misrepresented.' The scene of
Cssar's assassination b thus described: 'The stage was of great depth, and
Cssar sat upon a throne in the furthest background; as the petitioners s^iproached
and were repulsed, the conspirators ranged themselves, markedly enough, in the
form of a pyramid, of which Cesar was the apex, while Brutus stood at the left
near the proscenium. Casca gave him the first blow, and Caesar turned to the
right and received from a second enemy a second wound; he staggered terrified
again toward the left, and met another injury, likewise on the right; and now the
space became much larger, and the agitated movements of the mortally wounded
man less and more dexterous, but yet he staggered five or six times left and right in
order to be stabbed by the conspirators who remained at rest, until he received the
death-blow from Brutus, and with the words "Et tu, Brute?" fell to the ground.
The whole scene thus arranged like a clever ballet, lost all value, and was rendered
flat by its pretentious majesty. It was only impossible not to laugh.'
Macready (p. 129) says that the part of Cassius, which he acted in 1818 for the
first time, was one in whose representation he had always taken 'p)eculiar pleasure,
as one among Shakespeare's most {>erfect specimens of idiosyncrasy.' In the ac-
count of the season of 1822 Macready notes (p. 170) : 'The season dragged its slow
length along, but received an impetus from the performance of Jul. Cces.y Young
acting Brutus; myself, Cassius; C. Kemble, Mark Antony; and Fawcett, Casca.
The receipt of the first night exceeded, it was said, £600, and the house was crowded
to its several repetitions. On this occasion I entered con amore into the study of
the character of Cassius^ identifying myself with the eager ambition, the keen
{>enetration, and the restless envy of the determined conspirator, which, from that
time, I made one of my most real personations.' — In regard to the character of
BrutuSy which he later acted, Macready, imder date 18*** October, 1836, says: *It
is one of those characters that requires peculiar care which only repetition can
give, but it never can be a part that can inspire a [>erson with an eager desire to go
to a theatre to see represented.' — Again: 'London, Nov. 18, 1850: Acted Brutus
in my own opinion, in my own judgment, far beyond any performance I ever gave
STAGE HISTORY^WINTER 441
of the character; it was my last to many, and I wished it to be impressive. I do
not think the audience in the aggregate were equal to the performance; they ap-
plauded warmly the salient passages, but they did not seem to watch the gentle,
loving, self-subdued mind of Brutus which I tried to make manifest before them.
The gentle touches were done with great care, and, I think, with skill — the remon-
strances with Cassius in third act about Cassar's funeral and, in the fourth, the
quarrel.' — In 1851 Macready retired from the stage; on January 24 of that year
he acted BriUus for the last time, and thus records his own impressions of the
performance: 'Acted Brutus as I never — ^no never — acted it before, in regard to
dignified familiarity of dialogue, or enthusiastic inspiration of lofty purpose.
The tenderness, the reluctance to deeds of violence, the instinctive abhorrence of
tjrranny, the open simplicity of heart, and natural grandeur of soul, I never so per-
fectly, so consciously, portrayed before. I think the audience felt it.'
Winter (Life and Art of E. Boothy p. 216) : [Edwin] Booth's Cassius was comet-
like, rushing, and terrible — ^not lacking in human emotion, but coloured with some-
thing sinister. In Cassius he used the 'business' of his father's Richard ^ in the
moment after the murder of King Henrys — the business, namely, of striding with
heedless preoccupation across the head of the dead Caesar. [See note by Gould,
in, i, 281.] It was an embodiment replete with effect. As Brutus, on the other
hand. Booth presented an ideal of character more dependent on its absolute truth
than its electrical sympathy. ... He discriminated between the parts with
excellent discretion. The more his Brutus was seen, the more it was loved. His
slender figure, so appropriate to Cassius, had not the massiveness usually asso-
ciated with the mental and moral attributes of Brutus. The absence of lurid
flash and of telling points lessened the effect of emotional excitement. But the
actor's spirit was celestial and his art was superb. Booth's Brutus had little
significance for the senses; it was full of loveliness for the soul. Booth's delivery
of the fine Shakespearean periods was full of grave sweetness and melancholy
beauty, and the touching effect of his melodious elocution was deepened by the
exquisite grace of his demeanor and gesture, and by his aspect of wasting thought
and almost haggard sorrow. One of the most striking qualities of his assumption
of Brutus was the lofty and lovely chivalry of his manner toward Portia. . . .
Booth depicted Antony as a person of politic, reckless, somewhat treacherous
nature, yet resolute, strong, and fierce. ... To the lighter and more winning
qualities, and to the patrician nobility and refinement of Antony, Booth rendered
the utmost justice. The darker shades of the character were judiciously repressed.
[The following accoimt of Sir H. Beerbohm Tree's production of Jul. Cos. and
his portrayal of Antony is by Percy Simpson. It is given as an appendix in Mark
Hunter's edition:]
Act I. to Act in, Scene i. made in Tree's version one long act of five Scenes,
culminating in Caesar's murder and Antony's coming to the Senate House; Act H.
was the Forum Scene, ending with Antony's exulting cry —
'Mischief, thou art afoot,
Take thou what course thou wilt.'
Act ni, in two Scenes — 'Brutus's tent' and 'Plains of Philippi' — ended with
Antony's tribute over the body of Brutus, 'This was a man.' Antony's part at
the dose is slight, so the effect was to deepen the strong emphasis of the earlier acts
442 APPENDIX
and correspondingly to depress the later. It distmbed still further the uneven
balance of the play.
The scenery was an exquisite picture of vanished Rome. Sir L. Afana Tadema,
who designed it, has no rival among living artists in portraying the antique.
Temple and palace, street and forum were revealed aglow with Italian ookxtr. . . .
The 'Public Place' of the opening Scene (Scenes i. to iii. in the poet's text) was
happily chosen for its associations with the great Dictator. It was the Forum of
Julius with the Temple of Venus Genetriz seen throu^ a vast arch oC triumph
spanning the front of the stage. Cesar laid out this space at vast cost, and bdlt
the temple to the tutelary goddess of the Julian house which traced its descent from
lulus, the son of i£neas, the son of Venus. In the centre of the Formn stood a
bronze statue of Cesar 'decked with ceremony* and flanked by trees. In the
background the roof of the Temple of Jupiter Capitolinus rose against the sky.
The crowd was a many-coloured group, in which the sober tints of the workmen's
tunics and short-hooded mantles set off the bright dresses of rich bystanders and
the pomp of the imperial procession. Cesar (played by Mr C. Fulton) entered
in royal state, accompanied by guards and standard-bearers and the actual pa-
geantry of a Roman triumph, by Senators in red and white togas, and by bands of
lictors with the fasces (axes tied in bundles of rods, symbolizing the magistiate's
power of life and death). He wore the kingly dress, which irritated the rqyublican
faction, a robe of chiret red silk with an amethyst-coloured toga, and a laurd-wreath
(used on the plea of hiding baldness), — and he carried an ea^e-topped sceptre.
Calpumia had a robe of pale blue, and a si^phire 'palla' figured with gold lilies,
and she wore a crown of roses. Antony in this scene was equii^)ed as a ruimer for
the Lupercalia with the goat-skin cincture, and had a dappled fawn-skin h»inging
from his shoulder. As the procession passed out on its way to the games, a giil
from a house by the archway flung at Caesar's feet a handful of red roses, and he
started back at the omen of blood. It was a Roman touch, and not only recalled
the tribune's anger at strewing
'flowers in his way
That comes in triumph over Pompey's blood,'
but it preluded very daintily Decius Brutus's comment upon Caesar's being 'super-
stitious grown of late.' Antony, however, took the omen very differently. He
caught a rose as he passed, and when the procession re-entered he came in caressmg
two girls, one of whom had flung him the rose. It was these two girls who after-
wards induced the foremost of the mob to give him a hearing in the Forum scene.
Twice the procession crossed the stage, accentuating the dialogue of Cassius and
Brutus in the interval. . . . During the dialogue with Casca the stage darkened.
an<l the storm was vividly rendered, stray groups flying past to seek shelter while
Cassius ' bared his bosom to the thunder-stone.' The dying away of the storm and
the coming of morning were marked in the following scene, 'Brutus's orchard,'
a lovely glimpse of garden seen from the end of a pillared court. Round a marble
sent in the centre the conspirators gathered. Here, too, Mr Waller (Brutus) sat
for the opening of the speech, * It must be his death,' then rose as he continued it and
leaned metiitatively against a pillar. Action and utterance admirably expressed
the philosophic type. They further marked off the quieter tone of dramatic elocu-
tion ttvday from the 'sound and fury' of a bygone school of actors. Miss Millard
played Portia movingly. Her dress was severely simple, as became the wife of
Brutus — pure white, in which the only touch of colour was a turquoise and silver
STAGE HISTORY— WINTER 443
clasp. In strong contrast with the setting of this scene was the gorgeous restora-
tion of a Roman atrium in Scene iii, 'Cassar's house.' Garlanded busts of the
Hermes type (carved heads on square pedestals) stood against the pillared walls;
in the centre was the impluvium or basin below the opening in the pannelled
ceiling which served as a smoke-vent and drained ofif the rain-water from the roof;
beyond was a view of the triclinium or dining room, and the peristyle or pillared
court. Miss Hanbury acted well the suspense and agony of Calpumia.
The 'Public Street' of Scene iv. was very beautiful. Pillared buildings in the
foreground; then a row of shops with lowered sun-blinds led to a distant archway
with Ionic pilasters and massive entablature. Across the street ran a line of those
curious stepping-stones still to be seen at Pompeii, to enable passengers to cross in
bad weather. The text of this scene was very neatly arranged. It opened with
Portia's 'I prithee, boy, run to the Senate-house,' and the pretty dialogue which
follows, down to 'Sooth, madam, I hear nothing'; then lines 39-46, 'I will go in,'
&c., and the entry of Artemidorus. He wore the soothsayer's dress — thepileus
or skull-cap of felt and the trachea or augur's robe of bright scariet stripes with a
purple hem — and he carried the litmus or crooked wand which probably originated
the medieval bishop's crozier. Portia left with the question whether Caesar had
gone to the Capitol; Artemidorus read his warning 'schedule,' and Caesar's proces-
sion entered, the scene closing with Artemidorus's discomfiture.
It was thus a happy prleude to Scene v. 'The Senate House.' The curtain
rose upon some senators seated in tiers of circular seats on either side, with a
throne raised high and steps in the centre, and behind this a canopied and pillared
balcony in which the archivists sat. Caesar entered in procession, escorted by his
murderers. They took their seats at the sides; then rose one by one and knelt be-
fore him, each moving nearer as he supported Cimber. When Casca struck, Cssar
sprang to his feet, then half-defending himself rushed down the steps, stabbed by
each man as he passed, and meeting with outstretched hands Brutus who waited
at the foot. Those not in the secret fled with a cry of horror. For the moment
there was an impressive hush; then a rising murmiu: was heard in the street outside,
the first sign of 'the people besides themselves with fear.' Gathering round the
body, the conspirators reddened their hands in blood — a graphic touch usually
omitted in acting copies, as its significance depends upon a hunting custom long
obsolete. They turned to depart by the curtained entrance behind, but paused
on meeting Antony, who passed through them, with signs of deep emotion, straight
to the body. The double part which he has to act — accepting their overtures,
but indicating his real feeling to the audience — ^was conveyed by strokes of byplay.
As each man 'rendered him his bloody hand,' the blunt Casca wiped ofif the stains
on Antony's wrist, and he repressed a rising look of horror. So his eyes flashed with
a momentary gleam of passion as Cassius at the line, 'Brutus, a word with you,'
stepped over Caesar's body in his haste to move across. The scene ended with an
unhappy inroad of modem sentimentality. Calpumia, with a fold of crape thrown
over her shoulders, rushed in and postured in speechless agony over the dead.
Elizabethan tragedy was ' made of stemer stufif.' The lonely figure of Calpumia in
her widowed home brooding over the fulfilment of her presage stirs the imagination
with depths of suggestion which surface-pathos leaves untouched. Moreover
the improvised half-mourning bordered on the ludicrous. '
The great scene in the Forum followed as Act H. On the spectator's right was
the Temple of Concord with its outer gallery and the historic rostrum. The
Temple of Saturn was on the left. The towering height of the buildings and the
444
APPENDIX
vast surging crowd gave the impression of enormous space. The scene was per-
formed in its historic setting. First, Brutus's short-lived triumph. £Bs reception
was friendly even in the 'We will be satisfied/ and he seemed to make his points,
not because of his laconic pleading, but because he 'sat high in all the people's
hearts.' The body was brought in, mourned by Antony, whose head was muffled in
his toga. On Brutus's departure, he was ringed round by a sullen crowd who
hissed and made signs of leaving when he turned to mount the rostrum. Two
girls, with whom at his entrance in Act I, he had exchanged some smiling talk during
the pause in the procession, stood near. He spoke a hurried aside to them now,
and they stepped forward and induced some of the reluctant bystanders to wait.
The great speech began. It was finely modulated and struck the emotional note
distinctive of Antony. The mob became a storm-swept torrent. So far as mere
stage management goes, this episode of the play stood out as singulariy briUiant.
With the cry * We'll mutiny — we'll bum the house of Brutus,' they surged up the
terraced steps in the background, to be recalled with difficulty till the will was
mentioned. Opposite the rostnun was a shattered pedestal inscribed 'Cesar*;
the effigy had been destroyed, perhaps by the coryplueus of the mob, the First
Citizen, who weilded a large hammer. Springing on this pedestal, Antony read
the will. It was obviously impossible to represent the historic burning of the body
in the Forum and the plucking of lighted brands from the pyre to fire the murderer's
houses. But at the words ' Go fetch fire,' some of the crowd left to re-enter with
flaming torches and head the final rush of the avengers.
Act III. began in Brutus's tent. Fine as the episode of the quarrel is, it was tame
in comparison with the storm of passion which preceded. The catastrophe comes
as it were in the middle of the play. It is the spirit and method of Greek rather than
of Elizabethan drama. The modem playgoer calls it anti-dimaz. The scene was
well rendered, keeping the sharp antithesis of the leading figures. The loss of
Ludus's song is much to be regretted. Mr Tree uses the traditional substitute,
'Orpheus with his lute,' borrowed from Eewry VIII.
The scene of Phih'ppi — a picturesque ravine with a level space of foreground —
closed the act. From the rocks on either side the opening parley took place.
The battle is, as usual in Shakespeare, a series of loose excursions and alarms
sufficient to convey the suggestion of fighting. A seventeenth century audience,
unaccustomed to luxurious mounting, took the hint and
' made imaginary puissance
With four or five most vile and ragged foils
Right ill-disposed in brawl ridiculous.'
But in the conditions of the modem stage, the aimless rush and clatter of fighting
groups striking each other's shields and a moiety of them simulating death bring no
illusion. Cassius's suicide at sunset was dramatic for the contrast of the Roman
with the dark Eastern figure of the skin-clad Pindarus. The only marked depart-
ure from the text occurred at this point. There was no Titinius, and, therefore, no
crowning of dead Cassius with the wreath of victory. The fact that Cassius in-
spires sufficient affection for his friend to follow him in death is of vital significance,
and gives point to Brutus's tribute —
' The last of all the Romans, fare thee well I
It is impossible that ever Rome
Should breed thy fellow.'
STAGE HISTORY—WINTER 445
Brutus' death was also changed. ... At the words 'Hence! I will follow/ Brutus
was left alone; he knelt, unbuckled the shoulder-clasp of his armour, and killed
himself with the cry, 'Cssar, now be still!' Octavius's army entered, and the
epitaph on 'the noblest Roman of them all' was spoken at once by Antony, con-
spicuous in rich armour and the general's scarlet cloak amid the plainly-accoutred
soldiery. It was a moving end, but it was impossible not to feel the lowered note of
these later scenes. The very success of the play was on that account an eloquent
tribute to the power and beauty of the representation; it ran an even course from
January to June, and public interest in it was keen to the last.
Winter {AH oj Mansfield, ii, 160): All around BnUus, from first to last, there is
an atmosphere of omen that betokens peril, anguish, and death. In that spirit
Richard Mansfield apprehended the character, and because of his diffusion and sus-
tainment of that poetic ideal — making Brutus almost spectral, in spiritual conflict,
fanatical self-absorption, and silent, patient, majestic misery — ^the embodiment took
its place among the most thoughtful achievements of the modem stage. . . . The
potent charm of the impersonation was in its atmosphere, in its tremor of con-
flicting emotions, and in its sad isolation — the awful loneliness of a great soul fated
to disaster. In the scene of the quarrel with Cassius Mansfield wisely followed the
good precedent long ago established by Barton Booth, probably the most original
performer of Brutus ever seen upon the stage, and so he made the embodiment im-
pressive by innate authority, restrained demeanor, intense feeling, and penetrat-
ing tones. [See Notes IV, iii, 43; IV, iii, 70.] It was in the Garden Scene; the
moment after the assassination of C<tsar; the Ghost Scene; and the Death Scene
that he wrought his best effects. The spectral haggard, ravaged figure of Brutus,
in those imaginative passages — and more especially in presence of the phantom
— ^being the consununate image of a haunted mind, predestined to error, misery,
and ruin. Mansfield's embodiments of Brutus differed from previous present-
ments of the character that are still vividly remembered, in its strong accent-
uation, at first of fanatical monomania, and afterward of the self-contained
agony of remorse. His aspect, upon his first appearance, was that of a man
intensely preoccupied, almost dazed, with the conflict of distracting, harrowing
thoughts. The face was pale, the eyes were simken and hollow. In the Gar-
den Scene the voice was peculiarly tremulous and distressful, till at the close of
that trying ordeal, and again in the Senate Scene, it became stem and solemn, as
if with a terrible resolution, the access of fanaticism. When striking at Ccuar
he delivered a perfunctory stroke, and momentarily seemed to recoil from the deed
— in that particular following the precedent of Edwin Booth. His aspect, imme-
diately after the assassination, became that of a man absolutely insane. Hb
delivery of the vindicatory speech to the people was colloquial, and it was cleverly
contrived; loud shouts were made to follow the words, 'Hear me for my cause,'
and the next were spoken as a check to the shouting, 'And be silent that you may
hear.' In appearance ... he looked, indeed, the noble Roman, closely resem-
bling certain paintings of Roman worthies that imaginative skill has framed.
The latest production of Jul. Cos. in America is that given at Buffalo, New York,
October 12, 191 2, under the direction of William Faversham, who acted Marc
Antony; with Tyrone Power as Brutus; Frank Keenan as Cassius; Fuller Mellish as
Julius C(tsar; Julie Opp as Portia; Jane Wheatley as Calphumia.
446 APPENDIX
James O. Bennett (Chicago Ruard-Herald, Oct. ao, 191 2) gives the following
account of the perfonnance: In the past it has been agreed that the ri^t scenic
treatment of Julius Casar demands spaciousness and the degree of <^ulence that
is consistent with dignity. In the new production there is a radical dqwrture
from tradition in this respect. The scenes are ablaze with color. This b not the
Rome of white marble, if there ever was such a Rome, but a dty recalling the vivid
hues and abrupt contrasts of Pompeiian frescoes. The fonmi scene is framed in a
mighty double arch of brown stone that is nearly as high as the proscenium arch
of the theater, and that rises close to it. In the background the temples and obe-
lisks that overlook the forum mount high against the deq> blue sky of Italy. The
scene » radiant with white sunlight. In the whole scheme of decoration the color
of that oriental influence which was permeating Rome, and which ultimately was
to work its destruction, is felt.
This opening scene is riotous with the merry-making of the participants in the
Lupercalian games and of thronging onlookers. Dancing girls and acrobats flash
across the stage. Music sounds, and troops of soldiers, some of them rlMnlriwg in
armor and some hooded in undressed skins of beasts, escort notables to the games.
Laughter, ribaldry, and monkey tricks usher in the tragedy. This note of deca-
dence b authentic, as e\*ery reader of Mommsen knows, but the emphasb Mr Faver-
sham lays upon it b jarring. We weary in a few seconds of thb camival-of-Vcnice
kind of clamor, and we are thrown out of key with the austere business so soon to
occupy our minds. But the picture b effective, and the movement, save for too
much bobbing about, b wdl maneu\*ered.
The senate chamber b another stupendous picture. To the left of the stage as
you face it b the throne of Cesar, overshadowed by the statue of Pompey. To
the right the benches of the senators rise in four lofty tiers, and when the chamber
nils those benches are occupied by more than three score white-robed figures.
Pillars of richly hued marble stand sentinel around the room. In the background
are \*i$tas of courts and corridors bright with gilding and flaming with color. The
far-fl\-irig eagles of Rome look down from gorgeous panels and bending standards.
Clouvis i>t inw^n5e float beneath the ponderous ceilings. The stage trembles under
the iirad of s!<Mdier5 and the senators \-isit in animated groups pending the coming
of Cesar.
To vvnim.^n«.? silence for the hearing of the petitions an oflicer of the senate strikes
ihrivv u;vn mct.il \W:h a mallet. That lietail is worth while, for it adds a curious
touvh v>i rtv.lity to the scene.
Another victai!. ir.orf calculatevi and. rii:hl or wrong, far more important, b the
enininvr of C.i!pumia into the >i!on: ar.d deserted senate chamber after the assas-
sination. Antony ar.vi the n-essenger who has brought tidings from Octavius are
standing in the rf mv>tc bdcki;rc»unvi. They withdraw a little farther and avert their
t.\vx^ AS Ca!:^uraia. her asixv: that of dumb incredulity that has not yet broken in
wxx*, dosv^nvis the n'.arb'.e >:o:>s to the floor of the chamber, her step slow, her ^iLzt
wivie with horrvr. her e>-es dted in awful fascination upon the body of Caesar.
I'Kfr her heav* she has thrv>wn a lv>ng black scarf that sweeps neariy to her knees.
Reaching the Kvh . vhc ivnvi-i o\fr it and a lew note of wailing escapes her. The
prv\>tnitc Kv?y anvi the crouching, wt^eping wocian seem pitifully huddled and im-
jx^tont an.ivi the b*,u':ng n*.agnir.cence of the chaniber. Antony and the messenger
hAXf virawn >::". farther c<T. The moumer is aIoR« with the imperial dead, and on
that e\x;i:ent. simple taKVau the curtain 5^v>w!y descends. Austere classicbts may
pxvHXv^unv-x: this business only blarre- To the writer it nnds complete excuse \t. ;:?
DRAMATIC VERSIONS-— PARROTT 447
enormous effectiveness. If other justification for it is demanded, record may be
made of the fact that Miss Wheatley performs it beautifully.
The rich, mysterious setting of the tent scene deserves a word of praise. It is
severe, but it is most imaginative. The massive folds of the tent fill the entire
width and height of the stage with color that shifts with the movement of the touches
from a Gobelin hue to deq>, illusive green. The effects of night, of seclusion, of a
haunted place, and of a time of impending doom are created not by resort to clap-
trap, but by masterly painting, and the skilful, subtle, reserved manipulation of
lights. The play contains no finer picture than Mr. Faversham and his artists have
here devised. The Roman lamps burning with languid, bluish flames, the gleam
of burnished armor and crimson trappings and the compact group of generals poring
over their dispatches combine to produce an historical painting of the highest im-
pressiveness. The note of grandeur is here sounded as nowhere else in the play.
With the marvelous rapidity which marks all the scenic changes of this produc-
tion the tent scene vanishes and an entrancing picture of the plains of Philippi,
overlooked by the steq> heights of Pangaeus that glow with the rose tints of the
dawn, is revealed. The foreground of this scene is rugged and wild; the distant
peaks are touched with a soft, ineffable beauty at once mournful and consoling.
The pure heights seem to breathe benediction upon the dosing episodes of woe and
glory. The symbolism is so delicate that it is best let alone; to dwell upon it is to
render it obvious and so to cheapen it.
Speaking of Faversham's interpretation of Antony ^ Bennett says that 'the por-
tra3ra] is less a study than a lyric flight; spectacular in its grace and frankly dema-
gogic in its fluency and its cunning. It is ardent, loving, joyous, wild with youth-
ful spirit, instantly capable of rising to and revelling in an emotion. Here is the
fop, but here also is the passionate hero-worshipper, who can bend in awed grief,
that is no less genuine because it is luxurious, over the body of Caesar, pouring forth
in tremulous tones and with wet eyes his rhapsody of woe. Such rapture and such
splendor as Mr Faversham here summons up turn his declamation to pure gold. It
will be recalled that Antony's speeches provide a succession of lyric climaxes, and
Mr Faversham rises to them not once, but three and four times. And still he avoids
the effect of anti-climax as surely as the poet does. This because his crescendos,
without seeming to be, still are most carefully graduated.
The funeral oration he gave not as a flight in elocution, but as a means to an end,
which, of course, is what it is. He wrestles with the mob, wrestles with every
phrase, and with the phrases he slowly beats down the mob — beats it with rhetorical
questions and swift, argimientative thrusts, the inspiration for which he seems to
find in the upturned faces. Always he is wary, always beneath the fluency is
anxious calculation of the effect upon the crowd. This complex treatment is sus-
tained until victory is sure, and then the reins are thrown away and the words
'Here was a Caesar!' are released in a wild, exultant cry.
DRAMATIC VERSIONS.
T. M. Parsott (Modem Lang. RemeWy Oct., 1910, p. 438) gives a list of all those
'plays on Julius Csesar of which we have any knowledge.' Their titles are as
follows: Julyus Sesar, performed at Court, i Feb., 1562. (See Collier, Hist, of
Dram. Poetry, i, 180.) The Third Blast of Retreat from Plays (1580) mentions * the
life of Pompde and the martial affaires of Caesar' as among the histories which were
448 APPENDIX
represented upon the stage (Hazlitt, English Drama Documents, p. 145). In 1580
a play called The Storie of Pompey was played before the Queen at Whitdiall on
Twelfth Night by the children of Paul's (Feuillerat, Documents rdating to the Office
of the Revels, p. 336; and Schelling, ii, 21). The History of Casar and Pompey,
mentioned by Gosson, Playes Confuted, 1581 (see Note by Malone, I, i, i). Epi-
logus C<esaris Interfecti, by Richard Eedes, or Cedes, performed at Christchurch,
Oxford, 1582 (see note by Steevens, I, i, i). Henslowe's Diary mentions *seser
and pompie* as first performed by the Admiral's Men on Nov. 8, 1594, and 'The
2 P" of sesore* on June 18, 1595; and under the date May 22, 1602, he records the
advance of a sum of five pounds 'to give unto Antony Munday, Michad Dra3rton,
Webster, Middleton, and the rest in earnest of a book called Caesar's Fall (sesers
Jfalle).* No record exists of this play's production or publication. The Tragedy of
Julius Casar by Sir William Alexander, probably composed between 1604 and 1606
and published in 1607 (see note by Malone, I, i, i).
In reference to this Academic tragedy Ayres (p. 221) gives the following extract
from an impublished dissertation by Dr T. A. Lester: Connections between the
Drama of Prance and Great Britain, particularly in the Elixabethan Period, igoo:
'In general it may be said that Alexander follows Cr6vin [Cisar], availing himsdf
not only of Cr6vin's original scenes, but also of Cr6vin'snon-Plutarchian order. . . .
There can be little doubt that Alexander's Julius Casar is nothing but Crdvin's
CSsar, rewritten and enlarged.' — 'This b,' remarks Ayres, 'I think just, and, on the
whole, rather more than I had myself noticed; for Alexander has added so much
from the Cornelia [of Kyd] and from Plutarch (I think Plutarch's Life of Ceaar
could be almost reconstructed complete from his play) and rewritten it all in such
a parenthetically diffuse style that the outlines of Cr^vin's play are fairly obscured.
So far as the character of Caesar b concerned, however, Alexander owes to Gr6vin
hardly more than the monologue [p. 366, supra], in which Caesar expresses his vague
fears of impending disaster. On the whole, hb conception of Caesar's character . . .
depends directly on Gamier and the Senecan tradition inaugurated by Muret'
The Tragedie of Casar &• Pompey, or C(esar*s Revenge, Anon., 1607.
CcBsar and Pompey: A Roman Tragedy, by George Chapman, published 1631, but
written, as the author says in the dedication, Mong since.' — Schelling (ii, 22)
records also that * the manuscript of a Latin Julius Cdsar by Thomas May is still
extant, and may be identical with a late Julius Caesar, acted privately by students
of Trinity College, Oxford, it is not recorded when.'
Jttlius Cctsar, a droll, or puppet-show, mentioned by Marston in 1605, and
Jonson in 1609.
Ccesar^s Tragedy, mentioned in the Vertue MS. [See Malone: Stage History,
supra.]
D. E. Baker {Biographia Dram.) records a version, or alteration, of Shakespeare's
/;//. C(Bs. by D'Avenant and Dryden dated 1719, for an account of which see notes
on IV, iii, 357.
Genest (iii, 89) : Sheffield Duke of Buckingham left behind him two Tragedies —
Julius Cctsar and Marcus Brutus, both founded on Shakspeare's play — they were
published in 1722 — the Prologue to Julius Cdsar begins with —
'Hope to mend Shakspeare! or to match his style!
'Tis such a jest would make a Stoick smile.'
Then why attempt it?
DRAMATIC VERSIONS^GENEST
449
Act ist. All the low Comedy of the ist scene is omitted — ^Antony offers Caesar
the crown on the stage — the scene between Brutus and Cassius — and that between
Cassius and Casca are not materially altered, but several unnecessary changes
are made.
Act 2d. Brutus's Soliloquy and the scene with the Conspirators are altered for
the worse — that between Brutus and Portia is turned into a contemptible love
dialogue — Brutus in love!!!
Act 3d consists of the scene at Caesar's palace badly altered — Calpumia is
omitted, and two Priests relate the ill omens that have happened.
Act 4th consists of the Senate scene considerably altered for the worse.
Act 5th is the scene in the Forum — Brutus's address to the Citizens is turned into
blank verse with additions — one line deserves to be quoted —
'And when a grieving parent whips his child.'
— ^Then follows the remainder of the scene not materially altered — with this the
play ends.
Marcus Brulus — ^His Grace having but 2 acts of the original play to spin out
into 5, was obliged to introduce some new characters — thus we have Jimia wife to
Cassius and sbter to Brutus — Dolabella — Varius a young Roman studying at
Athens, &c.
The first three acts are entirely the Duke's — ^in the first Dolabella is most ab-
surdly introduced with a message fh>m Antony to Brutus, requesting him to take
the sovereign power on himself — ^in the 3d act Junia says —
'But Rome's at stake.'
To which Varius replies —
'And well it 'would be lost,
For staying here one night within these arms.'
Cassius is almost of the same opinion.
The substance of the 4th and 5th Acts is taken from Shakespeare, but the words
are the Duke's — the quarrelling scene b not badly written, but it is vastly inferior
to the original — Cassius says —
'From a superior my Stars defend mel'
This is quite wrong, as Cassius was an Epicurean and did not believe in planetary
influence.
After Cassius has stabbed himself, Brutus comes on before Cassius dies — Caesar's
Ghost appears to Brutus at the close of the 3d act, and again just as he is going to
kill himself.
Brutus some few ho\u3 before his death looked up to heaven and quoted a line
from the Medea of Euripides — 'O Jupiter, forget not who is the author of these
wrongs.' Shakspeare met with this circumstance in Plutarch, but did not insert
it in his play, which is a pity.
Both the Duke's plays have a Chorus at the end of each act — those at the end
of the ist and 2d acts of Marcus Brulus were written by Pope at the command
of .his Grace — ^in Marcus Brutus the scene lies at Athens in the first three acts, and
near Philippi in the last two — for thb violation of the unity of place his Grace
apologizes in the Prologue, but to satisfy us that he has preserved the unity of
time, we are studiously informed that the play begins the day before the battle of
29
DRAMATIC VERSIONS^PARROTT 451
to Brutus as his father — Brutus is distressed at the discovery, but perseveres in his
intentions — ^in the Duke of Guise, Brutus is said to have stabbed his father, &c. —
this no doubt at the time produced a thundering clap — the same thing is said in the
Prologue to Ltne in a Forest.
Suetonius tells us that Caesar was more in love with Servilia than with any other
woman, but does not give the slightest hint that Brutus was his son; and as he
dwells more on the private transactions of the Emperors than any other historian,
he would in all probability have noticed the report if he had ever heard it. [For
an accoimt of Voltaire's translation of Jtd, Cos., see Appendix: Criticisms, — Ed.]
The Academic Tkagedy: Ctesar br Pompey. '^^
T. M. Parrott (op. cit,, p. 440): It seems to me almost incredible that the
College Play [The Tragedy of Casar and Pompey] which has come down to us
should be identical with Henslowe's *seser and pompie,* We know, to be sure,
nothing about this latter besides its name, except the date of its first performance
and the company that produced it. But these two facts enable us to hazard some
conjecture as to its probable type. The Admiral's Company in 1594 stood under
the leadership of Alleyn, and were, in their choice of tragedies, dominated by the
tradition of Marlowe. A glance through the pages of Henslowe's Diary for 1594
shows us what sort of tragedies they preferred; from June 3, 1594, to March 14,
1595 we have an unbroken series of plays. . . . *Seser and pompie* stands well up
among other plays, with a record of seven performances between Nov. 8, 1594, and
March 14, 1595, and was revived once more in connection with a less successful
second part on June 25, 1595. This mention of a second part, by the way, is itself
an argument against the identity of the Admiral's play with that of Trinity Col-
lege. The latter, as we shall see, exhausts its subject so that no continuation is
possible. Now, if we may argue from the known to the imknown, have we not
reason to suppose that the Admiral's play was a vigorous chronicle of the wars of
Caesar and Pompey with plenty of action to tickle the groundlings, and, I fancy, a
fine mouth-filling part for Alleyne as Caesar? Is the Trinity College play anything
of this kind, or does it at all resemble the sort of play that could have been per-
formed with a fair measure of success before such an audience as frequented the
Rose in 1594? A brief analysis of the play will, I think, show the contrary.
[I gladly acknowledge my indebtedness to Mr Parrott for the following anal3rtical
outiine of this old tragedy; it would be but presumption on my part to hope to
improve upon, or even equal, his careful work. — Ed.]
The Tragedy opens in the approved academic fashion by the entrance and solil-
oquising prologue of a supernatural figure. Discord, who informs the audience as to
the war between Caesar and Pompey and the former's victory at Pharsalia. As
Discord leaves the stage a nimiber of fugitives from the battie, Pompey himself,
Titinius, and Brutus enter and discuss the situation. Pompey resolves to seek
aid in Egypt; Brutus remains, and in the next scene is taken prisoner and pardoned
by Caesar. In the third scene Caesar, in debate with Antony, Dolabella, and a Lord,
expresses his remorse for having precipitated civil war, but is still of a mind to
pursue Pompey. In the next scene Cato laments the loss of Roman liberty. In
the fifth we get the parting between Pompey and Cornelia, and in the last scene of
the act the meeting of Caesar with Cleopatra, who seeks his aid to restore her to
the throne of Eg3rpt. Caesar falls in love with her, and so also does Antony, who is
present at the interview.
452
APPENDIX
Discord ^>pears again to open the Second Act with a rhetorical soUloqiiy, and
gives place to Achillas and Sempronius, who meet and mankr POmpey on the
Eg3rptian sea-shore. In the second scene COmdia laments Pompey's death and
kills herself. In the third Caesar pronounces sentence on the murderers and departs
to feast with Qeopatra; Antony remains to soliloquise on his hopdess passion for the
Egyptian. Then Brutus brings the news of Pompey's death to a group of Roman
nobles who are persuaded by Cicero to submit to Cesar; and in the last scene of the
act we have a long dialogue between Cato and his son, dosing with the suicide of
Cato.
Discord opens the Third Act with a summons to Brutus and Cassius to slay
Caesar. Cassius enters to avow his purpose of killing the Dictator. The second
scene introduces Caesar's triumph. Antony remains on the stage to lament hb
separation from Qeopatra. His Bonus Genius appears to rd>uke his fofly and to
prophecy his ruin through Cleopatra. He thereupon resolves to 'wake frcnn idle
dream.' The third scene consists of a dialogue between Brutus and Owdiis, in
which the former takes an oath to slay Caesar. The fourth represents the festival
of Lupercalia, Antony's repeated offer of a crown to Caesar, and Caesar's repeated
refusal. This scene, not the first scene of Act n, as Collier (Annals of the Stage,
vol. HI, p. 124, n.) states, contains a flagrant plagiarism from the Faerie Qmeem.
Compare:
' The restless mind that harbours sorrowing thoughts.
And is with child of noble enterprise.
Doth never cease from honor's toilsome task.
Till it brings forth Eternal glories brood.'
with Spenser's lines:
* The noble hart, that harbours vertuous thought.
And is with child of glorious great intent.
Can never rest, until it forth have brought
Th* etemall brood •f glorie excellent.' — Faerie Queen^ I, v, i.
The fifth scene represents the meeting of the conspirators, Brutus, Cassius, Casca,
Cumber (sic), and Trebonius. In the last scene of the act Calpumia seeks to keep
Caesar from the Senate by reciting her ominous dream, an augur brings in bad
omens, and Caesar decides to remain at home. He is, however, overpersuaded by
Cassius, who enters at this moment. The scene then shifts, without any division
in the text, to the Senate house, where Caesar is attacked by the conspirators. He
defends himself by a long speech until Brutus, who has been detaining Antony
outside, enters and stabs him, whereupon he falls and dies. Antony enters to
lament his death and vow revenge, and bears off the body in his arms. One of the
murderers, by the way, bears the name of Bucolian, a fact which seems to point to
Appian's History , Bell. Civ., II, 113, 117, as a source.
The Fourth Act opens with the usual soliloquy of Discord, who introduces the
remaining action by foretelling the revenge of Caesar at Philippi. Octavian then
laments the death of Caesar, whose funeral is now performed, accompanied by
Antony's oration. It is worth noting that this oration does not bear the slightest
resemblance to the sp)eech in Shakespeare's Julius Cctsar. This play, it is true,
was not printed till 1623, but if so unscrupulous a plagiarist as the author of Caesar
and Pompey had ever seen it performed, he could hardly have refrained from in-
troducing some reminiscence of it into his own play.
The second scene of this act shows Brutus and Cassius at the head of an army,
DRAMATIC VERSIONS— PARROTT 453
to whom Titinius, playing the part of a Senecan nuntius, reports the disturbances
in Rome. The leaders decide to levy more troops and to meet in Thessaly. The
third scene opens with a monologue by the Ghost of Caesar; Antony and Octavian
enter at swords' points, but are persuaded by the affable familiar Host to renoimce
their quarrel and unite in a vow of revenge upon his murderers.
The Last Act consists of one long undivided scene. Discord opens it by calling
up the 'Stygian fiends' to make a hell on earth. Brutus and Cassius enter at the
head of an army, boasting of their conquests in the East, but Brutus is troubled by
forebodings of approaching death, and by remorse for the murder of Caesar. After
the departure of the others the Ghost of Caesar enters to Brutus and warns him that
he shall die that day by his own hand. The battle of Philippi is now supposed to
be fought off the stage. Cato's son enters wounded, tells of the battle, and dies.
Cassius sends Titinius for news of Brutus and in his absence kills himself. Titinius
returns and kills himself. Brutus enters, dogged by the Ghost of Caesar, and kills
himself. The revenge being accomplished in this satisfactory fashion, the play
closes with a dialogue between the Ghost and Discord quite in the manner of the
last scene of The Spanish Tragedy. A passage from the last speech of the Ghost will
give some notion of the author's old-fashioned versification and of his partiality for
classical allusions:
' I will descend to mine eternal home
Where everlastingly my quiet soul
The sweet Elysiimi pleasure shall enjoy,
And walk those fragrant flowery fields at rest:
To which nor fair Adonis bower so rare
Nor old Aldnous gardens may compare.
There that same gentle father of the Spring
Mild Zephyrus doth odours breath divine.
Clothing the earth in painted bravery.
The which nor Winter's rage nor scorching heat
Or Sunmiers sun can make it fall or fade.
There with the mighty champions of old time
And great Hero^ of the Golden Age
My dateless hours I'le si)end in lasting joy.'
It is evident from the above analysis, I think, that the Trinity College play is as
unlike what we may fairly assimie the Admiral's play to have been as could well be
expected. It has no central dominating r61e in which Alleyne could have found
scope for his powers. It is, indeed, entirely without that power of characterization
which gives life and interest even to some of the crudest and most formless plays
of the time. It has, in spite of the enormous amount of matter which the author
has dragged in, curiously little action. Most of the scenes consist of detailed
reports of actions off the stage, or of long tirades in which the speakers express their
grief for the past or avow their determination for the future. There is no plot, in
the proper sense of the word, nor any attempt at dramatic construction, but scene
follows scene in purely chronological order. This is a method of dramatic com-
position that we are accustomed to associate with the popular rather than the aca-
demic Senecan drama; but Churchill and Keller (Shakespeare Jahrhuch, vol. xxxix,
p. 257) have shown that a nimiber of academic tragedies followed the lines of
the popular chronicle plays rather than the stricter Senecan form. Finally, there
is not the slightest trace in this play of the broad realistic humour which b so fre-
454
APPENDIX
quent, not to say constant, in the early popular drama, and which we may reasonably
assimie to have appeared in the Admiral's play.
The Trinity College play, then, fully deserves the name by which it is com-
monly known, the 'Academic Tragedy' of Casar and Pompey, It is modelled on
the Senecan imitations so popular at the Universities and Inns of Court, but shows
also the influence of the popular drama. I fancy the author's favourite play must
have been The Spanish Tragedy, which itself represents this popularization of
Seneca. The stiff and monotonous blank verse reminds one far more of Kyd than
of Marlowe or Shakespeare. It is, indeed, curiously archaic to have been written
in 1606, a fact which may, perhaps, suggest that it was composed by an elderly Don
rather than by an undergraduate. It is crowded to a most unusual degree with
classical allusions such as would appeal to an academic audience. If the dates in
MS. on the title-page refer to performances of this play, it must have been a marked
favourite at Oxford, and this conjecture b corroborated by the fact that two printed
editions were called for, whereas the majority of academic tragedies remain in
manuscript to the present day. But we can by no stretch of imagination conceive
of it as successful to the degree of seven performances in four months at the Rose.
We may then assert pretty positively that the Trinity College play has no con-
nection whatever — ^beyond a similarity of name — with the lost play of stser and
pompie, mentioned by Henslowe. Nor has it any connection with Shakeqieare's
Julius Citsar, which precedes it, nor with Chapman's Casar and Pompey, which
follows it in date. The one play with which it may possibly have had some con-
nection is the lost Julius Casar of Eedes. Dull in itself, it is yet of interest historic-
ally as the first known example of a tragedy written in English on a classical
theme which was performed at either of the Universities.
„^.vc.v-. t.t- ,j, -,.,^1^
, ^ I «• • -- - i,o.Kt^ Chapman's Casar & Pompey,
^
The following is a transcript of the title-page of Chapman's Tragedy as given in
Pearson's reprint of the first edition iCiESAR | and \ Pompey: | A Roman Tragedy,
DE- I GLARING THEIR Warres. | Out of wkose euents is euicted this \ Proposition. \
Only a iust man is a freeman. \ by George Chapman. | London: | Printed by
Thomas Harper, and are to be | sold by Godfrey Edmondson, and Thomas Alchome.
I M. DC. XXXI. I In the dedication to the Earl of Middlesex Chapman says that
this History *^jiever,tauchLitaUheJStage.* although written Mong since.' An
analysis of this composition more elaborate than the following outline is, I think,
unnecessary. Act I, sc. i. Cato, Athenodorus, Statilius, and Porcius discuss the
situation which confronts the citizens of Rome, owing to the rivalry of Cssar and
Pompey; Cato describes the approach of the rabble surrounding Cssar, and is
warned of Caesar's opposition to him in the Senate; Cato declares that all is nothing
to one who places faith in his own integrity. As they depart Cssar and Metellus
enter at the head of a procession of Senators, soldiers, and people. The Consuls
take their places, and Csesar sounds Metellus as to winning Cato to their side;
Metellus assures him that such is impossible and they must use all means to keep
him from the bench, wherein Caesar acquiesces. They take their places; Pompey
and his followers enter and after them Cato with Statilius and Porcius; after some
slight opposition Cato places himself between Caesar and Metellus, the people
encouraging him so to do. Metellus presents his requests that the army of Pompey
be allowed to enter Rome, for the better guarding of the people against Cataline's
conspirators, some of whom are now in prison, but others at large. Cato at once
DRAMATIC VERSIONSr^CHAPMAN 455
rq>lies that in such a case it were better to put to death those in prison than to incur
the greater danger of increasing Pompey's power. Caesar in a long speech rehearses
all his services to the state and his exploits in arms, urging that if it be but for pro-
tection that Pompey's army be needed, that his own soldiers are quite as com-
petent to that end. To which Pompey replies in an equally long harangue that
his services to the state should not be overlooked, and denies any intention of using
the army to his own advantage. Metellus then attempts to read the law allowing
Pompey to admit his army; he is prevented by Cato, and Caesar rebukes Cato for
his interference, threatening him with imprisonment, whereat Pompey replies that
Caesar's threat is far worse than Cato's act; this at once leads to a scene of mutual
recrimination between the two leaders: Pompey declares that Caesar's malady of
the falling sickness b a just visitation by the gods as a punishment for his many
excesses; Caesar replies that were punishments thus inflicted Pompey would be the
more deserving of the two, and proceeds to relate some of the scandals attached
to Pompey's name. Cato remonstrates at this undignified quarrel, and Pompey,
exclaiming 'Away, I'll hear no more,' adds, 'All you that love the good of Rome,
I charge 3re, follow me; all such as stay, are friends to Caesar and their country's
foes.' The Act ends with the Ruffians exclaiming 'War I War I O Caesar,' and the
Senators replying 'Peace! Peace I worthy Pompey.'
Act n. Fronto, a ragged beggar, in a soliloquy tells of his wretched state and his
knavery, and is about to hang himself; to him appears a strange monster from the
infernal regions who gives his name as Ophioneus, one of the fallen angeb; he urges
Fronto to desist from his purpose since the present is 'the only time that ever
was for a rascal to live in.' They are interrupted by the sudden entry of Pompey
and his family in hurried flight. Ophioneus bids Fronto to 'drink with the Dutch-
man, sweare with the Frenchman, cheat with the Englishman, brag with the Scot,
and turn all this to religion.' (Which is perhaps not more anachronistic than the
appearance of Bottom and his companions at the court of Theseus.) Fronto
accedes and becomes a follower of Ophioneus. It is somewhat difficult to under-
stand the purpose of this whole scene, as neither of these characters appear again,
and it merely retards the action. NuiUius, as chorus, then tells how Pompey has
fled from Rome and Cssar is in pursuit; and how Pompey turned and attacked his
pursuer. Caesar enters with his officers and to him enters Antony with Vibius
taken prisoner; he asks pardon of Caesar for his desertion; it is granted and Caesar
bids him return to Pompey with offers of peace and the mutual bestowal of their
armies in garrison. Vibius departs on this errand. Caesar decides to await no
longer for word from Sabius, but to set out for Brundusium. Crassinius and
Adlius endeavor to dissuade him, urging as a reason for his not going by sea that the
vesseb to convey him are not safe. Caesar remains unmoved, declaring that
'suspicions are worse than assured destructions through thoughts.' With further
asseverations on this point the scene doses. The next shows Pompey after his
first encounter with Caesar, who has been repulsed with loss of two thousand men.
Cato bids him not to boast of this as they were his own countrymen, and begs that
he will ever be mindful of this in future battles and sieges of dries under Roman
rule. He assures Pompey that he doubts not 'there wiU come humble offer on
Caesar's part of honor'd peace.' Pompey begs Cato not to expose himself to danger
by leaving the safe refuge in which he now is. To which Cato replies that he is sent
by the Senators to visit both Pompey's army and Caesar's in order to curb the
stragglers puffed up with conquest on dther side, and that he b now on hb way to
Urica. Pompey, with many affecrionate words, commits him to the .care of
456
APPENDIX
Pordus and Statilius and Cato departs. The two Consuls enter, leading Bmtus
between them; he assures Pompey that it is but his love for his country and not
regard for his personal safety that now brings him. Pompey gladly receives
Brutus. To them enter the Rings of Iberia, Thessaly, Cflida, Epirus, and Thrace
to vow fealty and aid to Pompey. The air is suddenly darkened and a violent storm
with rain and thunder descends; in the midst of this Oesar enters disguised, still
firm in his determination to set out for Brundusium; the Master of a ship endeav-
ours to dissuade him from embarking, to his remonstrances Oesar relies:
'Launch, man, and all thy feares fraight [Qu. jZratf A^] disavow
Thou earnest Caesar and his fortune now.'
and with this Act n. doses.
Act in. begins with a scene between Pompey, the Five Kings, Brutus, Demetrius,
and Gabinius, wherein Pompey declares that the coming fight at Pharsalia is to
be the touchstone of his fortunes, and that all shall share in whatever success he
obtains, but that he alone must suffer for any failure, in which event his ill fortune,
not he, must be blamed. The others contribute each his comment on such noble
sentiments; Pompey enquires as to the fate of Vibius; Gabinius recounts how Vibius
was taken, and while he is thus telling, the man himself appears; Pompey marvek
that Vibius should so soon return, but the latter assures him that it was Cesar's
grace and not a ransom that thus set him free. Pompey rather doubts Cesar's
disinterestedness, which he thinks inconsistent with his other acts; Vibius informs
him of Caesar's offer of peace, in which Pompey is at first disposed to trust; but
Brutus warns him that this offer may but hide a snare; Pompey is at once sus-
picious and dedares that he will sooner 'take hell mouth for a sanctuary' than put
trust in Caesar's offers, resolving to hazard all in the approaching battle, though
regretting that he must thus act contrary to the counsd of Cato in shedding so
much innocent blood; he invokes the gods to be propitious to the justice of his
cause, since he fights against the self-love of Caesar. They depart; then enter
Caesar, Antony, a Soothsayer, Crassinius, Acilius, with others. The Soothsayer
tells of the sacrifice just made and interprets it as favourable to the success of
Caesar, since the sacred blaze is seen shining above the camp. Two Scouts enter
and corroborate the fortunate hour for battle, as they have noted a strange con-
fusion in the camp of Pompey; Crassinius also tells of a prodigy occurring in an
adjacent temple wherdn a palm tree miraculously grew and with its topmost
leaves crowned a statue of Caesar. To all of this Caesar, while admitting the
divine power thus shown, declares that their own strength must determine the
issue; on this point Crassinius reassures him, and Caesar bids them hang out his
crimson coat of arms to give the soldiers * that ever-sure sign of resolu'd-for fight.'
[See note V, i, i8.] The signal is hung out; Caesar calls upon the heavens to be
propitious, and that he may no longer be spoken of as a tyrant, but as the preserver
of his country; with this Act III. closes.
Act IV. opens with a scene between Pompey and Brutus. Pompey rails in good
set terms against fortune, declaring that there can be no cause for this sudden con-
fusion in his army other than his judgement against enforcing the fight. Brutus
begs him to trust to his own clearer insight and desist from battle, as the advice of
Domitius, Spinther, and Scipio is but prompted by their own selfish desires. Pom-
pey is unmoved in his determination to incur no longer the imputation of fear, and
bids Brutus at once to prepare for battle. The battle takes place with alarums
and excursions. The Kings enter and tell how the battle was lost even before it
DRAMATIC VERSIONS^CHAPMAN 457
was fought. Crassinius enters mortally wounded. Caesar and Pompey enter
fighting; Pompey gives way, Caesar pursues him and entering 'from another door'
finds Crassinius dead; he laments the death of so brave a soldier; pronoimces his
epitaph, and with the help of others bears away the body. Pompey and Demetrius
enter with black cloaks and hats; Pompey declares that he should have foreseen this
defeat from the overweening confidence of his soldiers which was so fallacious;
and laments his downfall after so many years of fortune; declaring that all his past
services to his country will be forgotten and cancelled by this one defeat. He
resolves to abandon all men save Cato, to whom he now turns; and will also 'visit
and comfort' Cornelia. They disguise themselves and depart. Caesar and
Adlius enter with their forces; Caesar mourns over the loss of so many of his own
countrymen, but especially that Brutus should be among those slain. Brutus
enters and submits his life and fortunes to Caesar, who receives him joyfully, and
tells him he is on his way to join Cato at Utica; Brutus accompanying Caesar they
depart. The scene now changes to Utica, the house of Cato. Porcius enters and
takes down a sword which he finds hanging by his father's bed; Marcius, who follows
him, enquires the reason for this, and Porcius informs him that he fears that Cato
will attempt suicide rather than yield to Caesar now that Pompey is defeated.
He begs Marcius to keep the news of this from Cato and also all weapons that may
aid him to take his life; to this Marcius assents. Cato, with a book in his hand,
enters accompanied by Statilius and Athenodorus. Cato asks the meaning of the
suspicious looks of those about him, and whether they fear his attempting suicide.
Athenodorus assures him that Caesar would consider his own life strengthened
by preserving Cato's. Cato indignantly refuses to condescend so far as to ask
aught of Caesar, who has slaughtered the loyal subjects of Rome, and declares
that rather than accept life from Caesar he would make a beast his 'second father.'
To this Statilius replies with the question: 'Why was a man ever just, but to be
free, 'gainst all injustice?' On this theme Cato waxes eloquent, and the remainder
of this Act b devoted to a discussion of this. (It will be remembered that this
b the proposition enimciated on the title-page of the Tragedy, and the proof of
which is to be demonstrated.) ApplaudiDg Cato'a. mfl«stHy Reposition of his ?
belief in immortality, they go in 'to sup,' and await. the coming of Caesar.
XctV. begins with Cornelia and the children of Pompey anxiously awaiting
tidings. Lentulus bids her enquire of a Sentinel, placed on a promontory, whether
any ship is yet in sight. The Sentinel replies that he sees but two travellers ap-
proaching along the shore on foot; but presently announces that he sees a single
ship approaching the haven; and now men armed with pikes are disembarking.
Pompey and Demetrius enter disguised in their long cloaks and black hats. Lentu-
lus points them out to Cornelia as two Thessalian Augurs, and begs that she ask
them for news of Pompey. Not penetrating the disguise, Cornelia puts a series of
questions to Pompey, who, in order to test her fidelity, disparages himself and asks
her if she could submit herself to her husband even though he were fallen; to thb
Cornelia replies: 'If he submit himself cheerfully to his fortune.' Pompey flings
off his disguise and folds her in his arms, crying: 'O gods, was I ever great till thb
minute.' They both joyfully accept the change in fortime, resolving to rise above
adversity. Achillas, Septius, and Salvius enter with messages from Ptolemy to
Pompey, bidding him to withdraw and hear the words of the King. Pompey goes
followed by Achillas and Septius with their swords drawn, this causes apprehension
to Cornelia; Pompey returns wounded, the murderers follow and drag him off in
order to 'take his head for Caesar.' Cornelia swoons and is borne away by the
458 APPENDIX
two Lentttli and Demetrius, who have also been wounded in defending Pompey.
The scene changes again to Utica, the house of Cato. Cato, with a book in his
hand, moralises upon the right of man to take his own life; he notices the absence
of the sword which Marcius had removed, and demands of Mardlius that it be
restored. Mardlius does not immediately return; Cato summons Decius Brutus
and asks that his sword be brought; Brutus does not respond, and Cato bids them
send for Pordus that he may return the sword. Athenodorus enters with Pordus;
he and the others kneel and beseech Cato to think of his wife, his children, and his
country, and their great need of him. Cato again indignantly asks that his sword
be replaced. He appeals to Pordus by his paternal duty to him and his affection
always shown; Pordus unwillingly acquiesces and they leave. Cato thus left alone
meditates upon death and the after life of the soul. A Page enters with a sword;
Cato bids him lay it upon the bed and leave him. He falls upon his sword, exclaim-
ing: 'Now wing thee, dear soul, and reed ve her, heaven I' Pordus and others rush
in; they endeavor to save the life of Cato, he repulses them and 'plucks out his
entrails,' saying as he dies: 'Have he my curse that my life's least part saves. Just
men are only free, the rest are slaves.' Caesar, Antony, Marcus Brutus, and the
Citizens of Utica enter; Cssar laments his delay in coming too late, declaring that
all his conquest is now as nothing since Cato is gone. Achillas and Sepdus enter
with Pompey's head, which they present to Caesar; he b overcome with horror at
thdr act, and orders them to death. Brutus intercedes for them, and Caesar miti-
gates the sentence; he orders a sumptuous tomb to be erected for Cato upon some
eminent rock, whereon shall be placed his statue holding a sword, and 'where, may
to all times rest His bones as honor'd as his soul is blest.' And with this the
Tragedy condudes.
The source of neariy all the inddents in Chapman's Tragedy is to be found in the
lives of CasoTf Pompey, and Colo the Younger, as given in North's Plutarch. It b
not necessary to piece together the fragments in order to show Chapman's skill,
but one or two illustrations of his use of his material b, perhaps, interesting:
* Act I, sc. ii. Enter Pompey, Gabinius, Vibius, Demetrius with papers. Enter the
Lists, ascend and set. After whom enter Cato, Minutius, Athenodorus, Statilius,
Porcius.
Cat. He is the man that sits so close to Ccesar,
And holds the law there, whispering; see the Cowherd
Hath guards of ann'd men got, against one naked,
lie part their whbpering virtue.
/. Hold, keepe out.
2. What? honor'd Cato? enter chuse thy place.
Cat. Come in;
He drawes him in and sits betwixt Ciesar and Metellus. — Away unworthy groomes.
J. No more.
Cds. What should one say to him?
Met. He will be Stoical!.
Cat. Where fit place is not given, it must be taken.
4. Doe, take it Cato; feare no greatest of them;
Thou seek'st the peoples good; and these their owne.
5. Brave Cato/ what a countenance he puts on?
Let's give his noble will, our utmost power.'
The basis for this is from the Life of Cato the Younger: ' Cato, when he saw the
temple of Castor and Pollux encompassed with armed men, and the steps guarded
DRAMATIC VERSIONS^CHAPMAN
459
by gladiators, and at the top Metellus and Caesar seated together, turning to his
friends, ''Behold," said he, "this audacious coward, who has levied a regiment of
soldiers against one unarmed naked man"; and so he went on with Thermus.
Those who kept the passages gave way to these two only, and would not let any-
body else pass. Yet Cato, taking Munatius by the hand, with much difficulty
pulled him through along with him. Then going directly to Metellus and Caesar, he
sat himself down between them, to prevent their talking to one another, at which
they were both amazed and confounded. And those of the honest party, observing
the countenance and admiring the high spirit and boldness of Cato, went nearer,
and cried out to him to have courage, exhorting also one another to stand together,
and not betray their liberty, nor the defender of it.'
Again in Act in, scene ii, before the battle of Pharsalia, Caesar thus speaks to
Antony:
'O Marc Anthony
I thought to raise my camp, and all my tents,
Tooke downe for swift remodon to Scoiussa.
Shall now oiu: purpose hold?
AfUh. Against the gods?
They grace in th' instant and in th' instant we
Must adde oiu: parts, and be in th' use as free.
Crassinius, See Sir, the scouts retume.
Enier two scouts.
Cos, What newes, my friends?
1 Scou, Arme, arme, my Lord, the voward of the foe
Is rang'd already.
2 Scou, Answer them, and arme:
You cannot set your rest of battell up
In happyer houre; for I this night beheld
A strange confusion in your enemies campe,
The souldiers taking armes in all dismay,
And hurling them againe as fast to earth.
Every way routing; as the alarme were then
Given to their army. A most causeless feare
Disi)erst quite through them.
Cos, Then twas love himselfe
That with his secret finger stirr'd in them.
Crass, Other presages of successe (my Lord)
Have strangely hapn'd in the adjacent Cities,
To this your army: for in TraUeis,
Within a Temple, built to Victory,
There stands a statue of your forme and name,
Neare whose firme base, even from the marble pavement.
There sprang a Palme tree up, in this last night.
That seemes to crowne your statue with his boughs
Spred in wrapt shadowes round about yoiu: browes.
Cos. Hang out of my tent
My Crimsine coat of armes, to give my souldiers
That ever sure signe of resolu'd-for fight.
46o APPENDIX
Crass, These hands shall give that signe to all their longings.
Exit Crass, . . . The Cote of Armes is kung out^ and the Souldiers shout
within.
An, Heark, your souldiers shoute
For ioy to see your bloody Cote of Armes
Assure their fight this morning/
The basis for this is in the Life of Pompey: 'Now Caesar having designed to raise
his camp with the morning and move to Scotussa, whilst the soldiers were busy
in pulling down their tents, and sending on their cattle and servants before them
with their baggage, there came in scouts who brought word that they saw arms
carried to and fro in the enemy's camp, and heard a noise and running up and
down, as of men preparing for battle; not long after there came in other scouts
with further intelligence, that the first ranks were already set in battle array.
Thereupon Caesar, when he had told them that the wished for day was come at
last, when they should fight with men, not with hunger and famine, instantly gave
orders for the red colors to be set up before his tent, that being the ordinary signal
of battle among the Romans. As soon as the soldiers saw that, they left their tents,
and with great shouts of joy ran to their arms.'
The prodigy of the palm tree b thus given in the Life of Casar: * Oesar had many
signs and tokens of victory before this battle, but the notablest of all others that
happened to him was in the dty of Tralles. For in the temple of Victory, within
the same city, there was an image of Caesar, and the earth all about it very hard of
itself, and was paved besides with hard Stone: and yet some say that there sprang
up a palm hard by the base of the same image.' — § 33; (ed. Skeat, p. S4).
The 'proposition ' which is evicted from the play is enunciated in the Life of Cato
the Younger y with but the change of one word: 'After supper, the wine produced
a great deal of lively and' agreeable discourse, and a whole series of Philosophical
questions was discussed. At length they [Cato and his friends] came to the strange
dogmas of the stoics, called their Paradoxes; and to this in particular, That the
good man only is free, and that all wicked men are slaves.' Plutarch's word
for *good man' is here iiyaBdp; Chapman was too good a Greek scholar to have
mistaken this for BUau», just; and his change is, I think, intentional; that is
to say, if he consulted the original and not North's translation. (For a further ex-
position of this subject, see Koeppel, Quellensiudien zu den Dramen Chapman*s,
pp. 67 et seq.)
Chapman says, in the dedication to the edition of 163 1, that this Tragedy was
written 'long since,' and from a slight point of internal e\ndence I think we may
assign its date of composition to a period between 1504 and 1598. In Act II, sc. i,
Fronto, the ragged thief, says: * — as if good clothes Were knacks to know a knave,'
which seems to be a reference to the title of the comedy A Knack to Know a Knave ^
acted by Alleyn's players, and published in 1594. The comedy is of unknown
authorship, but its alliterative title doubtless caught the fancy of the town and
made it thus become a stock-phrase. I am fully aware how fallacious such hy-
potheses are, particularly in regard to a date of composition, but offer this merely as
a suggestion. The other limiting date, 1596, is that of Chapman's earliest extant
play, The Blind Beggar of Alexandria^ first printed in 1598; had Ccesar 6* Pompey
been subsequent to this, I think that it would have * touched it at the stage,' which
Chapman declares was not the case. Fleay (Chron. History^ i, 64) thinks the play
as we now have it is in part a revision of an older play, which Chapman 'had on his
DRAMATIC VERSIONS— MURE T 461
hands when he left stage-writing in 1608, or perhaps in 1604. . . . This eariy play
may have been by Chapman; if so, he intended to rewrite the whole.' Fleay is
lead to this conclusion since certain passages were allowed to remain in prose.
Ward (ii, 426) says: 'The last Act [of Casar 6^ Pompey]^ both as developing
Cato's philosophy and as exhibiting with some dramatic force the anxieties of
Pompey's wife Cornelia and her fleeting recovery of the husband she is to lose
forever, seems to me superior in execution to the rest of the play, which shows
much unevenness in the treatment of its theme.'
To both these statements I willingly assent; I am even disposed to add the
Fourth Act also. The marked improvement in the versification; in the poetic
thought and its expression, to those of Acts I, II, and III, seem to mark the last
two Acts as the work of the maturer poet; one who had learned how to handle his
material. Possibly this was the case, and the first three Acts belong to a period
earlier than the last two, which also agrees in part with Fleay's conjecture. Ward
(ii, 437) » in concluding his criticism, says: 'Remarkable in the main neither for
historic insight, nor for commanding power of style, and not on the level of its
author's best works, even in beauty of versification, Cttsar & Pompey must have
been created by Chapman's genius when in a tame mood, and was probably ne\'er
subjected by him to a thorough revision.'
The text shows this lack of revision on almost every page. Fleay remarks that
the tragedy 'has never been competently edited'; but as the author himself evi-
dently shirked this 'dull duty of an editor' shaU we of later date be blamed when we
follow his example?
An account of the Latin Tragedy, JuUus Casar, by M&rc Antoine Muret, as far
as the character of Caesar b concerned, has already been given. [See Ayres:
Character of Citsar, ante.] Muret's work was first published in 1553, though
probably composed nine or ten years before that; among those Cesar-Tragedies
which have survived, it is the oldest. G. A. O. Coluschonn has made an ex-
haustive examination of this work in its relations to the CSsar of Jacques Gr6vin,
Voltaire's Mart de CSsar, and Shakespeare's Jul. Ctts. He gives the following
analyses:
Murit''8 TracedV: Julius C<tsar; GRfeviN's: Char.
In the first Act a speech assigned to Cssar gives an introduction to the general
situation of the Period in which the Drama opens. At the same time, allusion is
made to the conspiracy; while Caesar mentions the warnings of the Soothsayers
and his friends against secretly conspiring enemies, but at the same time rejecting
fear as being unworthy of a Cssar.
The Chorus philosophizes about the uncertainty of fate, proving it from various
instances in Roman history.
The conspiracy pointed out in Act I. draws gradually on in Act EC. Brutus ap-
pears, and decides to free his country from Caesar's tyranny, trying to reason out
that the duty charging him with the care and welfare of his fellow-citizens con-
fronts him also at the same time with the duty for Caesar's benevolence. Cassius
appearsj rejoicing that the time has come at last in which tyranny shall fall.
Brutus rejects the murder of Antonius, as proposed by Cassius. They separate
to prepare for action. The Chorus praises the love of one's country and the
sacrifice for the Republican liberty, as practised by Harmodios.
No progress seems to be made in Act III. Calpumia tells her dream to her
462 APPENDIX
nurse, explaining the fear she attaches thereto, etc. The nurse omsoles her,
inviting her to render sacrifices to the gods. Calpumia makes up her mind to
hold Cesar back from visiting the Senate.
The Chorus prays for the blessing of the Gods during the Lupercalian
Festival.
In Act IV. the crisis reaches its height. ^fifP^i C^*^'' yields to his wife's
entreaties to stay away from the^SfiOtte assemblage: but, later, after the
persuasion of Declus Brutus, he acts contrary to his prmniae. TTi'f ffffll* **ffl
fate.
The Chorus blames the contempt shown for a wife's advice.
Act V. shows Cassius and Brutus, who, after the murder is completed, stimulate
the people to freedom.
Gr6vin's C^of was first published in 1561; though probably written a year
or two earlier. It was reprinted in the following year, together with two
Comedies and some Lyric poems; and again separately in 1606.
Let us now see how Gr6vin treats the materialas found in Plutarch:
Act I. Cesar makes his appearance, but seems frightened at the rebellious
spirit of the Romans. But >ip ryral^ ^r^ mjp^ his own worth and greatness in order
t9 banish this fear, telling Rome thaj_she owes him^ whorepresents the prin-
ciples oif monarchy, her present grandeur (which is important to notice);
he prophecies its end and curses the hypothetical murderers. Here Mark Anthony
appears, who is entirely absent in Muret's work. With great propriety he is in-
troduced in the first act as he is the one to carry out Caesar's idea, and after his death
is an important character in the drama.
Antonius is trying to instil courage in Cesar, reminding him of the service
rendered unto him and also promising him to revenge his death. They then make
an appointment for the Senate. The Chorus, composed of Caesar's soldiers,
desires war, signifjring 'glory' as the greatest incentive for a soldier.
Act II. Here Gr6vin follows Muret*s footsteps. But he independently intro-
duces Decius Brutus in this Act, with a view that he is to play an impMsrtant r6Ie
in the next one. In this Act the actions to follow are shown under motives which
actually unite this Act with the third.
Brutus enters, arguing about Rome's oppression by Caesar, the example of
former tyrannicides, the secret request of his fellow-citizens, the tradition of his
own family, and, finally, the glory that shall be his by doing away with a tyrant.
Thus he decides in favor of action. Thereupon Cassius enters with Decius Brutus;
both declare themselves ready to revenge on Caesar Rome's liberty. They agree
to meet in the Senate, after Brutus has refused to entertain the idea of killing
Antonius.
The Chorus praises Caesar's power, his glorious deeds, reflecting upon the
changes of fortune, illustrating these by instances from history, and finally express-
ing fear for Caesar's own fate.
Act III, contrary to the third Act of the Latin tragedy of Muret, imme-
diately leads to the crisis of the play. Gr^vin, in his third Act, concentrates into
one Act Muret 's third and fourth Acts (in Muret *s the crisis occurs in the fourth
Act). First, Calpumia enters with her nurse, relating her dream to her, whereupon
Caesar with Decius Brutus appears. Calpumia beseeches Caesar to stay away from
the Senate. Decius Brutus, however, persuades Caesar to go (as was detennined
in the last Act by the conspirators); thus the crisis reaches its height.
DRAMATIC VERSIONS^GRJ&VIN 463
The Chorus speaks again of the chapge^of^fortune great men have to undergo, of
the rumor of a conspiracy, concluding that it is futile jfor Csesar to reject Calpur-
nia's advice.
Act IV, unfortunately, does not show any progress. It merely contains the
annoimcement of Caesar's death, which in the foregoing Act we saw was unavoid-
able. But this announcement in no way connects with anything that would
lead to real action; the fundamental thought of the tragedy, or to bring matters to a
focus, or a final goal. The peripeteia, and with it a progression beyond the crisis
is not reached before the Fifth Act. In the Fourth Act Calpumia merely laments
the death of her husband, and then retires to her apartments. The messenger
curses the assassins. The Chorus philosophizes over the fate of the great, praising
the lot of the conunon soldier, for whom a change in the reforms of the State seems
to work indifferently.
The action of the play, in consequence of this, becomes more full in Act V. The
peripeteia [the reversal of fortimes] is now brought to a focus, but does not solve the
conflict completely, since it does not carry out the action to its end. Nevertheless,
it shows a marked progress in the action and a clear view of those occturences which
must of necessity result in the future action of the Tragedy, the continuation of the
contest between the monarchical and the republican principles and the indication
that the former would conquer is clearly shown, and the Chorus is silent after the
address of the assassin (which, after all, is in conformity with Plutarch's tradition),
whUe An];hoQ^'s speech is listened to with approval and applausjCw^Lnd the soldiers
follow hiQ2jor_ revenge.
This Act primarily sees the appearance 01 Brutus, Dedus Brutus, and Cassius:
it is emphasized by their addresses to the public, announcing Caesar's death and
proclaiming liberty. Thereupon, Anthony appears; he, too, harangues the people
and cames them away with him; of course, the Chorus cannot deny themselves
one more small, philosophic observation (now for the fourth time) about the fate of
rulers, summing up with these words: Verse 1x02, 'ceste mort est fatale auz nou-
veauz inventeiu^ de puissance royale,' which, though they close the drama, yet do
not express the fundamental principle of the play.
The conclusion to which Collischonn arrives is that Gr6vin used Muret's work
as the basis of his tragedy, but amplified the material thus furnished by extracts
from other lives by Plutarch, viz.: those of Brutus and Antony (Muret had but
consulted the Lije of Casar), Voltaire has apparently taken some few passages
here and there from Gr6vin's work, and with a slight alteration incorporated them
in his Mart de Cisar, This was a very easy form of plagiarism, if such it could be
really called, as Gr6vin's tragedy was familiar to but a few at that time. ^ Collischonn
finds no evidence of Shakespeare's indebtedne^ to either of these French authors.
The only points commou are those which may be accounted for by the fact that
their sources were identical. As Appendices to his essay Collischonn reprints
both Muret's and Gr6vin's tragedies.
464
APPENDIX
TIME ANALYSIS.
Daniel (5A. Soc, Trans., 1877-79, p. 2cx>) gives the following analysis of the
duration of the action:
Time of this play, 6 days represented on the stage; with intervals.
Day I. Act I, scenes i. and ii.
IfUerval — one month.
3. Act I, sc. iii.
3. Acts n. and III.
IfUerval.
4. Act IV, sc. i.
IfUerval.
5. Act IV, scenes ii. and iii.
IfUerval — one day at least.
6. Act V.
The Cowden-Clarkes {Sh. Key, pp. 176-184) have collected, and quote in full,
all those passage? in Jul. Cos. which seem to indicate 'short time,' and also those
which seem to show a longer duration. See also: Legerdefnaift with Titne in Jul.
C(Bs. Anon. Poet Lore, vol. sd, p. 376.
The End.
PLAN OF THE WORK, Etc.
In this Edition the attempt is made to give, in the shape of Textual Notes,
on the same page with the Text, all the Various Readings of Julius C<Bsar, from
the Second Folio down to the latest critical Edition of the play; then, as Com-
mentary, follow the Notes which the Editor has thought worthy of insertion, not
only for the purpose of elucidating the text, but at times as illustrations of the
History of Shakespearian criticism. In the Appendix will be found criticisms and
discussions which, on the score of length, could not be conveniently included in the
Commentary,
List of Editions Collated in the Textual Notes
The Second Folio [Fa]
The Third Folio [FjJ
The Fourth Folio.'. [FJ
Quarto [Q]
N. Rowe (First Edition) [Rowe i.J
N. Rowe (Second Edition) Rowe ii.]
A. Pope (First Edition) [Pope i.]
A. Pope (Second Edition) [Pope ii.]
L. Theobald (First Edition) [Theob. i.]
L. Theobald (Second Edition) [Theob. ii.]
Sir T. Hanmer [Han.]
W. Warburton [Warb.]
E. Capell [Cap.]
Dr Johnson [Johns.]
Johnson and Steevens [Var. '73]
Johnson and Steevens [Var. '78]
Johnson and Steevens [Var. '85]
J. Rann [Ran.]
E. Malone [Mal.j
Geo. Steevens [Steev.]
Reed's Steevens [Var. '03]
Reed's Steevens [Var. '13]
Boswell's Malone [Var.]
S. W. Singer (First Edition). [Sing, i.]
C. Knight (First Edition) [Knt i.]
J. P. Collier (First Edition) [Coll. i.]
S. W. Singer (Second Edition) [Sing, ii.]
A. Dyce (First Edition) [Dycc i.]
J. P. Collier (Second Edition) [Coll. ii.]
H. Staunton [Sta.J
R. 0. White (First Edition) [Wh. i.J
Cambridge (First Edition, W. G. Clark and W. A.
Wright) [Cam. i.]
30
(?)
(?)
632
664
68s
6qi
709
714
723
728
733
740
744
747
761
76s
773
778
78s
787
790
793
803
813
821
826
841
842
856
857
858
860
861
1865
46s
466
APPENDIX
J. O. Haxuwell (Folio Edition) [Hal.]
T. Keightley [Ktly]
C. Knight (Second Edition) [Knt ii.]
A. Dyce (Second Edition) [Dycc ii.J
H. N. Hudson (Second Edition) [Huds. ii.]
A. Dyce (Third Edition) [Dyce iiij
J. P. Collier (Third Edition) [CoU. iiiJ
W. A. Wright {Jkt Clarendon Press Series) [ClaJ
H. N. Hudson {School Shakespeare) [Huds. iii.]
R. G. White (Second Edition) [Wh. ii.]
Cambridge (Second Edition, W. A. Wright) [Cam. ii.]
1865
186s
1865
1866
1871
1875
1877
1878
1879
1883
1891
W. Harness
Globe (Clare and Wright) [Globe]
N. Dblius [Del.] Elberfdd
Rev. John Hunter (Longman's Series)
F. A. Marshall (Henry Irving Edition)
A. D. Innes (Warwick Shakespeare)
H. C. Beeching
A. W. Verity (PiU Press Shakespeare)
J. M. D. Meiklejohn
K. Deighton
Mare Hunter (College Classics)
T. Page (Mofal's Shakespeare)
T. Parry (Longman's Modern Classics)
R. Rutherford (Helps to Study)
D. Forsyth (Swan Edition)
J. Lees
M. Macmillan (Arden Shakespeare)
Porter and Clark (First Folio Edition)
W. J. Rolfe (Revised Edition)
C. H. Hereford (Eversky Shakespeare)
G. S. Gordon
F. H. Sykes (Scribner*s English Classics)
W. Dent (Junior School Shakespeare)
I. Gollancz (Temple Edition)
S. Neil (Collins English Classics)
1830
1864
1869
1869
1869
1893
189s
189s
1896
1899
1900
1900
1900
1900
1901
1901
1902
1903
1903
1906
1909
1911
n. d.
n. d.
n. d.
These last twenty-five editions I have not collated beyond referring to them in
disputed passages, and recording, here and there in the Commentary, the views of
their editors.
Within the last twenty-five years — indeed, since the appearance, in 1864, of
the Globe Edition — the text of Shakespeare is become so settled that to collate
word for word the text of editions which have appeared within this term would
be a fruitless task. When, however, within recent years an editor revises his
text in a second or third edition, the case is different; it then becomes interesting
LIST OF BOOKS 467
to mark the effect of maturer judgement. The present Text is that of the First
Folio of 1623.
In the Textual Notes the symbol Ff indicates the agreement of the Second,
Third, and Fourth Folios,
I have not called attention to every little mi^rint in the Folio. The Textual Notes
will show, if need be, that they are misprints by the agreement of all the Editors in
their corrections.
Nor is notice taken of the first editor who adopted the modem qielling, or who
substituted commas for parentheses, or changed ? to I.
The sign + indicates the agreement of Rowe, Pope, Theobald, Hanmek,
Waeburton, Johnson, and the Variorum of 1773.
When in the Textual Notes Waebuston precedes Hanmek, it indicates that
Hanmer has followed a suggestion of Waebuston.
The words et eel. after any reading indicate that it is the reading of all other
editions.
The words et seq. indicate the agreement of all subsequent editions.
The abbreviation (subs.) indicates that the reading is substantially given, and
that immaterial variations in spelling, punctuation, or stage-directions are disre-
garded.
When Varr, precedes Steev. or Mai., it includes the Variorums of 1773, 1778, and
1785; when it follows Steev, or Mai., it includes the Variorums of 1803, 1813, and
1821.
An emendation or correction given in the Commentary is not repeated in the
Textual Notes unless it has been adopted by an editor in his text; nor is conj.
added in the Textual Notes to the name of the proposer of the conjecture unless the
conjecture happens to be that of an editor, in which case its omission would lead to
the inference that such was the reading of his text.
Coll. MS refers to Collier's copy of the Second Folio, bearing in its margin
manuscript annotations.
In citing plays or quoting from them, the Acts, Scenes, and Lines of the Globe
Edition are followed, unless otherwise noted. Of course, all references to Julius
C<Bsar refer to the present text.
UST OF BOOKS
To economise space in the foregoing pages, as a general rule merely the name
of an author has been given, followed, in parentheses, by the number of volume
and page.
In the following List, arranged alphabetically, enough of the full titles is set
forth to serve the purposes of either identification or reference.
Be it understood that this List does not include those books which have been
consulted or used in verifying references; were these included, the list would be
many times longer.
Abbott, £. A.: Shakespearian Grammar London, 1870
Afpian: History of Rome (translated by H. White) " 1899
Badhah, C: Text of Shakespeare Cambridge, 1856
Bailey, S.: The Received Text of Shakespeare London, 1862
468 APPENDIX
Bahxie-Grohican, W. A. & F.: The Master of Game, by Ed-
ward, Second Duke of York New York, 1909
Baker, H. B.: London Stage London, 1889
Baknett, T. D.: Notes on Julius C<Bsar " n. d.
857
896
896
848
896
867
874
897
889
90s
900
«
Bathurst, C: Diference of Shakespeare* s Versification
Baynes: Shakespeare Studies and Other Essays
Berger, a. Freiherrn von: Studien und Kritiken \/^en,
Birch, W. J.: Inquiry into the Rdigion and Philosophy of
Shakespeare Londcm,
Boas, F. S.: Shakespeare and His Predecessors New York,
BoDENSTEDT, F.: Shakspere Dramatische Werke Leipzig,
" Shakespeare* s Frauengestalten Berlin,
BoissiER, G.: Cicero and his Friends (translated by A. D.
Jones) London,
BoTTCHER, H.: Shakespeare's Julius desar Graudenz,
B^tADLEY, A. C: Shakespearian Tragedy London,
w/Brandes, G.: William Shakespeare New York,
Brown, J. M.: Julius Casar: A Study London, n. d.
Brown, T. A.: History of New York Stage New York,
Buckingham, John Sheffield, Duke of: Works London,
BucKNiLL, J. C: Shakespeare* s Medical Knowledge
Bulloch, J.: Studies on the Text of Shakespeare
BuLTHAUPT, H. A.: StreifzUge Bremen,
Campbell, John Lord: Shakespeare* s Legal Acquirements, , New York,
Campbell, T.: Life and Writings of Shakespeare Philadelphia,
Canning, A. S. G.: Thoughts on Historic Plays London,
Shakespeare Studied in Eight Plays
Capell, E.: NoteSy etc :
Carter, T. : Shakespeare and Holy Scripture New York,
Cartwright, R.: New Readings in Shakespeare London,
Cassius, Dion: Annals of the Roman People (translated by
H. B. Foster) Troy,
Chalmers, G. : Supplemental Apology London,
Chatelain, Chevalier de: Julius Cesar ^ traduUe en vers
Franfcis
CiBBER, C: Apology, etc
Cicero, M. Tullius: Orations Against Marc Antony (trans-
lated by C. D. Young) New York,
" Letters (translated by E. Shuck-
burgh) London,
Clarke, C. C: Shakespeare's Philosophers and Jesters
(Gentleman's Magazine^ March)
Clarke, C. C. & M.: Shakespeare Key
Coleridge, H.: Essays and Marginalia
Coleridge, S. T.: Notes and Lectures
Collier, J. P.: History of Dramatic Literature
" Notes 6* Emendations to the Text of Shake-
speare's Plays New York,
Coluschonn, G. A. O.: GrSvin*s *C(esar* in ihrem verhSltniss
zu Muret, Voltaire und Shakespeare •Marburg,
«
it
u
It
((
903
726
860
878
879
859
846
884
903
779
90s
866
906
799
866
740
881
909
873
879
851
874
831
853
886
LIST OF BOOKS 469
Conrad, H.: Sh, und die Frauen (Preuss, JakrhUcker, Aug J . 1900
" Was erkennen ivir van Sh,*s Wesen in seinem
Brutus {Preuss. JakrbiUkery Sept.) 1906
CoUKTENAY, T. P.: Commentaries on the Historical Plays
of Shakespeare London, 1840
Craik, G. L.: English of Shakespeare (ed. Rolfc) Boston, 1872
CsEswiNKA, J.: Shakespeare und die Bithne Wiesbaden, 1902
Da Costa, J. M.: Harvey and His Discovery Philadelphia, 1879
Daniel, P. A.: Shakespeare Notes London, 1870
" Time Analysis of Shakespeare's Plays {Sh.
Soc. Trans.) 1877
Dante Aughieri: La Divina Commedia (translated by H.
F. Cary) New York, 1852
Davies, T.: Dramatic Miscellanies London, 1785
Deuus, N.: Shakespeare's Julius Cdsar und seine Qudlen im
Plutarch (Jahrbuch, xvii.) 1882
Dennis, J.: Letters Familiar^ Moral fir Critical " 1721
De Quincey, T.: The Ccuars {Works, vol. ix.) Edinbuigh, 1862
Douce, F.: Illustrations of Shakespeare London, 1807
DowDEN, E.: Shakespeare: His Mind and Art ** 1875
Drake, "S,: Shakespeare and His Times " 1817
" Memorials of Shakespeare " 1828
Dkyden, J.: TroUus fir Cressida (Preface) " 1679
Dyce, a.: Strictures on Collier's Edition " 1844
" Few Notes, etc " 1853
Earle, J.: Philology of the English Tongue Oxford, 1871
Eduaro, John: Plutarch and Shakespeare Werthdm, 1889
Edwards, T.: Canons of Criticism (Seventh Edition) London, 1765
Elus, a. J.: Early English Pronunciation " 1867
Elze, K.: William Shakespeare Halle, 1876
Etty, J. L.: Studies in Shakespeare's History (Macmillan's
Magazine, March) 1903
Farmer, R. : Essay on the Learning of Shakespeare London, 1 767
Ferrero, G.: Greatness and Decline of Rome (translated by
E. Zimmem) " 1907
Fischer, H. : Dryden und Davenant's Jul. Cos. (Auglia viii, 3) . 1 885
Fitzgerald, P.: Shakespearean Representations " 1908
Fleay, F. G.: Shakespeare Manual " 1876
Life and Work of Shakespeare " 1886
** Chronicle History of the London Stage " 1890
Florus, Luaus Ann^eus: Epitome of Roman History (trans- '
lated by J. S. Watson) New York, 1886
Forsyth, W.: Life of M. T. Cicero London, 1864
Franz, R.: Aufhau der HanMung in den klassischen Dramen. Leipsic, 1892
Freytag, G.: Technique of the Drama (translated by E. J.
MacEwan) Chicago, 1895
Friesen, H. von: Shakspere-Studien Wien, 1876
FkouDE, J. A.: Ccuar: A Sketch New York, n. d.
FuRNiVALL, F. J.: Succession of Shakespeare's Works London, 1874
" Introduction to Leopold Shakspere " 1877
470 APPENDIX '
Genee, R.: Shakespeare: sein Leben und seine Werke EBldbuigliauseii, 1872
Genest, J.: The English Stage, 1660-1832 Bath, 1832
Gentleman, F.: Dramatic Censor London, 1770
" Julius CtBsarj as acted at Covent Garden, with
an Introduction and Notes (Bell's British
Theatre) " 1773
GERvmus, G. G.: Commentaries (translated by BunnetO ... *' 1863
Gildon: Remarks on the Plays of Shakespeare '' 1710
GoLL, A.: Criminal Types in Shakespeare (translated by Mrs.
C. Weekes) " 1909
GoMONT, H.: Le Char de Shakespeare Paris, 1874
Gould, T. R.: The Tragedian London, 1868
Green, H.: Shakespeare and the Emblem-writers " 1870
Gregorovius, F.: History of the City of Rome in the Middle
Ages (translated by A. Hamilton) " 1897
Grey, Z.: Critical, Historical, and Explanatory Notes on
Shakespeare " 1754
Griffith, Mrs: Morality of Shakespeare's Dramas " 1775
Groag, J.: Der Charakter Jul, C(Bsar*s Linz, 1893
Guest, £.: History of English Rhythms London, 1838
Hales, J. W.: Essays and Notes " 1892
Halford, H.: Essays and Orations " 1831
Hallam, H.: Introduction to the Literature of Europe (Fifth
Edition) " 1873
Haluwell-Phuxips, J. O.: Outlines of Life of Shakespeare.. Brighton, 1882
Hamilton, R. W.: Nuga Literarice London, 1841
Harris, F.: The Man Shakespeare and His Tragic Life Story. New York, 1909
Hazutt, W.: Characters of Shakespeare* s Plays " 1817
Heath, B.: Ransal of Shakespeare's Text " 1765
Heine, H.: Sammtliche Werke Philadelphia, 1856
Heraud, J. A.: Shakespeare's Inner Life London, 1865
Herbert, W.: History of Twelve Great Livery Companies of
London " 1837
Herr, J. C: Scattered Notes Philadelphia, 1879
Hippocrates: Works (translated by F. Adams) New York, 1886
Hodge, H.: Julius Casar (Harper's Maga., February) 1906
Horn, F.: Shakespeare's Schauspiele Erlaiitert Leipzig, 1823
Hudson, H. N.: Shakespeare: His Life, Art, and Characters . Boston, 1872
Hugo, Francois- Victor: (Euvres Completes de Shakespeare . . Paris, 1872
Hunter, Joseph: New Illustrations of Shakespeare London, 1853
HuRDis, J.: Cursory Remarks " 1792
Ingleby, C. M.: The Still Lion " 1874
Jameson, Mrs: Characteristics of Women " 1833
Jervis, S.: Emendations of the Text of Shakespeare " i860
JussERAND, J. J.: Shakespeare in France " 1899
" Literary History of the English People " 1909
Keightley, T.: Shakespeare Expositor '* 1867
Kilbourne, F. W.: Alterations and Adaptations of Shake-
speare Boston, 1906
KiNNEAR, B. G.: Cruces Shakes pear iance London, 1883
LIST OF BOOKS
471
Knight, C: Studies ofShakspere London, 1868
KoHLEK, J. : Verhrecker-Typen in Sh,'s Dratnen Berlin, n. d.
KoLBE, F. C: Sh,*s Julius C<tsar {Irish Monthly ^ September) 1896
KsEUTZBEKG, P.: Brutus in Shakespeare* s Jul, Cos Neisse, 1894
KsEYSSiG, F.: Vorlesungen iiber Shakspeare Berlin, 1862
Leo, F. a.: Four Chapters of North's Plutarch London, 1878
Shakespeare Notes " 1885
Lewes, L.: Shakespeare* s Frauengestalten Stuttgart, 1893
Lindner, A.: Die Dramatische Einheit im Jul. Cos. (Sh.
Jakrhuch, u.) 1867
Lloyd, W. W.: Essays on Shakespeare London, 1858
LouNSBUSY, T. R.: Shakespeare and Voltaire New York, 1902
Luce, M.: Handbook to Shakespear^s Works London, 1907
Mabie, H. W.: W. Shakespeare j Poet, Dramatist y and Man. . New York, 1900
MacCallum, M. W.: Shakespeare's Roman Plays and Their
Background London, 1910
Macready, W.: Reminiscences (ed. F. Pollock) ** 1875
Maltzahn, W. von: Julius Cdsar fur die BUhne eingerichtet
von Schlegel {Jahrbuchf vii.) 1873
Masefield, John: William Shakespeare New York, 1911
Mason, J. Monck: Comments on the [Var, 1778] London, 1785
** Comments on the Plays of Beaumont &
Fletcher " 1798
Merivale, C: History of the Romans Under the Empire New York, 1864
Merivale, H.: Collier and Singer {Edin, Review j April) 1856
Mezieres, A.: Shakespeare ses (Euvres et ses Critiques Paris, i860
MiNTO, W.: Characteristics of English Poets Boston, 1901
MoiocsEN, T. : History of Rome (translated by W. P. Dickson) New York, 1895
Montagu, Mrs: Essay on Genius and Writings of Shakespeare London, 1769
MouLTON, R. G.: Shakespeare as Dramatic Artist Oxford, 1893
" Moral System of Shakespeare New York, 1903
Murray, J. A. H.: New English Dictionary Oxford, 1888
Nares, R.: Glossary (ed. Halliwell & Wright, 1867) London, 1822
Nichols, J.: Illustrations of the Literary History of the Eight-
eenth Century " 1817
Notes, etc " 1862
Niebuhr, B. G.: History of Rome (ed. L. Schmitz) " 1849
Nietzsche, F.: The Joyful Wisdom (translated by T. Com-
mon) " 1910
OECHELHAt^SER, W.: Sk. Dromatiscke Werke Weimar, 1877
EinfUhrungen zu Shakespere's Bilknen-
Dramen Minden, 1885
Oliphant, E. H. C: Sh,*s Plays: An Examination (Modem
Lang. Renew, Jan.) 1909
O'SuLUVAN, D.: Chefs-d^cBuvres de Shakespeare Paris, 1839
Paetow, W.: Die Erste metrische Deutsche Uebersetzung Rostow, 1892
Palm, H.: Shakespeare's Julius Cdsar and Kruse's Brutus
(ArchivfUr das Studium, etc., Bd Iviii, heft i) 1873
Parrott, T. M.: Academic Tragedy of Ciesar &• Pompey
(Modern Lang. Review, Oct.) 1910
472
APPENDIX
TATKacuvm, Velleius: Compendium tf Roman
(tnnslated by J. S. Wataon)
Patqn, a. p.: Norths Plutarch: Notes as to a copy of tins work
in the Greenock Ubrary
PnsiNG, Sn P.: Hard Knots in Shakespeare (ecL iL)
POLYCBKONICON RaNULPHI HiGDEN MoNACHI CeSIBEMSIS
(cd. J. R.- Lumby)
PRESCOT, K.: Letters and Classic Amusements
QniNcy, J. P.: Manuscript Corrections from a Copy of the
Fourth Folio
Rescb, H.: Zu Shakespear^s JuUus Cdsar (Archi9 fUr das
Studium, etc., Bd Izvii.)
R1T8ON, J.: Cursory Criticisms
RiVEXius, L.: Practiu of Physich
RoLTE, W. J.: Skakespeare^s Julius Ctesar (Poet Lore, vols, vf,
VII.)
R088I, E.: Studien ilber Shakespeare und das modeme Tkeater
ROmeun, G.: Skakspere^tudien
Ryiier, T.: Short View of Tragedy
SCHEXXING, F. £.: Elizabethan Drama, 1558-1642
ScHLEGEL, A. W.: Dramatic Literature, Lectures (translated
by J. Black)
SCSOODT, A.: Shakespeare Lexicon
SCBONE, F.: Udter Shakspere*s Jul, Cobs
SCBWAETZEOPF, A.: Skakspere's Dramen auf Ewigen Griinde.
Sbilhahse, G. O.: History of tke American Theatre
Shselock, M.: A Fragment on Shakspeare
SiDGWXCS, H.: Miscdlaneous Essays and Addresses
SiEVEKiNO, E. H.: On Epilepsy and Epileptiform Seizures. . .
SiEVEE8» C. W.: Sk:s Jul, Cas,fUr weitere Kreise bearbeitet.,
** Julius Casar (3 Auflage)
SlonicuND, R.: Uebereinstimmendes smschen Shakespeare und
Plutarch (Jahrbuch, kviii.)
SncPSON, Percy: Shakespearian Punctuation
Singer, S. W.: Text of Shakespeare Vindicated
Skeat, W. W.: Etymological Didionary
** Skakespeare*s Plutarch
Skottowb, a.: Ufe of Shakespeare ^
Smith, Toulmin: Early Englisk Gilds {Early Englisk Text,
Soc,)
Snkdbr, D, J,: System of Skakespear^s Dramas
Sprenoer, R,: Bemerkungen mu Dramen Sk's
STAPfER, Paux.; Skakespeare and Classical Antiquity (tzans-
lated by Miss E. J. Gary)
STt)rPRROEN, W.: Tragiscke Naturen und Skakespeare-Cka^
foktere .(•••.•|. »••••.« ....•«.••.«
Stokka, H. p.: Chronological Order of Skakespear^s Plays. . .
SURT\WtV«: History ^ Twehe Cmars (tianslated by Phile-
row Holland; ed. C, Whiblcy)
ritKORAU), K.: Shakespeare Restored
<f«
New Yock, 1886
Gxeeiiock, ]
[871
Lcmdon, ]
[886
u .
[872
Cambzidge, i
^775
Boston, ]
i8S4
r883
London, ]
[792
M .
[658
[894
Leipsic, ]
[88s
Stuttgart, ]
[866
London, 1
it)93
Boston, ]
[908
London, ]
[815
Beriin, 1
[874
Dresden, ]
1873
Bremen, i
[888
Philadelphia, 1
[891
London, ]
[786
u .
1904
u .
[858
Leipzig, ]
[851
Salzwedd, ]
[885
[881
Oxford, ]
[91X
London, ]
1853
tt .
[882
u .
[904
« .
[824
1870
SL Louis, :
[877
Northeim, )
[891
London, :
[880
1880
London, :
[865
M .
[899
U .
[726
LIST OF BOOKS
473
Thiselton, a. E.: I^oivia Criiica London, 1906
Thomson, A.: Lives of the Cctsars, translated from the Latin of
C. Suetonitts TranquiUus " 1791
TiECK, L.: Kritische Schriften Leipsic, 1852
Tompkins, E. : History of the Boston Theatre Boston, 1908
ToPSELL, E.: History of Four-footed Beasts London, 1658
Trench, R. C: Plutarch: His Life, His Lives , and His Morals " 1873
Trevelyan, Sir G. O.: Life and Letters of Lord Macauley
(enlarged edition) " 1908
Tylor, E. B.: Primitive Culture " 1871
Ulrici, H.: Shakespeare's Dramatic Art (translated by L. D.
Schmitz) " 1876
Unwin, G.: Gilds and Companies of London " 1909
Upton, J.: Critical Observations " 1746
Valerius Maximus: Acts and Sayings of the Ancient Romans
(translated by S, Speed) " 1684
Verplanck, G. C: Shakespeare's Dramas New York, 1847
ViEHOPP, H.: Shakespeare's Julius Cdsar {Jahrhuch, v.)... 1870
Voltaire, F. M. de: Theatre de Corneille avec des Commen-
taires Paris, 1765
" (Euvres Completes BAsle, 1784
Waddell, W. : Casar's Character New York, 1907
Walford, C: Gilds: Their Origin and Later History London, 1888
Walker, W. S.: On Shakespeare's Versification " 1854
" Criticisms on Shakespeare " i860
Ward, A. W.: English Dramatic Literature (Revised Edition) " 1899
Ward, A. W., & Waller, A. R. : Cambridge History of English
Literature Cambridge, 1910
Wedgwood, Miss J.: 5A(ai^e5^ar0'5 Julius Casar {Contem-
porary RevieWy March) 1893
Westenholz, F. von: Idee und Charaktere in Jul, Cos Stuttgart, 1897
Wetite, R. G.: Shakespeare's Scholar New York, 1854
Whiter, W.: Commentary on Shakespeare London, 1794
Wetitney, E. : Shakespeare's Jul. Cos, (New Englander, Oct.) . 1886
WiLKEN, Dr: Historical and Metrical Introduction to Shake-
speare Biedenkopf, 1883
Wilkes, G.: Shakespeare from an American Point of View, . New York, 1882
Winter, W.: Life and Art of Edwin Booth " 1893
Life and Art of Richard Mansfield " 1910
Wordsworth, C: Shakespeare's Knowledge and Use of the
Bible London, 1864
" Shakespeare's Historical Plays " 1893
INDEX
'Abide' used for abye^pay the
penalty of 14S, i7S
Accent, change of, in 'future* 185
Act IV, sc. ii. and iii, stage arrange-
ment of 196
Action, turning point of, Moulton on 148
Actions, too hasty, of servants,
blamed by masters 97
Acts, division of, Whitney on 112
MATesX^make ready 134
Adjective used ^ar/icf^i(x//y 219
Advantage»((? he of benefit 158
Adverb, transposition of 268
Adverbs, but one of two, having
adverbial termination 102
Alexander's Julius Ctuar 317
Julius Casar and
Gr6vin*s C&ar 448
Julius CasoTf Malone .
on II
Julius Casar, similar
passages in 96, 106
Allen, J. C, on Casar*s character. . . 395
Ambitious'^' inordinate desire for
rank 168
Angel, Caesar's 178
Anger on sorrow producing frenzy. 217
Antony, Dowden on character of . . 2
" Horn on character of i
" saved from assassination,
Cicero on 95
'Antonio's' for Antonius 25
Antony, stage appearance of 2
Anton)r*s oration as given by Ap-
pian 171
subtlety, Moulton on 154
Appian, Shakespeare's indebtedness
to, in speech of Antony 171
Shakespeare's use of 294
Appian's account of speech by
Brutus to Plebeians 167
Appoint =(fecretf 193
Apprehensive BfM/^lf^eifl 142
Kpt^fitt prepared 150, 262
Armed men in the clouds 114
Arrian on fear of death 116
'Arrive' used without prq)osition. 36
Artemidorus not a soothsayer 7
Article, omission of, in exclamations 61
As thb very day 246
At hand 198
Ate, an Homeric goddess 160
'Augurers' for augures 117
Auxiliary, retention of, a pleonasm 22
Aye me 129
Ayres on Ceuar*s character 397
Bacon's Essay of Friendship^
quoted 122
Baron's Wars, by Drayton, date of,
and that of Jul, CtBS 276
Bathurst on the Play 13
" on verse and date 285
BzXiXt™ division of army 239
" signal for 240
Bay and bait 206
Ba/d iss
Bear hard»6ear a grudge loi, 150
Bears trapped with glasses. ...... 100
Beest 12$, 213
'Began' and heg^n 255
Beholding otffuf^ obligation 171
'Bend^glance 38
Bennett on Faversham's production 446
Berger on Brutus 415
Betterton's Brutus y Cibber on 208
Bibliography 467
Blaze ioTth^ proclaim 116
Blood, bathing of hands in, a sacri-
ficial rite 146
circulation of 107
" ^disposition 214
Boastful language of Oesar, Bos-
well on 118
475
476
INDEX
II
II
Boissier on portrait bust of Brutus.. 416
Bold upon»tn/niJiiif upon 86
Booth, Barton, as Brutus 209
Booth, £., as Antony 441
** as Brutus 441
Boswell on Shakespeare's classical
knowledge 118
Bound in shallows 228
Bradley on quarrel scene 202
Brandes on C<tsar*s character 394
Bravery, fearful 240
Break '=^ make known 94
Brings accompany 57
Brown on Shakespeare's fatalism . . 39
Brown, J. M., on the Play 434
'' on Brutus 414
Brutus and Cassius, Dante's opinion
of 274
distinction be-
tween 27
and Portia, scene between,
compared to Hotspur and
Lady Percy 103
character of 402
" death of, portrayed by Em-
blem-writers 273
Decimus, referred to in
Bacon's Essay on Friend-
ship 100
kindness of heart of 231
last words of 272
letter from, to Cicero 210
soliloquy of 73
Brutus's denial of knowledge of
Portia's death 222
lack of military skill 229
love of music 23 2
Buckingham, Duke of, adaptations
by 448
Bucknill on Shakespeare's knowl-
edge of circulation of blood 108
Burning the dead among Romans. . 172
II
i<
tt
It
u
n
<(
Caesar, character of 386
Octavius, compared with
Antony i
superstitious 25
the ghost of 233
Casar 6* Pompey^ by Chapman,
analysis of 454
((
((
((
(I
«
tt
CtBsar 6* Pompey, or Cctsar^s Re-
venge, analysis of 451
Cesar's courage, MacCallum on.. 116
Cttsar's Fail in Henslowe's Diary. . 12
Cesar's prowess in swimming 35
spiritual predominance 264
superstition, DeQuincy on 99
urbanity, Davies on 124
Caius Ligarius loi
CaXcvlaXif prophesy 63
Call in question'^ consider 221
Calphumia contrasted with Portia. 8
Calpumia, dream of 119
' Calpumia ' for Calphumia 24
CampbeU on opening scene 19
C^)eU on the Date 281
C^itol as scene of Caesar's murder. 132
" as Tower of London 89
Casca, character of 5
inner character of, revealed
under agitation 48
in relation to Cicero 57
pretended self-dependence of 94
Cassius a good hater 68
" an open enemy 123
" as epicurean 57, 64, 247
** and Brutus as viewed by
Dante 274
character of 4
" in his relation to Brutus. . . 4
i<
II
i<
tt
key to character of 46
Cast yourself in wonder 62
Cautelous 92
Censure=/(? estimate 167
Ceremonies =^of^/ 100
* Ceremony ' as trisyllable 26, 198
Ceremony = religious ornament or
decoration 23
Chalmers on the Date 292
Chajiced^ happened 48, 269
Change of past tense to present . 1 14, 1 15
Charactery no
Cheer=/r(im€ of mind 144
Choice=6«/ part 151
Cicero, character of 3
** Horn on 52
on speech by Brutus 166
Cicero's lack of initiative 94
" letter to Brutus on death of
Portia 219
It
tt
INDEX
All
«
If
«
U
u
Cicero's letter to Trebonius 134
opinion on Antony's being
spared 95
Tusctdans and suicide
among Romans 260
Cinna, murder of, Stapfer on 188
Circulation of blood, Shakespeare's
knowledge of, Bucknill on 108
Clarke, C. G., on Brutus 409
C\xm2Xt™ region of the earth 60
Clock, striking, an anachronism, >. 99
Coleridge on fiftt speech of Brutus. 26
on interpolated lines 156
on soliloquy of Brutus. . 73
on Theobald 46
Collier on the Date 283
CoUischonn on Muret, Gr6vin, Vol-
taire, and Shakespeare 463
Colon marking emphatic pause. 245, 246
Common proof 76
f ommons 193
'Companion' a term of contempt. . 217
Compass=a circuit of time 258
Condition =/eiff^ 104
Consistency in characters 216
Consorted^ accompanied 248
CoTistBLacy=' firmness 127
Content=60 calm 199
Contradictory statements by Brutus 250
Contiiver^' schemer 95
Cornelia of Kyd, resemblance of
passage in 66
Countenance »ai^A0r«^y 72
Crimson'd in thy lethe 155
Cross you, I do not 241
Cynthia*s Revels, passage in, com-
pared 276
Da Costa on Harvey and Shake-
speare 108
Damn^condemn 191
Daniel on Time analysis 464
Dante's opinion of crime of Brutus
and Cassius 274
Date of Composition 281
" of Play, Malone on 12
Davenant and Dryden's alteration,
Fischer on 238
Deafness in Cassar due to epilepsy. 47
'Dear' used intensitively 154
II
II
Death's hour. 150
Decimation, allusion to 91
*'Deci\is* ior Decimus Brutus 24
Definite article for possessive pn>-
noim 136
Degree=5te^ in ascent 77
DeQuincy on Caesar's superstition. 99
Dmt^mark 179
Disillusion, confession of, by Bru-
tus 205
'Distract' as past participle 218
Dogs of war 161
Dowden on Brutus 410
on C<esar*s character 391
on the Play 429
Drachma, value of 183
Dramatic versions 447
Drayton and Shakespq^ue 276
Dream of banquet, unfortunate. . . 186
Dryden and Davenant's alteration,
Fischer on 238
Dryden's Tro, 6* Cress., similarity of
scene in 201
'Eame' for y^am 124
Eedes, Epilogus Cctsaris Interfecti. . 11
' Either' a monosyUable 192
Element, complexion of 69
Elements and humours in composi-
tion of man 277
Elze on date of Mirror of Martyrs . . 290
Emendations in Cambridge edition. 281
Emulations Jis/ii^^ 126
Enforc'd™ tiff e<f unduly 169
Ensign»either flag or hearer 257
Entertain »/aJ^ into service 275
Envious »iyKiifd4M<5 97, 178
Epicureans, doctrine of 247
Epilepsy, morbus comitiaUs 51
" S3miptomsof 50
Erebus 86
Et tu Brute 143
'Eternal' or infernal 42
Euripides' Iphegenia in Aulis, com-
parison of, to scene in Julius
Ccesar 201
Evil spiritBvmton/ of HI omen 234
Exhalations =m«l«0r5 79
'EnmsDt*' decisive moment 241
^xoid&t^one who raises spirits in
478
INDEX
II
If
Face of men 90
Factious ""oc/tiw 68
'Fall' used transUivdy 198
Falling sickness 50
Fantasy ^imagimUive faculty. . .100, 187
Far^furtker 257
FataX^foreboding ill 248
Fatalism, Shakespeare's, J. M.
Brown on 39
Faversham, W., as AnUmy 447
" production of 446
Ferrero on C(esar*s ckarader 401
on Caesar's power after
Pharsalia 39
on intimacy between Brutus
and Caesar 32
Figaie^ imaginary farm 103
'Find out' as single word 70
Fire»(0 enkindle 184
Fisher, Miss L. A., on Capitol, Rome 132
Fleay on the Date 287
" on the Play 434
Flint as source of fire 213
Flood, the great, that of Deucalion . 40
Flourished 179
Former=«/r<m/ 247
Frenzy produced by anger on sor-
row 217
Freytag on the Play 427
Friesen, von, on the Play 428
Froude on Casar^s character 400
* Funerals * for funeral 266
Fumivall on the Date 286
'Future,' change of accent in 185
Future life, Shakespeare's belief in 255
Gardens of Caesar 183
" " where situated .. . 184
Genitive of proper noun ending in
'ius 256
Genius and mortal instruments ... . 81
" natalis 82
Genindial infinitive 203
Gervinus on character of Casar 388
on Brutus*s character .... 403
on the Play 424
Get thee gone 127
Ghost of Caesar, subjective 236
Ghosts, thin voices of 115
use of, in Tragedy 234
n
((
n
Gifford on Jonson's attack on Shake-
speare 137
Gilds, mediaeval, regulations of 16
Givea^ inclined, disposed 45
Glaxe^to stare 59
Goll on Brutus 416
" on false-reasoning of Brutus. . 157
Good success 262
Gr6vin's CSsar 448
" " analysis of 462
Gxitls^ grievances 68, 180, 199
Halliwell on the Date 285
Hard, to hear'^cherish resentment. . 54
Harvey and Shakespeare, DaCosta
on 108
Harvey's discovery of circulation of
blood 107
Hats 84
Havoc, to cry 161
Hazlitt on the Play 420
HealXh^weifare 208
^tA'p^amuUUude 60
'Heare' pronounced hair 118
Heart as seat of courage 117
Hibla, situation of 243
High-sighted tyranny 91
Hilts 260, 272
Historic interval between Acts HI.
and IV 189
** period of action 12
Hold my hand 68
" thee 263
Holds on his rank 142
* Honest,' a terra of patronising con-
tempt 48
'Honourable' ambiguously used by
Cicero in 2 Philippic 1 73
Hony-heavy-dew 102
Hudson on apparent irony in
speeches of assassins . . 147
on Cassius's opinion of
Caesar 37
on character of Brutus 407
on character of Ccesar. . . . 389
on the Date 285
on the Play 428
Humour, meaning of 214
Humours, four, and four elements. . 277
Hurtled 115
<(
((
(i
(<
((
INDEX
479
I'Ay 36
'I was' pronounced as am syttabU. 233
Ideas, association of, Whiter on. . . 38
Ides of March 78
Impatient of my absence 217
Improve»Ai make good use €f 95
In^ifUe 265
" strength of malice 152
Incense^ur^e 58
Incidents known to audience only
referred to by character 64
Inconsistency, dramatic, of charac-
ters S*
Indicative instead of subjunctive. . 233
Indiretion«(fec0d 310
Infinitive, gerundial 203
iB^KOk cm mdrkal test 389
Instances 197
'Insoppressive' used in passive
sense 93
'Intermit' for renifl 31
Interval between Acts I. and 11. . . . 80
Irony apparent in q)eeches of as-
sassins 147
** dramatic, example of. . . 142, 192
Is favofs like 69
'Jig 'either rapid dance or lively song 216
Johnson on the Play 420
Jonson possibly a collaborator with
Shakespeare, Fleay on 287
Jonson's malignity, Gi£ford on 45
quotation in Discoveries^
Fleay on 287
reference to Shakespeare in
Discoveries 136
Julius Cesar, allusions to, in other
plays by Shakespeare 284
Ketp^reptain in 239
Kembles, the, as Brutus and AnUmy 440
Kerchief worn by the sick iii
Knight on the Play 423
Knot^ company of persons 147
Know Cesar doth not wrong 136
^recognise 216
Kolbe on characters of Plebeians. . 164
Lane of children 135
Lau^ter*fotf^A»ii^ siock 31
u
M
Lepidus, character of. 191
hethf no matter 65
" blood 150
" him be Cesar 169
Lttht^blood 155
Liable 123
Life compared to bond 67
Ligaiius, Caius, or Quintus loi
Lights burning blue in presence of
ghost 23s
Limbs of men 159
Lindner on Cesar's q>iritual pre-
dominance 387
Lines, interpolation of, at end of
Act IV 238
" lost, Warburton on 254
'Listen' used transiliedy 194
Lloyd on Bruius's character 402
" on character of Ctesar 387
Loven^friends 169, 249
Ludllius and Ludus, confusion in
names of 200
■
Mabie on the Play 436
MacCallum on Brutus 4x7
on Cctsar^s character.. . . 396
on Shakespeare's use of
Plutarch 294
Macmillan on Ctesar's character 395
Macready as Brutus 440
" as Cassius 440
Maid's Tragedy, quarrel scene in,
compared 201
Malone on the Date 282
Man likened to kingdom 83
Manner a5to(« cf the case 49
Mansfield, R., as Brutus 445
Mantle of Caesar shown by An-
tony.....' 177, 179
March used to designate piece of
music 198
Martial's Epigram on death of
Portia 219
Mazimus, Valerius, on ghost of
Caesar 234
May»(0 be able 84
Mtan^that used to effect a purpose. 151
Merivale on Ctesar^s character 399
Messala, Appian's account of 7
Cicero's opinion of 220
M
<l
(I
48o
INDEX
it
i<
(I
M6zierte on character of Cctsar 388
Microcosm 83
Military coat hung out as signal for
battle 240
Minto on ihe Play 435
MiribUia Urbis RonuB 132
Mirror of Martyrs j by Weever 285
Mischiefs »AarffM 195
Modesty =^moderaiion 157
*Moe* and more 84, 266
Mommsen on Casar's character 400
Morticed ^insensible in
Mortimeriados, comparison to pas-
sage in 276
Moulton on Brutus 413
on C(Bsar*s character 392
on the Play 434
on I, ii 32
Mourn, unusual construction 264
'Much' used predicatively 98
Muret's Julius Ceuar 398
" " analysis of 461
Mutiny, suggestion of, by Antony. 182
'Myself' followed by third person. 221
Name of Cassar that in which his
power resided 46
'^di'pVxRs^ handkerchiefs 175
Negative, double, for emphasis 144
" indirectly expressed 91
Nervii, victory over 177
New-added 227
New-fir*d = inflamed 112
Niebuhr on Octavius CcBsar i
Nietzsche on relation of Brutus to
Caesar 415
* Niggard * used transitively 2 29
Nimmo on Shakespeare's knowledge
of circulation of blood 107
Nominative absolute 275
" to verb, suppression of 150
"Note == stigmatize 203
Nothing= no/ at all 43
Object redundant 186
Objects, arts, and limitations 193
Observe = show homage 208
Octavius and Antony, relative at-
titudes of, adumbrated 191
Of = in 95
Of =6y or from 186
Oliphant on the Date 291
Omission of passage by actors 97
On this side Tyber 184
Once^at some future time 226
Opportunity as personified in Em-
blem-books 228
Orchard 72
Order =/<?rma/ arrangement 157
Ore-watch*d '. . 230
Ought not walk 15
Oiu: means strctcht 195
" work alive 226
Owl as bird of ill omen 60
Fzinted^ decorated 141
Palter«to shift 91
Parenthesis, Johnson's dislike of.. 254
Parrott on Casar 6* Pompey 451
Passion » overpowering emotion 28
F&th^walk 8s
Paton on edition of North's Plutarch
used by Shakespeare 295
Peevish 245
Period marking incomplete sentence 259
Plan of Work 465
Plebeians as in Coricl. and Jul.
Cos 14
as moving force of Play. 13
characters of, Kolbe on. 164
of same character as
Modem Transteverins . 180
Plural by attraction 243
Plutarch's description of Brutus.. 402
Brutus's
style of writing 165
description of Caesar. . . . 386
* Pluto' and Plutus 212
Polychronicon of Higden 132
Pope, change of speeches by 145
Portia contrasted with Calphumia. 8
" death of 218
" in Plutarch and in Shake-
speare 9
Mrs Jameson on 8
Posture of your blows 242
PrcieT=^ recommend 275
Present for future tense 257
Frevent^ anticipate 254
Fnc\!i*d = nominated 157
i<
it
n
((
((
INDEX
481
Proceeding 122
Profession, sign of, worn in obe-
dience to Sumptuary Law, or
Trade Gild regulation. 15
Property Bif»/f«<m«ff/ 194
Proscription proclamation, text of. 190
Prose and verse, use of 48
" use of, in Oration by Brutus,
Moulton on 166
Publius, error in name of 191
" Shakespeare's use of, as
common name 144
'Puisant' a disylkMe 135
Quarrel »a>ffi^/ain/ 77
scene, purpose of 202
II
r doubled in proper names 231
'Raise' used causativdy 231
'Rzjok^ diseased from repletion 150
'RzacaX^wretched 211
'Real and illusory,' MacCallum on 147
Reason in animals 174
'Rebel' used as adjective 135
Reek»0mt/ smoke 150
Relative, omission of,. 26, no, 209
" regarded as noun 135
'RemoTS^^ conscience 76
Rendred 164
Repeal = to recall from banishment . . 140
Republic and Democracy, inapt
conception of 40
Republicanism, lack of, in Brutus's
speeches 79
Resch on interpolation in IV, iii 223
Respect^Aeo/ 210
Rhewny=fm?w/, damp 104
* Rived ' for riven 58
Roman Revengej by A. Hill 450
'Rome,' pronunciation of same as
Room i9i 4i» 163
Rumelin on the Play 426
Ruskin on 'fret the clouds' 88
Rymer on scene with conspirators. . 87
Sy final interpolation of, in the
Folio 44, loi, 170, 243
'Satisfied,' particular meaning of. . 140
' Saving,' a verbal substantive 260
Scandal =/o defame 32
Scene, change of, without indication 200
31
Scenic arrangement of Acts, Malt-
zahn on 130
Schelling on the Play 437
Schlegel on the Play 422
Security s/n/je confidence 126
Semicolon marking a sudden pause . 91
Senators, niunber of, put to death
by proscription 223
Senatusconsulta, legislative acts of
Senate 168
SenecaandArrian on 'fear of death' 116
Seneca's Tragedies, influence of 398
Served =^cy«f/«/ 131
Set on your foot 112
' Shall ' used with prophetic import . 1 56
'Shame' used intransitively 85
Should»mi;A^ 40
'Should' for unndd 117
Simile, confusion in 263
Singular substantives, two, re-
garded as plurality 113
Sirrah 258
Smatcfa 273
Snider on Brutus 410
" on the Play 431
Some other 231
Soothsayer, r61e of, assigned to
Artemidorus 128
So please him come 149
Source of Plot 292
Speak'^ communicate 236
Spirit of Caesar unassailable 96
Spiritual predominance of Caesar,
Lindner on 387
Spleen, the seat of emotions 208
Stage arrangement of Act V 239
history 437
setting of Act 1 13
" ofn,i 72
Stand upon 14S
Stapfer on Brutus 411
on Casar*s character 391
on murder of Cinna 188
u
tt
<l
<(
tt
tt
onthePlay 433
Stare=to be stiff y. 236
'Statue' a trisyllable 120, 179
'Stay' used causatively 119
Steal away heart = to deceive 181
Stoical doctrine improperly used by
Caesar 117
482
INDEX
Stokes on ihe Date 290
Stole»5(o/e» 103
Stomsuch^ incUnaiian 246
Sirsm^stock race 245
Strange »«if/ami/kir 28
Suburbs, residence of hariots 106
S\xccts&^ good fortune 113
Suetonius' description of Cesar 386
" Lives of Ctesars, doubtful
use of, by Shakespeare 295
Suicide among Romans effect of
Cicero's writings 260
Sumptuary laws 16
Superlative, double 148
Superstition, Caesar's, M. Hunter on 116
Sway of earth 58
'Swear' used /ra»fi/fM/y 259
Take thought and die 98
Taste=m some degree 193
Tears and sighs as floods and storms . 21
Tense, past, change of, to present. 114
for perfect 270
Text 281
'Than,' comma placed before 269
Thassos as burial place of Cassius. 266
The last of all the Romans 265
Thews 6s
Think of the world 54
Third person, Caesar's use of 113
'Thou' and you 126, 272
Thunder-stone 62
'Tidings' a plural noun 261
" either plural or singular
noun 218
Time Analysis 464
double 267
" and double space. . . . 226
long and short, indication of 80
" suggested 271
of life 254
passage of, how shown 89
Tincture 121
Title of Tragedy, Gildon on 11
To friend =/<7r a friend 149
Too blame = blameworthy 1 24
'Toward,' accent of 33
Tower of London as Roman Capitol 64
Trebonius, letter to, from Cicero. . 134
Tree, H. B., as Antony 441
((
((
((
u
tt
n
Tree's, H. B., production 441
Trench on Shakespeare's use of
Plutarch 293
Tribunes of Plebs as in Corioi. and
Jul, C<es 14
Triumvirate, meeting place of 190
the 189
'Tyber,' gender of 20
Ulrici on the Play 429
Unaccented syllable carrying em-
phasis 216
XJndetf^^ undertake 68
Unicorns, how caught 100
Unkindest »irk>5l unnatural 178
'Unmeritable' used in active sense. . 192
Unshak'd of motion 142
Vagrants, acts relating to 16
Verb, plural, with two singular
substantives 113
Verplanck on the Date 284
Vessel compared to himmn being. . 271
Voltaire's Mart de CSsar, account
of 421
translation 420
Wouchaale^ condescend to grant. . . . zio
Waftcr XQ4
'Walkes' or ipotti 40
WsLTTi^ summon 239
Warnings of conspiracy exaggerated 128
Wash =tt>ayA over 146
Watchman in Rome 114
We heare two lions 118
When that 172
Where = whether 22, 269
'Why' used as interjection 225, 236
Wilks as Antony y Davies on 149
'Window' indiscriminately used for
opening and for shutter 185
Woe the while 65
Worlds present stale of ajfairs 271
** threefold 192
Worthless^ undeserving 245
Wounds of Csesar, niunber of 244
Wright on the Date 290
*Ye' and 'You,' use of 66, 150
You are not Cassius 206
" were best 187
Monumental Work
AND Its Editors
BEING A SHORT HISTORY OF
A NEW VARIORUM EDITION
OF THE WORKS OF
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
EDITED BV
HORACE HOWARD FURNESS, Ph.D., LL.D , Litt.D.
and HORACE HOWARD FURNESS, Jr.
LIPPINCOTT COMPANY
LONDON
■ 6 John St., Adclphi
PHILADELPHIA
MONTREAL
A MONUiMENTAL WORK
AND ITS EDITORS
THE publication this Spring of "Julius Caesar," edited by
Horace Howard Furness, Jr., — being the seventeenth volume
in a New Variorum Edition of Shakespeare's Works — offers
a fitting opportunity for a short history of this scholarly and highly
praised Variorum Shakespeare.
The late Dr. Horace Howard Furness was not yet thirty when he
was stirred half a century ago to compare the various texts by the aid
of a scrap-book. This was the small beginning of a work which
became so stupendous as to be beyond the power of one man's fulfil-
ment, even though that man — Dr. Horace Howard Furness — made it his
life work, and devoted his entire time to it with tireless industry.
Those who knew Dr. Furness personally and who were aware of
his wonderful Shakespearean scholarship would find it difficult to be-
lieve that the inception of his remarkable work was solely a matter of
chance. He was but fourteen years of age when the famous actress,
Fanny Kemble, gave to him a season ticket for her Shakespearean read-
ings. This created in him the desire for a deeper knowledge of
Shakespeare's works, and the New Variorum Edition is the result.
Dr. Furness's power of sustained labor was well nigh miraculous.
For forty-one years he worked at his desk on an average ten hours out
of twenty-four. For nearly twenty years he lived in his country seat
at Wallingford, remote from urban distractions. Here in the quiet
seclusion of his well filled library (he collected more than seven
thousand volumes for the preparation of the V^ariorum Edition) he
worked while the long quiet days merged in the quiet nights. In all
our American life there is no other and few in any land, who have so
absorbed themselves in a task wholly of letters.
In his researches he was a firm believer in the study of the plays,
and the plays alone. The order in which they were written did not
interest him. For ''weak endings" and ''incomplete lines" and the
newer apparatus for Shakespeare study, he had an unconcealed
disregard. He would have (juestioned his personal identity as soon as
question the authorship of Shakespeare's plays.
Dr. Furness was an old-fashioned scholar, and an old-fashioned man.
He recalled at all times that leisure (which is sometimes such a
perilous gift) is an essential of sound scholarship, not leisure to dawdle,
but leisure to do wholly and completely what is to be done, no matter
what the time involved; leisure to read, to know, to be infinitely more
than the narrow specialist digging one ditch in oblivion of the world
about and the skies above. His was the old-fashioned courtesy that has
time to remember trifles, and to be kind to unconsidered persons. His
generosity to young scholars was abounding.
^To know him even casually was to feel oneself distinguished; to
know him well was to be truly among the elect." — Dr. Felix Schelling,
Dr. Furness was the most notable authority on the plays of
Shakespeare in our time, and, the world has in the Variorum Edition
a precious monument of efficient scholarship, ingenious criticism, and
just appraisal of the work of other men. From eight thousand to ten
thousand works have been published on Shakespeare. In each play
issued under his editorship, Dr. Furness condensed the criticism of three
centuries into a single volume, save ''Hamlet,'' which has two. His
work has made accurate study possible to the wandering player, the
solitary teacher on the frontier, and the smallest village club, giving to
each a library of learning, and making the best of Shakespeare the
general possession of all. A shrewd humor held well in check illu-
mines the dusty paths of learning. To read the prefaces which have
enriched the plays which he edited is to follow the intellectual life of
a great scholar, and to realize that it was ever for the democracy of
learning that he labored.
Mere industry can do much, but mere industry could never build
the monument of these volumes. Insight and sympathy have made
the Variorum Eklition not only a finished interpretation and commen-
tary upon the plays of Shakespeare, but a work of extraordinary satis-
taction, independently of its subject.
That the task upon which his life has been spent and which his
death left uncompleted, should be taken up by his son, was to Dr.
Furness a source of measureless content. His heart visibly and frankly
warmed, though without word or bruit, when in a narrow span of years
he and his son, Horace Howard Furness, Jr., published each his volume
which garnered the comment of all the years on a play of Shakespeare.
It is indeed fortunate, and will no doubt cause great satisfaction among
Shakespearean scholars that Dr. Furness associated his son with this
monumental work, so that after the talented father's death the son
found himself well equipped to take up the task of editing the remain-
ing plays.
The value of the new Variorum Eklition to lovers and students of
Shakespeare, to the teacher and the theatrical profession, is plainly evi-
dent, but it is also a work which should grace the library of every
editor, every author, and every cultured man or woman on account of
its incalculable value as a work of reference and a storehouse of stories,
plays, references, and criticisms, which no one who desires a thorough
knowledge of English literature can be without.
Te be published shortly
A POSTHUMOUS VOLUME BY
HORACE HOWARD FURNESS, Ph.D., LL.D., Litt.D.
(VOLUME EIGHTEEN)
CYMBELINE
IN
A NEW VARIORUM EDITION OF THE WORKS
OF WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
Recently issued
JULIUS C^SAR
(VOLUME SEVENTEEN)
Edited by HORACE HOWARD FURNESS, Jr.
The plan of* this ^'o]ume is the same as in the preceding volumes, and the reader will
find evidence of all the learning, care and critical judgment that have made the new
Variorum Edition of Shakespeare's works pre-eminent. The text is that of the first folio
of 1623. The editor gives, in the shape of textual notes on the same page with the text,
■11 the various readings of Julius Csesar from the second folio down to the latest critical
edition of the play, then as commentary follow the notes which have been thought worthy
of insertion not only for the purpose of elucidating the text but at times as illustrations of
the history of Shakespearean criticism. In the appendix will be found the criticisms and
discussion, which on the score of length could not be conveniently included in the com-
mentary, together with a reprint of the tragedy of Julius CsesarbySir William Alexander,
Earl of Sterline (Edition of 1637). Stage history^ and dramatic versions are also given.
In short, within one volume is to be found an epitome of a Shakespeare librarv that would
cost a large expenditure of time and money to collect.
Volumes Previously Issued
Romeo and Juliet As You Like It
Hamlet (two volumes) The Tempest
King Lear ^ Midsummer Night's Dream
p. , .1 The Winter's Tale
Nluch Ado About Nothing
Macbeth Twelfth Nicht
Revised Edition by Horace Howard FiRNES>, Jk. *-» • i Ti •
r|M xf I t i' \7 ' Richard the i hird
1 lie JVierCliant Ot V eniCe EAWcA by Hokace Howard FiRKHss, Jk.
Antony and Cleopatra Love's Labour's Lost
These volumes are produced in a form and style suited to their character. They arc
of royal octavo size, and are bound in a plain, but rich cloth, with gilt top, and gold
lettering. They are printed upon superfine tone paper, with uncut edge, and have broad
margins. The type employed is of good size and clear, definite face, even the foot-notes
appearing in type large enough to be easily read. The greatest care has been taken to give
the books not only dignity of appearance, but a substantial quality which insures their
beauty against the impairment which so often follows the handling of large books.
Royal octavo, gilt top, uncut edges, cloth, $4.00, net, per volume. Half morocco,
$^,00, net, per volume.
n
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3 6105 038 535 592
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4 41#
ID
18 «
/S if, ^^
JUL 25 •65
JIJL 1 « E^j
Stanfori IniveRitif Library
Stanford, Calif ornia
In order that others may uae this book,
please return it as soon as possible, but
not later dian the date due.
ii