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SHAKESPEARE'S
23556
JULIUS CAESAR.
WITH
INTRODUCTION, AND NOTES EXPLANATORY AND CRITICAL.
FOR USE IN SCHOOLS AND CLASSES.
BY THE
REV. HENRY N. HUDSON, LL.D.
BOSTON:
PUBLISHED BY GINN, HEATH, & CO..
1883-
Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1879, by
HENRY N. HUDSON,
In the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington.
Cushing & Bramhall, Printers, Boston.
INTRODUCTION.
History of the Play.
JULIUS CÆSAR was first printed in the folio of 1623.
None of the plays in that inestimable volume have reached
us with the text in a sounder and clearer state; there being
few passages that give an editor any trouble, none that are
very troublesome.
The Rev. Mr. Fleay, in his Shakespeare Manual, 1876,
argues somewhat strenuously to the point that "this play, as
we have it, is an abridgment of Shakespeare's play, made by
Ben Jonson." In support of his theory he alleges, and truly,
that Jonson did in fact exercise his hand more or less in al-
tering and refitting other men's plays. He also points out
the fact, for such it is, that the number of short lines or
broken verses in Julius Cæsar is uncommonly large. And
he cites several words and phrases, such as "quality and
kind," "bear me hard," "chew upon this," &c., which do
not occur elsewhere in Shakespeare; while the same words
and phrases, or something very like them, are met with in
Jonson's plays. Still more to the purpose, he adduces a pas-
sage in Act iii., scene 1, which is evidently referred to in
Jonson's Discoveries, 1637, and which, in all probability, —
as I think, has been altered, perhaps by Jonson's hand,
from what Shakespeare wrote. As the question is discussed.
3
4
JULIUS CÆSAR.
at some length in the Critical Notes, it need not be prose-
cuted further here.
Such are the main particulars urged by Mr. Fleay. His
argument shows a good deal of learned diligence; still it
does not, to my mind, carry any great force, certainly is far
from being conclusive, and, as the Clarendon Editor observes,
is "not such as the readers of Shakespeare have a right to de-
mand." Nevertheless, as, on comparing the quarto and folio.
copies, we find that the folio has several other plays more or
less abridged, some to the extent of whole scenes; so I think
it nowise improbable that, after Shakespeare's retirement
from the stage, perhaps after his death, Julius Cæsar may
have been subjected to the same process, and for the same
purpose, namely, to shorten the time of representation. If
this was done, it is altogether credible that Jonson may have
been the man who did it but I fail to catch any taste of
Jonson's style or any smack of his idiom in the play as it
stands. So that, while conceding that he may have struck
out more or less of Shakespeare's matter, still I am by no
means prepared to admit that he put in any thing of his
own; though, possibly enough, in a few places, as in that
already specified, he may have slightly altered Shakespeare's
language.
There were several other plays on the subject of Julius
Cæsar, written some before, some after, the composition of
Shakespeare's play; but, as no connection has been traced
between any of these and Shakespeare's, it seems hardly worth
the while to make any further notice of them.

Date of the Writing.
The time when Julius Cæsar was composed has been
variously argued, some placing it in the middle period of
INTRODUCTION.
5
the Poet's labours, others among the latest; and, as no
clear contemporary notice or allusion had been produced,
the question could not be positively determined. It is in-
deed well known that the original Hamlet must have been
written as early as 1602; and in iii. 2, of that play Polonius
says, I did enact Julius Cæsar: I was killed in the Capitol ;
Brutus killed me." As the play now in hand lays the scene
of the stabbing in the Capitol, it is not improbable, to say
the least, that the Poet had his own Julius Cæsar in mind
when he wrote the passage in Hamlet. And that such was
the case is made further credible by the fact, that Polonius
speaks of himself as having enacted the part when he "play'd
once in the University," and that in the title-page of the
first edition of Hamlet we have the words, “As it hath been
divers times acted by his Highness' Servants in the city of
London; as also in the two Universities of Cambridge and
Oxford." Still the point cannot be affirmed with certainty;
for there were several earlier plays on the subject, and es-
pecially a Latin play on Cæsar's Death, which was performed
at Oxford in 1582.
Mr. Collier argued that Shakespeare's play must have been
on the stage before 1603, his reason being as follows. Dray-
ton's Mortimeriados appeared in 1596. The poem was af-
terwards recast by the author, and published again in 1603
as The Barons' Wars. The recast has the following lines,
which were not in the original form of the poem :
Such one he was, of him we boldly say,
In whose rich soul all sovereign powers did suit;
In whom in peace the elements all lay
So mix'd, 25 none could sovereignty impute:
That 't seem'd when Heaven his model first began,
In him it show'd perfection in a man.
6
JULIUS CÆSAR.
Here we have a striking resemblance to what Antony says of
Brutus in the play :
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.
Mr. Collier's theory is, that Drayton, before recasting his
poem, had either seen the play in manuscript or heard it at
the theatre, and so caught and copied the language of
Shakespeare.
I confess there does not seem to me any great strength in
this argument; for the idea and even the language of the
resembling lines was so much a commonplace in the Poet's
time, that no one could claim any special right of authorship
in it. Nevertheless it is now pretty certain that the play
was written as early as 1601, Mr. Halliwell having lately pro-
duced the following from Weever's Mirror of Martyrs, which
was printed that year :
The many-headed multitude were drawn
By Brutus' speech, that Cæsar was ambitious;
When eloquent Mark Antony had shown
His virtues, who but Brutus then was vicious?
As there is nothing in the history that could have suggested
this, we can only ascribe it to some acquaintance with the
play so that the passage may be justly regarded as decisive
of the question.
The style alone of the drama led me to rest in about the
same conclusion long ago. And I the rather make some-
thing of this matter, because it involves a good exercise of
mind in discriminating the Poet's different styles; which is
a very nice art indeed, and therefore apt to render the per-
ceptions delicate and acute. It has been said that a true
INTRODUCTION.
7
taste for Shakespeare is like the creation of a special sense;
and this saying is nowhere better approved than in reference
to his subtile variations of language and style. For he began
with what may be described as a preponderance of the poetic.
element over the dramatic. As we trace his course onward,
we may, I think, discover a gradual rising of the latter ele-
ment into greater strength and prominence, until at last it
had the former in complete subjection. Now, where positive
external evidence is wanting, it is mainly from the relative
strength of these elements that I argue the probable date of
the writing. And it seems to me that in Julius Cæsartthe
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.
But these distinctive notes are of a nature to be more
easily felt than described; and to make them felt examples
will best serve. Take, then, a sentence from the soliloquy
of Brutus just after he has pledged himself to the con-
spiracy: -

'Tis a common proof,
That lowliness is young ambition's ladder,
Whereto the climber-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 ele-
ments seem to have been adjusted, and the whole expres-
sion set in order, before any part of it was written down.
The beginning foresees the end, the end remembers the be-
ginning, and the thought and image are evolved together in
an even continuous flow. The thing is indeed perfect in
its way, still it is not in Shakespeare's latest and highest
8
JULIUS CÆSAR. ·
style. Now compare with this a passage from The Winter's
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 affairs,
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, thought kindling thought, and image prompting
image, and each part neither concerning 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, almost from word to word, as so many keen darts of
poetic rapture shot forth in rapid succession. Yet the passage,
notwithstanding its swift changes of imagery and motion, 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. Antony and Cleo-
patra is pre-eminently rich in this quality; but there is enough
of it in The Tempest, The Winter's Tale, Coriolanus, and
Cymbeline, to identify them as belonging to the same stage
and period of authorship. But I can find hardly so much as
an earnest of it in Julius Cæsar; and nothing short of very
strong positive evidence would induce me to class this drama
with those, as regards the time of writing.
Historical Sources.
The historic materials of this play were drawn from The
Life of Julius Cæsar, The Life of Marcus Brutus, and The
INTRODUCTION.
9
Life of Marcus Antonius, as set forth in Sir Thomas North's
translation of Plutarch. This work, aptly described by War-
ton as "Shakespeare's storehouse of learned history," was
first printed in 1579, and reprinted in 1595, 1603, and 1612,
not to mention several later editions. The translation was
avowedly made, not directly from the Greek, but from the
French version of Jaques Amyot, Bishop of Auxerre. The
book is among our richest and freshest literary monuments
of that age; and, apart from the use made of it by Shake-
speare, is in itself an invaluable repertory of honest, manly,
idiomatic Elizabethan English. A selection, embracing such
portions of the work as specially illustrate Shakespeare's plays,
has lately been published, with learned and appropriate edi-
torial furnishings, by the Rev. Walter W. Skeat, M.A. This
has been of great service to me in preparing the present
edition.
No abstract, nor any extracts, of the Plutarchian matter
need be furnished here, as nearly all the passages drawn
upon for the play are given in the foot-notes. Suffice it to
say, that in most of the leading incidents the charming old
Greek is minutely followed; though in divers cases those in-
cidents are worked out with surpassing fertility of invention
and art. But, besides this, in many places the Plutarchian
form and order of thought, and also the very words of North's
racy and delectable old English, are retained, with such an
embalming for immortality as Shakespeare alone could give.
-It may be well to add, that on the 13th of February,
B.C. 44, the feast of Lupercalia was held, when the crown
was offered to Cæsar by Antony. On the 15th of March fol-
lowing, Cæsar was slain. In November, B.C. 43, the Trium-
virs, Octavius, Antony, and Lepidus, met on a small island
near Bononia, and there made up their bloody proscription.
ΙΟ
JULIUS CÆSAR.
The overthrow of Brutus and Cassius near Philippi took
place in the Fall of the next year. So that the events of the
drama cover a period of something over two years and a
half.
The Play rightly Named.
It has been justly observed that Shakespeare shows much
judgment in the naming of his plays. From this observa-
tion, however, several critics, as Gildon and Schlegel, have
excepted the play in hand, pronouncing the title a misnomer,
on the ground that Brutus, and not Cæsar, is the hero of it.
It is indeed true that Brutus is the hero; nevertheless, I must
insist upon it that the play is rightly named, inasmuch as
Cæsar is not only the subject but also the governing power
of it throughout. He is the centre and spring-head of the
entire action, giving law and shape to every thing that is said
and done. This is manifestly true in what occurs before his
death; and it is true in a still deeper sense afterwards, since
his genius then becomes the Nemesis or retributive Provi-
dence, presiding over the whole course of the drama.
The Cæsar of Shakespeare.
The characterization of this drama in some of the parts is,
I confess, not a little perplexing to me. I do not feel quite
sure as to the temper of mind in which the Poet conceived
some of the persons, or why he should have given them the
aspect they wear in the play. For instance, Cæsar is far
from being himself in these scenes; hardly one of the
speeches put into his mouth can be regarded as historically
characteristic; taken all together, they are little short of a
downright caricature. As here represented, he is indeed lit-
tle better than a grand, strutting piece of puff-paste; and
INTRODUCTION.
II
when he speaks, it is very much in the style of a glorious va-
pourer 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 duc-
tile 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.
It is true, Cæsar's ambition was indeed gigantic, but none
too much so, I suspect, for the mind it dwelt in; for his
character in all its features was gigantic. And no man ever
framed his ambition more in sympathy with the great forces
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 be-
fore 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 transcendant qualities which placed him at
the summit 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
Cæsar thoroughly; and that he regarded him as "the no-
blest man that ever lived in the tide of times." For exam-
ple, in Hamlet, he makes Horatio, who is one of his calmest
and most right-thinking characters, speak of him as “the
mightiest Julius." In Antony and Cleopatra, again, the
heroine is made to describe him as broad-fronted Cæsar."
And in King Richard the Third, the young Prince utters
these lines:-
12
JULIUS CÆSAR.
*
That Julius Cæsar was a famous man:
With what his valour did enrich his wit,
His wit set down to make his valour live:
Death makes no conquest of this conqueror.
In fact, we need not go beyond Shakespeare to gather that
Julius Cæsar's was the deepest, the most versatile, and most
multitudinous head that ever figured in the political affairs of
mankind.
Indeed, it is clear from this play itself that the Poet's course
did not proceed at all from ignorance or misconception of
the man.
For it is remarkable that, though Cæsar 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, Cæsar'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 guard-
ian 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 Cæsar, the greatest of their
national heroes, the crown and consummation 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 Cæsar fell; and
INTRODUCTION.
13
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.
From all which it may well be thought that Cæsar was too
great for the hero of a drama, since his greatness, if brought
forward in full measure, would leave no room for any thing
else, at least would preclude any proper dramatic balance
and equipoise. It was only as a sort of underlying potency,
or a force withdrawn into the background, that his presence
was compatible with that harmony and reciprocity of several
characters which a well-ordered drama requires. At all
events, it is pretty clear that, where he was, such figures as
Brutus and Cassius could never be very considerable, save
as his assassins. They would not have been heard of in
after-times, if they had not " struck the foremost man of all
this world"; in other words, the great sun of Rome had to be
shorn of his beams, else so ineffectual a fire as Brutus could
nowise catch the eye.
Be this as it may, I have no doubt that Shakespeare knew
the whole height and compass of Cæsar's vast and varied
capacity. And I sometimes regret that he did not render
him as he evidently saw him, inasmuch as he alone perhaps.
of all the men who ever wrote could have given an adequate
expression of that colossal man.
I have sometimes thought that the policy of the drama
may have been to represent Cæsar, 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 Cæsar was
literally too great to be seen by them, save as children often
L.
14
JULIUS CÆSAR.
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 identi-
fying us more or less with them in mental position, and
making us share somewhat in their delusion. For there is
scarce any thing 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 better, had
we been in the dark along with them.
Cæsar 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 com-
mon 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 wait the ap-
proval of later events. He indeed, far beyond any other
man of his 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 to think, will both explain
and justify the strange disguise a sort of falsetto greatness
under which Cæsar exhibits himself.
Now the seeming contradiction between Cæsar as known
and Cæsar as rendered by Shakespeare is what, more than
INTRODUCTION.
15
66
any thing else in the drama, perplexes me. But there is, I
think, a very refined, subtile, and peculiar irony pervading
this, more than any other of the Poet's plays; not intended
as such, indeed, by the speakers, but a sort of historic irony,
-the irony of Providence, so to speak, or, if you please,
of Fate; much the same as is implied in the proverb, “A
haughty spirit goes before a fall." This irony crops out in
many places. Thus we have Cæsar most blown with arro-
gance and godding it in the loftiest style when the daggers
of the assassins are on the very point of leaping at him. So
too, all along, we find Brutus most confident in those very
things where he is most at fault, or acting like a man most
ignorant of what he's most assured"; as when he says that
"Antony can do no more than Cæsar's arm when Cæsar's
head is off." This, to be sure, is not meant ironically by
him; but it is turned into irony by the fact that Antony
soon tears the cause of the conspirators all to pieces with his
tongue. But indeed this sort of honest guile runs all through
the piece as a perfusive and permeating efficacy. A still bet-
ter instance of it occurs just after the murder, when the chiefs
of the conspiracy are exulting in the transcendant virtue and
beneficence of their deed, and in its future stage celebrity;
and Cassius says,
So often shall the knot of us be call'd
The men that gave their country liberty;
and again, a little later, when Brutus says of Antony, "I
know that we shall have him well to friend." Not indeed
that the men themselves thought any irony in those speeches :
it was natural, no doubt, that they should utter such things
in all seriousness; but what they say is interpreted into
irony by the subsequent events. And when such a shallow
L
16
JULIUS CÆSAR.
idealist as Brutus is made to overtop and outshine the great-
est practical genius the world ever saw, what is it but a re-
fined and subtile irony at work on a much larger scale, and
diffusing itself, secretly, it may be, but not the less vitally,
into the texture? It was not the frog that thought irony,
when he tried to make himself as big as the ox; but there
was a pretty decided spice of irony in the mind that con-
ceived the fable.
It is to be noted further, that Brutus uniformly speaks of
Cæsar with respect, almost indeed with admiration. It is his
ambition, not his greatness, that Brutus resents; the thought
that his own consequence is impaired by Cæsar's elevation
having no influence with him. With Cassius, on the con-
trary, impatience of his superiority is the ruling motive: he
is all the while thinking of the disparagement he suffers by
Cæsar's exaltation.
This man
Is now become a god; and Cassius is
A wretched creature, and must bend his body,
If Cæsar carelessly but nod on him.
Why, man, he doth bestride the narrow world
Like a Colossus; and we petty men
Walk under his huge legs.
Thus he overflows with mocking comparisons, and finds his
pastime in flouting at Cæsar as having managed, by a sham
heroism, to hoodwink the world.
And yet the Poet makes Cæsar characterize himself very
much as Cassius, in his splenetic temper, describes him.
Cæsar 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 sympathized rather in
INTRODUCTION.
17
Antony's great oration. And the sequel, as we have seen,
justifies Antony's opinion of Cæsar. 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 Cæsar since your daggers pricked the gas out of him,
you see what a grand humbug he was."
In sober truth, the final issue of the conspiracy, as repre-
sented by Shakespeare, is a pretty conclusive argument of
the blunder, not to say the crime, of its authors. Cæsar,
dead, tears them and their cause all to pieces. In effect,
they did but stab him into a mightier life; so that Brutus
might well say, as indeed he does at last,
(0 Julius Cæsar, thou art mighty yet!
Thy spirit walks abroad, and turns our swords
In our own proper entrails.
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 Cæsar to be an in-
stance of the profound guile with which Shakespeare some-
times plays upon his characters, humouring their bent, and
then leaving them to the discipline of events.*
* Julius Cæsar is indeed protagonist of the tragedy: but it is not the
Cæsar whose bodily presence is weak, whose mind is declining in strength
and sure-footed energy, the Cæsar who stands exposed to all the acci-
dents of fortune. It is the spirit of Cæsar which is the dominant power of
the tragedy: against this the spirit of Cæsar Brutus fought; but Bru-
tus, who for ever errs in practical politics, succeeded only in striking down
Cæsar's body: he who had been weak now rises as pure spirit, strong and
terrible, and avenges himself upon the conspirators. The contrast between
the weakness of Cæsar's bodily presence in the first half of the play, and the
might of his spiritual presence in the latter half, is emphasized and perhaps
18
JULIUS CÆSAR.
The Cæsar of History.
In oratory, also, he is
Merivale justly affirms Julius Cæsar to be "the greatest
name in history." And I believe the general verdict of man-
kind pronounces him at once the greatest soldier and the
greatest statesman of the world.
acknowledged to have stood second only to Cicero at the
time; while, as an author, he ranks among the best and
highest of our Latin classics. Therewithal he was a perfect
gentleman; and of the world's great military conquerors he
is probably the only one to whom that title can be justly ap-
plied. All the sweetness of humanity seems to have been
concentrated in his native temper and disposition. Nor were
his virtues less eminent than his talents and genius; while
the immense power to which he attained served, apparently,
but to give his virtues larger scope and render them more
conspicuous: so that his rightful seat is among the loveliest,
the largest-hearted, the most magnanimous of men.
Julius Cæsar loved Rome, too, at least as well as any of
his haters did, and loved her a thousand times more wisely.
But it was his peculiar lot, perhaps I should rather say his
special mission, to contend-alone and single-handed in the
fore-front, though, to be sure, with the great body of the Ro-
man people at his back — with the proudest, the powerfullest,
over-emphasized by Shakespeare. It was the error of Brutus that he failed
to perceive wherein lay the true Cæsarean power, and acted with short-
sighted eagerness and violence. Mark Antony, over the dead body of his
lord, announces what is to follow: "Over thy wounds now do I prophesy,"
&c. The ghost of Cæsar, which appears on the night before the battle of
Philippi, serves as a kind of visible symbol of the vast posthumous power
of the Dictator. Finally, the little effort of the aristocrat republicans sinks
to the ground, foiled and crushed by the force which they had hoped to
abolish by one violent blow. — Dowden.
DoWDEN.
INTRODUCTION.
19
and the wickedest oligarchy that ever afflicted the world. This
senatorial faction, small in number, but terrible in malignant
activity, were, and long had been, intent on prostituting all
the powers of the Roman State to their own base, selfish, sin-
ister ends with a few individual exceptions, they seemed to
cherish the illustrious traditions of their country only as a
license for their atrocious cupidity and lust. They could not
be made to comprehend that either the foreign nations
whom they conquered or the other classes of their own na-
tion had any rights which they were bound to respect: prac-
tically at least, as the thing stood to their mind, all other
men were created but for the one sole purpose that they
might fleece them, plunder them, prey upon them. And
they, they it was who were slowly murdering the liberties and
the Constitution of their country, by their hideous corruption,
avarice, profligacy, rapacity, inhumanity. From the very
outset of his public career, Cæsar deliberately set his whole
mind and bent all his matchless energies to the work of
rescuing so much of the liberty and Constitution of old Rome
as it was yet possible to save from the stanchless greed, the
remorseless tyranny, the monstrous sensuality, which were ren-
dering the Roman name an intolerable stench in the nostrils
of Heaven and Earth. Such as they were, Cæsar wrestled
with them many a long year, till he finally outwrestled and
overthrew them, and thereby delivered the groaning nations
from their dreadful misrule. When they could no longer
meet him in open fight, they found him as wise and merci-
ful in peace as he had been heroic and irresistible in war; so
that no means were left them for putting him down but those
which they used at last, smiles concealing daggers, kisses,
to make way for stabs.
In the process of his work, this mighty man approved him-
20
JULIUS CÆSAR.
self to be 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 Cæsar 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
the fittest man for that office. We can all now see, what he
alone saw then, that the great social and political forces of
the Roman world had long been moving and converging
irresistibly to that end. He was not to be deluded with the
hope of reversing or postponing the issue of such deep-work-
ing 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 Cæsar'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. The only mode of induc-
ing her powers to work for us is by learning their terms and
letting them have their own way. There is nothing in which
this holds more true than in respect of those vast moral ener-
gies which evolve and shape the life of States and empires;
and which no conscious power of man can prevent, because
their working is so deep and silent as not to be known, till
the results are fully prepared. Here, indeed, man's best
INTRODUCTION.
21
strength is a confession of his impotence. Great Cæsar un-
derstood 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 administrative modes and powers answerable to the exi-
gency. The most sagacious and far-seeing of political re-
formers, he was also, his enemies themselves being judges,
the most gentle and benignant of civil rulers. Great faults.
he had indeed, measured by our standard; but his worst
vices were, in all rational and human account, preferable to
the best public virtues of his stabbers.
As the foregoing view of Cæsar and his assassins does not
tally at all points with the one commonly held, and as it may
appear to some rather paradoxical, I subjoin the judgments
of two learned and judicious authors, to show that I am not
altogether singular. The first is from Merivale's History of
the Romans under the Empire:
"While other illustrious men have been reputed great for
their excellence in some one department of human genius, it
was declared by the concurrent voice of antiquity, that Cæsar
was excellent in all. He had genius, understanding, memory,
taste, reflection, industry, and exactness. He was great,'
repeats a modern writer, 'in every thing he undertook; as a
captain, a statesman, a lawgiver, a jurist, an orator, a poet,
an historian, a grammarian, a mathematician, and an archi-
tect.' The secret of his manifold excellence was discovered
by Pliny in the unparalleled energy of his intellectual powers,
which he could devote without distraction to several objects
at once, or rush at any moment from one occupation to
another with the abruptness and rapidity of lightning. Cæsar
could be writing and reading, dictating and listening, all at
the same time; he was wont to occupy four amanuenses at
22
JULIUS CÆSAR.
once; and had been known, on occasions, to employ as
many as seven together. And, as if to complete the picture
of the most perfect specimen of human ability, we are assured
that in all the exercises of the camp his vigour and skill were
not less conspicuous. He fought at the most perilous mo-
ments in the ranks of the soldiers; he could manage his
charger without the use of reins; and he saved his life at
Alexandria by his address in the art of swimming."
The following is from a recent history of Rome by Dr.
Leonard Schmitz, of Edinburgh: "The death of Cæsar was
an irreparable loss, not only to the Roman people, but to
the whole civilized world; for the Republic was utterly
ruined, and no earthly power could restore it. Cæsar's
death involved the State in fresh struggles and civil wars
for many a year, until in the end it fell again (and this was
the best that, under the circumstances, could have hap-
pened to it) under the supremacy of Augustus, who had
neither the talent, nor the will, nor the power, to carry out
all the beneficial plans which his great-uncle had formed.
It has been truly said, that the murder of Cæsar was the
most senseless act the Romans ever committed. Had it
been possible at all to restore the Republic, it would un-
avoidably have fallen into the hands of a most profligate
aristocracy; who would have sought nothing but their own
aggrandizement; would have demoralized the people still
more; and would have established their own greatness upon
the ruins of their country. It is only necessary to recollect
the latter years of the Republic, the depravity and corrup-
tion of the ruling classes, the scenes of violence and blood-
shed which constantly occurred in the streets of Rome, to
render it evident to every one that peace and security could
not be restored, except by the strong hand of a sovereign;

S
INTRODUCTION.
23
1
and the Roman world would have been fortunate indeed, if
it had submitted to the mild and beneficent sway of Cæsar.”
The Brutus of Shakespeare.
Coleridge has a shrewd doubt as to what sort of a charac-
ter the Poet meant his Brutus to be. For, in his thinking
aloud just after the breaking of the conspiracy to him, Brutus
avowedly grounds his purpose, not on any thing Cæsar has
done, nor on what he is, but simply on what he may become
when crowned. (He "knows no personal cause to spurn at
him"; nor has he "known when his affections sway'd more
than his reason": but "he would be crown'd: how that
might change his nature, there's the question"; and,
since the quarrel
Will bear no colour for the thing he is,
Fashion it thus, - that what he is, augmented,
Would run to these and these extremities;
And therefore think him as a serpent's egg,
And kill him in the shell.>
So then, Brutus heads a plot to assassinate the man who, be-
sides being clothed with the sanctions of law as the highest
representative of the State, has been his personal friend and
benefactor; all this, too, not on any ground of fact, but on
an assumed probability that the crown will prove a sacra-
ment of evil, and transform him into quite another man.
strange piece of casuistry indeed! but nowise unsuited to
the spirit of a man who was to commit the gravest of crimes,
purely from a misplaced virtue.

A
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 sensitiveness and delicacy of principle that
cannot bosom the slightest stain; his mind enriched and

24
JULIUS CÆSAR.
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 patri-
otism, besides being somewhat hidebound with patrician
pride, is of the speculative kind, and dwells, where his whole
character has been chiefly formed, in a world of poetical and
philosophic ideals. He is an enthusiastic student of books.
Plato is his favourite teacher; and he has studiously framed
his life and tuned his thoughts to the grand and pure con-
ceptions won from that all but divine source: Plato's genius
walks with him in the Senate, sits with him at the fireside,
goes with him to the wars, and still hovers about his tent.
His great fault, then, lies in supposing it his duty to be
meddling with things that he does not understand. Con-
scious of high thoughts and just desires, but with no 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 is ;
the actual circumstances and tendencies amidst which he
lives are as a book written in a language he cannot read.
The characters 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 mo-
tives as govern them, he just projects and suspends his ideals
in
em, 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,

INTRODUCTION.
25
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
substantially changed, the reality lost. Cæsar, already clothed
with the title and the power of Imperator for life, would change
the form so as to agree with the substance, 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 around him.
Indeed he does not see them; he merely dreams his own
meaning into them. He is swift to do that by which he
thinks his country ought to be benefited. As the killing of
Cæsar stands in his purpose, he and his associates are to be
sacrificers, not butchers.") But, in order to any such effect
as he hopes for, his countrymen generally must regard the
act in the same light as he intends it. That they will do this,
is the very thing which he has in fact no reason to conclude;
notwithstanding, because it is so in his idea, therefore he
trusts that the conspirators will "be called purgers, not mur-
derers." Meanwhile the plain truth is, that, if his country-
men 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 full of things proving that it can-
not be so construed; but this is what Brutus has no eye to
see.
So too, in his oration "to show the reason of our Cæsar's
death," he speaks, in calm and dispassionate manner, just
26
JULIUS CÆSAR.
those things which he thinks ought to set the people right,
and himself right in their eyes) forgetting al. the while that
the deed cannot fail to make the people mac, and that pop-
ular madness is not a thing to be reasoned with. And for
the same cause he insists on sparing Antony, and on permit-
ting him to speak in Cæsar's funeral. 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
Cæsar's death the occasion of strengthening those who killed
him; not perceiving the strong likelihood, which soon passes
into a fact, that in cutting off Cæsar 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 Cæsar'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 sought to prevent. He confides in the good-
ness 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 had worshipped Virtue, and found her at last but a
shade.) So worshipped, she may well prove a shade indeed!

INTRODUCTION.
27
Admiration of the man's character, reprobation of his pro-
ceedings, which of these is the stronger with us? And
there is, I think, much the same irony in the representation
of Brutus as in that of Cæsar; only the order of it is here
reversed. As if one should say, "O yes, yes! in the prac-
tical affairs of mankind your charming wisdom of the closet
will doubtless put to shame the workings of mere practical
insight and sagacity.”
Shakespeare's exactness in the minutest details of char-
acter is well shown in the speech already referred to; which
is the utterance of a man philosophizing most unphilosophi-
cally; as if the Academy should betake itself to the stump,
and this too without any sense of the incongruity. Plu-
tarch has a short passage which served as a hint, not indeed
for the matter, but for the style of that speech. "They do
note," says he, "that in some of his epistles he counterfeited
that brief compendious manner of the Lacedæmonians. As,
when the war was begun, he wrote to the Pergamenians in this
sort: 'I understand you have given Dolabella money: if
you have done it willingly, you confess you have offended
me; if against your wills, show it by giving me willingly.'
This was Brutus's manner of letters, which were honoured for
their briefness." The speech in question is far enough in-
deed from being a model of style either for oratory or any
thing else; but it is finely characteristic; while its studied
primness and epigrammatic finish contrast most unfavourably
with the frank-hearted yet artful eloquence of Antony.
And what a rare significance attaches to the brief scene of
Brutus and his drowsy boy Lucius in camp a little before the
catastrophe! There, in the deep of the night, long after all
the rest have lost themselves in sleep, and when the anxie-
ties of the issue are crowding upon him, — there we have the
28
JULIUS CÆSAR.
:
earnest, thoughtful Brutus hungering intensely for the repasts
of treasured thought.
Look, Lucius, here's the book I sought for so;
I put it in the pocket of my gown.
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 benig-
nant irony in the implied repugnance between the spirit of
the man and the stuff of his present undertaking? The idea
of a bookworm riding the whirlwind of war! The thing is
most like Brutus; but how out of his element, how unsphered
from his right place, it shows him! There is a touch of
drollery in the contrast, which the richest steeping of poetry
does not disguise. I fancy the Poet to have been in a
bland intellectual smile, as he wrote that strain of loving ear-
nestness in which the matter is delivered. And the irony is
all the more delectable for being so remote and unpro-
nounced; like one of those choice arrangements in the back-
ground of a painting, which, without attracting conscious no-
tice, give a zest and relish to what stands in front. The
scene, whether for charm of sentiment or felicity of concep-
tion, is one of the finest in Shakespeare. Here too he had
a hint from Plutarch: "Whilst Brutus was in the war, and
his head over-busily occupied, having slumbered a little
after supper, he spent the rest of the night in dispatching
his weightiest causes; and if he had any leisure left, he
would read some book till the third watch of the night." I
must add a part of what Brutus says when Lucius falls asleep
in the midst of his song:
This is a sleepy tune. -O murderous slumber!
Lay'st thou thy leaden mace upon my boy
That plays thee music? Gentle knave, good night;
I will not do thee so much wrong to wake thee:
INTRODUCTION.
29
If thou dost nod, thou break'st thy instrument;
I'll take it from thee; and, good boy, good night.
Let me see, let me see: is not the leaf turn'd down,
Where I left reading? Here it is, I think.
It is but right to add that, in the war between Pompey
and Cæsar, Brutus, after much vacillation, sided with the
former; and, when Pompey's cause was wrecked at Phar-
salia, he was one of the first to throw himself on Cæsar's
clemency; who thereupon took him to his bosom; thus be-
having with that mixture of far-sightedness and kind-heart-
edness which is rightly called magnanimity; and as thinking
it nobler to charm the hostility out of his enemies than to
make them feel his power. These facts, to be sure, are not
brought forward in the play, but the sense of them is; and
this too in a way that tells powerfully against the course of
Brutus.
Such, to my apprehension, is the Brutus of Shakespeare.
But the Brutus of history was neither so immaculate in pur-
pose nor so amiable in temper as the Poet's delineation may
lead us to suppose. Merivale, who is among the calmest,
fairest, and solidest of English historians, has the following
in reference to him:
'He was the son of a father of the same name, who had
been a prominent supporter of the Marian party, and finally
lost his life by rashly joining in the enterprise of Lepidus.
His mother Servilia was half-sister to Marcus Cato, and ap-
pears to have been a woman of strong character and more
than usual attainments. He was born only fifteen years later
than Cæsar himself. But Cæsar's intimacy with Servilia was,
it may be presumed, a principal cause of the marked favour
with which he distinguished her offspring.
"The elder Brutus being cut off prematurely, when his son
30
JULIUS CÆSAR,
•
was only eight years of age, the care of his education
passed into the hands of his uncle Cato; and the youth be-
came early initiated in the maxims of the Stoic philosophy,
and learned to regard his preceptor, whose daughter Portia
he married, as the purest model of practical and abstract
virtue. But, together with many honourable and noble sen-
timents, he imbibed also from him that morose strictness in
the exaction as well as the discharge of legal obligations
which, while it is often mistaken for a guaranty of probity,
is not incompatible with actual laxity of principle.
"Accordingly, we find that while, on the one hand, he
refrained as a provincial officer from extorting by fraud or
violence the objects of his cupidity, he was, on the other,
not the less unscrupulous in demanding exorbitant interest
for loans advanced to the natives, and enforcing payment with
rigid pertinacity. His base transactions with the magistrates
of Salamis, as also with Ariobarzanes, King of Cappadocia,
are detailed in Cicero's correspondence with Atticus. It was
some years after his residence in Cyprus that he commissioned
a person named Scaptius to collect his debts with their ac-
cumulated interest. He allowed his agent to urge the most
questionable interpretations of the law, and to enforce a rate of
interest beyond what Cicero considered either legal or equita-
ble. Scaptius, in his zeal for his employer, obtained the ser-
vices of a troop of horse, with which he shut up the Sala-
minian Senators in their house of assembly till five of them
died of starvation, being really unable to procure the sum
required. The bitter reflections which Cicero makes upon
the conduct of Brutus mark the strong contrast between the
tried and practical friend of virtue and the pedantic aspirant
to philosophic renown."
INTRODUCTION.
31
=
Brutus and Cassius.
The characters of Brutus and Cassius are very nicely dis-
criminated, scarce a word falling from either but what smacks
of the man. Cassius is much the better conspirator, but
much the worse man; and the better in that because the
worse in this. For Brutus engages in the conspiracy on
grounds of abstract and ideal justice; while Cassius holds
it both a wrong and a blunder to go about such a thing
without making success his first care. This, accordingly, is
what he works for, being reckless of all other considerations
in his choice and use of means. Withal he is more impul-
sive and quick than Brutus, because less under the self-
discipline of moral principle. His motives, too, are of a
much more mixed and various quality, because his habits
of thinking and acting have grown by the measures of expe-
rience: he studies to understand men as they are; Brutus,
as he thinks they ought to be. Hence, in every case where
Brutus crosses him, Brutus is wrong, and he is right, — right,
that is, if success be their aim. Cassius judges, and rightly,
I think, that the end should give law to the means; and that
"the honourable men whose daggers have stabb'd Cæsar”
should not be hampered much with conscientious scruples.
Still Brutus overawes him by his moral energy and eleva-
tion of character, and by the open-faced rectitude and purity
of his principles. Brutus has no thoughts or aims that he is
afraid or ashamed to avow; Cassius has many which he
would fain hide even from himself. And he catches a sort
of inspiration and is raised above himself by contact with
Brutus. And Cassius, moreover, acts very much from per-
sonal hatred of Cæsar, as remembering how, not long before,
he and Brutus had stood for the chief Prætorship of the city,


32
JULIUS CÆSAR.
and Brutus through Cæsar's favour had got the election.
And so the Poet read in Plutarch that "Cassius, being a
choleric man, and hating Cæsar privately more than he did
the tyranny openly, incensed Brutus against him." The
effect of this is finely worked out by the Poet in the man's
affected scorn of Cæsar, and in the scoffing humour in which
he loves to speak of him. For such is the natural language
of a masked revenge.
The tone of Cassius is further indicated, and with exqui-
site art, in his soliloquy where, after tempering Brutus to his
purpose, and finding how his " honourable metal may be
wrought," he gently slurs him for being practicable to flatter-
ies, and then proceeds to ruminate the scheme for working
upon his vanity, and thereby drawing him into the conspir-
acy; thus spilling the significant fact, that his own honour
does not stick to practise the arts by which he thinks it is a
shame to be seduced.
:
It is a noteworthy point also, that Cassius is too practical
and too much of a politician to see any ghosts. Acting on
far lower principles than his leader, and such as that leader
would spurn as both wicked and base, he therefore does no
violence to his heart in screwing it to the work he takes in
hand his heart is even more at home in the work than his
head: whereas Brutus, from the wrenching his heart has suf-
fered, keeps reverting to the moral complexion of his first
step. The remembrance of this is a thorn in his side; while
Cassius has no sensibilities of nature for such compunctions
to stick upon. Brutus is never thoroughly himself after the
assassination: that his heart is ill at ease, is shown in a cer-
tain dogged tenacity of honour and overstraining of rectitude,
as if he were struggling to make atonement with his con-
science. The stab he gave Cæsar planted in his own ut

INTRODUCTION.
33

right and gentle nature a germ of remorse, which, gathering
strength from every subsequent adversity, came to embody
itself in imaginary sights and sounds; the Spirit of Justice,
made an ill angel to him by his own sense of wrong, hover-
ing in the background of his after-life, and haunting his soli-
tary moments in the shape of Cæsar's ghost. And so it is
well done, that he is made to see the "monstrous appari-
tion" just after his heart has been pierced through with many
sorrows at hearing of Portia's shocking death.
Character of Portia.
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 suffer for others, but very little for herself. As the
daughter of Cato and the wife of Brutus, she has set in her
eye a pattern of how she ought to think and act, being "so
father'd 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; she knows well how to honour and
admire it; yet she cannot work it into the texture of her
character; she can talk it like a book, but she tries in vain
to live it.
Plutarch gives one most touching incident respecting her
which the Poet did not use, though he transfused the sense
of it into his work. It occurred some time after Cæsar's
death, and when the civil war was growing to a head: “Bru-
34
JULIUS CÆSAR.
tus, seeing the state of Rome would be utterly overthrown,
went to the city of Elea standing by the sea. There Portia,
being ready to depart from her husband and return to Rome,
did what she could to dissemble the sorrow she felt. But a
certain painting bewrayed her in the end. The device was
taken out of the Greek stories, how Andromache accom-
panied her husband Hector when he went out of Troy to the
wars, and how Hector delivered her his little son, and how
her eyes were never off him. Portia, seeing this picture, and
likening herself to be in the same case, fell a-weeping; and
coming thither oftentimes in a day to see it, she wept still."
The force of this incident is indeed all reproduced in the
Portia of the play; we have its full effect in the matter about
her self-inflicted wound as compared with her subsequent
demeanour; still I cannot help wishing the Poet had made
use of the incident itself.
Portia gives herself that gash without flinching, and bears
it without a murmur, as an exercise and proof of manly for-
titude; and she translates her pains into smiles, all to com-
fort 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 mo-
tive 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 the inward mu-
tiny till affection again whispers her into composure, lest she
spill something that may hurt or endanger her Brutus. O
noble Portia ! Well might the poet Campbell say, "For the
picture of that wedded pair, at once august and tender, hu-
man nature and the dignity of conjugal faith are indebted."
INTRODUCTION.
35
Mark Antony.
A rounded analysis of Antony belongs to a later period,
when his native aptitudes for vice were warmed into full de-
velopment by the charms of the great Egyptian sorceress;
and only a few of his points as set forth in this play call for
present notice. His unreserved adulation of Cæsar, and
reckless purveying to Cæsar's dangerous weakness in craving
to be called a king when he already had far more than kingly
power, and while the obvious part of a friend was to warn
him from it and help him against it, this is wisely retained
by the Poet as one of Antony's characteristic traits. Then
too we have apt indications here and there of his proneness
to those vicious levities and debasing luxuries which after-
wards ripened into such a gigantic profligacy. He has not
yet attained to that rank and full-blown combination of cru-
elty, perfidy, and voluptuousness, which the world associates
with his name, but he is plainly on the way to it. His pro-
found and wily dissimulation, while knitting up the hollow
truce with the assassins on the very spot where "great Cæsar
fell," is managed with admirable skill; his deep spasms of
grief being worked out in just the right way to quench their
suspicions, and make them run into the toils, when he calls
on them to render him their bloody hands. Nor have they
any right to complain, for he is but paying them in their own
coin; and we think none the worse of him, that he fairly
outdoes them at their own practice.
But Antony's worst parts as here delivered are his exult-
ant treachery in proposing to use his colleague Lepidus as
at once the pack-horse and the scape-goat of the Trium-
virate, and his remorseless savagery in arranging for the
slaughter of all that was most illustrious in Rome, bartering
36
JULIUS CÆSAR.
away his own uncle, to glut his revenge with the blood of
Cicero; though even here his revenge was less hideous than
the cold-blooded policy of young Octavius. Yet Antony has
in the play, as he had in fact, some right-noble streaks in
him; for his character was a very mixed one; and there was
to the last a fierce war of good and evil within him. Espe-
cially he had an eye to see, a heart to feel, and a soul to
honour the superb structure of manhood which Rome pos-
sessed in Julius Cæsar, who stood to him indeed as a kind of
superior nature, to raise him above himself. He "fear'd
Cæsar, honour'd him, and loved him"; and this religious
gravitation towards him was honourable to them both. An-
tony's usual style of oratory is said to have been rather of the
bloated and gassy sort; yet, with the murdered Cæsar for
his theme, he was for once inspired and kindled to a rapture
of the truest, noblest, most overwhelming eloquence; his
actual performance being hardly exaggerated by the oration
Shakespeare puts in his mouth. Nor must I omit the grate-
ful remembrance at last of his obligations to Brutus for having
saved him from the daggers of the conspirators.
The People.
That many-headed, but withal big-souled creature, the
multitude, is charmingly characterized in these scenes. It
is true, they are rather easily swayed hither and thither by
the contagion of sympathy and of persuasive speech; yet
their feelings are in the main right, and even their judgment
in the long run is better than that of the pampered Roman
aristocracy, inasmuch as it proceeds more from the instincts
of manhood. Shakespeare evidently loved to play with the
natural, unsophisticated, though somewhat childish heart of
the people; but his playing is always genial and human-
INTRODUCTION.
37
hearted, with a certain angelic humour in it that seldom fails
to warm us towards the subject. On the whole, he under-
stood the people well, and they have well repaid him in un-
derstanding him better, I suspect, than the critics have done.
The cobbler's droll humour, at the opening of this play, fol-
lowed as it is by a strain of the loftiest poetry, is aptly noted
by Campbell as showing that the Poet, "even in dealing
with classical subjects, laughed at the classic fear of putting
the ludicrous and sublime into juxtaposition."
General Remarks.
As a whole, this play is several degrees inferior to Corio-
lanus. Admirable as is the characterization, regarded indi-
vidually, still, in respect of dramatic composition, the play
does not, to my mind, stand among the Poet's masterpieces.
But it abounds in particular scenes and passages fraught with
the highest virtue of his genius. Among these may be spe-
cially mentioned the second scene of the first Act, where
Cassius lays the egg of the conspiracy in Brutus's mind,
warmed with such a wrappage of instigation as to assure
its being quickly hatched. Also, the first scene of the sec-
ond Act, unfolding the birth of the conspiracy, and winding
up with the interview, so charged with domestic glory, of
Brutus and Portia. The oration of Antony in Cæsar's funeral
is such an interfusion of art and passion as realizes the very
perfection of its kind.. Adapted at once to the comprehen-
sion 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 tells with terrible effect on the people; and when it is
done we feel that Cæsar's bleeding wounds are mightier than
ever his genius and fortune were. The quarrel of Brutus
and Cassius is deservedly celebrated. Dr. Johnson thought
',
38
JULIUS CÆSAR.
it "somewhat cold and unaffecting." Coleridge thought
otherwise. "I know," says he, "no part of Shakespeare
that more impresses on me the belief of his genius being
superhuman than this scene." I am content to err with
Coleridge here, if it be an error. But there is nothing in
the play that seems to me more divinely touched than the
brief scene, already noticed, of Brutus and his boy Lucius.
And what a dear little fellow Lucius is! so gentle, so dutiful,
so loving, so thoughtful and careful for his master; and yet
himself no more conscious of his virtue than a flower of its
fragrance. His falling asleep in the midst of his song, and
his exclaiming on being aroused, "The strings, my lord, are
false," are so good that I cannot speak of them.


.:
JULIUS CÆSAR.
JULIUS CÆSAR.
OCTAVIUS CÆSAR,
MARCUS ANTONIUS,
M. ÆMIL. Lepidus,
persons represented.
Triumvirs,
after his Death.
FLAVIUS and MARULLUS, Tribunes.
ARTEMIDORUS, a Sophist of Cnidos.
A Soothsayer.
CINNA, a Poet. Another Poet.
Cicero, PUBLIUS, POPILIUS LENA, LUCILIUS, TITINIUS, MESSALA, young
Senators.
MARCUS BRUTUS,
CASSIUS,
CASCA,
Conspirators
TREBONIUS,
against
LIGARIUS,
Cæsar.
DECIUS BRUTUS,
METELLUS CIMBER,
CINNA,
CATO, and VOLUMNIUS, Friends to
Brutus and Cassius.
VARRO, CLITUS, Claudius, Strato,
LUCIUS, DARDANIUS, Servants to
Brutus.
PINDARUS, Servant to Cassius.
CALPURNIA, Wife to Cæsar.
PORTIA, Wife to Brutus.
Senators, Citizens, Guards, Attendants, &c.
SCENE, during a great part of the Play, at Rome; afterwards at Sardis;
and near Philippi.
ACT I.
SCENE I.— Rome. A Street.
Enter FLAVIUS, MARULLUS, and a Throng of Citizens.
Flav. Hence! home, you idle creatures, get you home!
Is this a holiday? What! know you not,
39
40
ACT I.
JULIUS CÆSAR.
Being mechanical,¹ you ought not walk 2
Upon a labouring-day without the sign
Of your profession ?3 — Speak, what trade art thou?
1 Cit. Why, sir, a carpenter.
Mar. Where is thy leather apron and thy rule ?
What dost thou with thy best apparel on?
You, sir; what trade are you?
2 Cit. Truly, sir, in respect of a fine workman, I am
but, as you would say, a cobbler.
Mar. But what trade art thou? Answer me directly.5
2 Cit. A trade, sir, that I hope I may use with a safe
conscience; which is indeed, sir, a mender of bad soles.
Mar. What trade, thou knave? thou naughty knave, what
trade?
2 Cit. Nay, I beseech you, sir, be not out with me: yet,
if you be out, sir, I can mend you.6
1 Shakespeare often uses adjectives with the sense of plural substantives;
as mechanical here for mechanics or artizans. So in Hamlet, i. 1: “Tell me
why this same strict and most observant watch so nightly toils the subject of
the land." The sense in the text is, "Know you not that, being mechanics,
you ought not," &c.
2 "Ought not to walk," of course. This omission of to is not unfrequent.
So in The Merchant, i. 3: "Whose own hard dealing teaches them suspect
the thoughts of others."
3 The Poet here transfers to Rome the English customs and usages of
his own time; representing men in the several mechanic trades as having
their guilds, with appropriate regulations and badges.
4 Here, as often, in respect of is equivalent to in comparison with. So in
the 39th Psalm of The Psalter: “Thou hast made my days as it were a span
long, and mine age is even as nothing in respect of Thee." See, also, Ham-
let, page 219, note 29.
5 Cobbler, it seems, was used of a coarse workman, or a botcher, in any
mechanical trade. So that the Cobbler's answer does not give the infor-
mation required.- Directly here has the sense of the Latin directus; in a
straightforward manner, or without evasion.
6 Of course there is a play upon the two senses of out here. To be out
SCENE I.
4I
JULIUS CÆSAR.
Mar. What mean'st thou by that? Mend me, thou saucy
fellow !
2 Cit. Why, sir, cobble you.
Flav. Thou art a cobbler, art thou?
2 Cit. Truly, sir, all that I live by is with the awl: I med-
dle with no tradesman's matters, nor women's matters, but
with all. I am indeed, sir, a surgeon to old shoes; when
they are in great danger, I re-cover them. As proper7 men
as ever trod upon neat's-leather have gone upon my handi-
work.
Flav. But wherefore art not in thy shop to-day?
Why dost thou lead these men about the streets?
2 Cit. Truly, sir, to wear out their shoes, to get myself
into more work. But indeed, sir, we make holiday, to see
Cæsar, and to rejoice in his triumph.
Mar. Wherefore rejoice? What conquest brings he home?
What tributaries follow him to Rome,
To grace in captive bonds his chariot-wheels?
You blocks, you stones, you worse than senseless things!
O you hard hearts, you cruel men of Rome,
Knew you not Pompey? Many a time and oft
Have you climb'd up to walls and battlements,
To towers and windows, yea, to chimney-tops,
Your infants in your arms,⁹ and there have sat
with a man is to be at odds with him; to be out at the toes is to need a
mending of one's shoes.
7 Proper for handsome, goodly, or fine. Commonly so in Shakespeare; at
least when used of persons. And so, in Hebrews, xi. 23, it is said that the
parents of Moses hid him "because they saw he was a proper child."
**
8 Neat's-leather is what we call cowhide or calfskin. Neat was applied to
all cattle of the bovine genus. So in The Winter's Tale, i. 2:
The steer,
the heifer, and the calf, are all call'd neat.” And the word is still so used in
neat's-foot oil."
9 " Your infants being in your arms." Ablative absolute.
42
ACT I,
JULIUS CÆSAR,
The live-long day, with patient expectation,
To see great Pompey pass the streets of Rome :
And, when you saw his chariot but appear,
Have you not made an universal shout,
That 10 Tiber trembled underneath her¹¹ banks,
To hear the replication 12 of your sounds
Made in her concave shores?
And do you now put on your best attire?
And do you now cull out a holiday? 13
And do you now strew flowers 14 in his way
That comes in triumph over Pompey's blood? 15
Be gone!
Run to your houses, fall upon your knees,
Pray to the gods to intermit 16 the plague
That needs must light on this ingratitude.17
10 That with the force of so that or insomuch that. Often so used by the
writers of Shakespeare's time, and in all sorts of writing.
11 In classical usage the divinities of rivers were gods, and not goddesses.
Old English usage, however, varies; Drayton making them mostly femi-
nine; Spenser, masculine.
12 Replication for echo or reverberation. — Here, as often, the infinitive to
hear is used gerundively, or like the Latin gerund, and so is equivalent to
at hearing.
18 "Do you cull out this time for a holiday?" is the meaning.
14 Flowers is here a dissyllable. This and various similar words, as
bower, dower, hour, and power, the Poet uses as one or two syllables, accord-
ing as his verse requires. The same with fire, hire, tire, year, and divers
others.
of Munda, in Spain, which took
Cæsar was now celebrating his
final victory over the Pompeian
15 The reference is to the great battle
place in the Fall of the preceding year.
fifth triumph, which was in honour of his
faction. Cnæus and Sextus, the two sons of Pompey the Great, were lead-
ers in that battle, and Cnæus perished.
16 Intermit is here equivalent to remit; that is, avert, or turn back.
17 It is evident from the opening scene, that Shakespeare, even in dealing
with classical subjects, laughed at the classic fear of putting the ludicrous
SCENE I.
43
JULIUS CÆSAR.
•
Flav. Go, go, good countrymen; and, for this fault,
Assemble all the poor men of your sort;
Draw them to Tiber banks, and weep your tears
[Exeunt Citizens.
Into the channel, till the lowest stream
Do kiss the most exalted shores 18 of all.
See, whêr their basest metal 19 be not moved!
They vanish tongue-tied in their guiltiness.
Go you down that way towards the Capitol;
This way will I. Disrobe the images,
If you do find them deck'd with ceremony.20
Mar. May we do so?
You know it is the feast of Lupercal.21
Flav. It is no matter; let no images
Be hung with Cæsar's trophies.22 I'll about,
and sublime into juxtaposition. After the low and farcical jests of the
saucy cobbler, the eloquence of Marullus "springs upwards like a pyramid
of fire."- CAMPBELL.
18 The meaning is, "till your tears swell the river from the extreme low-
water mark to the extreme high-water mark."
19 Whêr for whether. Thus the Poet often contracts whether into one
syllable. The contraction occurs repeatedly in this play.—In basest metal
Shakespeare probably had lead in his thought. So that the meaning is, that
even these men, though as dull and heavy as lead, have yet the sense to be
tongue-tied with shame at their conduct.
20 These images were the busts and statues of Cæsar, ceremoniously
decked with scarfs and badges in honour of his triumph.
21 This festival, held in honour of Lupercus, the Roman Pan, fell on the
13th of February, which month was so named from Februus, a surname of
the god. Lupercus was, primarily, the god of shepherds, said to have been
so called because he kept off the wolves. His wife Luperca was the deified
she-wolf that suckled Romulus. The festival, in its original idea, was meant
for religious expiation and purification, February being at that time the last
month of the year.
22" Cæsar's trophies" are the scarfs and badges mentioned in note 20; as
appears in the next scene, where it is said that the Tribunes "are put to
silence for pulling scarfs off Cæsar's images."
44
ACT I.
JULIUS CÆSAR.
And drive away the vulgar 23 from the streets :
So do you too, where you perceive them thick.
These growing feathers pluck'd from Cæsar's wing
Will make him fly an ordinary pitch;24
Who else would soar above the view of men,
And keep us all in servile fearfulness.
SCENE II. — The Same.
The Same. A Public Place.
[Exeunt.
Enter, in Procession, with Music, CÆSAR; ANTONY, for the
course; CALPURNIA, PORTIA, DECIUS, CICERO, BRUTUS,
CASSIUS, and CASCA; a great Crowd following, among
them a Soothsayer.
Cæs. Calpurnia, —
Casca. Peace, ho! Cæsar speaks.
Cæs. Calpurnia, -
[Music ceases.
Cal. Here, my lord.
Cæs. Stand you directly in Antonius' way,
When he doth run his course.¹
Antonius,
23 The Poet often uses vulgar in its Latin sense of common. Here it
means the common people.
24 Pitch is here a technical term in falconry, and means the highest flight
of a hawk or falcon.
1 Marcus Antonius was at this time Consul, as Cæsar himself also was.
Each Roman gens had its own priesthood, and also its peculiar religious
rites. The priests of the Julian gens (so named from Iulus the son of
Æneas) had lately been advanced to the same rank with those of the god
Lupercus; and Antony was at this time at their head. It was probably as
chief of the Julian Luperci that he officiated on this occasion in "the holy
course." It may be well to add, here, that in old Roman society the gens
was much the same as the Scottish clan in modern times; and that all the
individuals, both male and female, of a given gens inherited what is called
the gentilitial name; as Julius and Julia, Antonius and Antonia, Calpurnius
and Calpurnia, Octavius and Octavia, Junius and Junia, Portius and Portia,
Cassius and Cassia, Tullius and Tullia, &c.
SCENE II.
45
IJULIUS CÆSAR.
Ant. Cæsar, my lord?
Cæs. Forget not, in your speed, Antonius,
To touch Calpurnia; for our elders say,
The barren, touchèd in this holy chase,
Shake off their sterile curse.2
I shall remember:
Anto.
When Cæsar says Do this, it is perform'd.
Cæs. Set on; and leave no ceremony out.
Sooth. Cæsar !
[Music.
Cæs. Ha! who calls?
Casca. Bid every noise be still. — Peace yet again !
[Music ceases.
Cæs. Who is it in the press that calls on me?
I hear a tongue, shriller than all the music,.
Cry Cæsar! Speak; Cæsar is turn'd to hear.
Sooth. Beware the Ides of March.
Cæs.
Bru. A soothsayer bids you beware the Ides of March.³
Cas. Set him before me; let me see his face.
What man is that?
2 It was an old custom at these festivals for the priests, all naked except
a girdle about the loins, to run through the streets of the city, waving in the
hand a thong of goat's hide, and striking with it such women as offered
themselves for the blow, in the belief that this would prevent or avert "the
sterile curse." Cæsar was at this time childless; his only daughter, Julia,.
married to Pompey the Great, having died some years before, upon the birth
of her first child, who also died soon after. The Poet justly ascribes to
Cæsar the natural desire of children to inherit his vast fame and honours;
and this desire is aptly signified in the play, as such an ambition to be the
founder of a royal or imperial line would be an additional motive for the
conspiracy against him.
3 Coleridge has a remark on this line, which, whether true to the subject
or not, is very characteristic of the writer: "If my ear does not deceive me,
the metre of this line was meant to express that sort of mild philosophic con-
tempt, characterizing Brutus even in his first casual speech." The metrical
analysis of the line is, an lamb, two Anapests, and two Iambs.
46
ACT I.
JULIUS CÆSAR.
Cass. Fellow, come from the throng; look upon Cæsar.
Cæs. What say'st thou to me now? speak once again.
Sooth. Beware the Ides of March.
Cæs. He is a dreamer; let us leave him. - Pass.
[Sennet. Exeunt all but BRUTUS and CASSIUS.
Cass. Will you go see the order of the course?
Bru. Not I.
Cass. I pray you, do.
Bru. I am not gamesome: 5 I do lack some part
Of that quick spirit that is in Antony.
Let me not hinder, Cassius, your desires ;
I'll leave you.
Cass. Brutus, I do observe you now of late:
I have not from your eyes that gentleness
And show of love as 7 I was wont to have:
You bear too stubborn and too strange a hand
Over your friend that loves you.8
Bru.
Cassius,
4 Sennet is an old musical term occurring repeatedly in Shakespeare; of
uncertain origin, but denoting a peculiar succession of notes on a trumpet,
used, as here, to signal the march of a procession.
5 Gamesome is fond of sport, or sportively inclined. Repeatedly so.
6 Quick for lively or animated. So we have it in the phrases, “quick
recreation," and "quick and merry words.” — Spirit, in Shakespeare, is often
pronounced as one syllable, and sometimes spelt so,- sprite, spright.
7 The demonstratives this, that, and such, and also the relatives which,
that, and as, were often used indiscriminately. So a little later in this scene:
"Under these hard conditions as this time is like to lay on us."
8 This man, Caius Cassius Longinus, had married Junia, a sister of Bru-
tus. Both had lately stood for the chief Prætorship of the city, and Brutus,
through Cæsar's favour, had won it; though Cassius was at the same time
elected one of the sixteen Prætors or judges of the city. This is said to have
produced a coldness between Brutus and Cassius, so that they did not
speak to each other, till this extraordinary flight of patriotism brought them
together.
་

SCENE II.
47
JULIUS CÆSAR.
Be not deceived: if I have veil'd my look,
I turn the trouble of my countenance
Merely upon myself. Vexèd I am
9
Of late with passions of some difference,10
Conceptions only proper to myself,)
Which give some soil, perhaps, to my behaviours; 11
But let not therefore my good friends be grieved,
Among which number, Cassius, be you one,-
Nor construe 12 any further my neglect,
Than that poor Brutus, with himself at war,
Forgets the shows of love to other men.
Cass. Then, Brutus, I have much mistook your passion; 13
By means whereof 14 this breast of mine hath buried
Thoughts of great value, worthy cogitations.
Tell me, good Brutus, can you see your face?
Bru. No, Cassius; for the eye sees not itself
But by reflection from some other thing.14
15
9 Merely, here, is altogether or entirely. A frequent usage.
10 That is, conflicting passions; such as his love to Cæsar personally,
and his hatred of Cæsar's power in the State.
11 "
Which blemish or tarnish the lustre of my manners." The Poet re-
peatedly uses the plural, behaviours, for the particular acts which make up
what we call behaviour. And so of several other words.
12 In Shakespeare, and, I think, in all other poetry, construe always has
the accent on the first syllable. How or whence the present vulgar pro-
nunciation of it came into use, I cannot say. The same, too, of misconstrue,
which always has the accent on con.
13 The Poet uses mistook and mistaken indiscriminately. He also some-
times uses passion for any feeling, sentiment, or emotion, whether painful or
pleasant. So he has “more merry tears the passion of loud laughter never
shed," and "free from gross passion or of mirth or anger."
14 Means was sometimes used in the sense of cause or reason. Whereof
refers to the preceding clause.
15 By an image or "shadow" reflected from a mirror, or from water, or
some polished surface.

48
ACT
JULIUS CÆSAR.
Cass. 'Tis just: 16
And it is very much lamented, Brutus,
That you have no such mirror as will turn
Your hidden worthiness into your eye,
That you might see your shadow. I have heard,
Where many of the best respect
17 in Rome,
Except immortal Cæsar !- speaking of Brutus,
And groaning underneath this age's yoke,
Have wish'd that noble Brutus had his eyes.
Bru. Into what dangers would you lead me, Cassius,
That you would have me seek into myself
For that which is not in me?
Cass. Therefore, good Brutus, be prepared to hear:
And, since you know you cannot see yourself
So well as by reflection, I, your glass,
Will modestly discover to yourself
That of yourself which you yet know not of.
And be not jealous on me,18 gentle Brutus :
Were I a common laugher, or did use
To stale 19 with ordinary oaths my love
To every new protester; 20 if you know
16 'Tis just is the same as our phrase, "That's so," or "Exactly so."
17 The sense probably is, "I have been present where many of the highest
repute, or held in the highest consideration." Respect was often used so.—
In what follows, "Except immortal Cæsar! "is very emphatic, and intensely
ironical.
18 On and of were used indifferently in such cases. Jealous, also, for
doubtful or suspicious. So a little further on: "That you do love me,
nothing jealous."
#
I am
19 To stale a thing is to make it common or cheap by indiscriminate use.
So in iv. 1, of this play: "Out of use, and staled by other men.' Laugher,
if it be the right word, must mean jester or buffoon. See Critical Notes.
20 To protest occurs frequently in the sense of to profess, to declare, or to
vow. The passage is well explained by one in Hamlet, i. 3: Do not dull
thy palm with entertainment of each new-hatch'd, unfledged comrade.”
SCENE II.
49
JULIUS CÆSAR.
That I do fawn on men, and hug them hard,
And after scandal them; or if you know
That I profess myself, in banqueting,
To all the rout,21 then hold me dangerous.
healterer
[Flourish and shout.
Bru. What means this shouting? I do fear the people
Choose Cæsar for their king.
Cass.
Ay, do you fear it?
Then must I think you would not have it so.
Bru. I would not, Cassius; yet I love him well.
But wherefore do you hold me here so long?
What is it that you would impart to me?
If it be aught toward 22 the general good,
Set honour in one eye and death i' the other,
And I will look on death indifferently;
For let the gods so speed 23 me as I love
[The name of honour more than I fear death.
Cass. I know that virtue to be in you, Brutus,
As well as I do know your outward favour.24
Well, honour is the subject of my story.
I cannot tell what you and other men
Think of this life; but, for my single self,
I had as lief25 not be as live to be

21 The order, according to the sense, is, "if you know that, in banquet-
ing, I profess myself to all the rout."-To make his flattery work the bet-
ter, Cassius here assures the "gentle Brutus" that he scorns to flatter, that
he never speaks any thing but austere truth, and that he is extremely select
in his friendships.
22 Here, as often, toward is two syllables, with the accent on the last.
23 To speed for to prosper or bless; a frequent usage. So in The Merry
Wives, iii. 4: Heaven so speed me in my time to come!"
(&
24 Favour for look, aspect, or appearance, was very common.
25 Lief or lieve is an old word for glad or willing, gladly or willingly;
the opposite of loth or loath. Its original sense was about the same as dear.
50
ACT I
JULIUS CÆSAR.
In awe of such a thing as I myself.
I was born free as Cæsar; so were you:
We both have fed as well; and we can both
Endure the Winter's cold as well as he :
For once, upon a raw and gusty day,
The troubled Tiber chafing with her shores,
Cæsar said to me, Darest thou, Cassius, now
Leap in with me into this angry flood,
And swim to yonder point? Upon the word,
Accoutred as I was, I plungèd in,
And bade him follow: so indeed he did.
The torrent roar'd, and we did buffet it
With lusty sinews, throwing it aside
And stemming it with hearts of controversy:
But, ere we could arrive the point 27 proposed,
Cæsar cried, Help me, Cassius, or I sink !
I, as Æneas, our great ancestor,
26
Did from the flames of Troy upon his shoulder
The old Anchises bear, so from the waves of Tiber
Did I the tirèd Cæsar: and this man
Is now become a god; and Cassius is
A wretched creature, and must bend his body,
If Cæsar carelessly but nod on him.
He had a fever when he was in Spain;28
26 That is, with opposing or contending hearts; heart being put for cour-
age. The Poet has many like expressions, as, "mind of love" for loving
mind, “thieves of mercy" for merciful thieves, "time of scorn" for scornful
time, &c.
27 Shakespeare uses both arrive and aspire as transitive verbs, and in the
sense of reach or attain. So in 3 Henry the Sixth, v. 3:
"Those powers
that the Queen hath raised in Gallia have arrived our coast." Also Milton,
in Paradise Lost, ii. 409: "Ere he arrive the happy isle.'
"
28 Fever appears to have been used for sickness in general, as well as
for what we call a fever. Cæsar had three several campaigns in Spain at
SCENE II.
51
JULIUS CÆSAR.
And when the fit was on him I did mark
How he did shake: 'tis true, this god did shake:
His coward lips did from their colour fly ;29
And that same eye, whose bend 30 doth awe the world,
Did lose his 31 lustre. I did hear him groan :
Ay, and that tongue of his, that bade the Romans
Mark him, and write his speeches in their books,
Alas, it cried, Give me some drink, Titinius,
As a sick girl. Ye gods, it doth amaze me,
A man of such a feeble temper 32 should
different periods of his life, and the text does not show which of these Shake-
speare had in mind. The following from Plutarch would seem to infer that
Cæsar was first taken with the epilepsy during his third campaign, which
closed with the great battle of Munda, March 17, B.C. 45; but Plutarch else-
where speaks of him as having had the disease at an earlier period: “Con-
cerning the constitution of his body, he was lean, white, and soft-skinned,
and often subject to headache, and otherwhile to the falling-sickness; the
which took him the first time, as it is reported, in Corduba, a city of Spain;
but yet therefore 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 medicine
to cure his sick body, fighting always with his disease, travelling continu-
ally, living soberly, and commonly lying abroad in the field."

1000 KY
29 The image, very bold, somewhat forced, and not altogether happy, is
of a cowardly soldier running away from his flag.
30 Bend for look. The verb to bend, when used of the eyes, often has the
sense of to direct. So in 1 Henry the Fourth, ii. 3: “Why dost thou bend
thine eyes upon the earth?"
31 His for its, and referring to eye. Its was not then an accepted word,
but was knocking for admission; and Shakespeare has it several times. It
does not once occur in the English Bible as first printed in 1611; and only
twice, I think, in Paradise Lost, published in 1667.
32 Temper for constitution or temperament. "The lean and wrinkled
Cassius" venting his spite at Cæsar, by ridiculing his liability to sickness
and death, is charmingly characteristic. In fact, this mighty man, with all
his electric energy of mind and will, was of a rather fragile and delicate
make; and his countenance, as we have it in authentic busts, is almost a
model of feminine beauty. Cicero, who did not love him at all, in one of his
Letters applies to him a Greek word, the same that is used for miracle or
52
ACT I.
JULIUS CÆSAR.
So get the start of the majestic world,
And bear the palm alone.
Bru. Another general shout!
I do believe that these applauses are
[Shout. Flourish.
For some new honours that are heap'd on Cæsar.
Cass. Why, man, he doth bestride the narrow world
Like a Colossus ;33 and we petty men
Walk under his huge legs, and peep about
To find ourselves dishonourable graves.
པ་
Men at some time are masters of their fates :
The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars,34
But in ourselves, that we are underlings.
Brutus and Caesar: what should be in that Cæsar ?35
Why should that name be sounded more than yours?
Write them together, yours is as fair a name
Sound them, it doth become the mouth as well;
Weigh them, it is as heavy; conjure with them,
Brutus will start a spirit as soon as Cæsar.36
wonder in the New Testament; the English of the passage being, "This
miracle (monster?) is a thing of terrible energy, swiftness, diligence."
33 Observe the force of narrow here; as if Cæsar were grown so enor-
mously big that even the world seemed a little thing under him. Some
while before this, the Senate had erected a bronze statue of Caesar, standing
on a globe, and inscribed to Cæsar the Demigod"; which inscription,
however, Cæsar had erased. — The original Colossus was a bronze statue a
hundred and twenty feet high, set up astride a part of the harbour at Rhodes,
so that ships passed "under its huge legs.”
34 Referring to the old astrological notion of planetary influence on the
fortunes and characters of men. The Poet has many such allusions.
35 Meaning, "what is there in that word Cæsar?" The Poet often uses
should be where we should use is or can be. So I have sometimes been
asked, "What might your name be?"
36 The allusion is to the old custom of muttering certain names, sup-
posed to have in them "the might of magic spells," in raising or conjuring
up spirits. — Brutus and Cæsar are here printed in Italic, to show that Cas-
sius is referring to the magical power of the names, and not to the men.
i
!
JULIUS CÆSAR.
53
Now, in the names of all the gods at once,
Upon what meat doth this our Cæsar feed,
That he is grown so great? Age, thou art shamed!
Rome, thou hast lost the breed of noble bloods !
When went there by an age, since the great flood,37
But it was famed with more than with one man?
When could they say, till now, that talk'd of Rome,
That her wide walls encompass'd but one man?
Now is it Rome indeed, and room 38 enough,
When there is in it but one only man.
O, you and I have heard our fathers say
There was a Brutus once 39 that would have brook'd
Th' eternal Devil to keep his state 40 in Rome,
As easily as a king!
Bru. That you do love me, I am nothing jealous ;
What you would work me to, I have some aim : 41
37 By this a Roman would of course mean Deucalion's flood..
38 A play upon Rome and room, which appear to have been sounded
more alike in Shakespeare's time than they are now.- In the next line,
"but one only" is redundant or reduplicative, and means but one, or only
one. Repeatedly so.
39 Alluding to Lucius Junius Brutus, who bore a leading part in driving
out the Tarquins, and in turning the Kingdom into a Republic. After-
wards, as Consul, he condemned his own sons to death for attempting to
restore the Kingdom. The Marcus Junius Brutus of the play supposed him-
self to be lineally descended from him. His mother, Servilia, also derived
her lineage from Servilius Ahala, who slew Spurius Mælius for aspiring to
royalty. Merivale justly remarks that "the name of Brutus forced its pos-
sessor into prominence as soon as royalty began to be discussed.”
40 "Keep his state" may mean either preserve his dignity or set up his
throne; state being repeatedly used for throne.— The Poet has eternal sev-
eral times for infernal. Perhaps our Yankee phrases, “tarnal shame,”
tarnal scamp," &c., are relics of this usage. It seems that the Puritans
and Calvinists thought infernal too profane for godly mouths, and so trans-
ferred its sense to eternal.
41 “Work me to" is persuade or induce me to. — Aim is guess. So the
54
JULIUS CÆSAR.
ACT I.
How I have thought of this, and of these times,
I shall recount hereafter; for this present,
I would not, so with love I might entreat you,
Be any further moved. What you have said,
I will consider; what you have to say,
I will with patience hear; and find a time
Both meet to hear and answer such high things.
Till then, my noble friend, chew 42
Brutus had rather be a villager
upon this :
Than to repute himself 43 a son of Rome
Under these hard conditions as this time
Is like to lay upon us.
Cass. I am glad that my weak words
Have struck but thus much show of fire 44 from Brutus.
Bru. The games are done, and Cæsar is returning.
Cass. As they pass by, pluck Casca by the sleeve
e;
And he will, after his sour fashion, tell you
What hath proceeded 45 worthy note to-day.
Re-enter CÆSAR and his Train.
Bru. I will do so.
But, look you, Cassius,
The angry spot doth glow on Cæsar's brow,
And all the rest look like a chidden train:
Calpurnia's cheek is pale; and Cicero
verb in Romeo and Juliet, i. 1: "I aim'd so near when I supposed you
loved." And the Poet has it so in divers other places.
42 To chew is, literally, to ruminate; that is, reflect or meditate.
43 An irregular construction, but common in the Poet's time. So Bacon
in his essay Of Friendship: “A man were better relate himself to a statue
or picture than to suffer his thoughts to pass in smother."
44 Referring to the use of steel and flint in starting a fire. So, in Troilus
and Cressida, iii. 3, Thersites says of Ajax's wit, "It lies as coldly in him as
fire in a flint, which will not show without knocking."
45 That is, hath happened or come to pass. Repeatedly so,
1
SCENE II.
55
JULIUS CÆSAR.
Looks with such ferret 46 and such fiery eyes
As we have seen him in the Capitol,
Being cross'd in conference by some Senator.
Cass. Casca will tell us what the matter is.
Cæs. Antonius,—
Ant. Cæsar?
Cæs. Let me have men about me that are fat;
Sleek-headed men, and such as sleep o' nights:
Yond Cassius has a lean and hungry look;
He thinks too much:47 such men are dangerous.
Ant. Fear him not, Cæsar; he's not dangerous;
He is a noble Roman, and well given.48
Cæs. Would he were fatter! but I fear him not:
Yet, if my name were liable to fear,
I do not know the man I should avoid
So soon as that spare Cassius. He reads much;
He is a great observer, and he looks
Quite through the deeds of men: he loves no plays,49

46 The ferret is a very ferocious little animal of the weasel kind, noted for
its fire-red eyes.
The angry spot on Cæsar's brow, Calpurnia's pale cheek,
and Cicero spouting fire from his eyes as when kindled by opposition in
the Senate, make an exceedingly vivid picture.
47 So in North's Plutarch, Life of Julius Cæsar: "When Cæsar's frends
complained unto him of Antonius and Dolabella, that they pretended some
mischief towards him, he answered them, As for those fat men, and smooth-
combed heads, I never reckon of them; but these pale-visaged and carrion-
lean people, I fear them most; meaning Brutus and Cassius."
48 Well given is well disposed. So in North's Plutarch: "If there were
any noble attempt done in all this conspiracy, they refer it wholly unto Bru-
tus; and all the cruel and violent acts unto Cassius, who was Brutus's fa-
miliar friend, but not so well given and conditioned as he."
49 This is from Plutarch's Life of Antonius: "In his house they did
nothing but feast, dance, and masque; and himself passed away the time in
hearing of foolish plays, and in marrying these players, tumblers, jesters,
and such sort of people."
56
ACT I.
JULIUS CÆSAR.

As thou dost, Antony; he hears no music : 50
Seldom he smiles; and smiles in such a sort
As if he mock'd himself, and scorn'd his spirit
That could be moved to smile at any thing.
Such men as he never be at heart's ease
Whiles they behold a greater than themselves;
And therefore are they very dangerous.
I rather tell thee what is to be fear'd
Than what I fear, for always I am Cæsar.
Come on my right hand, for this ear is deaf,51
And tell me truly what thou think'st of him.
[Exeunt CÆSAR and his Train. CASCA stays.
Casca. You pull'd me by the cloak: would you speak
with me?
Bru. Ay, Casca; tell us what hath chanced to-day,
That Cæsar looks so sad.52
Casca. Why, you were with him, were you not?
Bru. I should not then ask Casca what had chanced.
50 The power of music is repeatedly celebrated by Shakespeare, and some-
times in strains that approximate the classical hyperboles about Orpheus,
Amphion, and Arion. His own ear, no doubt, was exquisitely sensitive to
“the touches of sweet harmony." What is here said of Cassius has an apt
commentary in The Merchant of Venice, v. 1: —
The man that hath no music in himself,
Nor is not moved with concord of sweet sounds,
Is fit for treasons, stratagems, and spoils;
The motions of his spirit are dull as night,
And his affections dark as Erebus:
Let no such man be trusted.
51 This is one of the little touches of invention that so often impart a
fact-like vividness to the Poet's scenes; like that remarked in note 46.
52 Sad in its old sense of grave or serious, probably. A frequent usage,
So, in Romeo and Juliet, i. 1, Benvolio says, "Tell me in sadness, who 'tis ·
that you love"; and Romeo replies, "In sadness, cousin, I do love a wo-
man."
SCENE II.
57
JULIUS CÆSAR.
Casca. Why, there was a crown offer'd him; and, being
offer'd him, he put it by with the back of his hand, thus; and
then the people fell a-shouting.
Bru. What was the second noise for?
Casca. Why, for that too.
Cass. They shouted thrice: what was the last cry for?
Casca. Why, for that too.
Bru. Was the crown offer'd him thrice?
Casca. Ay, marry,53 was't, and he put it by thrice, every
time gentler than other; and at every putting-by mine hon-
est neighbours shouted.
Cass. Who offer'd him the crown?
Casca. Why, Antony.
Bru. Tell us the manner of it, gentle Casca.
Casca. I can as well be hang'd, as tell the manner of it:
it was mere foolery; I did not mark it. I saw Mark Antony
offer him a crown; yet 'twas not a crown neither, 'twas
one of these coronets; and, as I told you, he put it by
once but, for all that, to my thinking, he would fain 54 have
had it. Then he offered it to him again; then he put it by
again: but, to my thinking, he was very loth to lay his fingers
off it. And then he offered it the third time; he put it the
third time by; and still, as he refused it, the rabblement
shouted, and clapp'd their chopt hands, and threw up their
sweaty night-caps, and uttered such a deal of stinking breath
because Cæsar refused the crown, that it had almost choked
Cæsar; for he swooned, and fell down at it: and, for mine
53 From an old custom of appealing to the Virgin Mary, marry grew
into common use as an intensive; like verily, indeed, to be sure. So the
Latin often has heracle and edepol; the latter from swearing by Castor and
Pollux.
54 Fain is glad or gladly; much used in the Poet's time. So in St. Luke,
xv. 16: "He would fain have filled his belly with the husks," &c.
58
ACT I.
JULIUS CÆSAR.
own part, I durst not laugh, for fear of opening my lips and
receiving the bad air.55
Cass. But, soft !56 I pray you. What, did Cæsar swoon?
Casca. He fell down in the market-place, and foam'd at
mouth, and was speechless.
Bru. 'Tis very like: he hath the falling-sickness.
Cass. No, Cæsar hath it not; but you, and I,
And honest Casca, we have the falling-sickness.57
Casca. I know not what you mean by that; but I am sure
Cæsar fell down. If the tag-rag people did not clap him
and hiss him, according as he pleased and displeased them,
as they use to do the players in the theatre, I am no true
man.58
55 Cæsar sat to behold that sport upon the pulpit for orations, in a chain
of gold, apparelled in triumphant manner. Antonius, who was Consul at
that time, was one of them that ran this holy course. So when he came
into the market-place the people made a lane for him to run at liberty, and
he came to Cæsar, and presented him a diadem wreathed about with laurel.
Whereupon there rose a certain cry of rejoicing, not very great, done only
by a few appointed for the purpose. But when Cæsar refused the diadem,
then all the people together made an outcry of joy. Then Antonius offering
it him again, there was a second shout of joy, but yet of a few. But when
Cæsar refused it again the second time, then all the whole people shouted.
Cæsar having made this proof, found that the people did not like of it, and
thereupon rose out of his chair, and commanded the crown to be carried
unto Jupiter in the Capitol. — PLUTARCH.
56 Soft! was much used as an exclamation for arresting or retarding the
speed of a person or thing; meaning about the same as hold! stay! or not
too fast! So in Othello, v. 2: "Soft you! a word or two before you go."
57 Meaning the disease of "standing prostrate" before Cæsar. Falling-
sickness or falling-evil was the English name for epilepsy. Cæsar was sub-
ject to it, especially in his later years, as Napoleon also is said to have been.
See page 50, note 28.
"
58" True man
is honest man. Often used in that sense, but especially
as opposed to thief. So in Cymbeline, ii. 3: “'Tis gold which makes the
true man kill'd, and saves the thief; nay, sometimes hangs both thief and
true man." Also in Venus and Adonis: "Rich preys make true men thieves."
SCENE II.
59
JULIUS CÆSAR.
Bru. What said he when he came unto himself?
Casca. Marry, before he fell down, when he perceived
the common herd was glad he refused the crown, he pluck'd
me ope his doublet,59 and offer'd them his throat to cut: an
I had been a man of any occupation,60 if I would not have
taken him at a word, I would I might go to Hell among the
rogues : and so he fell. When he came to himself again
he said, if he had done or said any thing amiss, he desired
their Worships to think it was his infirmity.61 Three or four
wenches, where I stood, cried, Alas, good soul! and forgave
him with all their hearts. But there's no heed to be taken
of them if Cæsar had stabb'd their mothers, they would
have done no less.
Bru. And, after that, he came thus sad away?
Casca. Ay.
Cass. Did Cicero say any thing?
Casca. Ay, he spoke Greek.
Cass. To what effect?
هیم
Casca. Nay, an I tell you that, I'll ne'er look you i̇' the
face again: but those that understood him smiled at one
59 Doublet was the common English name of a man's upper outward
garment. In this clause, me is simply redundant; as in Falstaff's speech
in praise of sack: "It ascends me into the brain; dries me there all the fool-
ish and dull and crudy vapours which environ it.'
60 "A man of occupation" probably means not only a mechanic or user
of cutting-tools, but also a man of business and of action, as distinguished
from a gentleman of leisure, or an idler.-An, in this clause, is an old
equivalent for if. Often used thus by the Poet. See Hamlet, page 89,
note 34.
61 Thereupon Cæsar 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 his disease, saying that their wits are not perfect which
have this disease of the falling-evil. — PLUTARCH,
60
ACT L
JULIUS CÆSAR.
another, and shook their heads ;62 but, for mine own part, it
was Greek to me. 63I could tell you more news too? Marul-
lus and Flavius, for pulling scarfs off Cæsar's images, are put
to silence.64 Fare you well. There was more foolery yet,
if I could remember it.
Cass. Will you sup with me to-night, Casca?
Casca. No, I am promised forth.65
Cass. Will you dine with me to-morrow?
Casca. Ay, if I be alive, and your mind hold, and your
dinner worth the eating.
Cass. Good; I will expect you.
Casca. Do so farewell both.
[Exit CASCA.
Bru. What a blunt 66 fellow is this grown to be!
He was quick mettle when he went to school.
Cass. So is he now in execution
Of any bold or noble enterprise,
62 A charming invention. Cicero had a long, sharp, agile tongue, and
was mighty fond of using it; and nothing was more natural, supposing him
to have been present, than that he should snap off some keen sententious
sayings; prudently veiling them however in a foreign language from all but
those who might safely understand them.
63 The phrase "it is Greek to me" is still in common use for any thing
that is not understood.
61 There were set up images of Cæsar in the city, with diadems upon
their heads like kings. Those the two tribunes, Flavius and Marullus, went
and pulled down, and furthermore, meeting with them that first saluted
Cæsar as king, they committed them to prison. The people followed them
rejoicing at it, and called them Brutuses, because of Brutus who had in old
times driven the kings out of Rome. Cæsar was so offended withal, that he
deprived Marullus and Flavius of their tribuneships.— PLUTARCH.
65 Shakespeare has forth very often with the sense of out or abroad.
66 Blunt here means, apparently, dull or slow; alluding to the "tardy
form" Casca has just "put on " in winding so long about the matter before
coming to the point.-"He was quick mettle" means, He was of a lively
spirit. Mettlesome is still used of spirited horses. See page 46, note 6;
also, Hamlet, page 51, note 27.

SCENE II.
61
JULIUS CÆSAR.
However he puts on this tardy form.67
This rudeness is a sauce to his good wit, ?
Which gives men stomach to digest his words
With better appetite.
Bru. And so it is. For this time I will leave you:
To-morrow, if you please to speak with me,
I will come home to you; or, if you will,
Come home to me, and I will wait for you.
Cass. I will do so: till then, think of the world.
Well, Brutus, thou art noble; yet, I see,,
Thy honourable metal may be wrought
[Exit BRUTUS.
From that it is disposed: 68 therefore 'tis meet
That noble minds keep ever with their likes
For who so firm that cannot be seduced?
Cæsar doth bear me hard,69 but he loves Brutus :
If I were Brutus now, and he were Cassius,
He should not humour me.70 I will this night,
67 However for although, or notwithstanding. Often so.-" Tardy form
is form of tardiness. So the Poet has shady stealth for stealing shadow, and
“negligent danger" for danger from negligence.
68 Wrought from what, or from that which it is disposed to. The Poet
has divers instances of prepositions thus omitted. Of course Cassius is
here chuckling over the effect his talk has had upon Brutus. He evidently
regards Brutus as a noble putty-head, and goes on to take order for mould-
ing him accordingly.
69 The phrase to bear one hard occurs three times in this play, but no-
where else in Shakespeare. It seems to have been borrowed from horse-
manship, and to mean carries a tight rein, or reins hard, like one who dis-
trusts his horse. So before: "You bear too stubborn and too strange a
hand over your friend that loves you"; that is, "You hold me too hard on
the bit, like a strange rider, who is doubtful of his steed, and not like one
who confides in his faithful horse, and so rides him with an easy rein.'
For this note I am indebted to Mr. Joseph Crosby.
"
70 To humour a man, as the word is here used, is to turn and wind and
manage him by watching his moods and crotchets, and touching him ac-

62
ACT I.
JULIUS CÆSAR.
In several hands,71 in at his window throw,
As if they came from several citizens,
Writings all tending to the great opinion
That Rome holds of his name ;72 wherein obscurely
Cæsar's ambition shall be glancèd at :
And, after this, let Cæsar seat him sure ;
For we will shake him, or worse days endure.73
[Exit.
SCENE III. The Same. A Street.
Thunder and Lightning. Enter, from opposite sides, CASCA,
with his sword drawn, and CICERO.
Cic. Good even, Casca: brought you Cæsar home?1
Why are you breathless? and why stare you so?
cordingly. It is somewhat in doubt whether the last he refers to Brutus or
to Cæsar. 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.
71 Hands for handwritings, of course. The Poet has it repeatedly so.
72 Now when Cassius felt his friends, and did stir them up against Cæsar,
they all agreed, and promised to take part with him, so Brutus were the
chief of their conspiracy. For they told him that so high an enterprise 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 think that by his only presence the
fact were holy and just. PLUTARCH.
73" We will either shake him, or endure worse days in suffering the con-
sequences of our attempt." The Poet makes Cassius overflow with intense
personal spite against Cæsar. This is in accordance with what he read
in Plutarch: "Cassius, being a choleric man, and hating Cæsar privately
more than he did the tyranny openly, incensed Brutus against him. It is
also reported that Brutus could evil away with the tyranny, and that Cassius
hated the tyrant." Of course tyranny as here used means royalty.
1 To bring for to escort or go along with was very common.
SCENE III.
63
JULIUS CÆSAR.
Casca. Are not you moved, when all the sway of Earth
Shakes like a thing unfirm ?2 O Cicero !
I have seen tempests, when the scolding winds
Have rived the knotty oaks; and I have seen
Th' ambitious ocean swell and rage and foam,
To be exalted with the threatening clouds : 3
But never till to-night, never till now,
Did I go through a tempest dropping fire. Y
Either there is a civil strife in Heaven,
Or else the world, too saucy with the gods,
Incenses them to send destruction.4
Cic. Why, saw you any thing more wonderful ?5
Casca. A common slave - you'd know him well by
sight6-
Held up his left hand, which did flame and burn
Like twenty torches join'd; and yet his hand,
Not sensible of fire, remain'd unscorch'd.
Besides, - I ha' not since put up my sword, -
Against the Capitol I met a lion,
Who glared upon me, and went surly by,
Without annoying me: and there were drawn
8
Upon a heap a hundred ghastly women,
2 Sway for constitution or order, probably. In such a raging of the ele-
ments, it seems as if the whole world were going to pieces, or as if the
Earth's steadfastness were growing unfirm, that is, unsteady.
8 So as, or insomuch as to be exalted with the threatening clouds. The
Poet often uses the infinitive mood thus.
4 Either the gods are fighting among themselves, or else they are making
war on the world for being too saucy with them.
5 More is here equivalent to else: "Saw you any thing more that was
wonderful?"
6 " You would recognise him as a common slave, from his looks."
7 Sensible, here, is sensitive, or having sensation. Repeatedly so.
8" Drawn upon a heap" is drawn together in a crowd.
64
ACT I.
JULIUS CÆSAR.
?
6
·
Transformed with their fear; who swore they saw
Men, all in fire, walk up and down the streets.
And yesterday the bird of night⁹ did sit
Even at noon-day upon the market-place,
Hooting and shrieking. When these prodigies
Do so conjointly meet,¹0 let not men say,
These are their reasons; they are natural;
11
9 The old Roman horror of this bird is well shown in a passage of Hol-
land's Pliny, as quoted in the Clarendon edition: "The screechowl be-
tokeneth always some heavy news, and is most execrable in the presages of
public affairs. In sum, he is the very monster of the night. There fortuned
one of them to enter the very sanctuary of the Capitol, in that year when
Sextus Papellio Ister and Lucius Pedanius were Consuls; whereupon, at
the Nones of March, the city of Rome that year made general processions,
to appease the wrath of the gods, and was solemnly purged by sacrifices."
10 Certainly destiny may easier be foreseen than avoided, considering
the strange and wonderful signs that were said to be seen before Cæsar's
death. For, touching the fires in the element, and spirits running up and
down in the night, and also the solitary birds to be seen at noondays sitting
in the great market-place, are not all these signs perhaps worth the noting,
in such a wonderful chance as happened? But Strabo the philosopher
writeth, that divers men were seen going up and down in fire, and further-
more, that there was a slave of the soldiers that did cast a marvellous burn-
ing flame out 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. Cæsar self
also, doing sacrifice unto the gods, found that one of the beasts which was
sacrificed had no heart: and that was a strange thing in nature, how a beast
could live without a heart. PLUTARCH.
11 The language is obscure, but the meaning probably is, "These things
have their reasons; they proceed from natural causes." Casca refers to the
doctrine of the Epicureans, who were slow to believe that such elemental ·
pranks had any moral significance in them, or that moral causes had any
thing to do with them; and held that the reasons of them were to be sought
for in the simple working of natural laws and forces. The text has a good
comment in All's Well that Ends Well, ii. 3: "They say miracles are past;
and we have our philosophical persons, to makę modern and familiar,
things supernatural and causeless. Hence it is that we make trifles of ter-
rors; ensconcing ourselves into seeming knowledge, when we should sub-
mit ourselves to an unknown fear."
SCENE III.
65
JULIUS CÆSAR.
For I believe they are portentous things
Unto the climate 12 that they point upon.
Cic. Indeed, it is a strange-disposèd time:
But men may construe things after their fashion,
Clean 13 from the purpose of the things themselves.
Comes Cæsar to the Capitol to-morrow?
Casca. He doth; for he did bid Antonius
Send word to you he would be there to-morrow.
Cic. Good night, then, Casca: this disturbed sky
Is not to walk in.
а
Casca.
Farewell, Cicero.
[Exit CICERO.
Enter CASSIUS.
Cass. Who's there?
Casca.
A Roman.
Cass.
Casca, by your voice.
Casca. Your ear is good. Cassius, what night is this !14
Cass. A very pleasing night to honest men.
Casca. Who ever knew the Heavens menace so?
Cass. Those that have known the Earth so full of faults.
For my part, I have walk'd about the streets,
Submitting me unto the perilous night;
And, thus umbracèd,15 Casca, as you see,
Have bared my bosom to the thunder-stone : 16
12 Climate for region or country. In Hamlet we have climature with the
same meaning. Also "Christian climate" in Richard the Second, iv. I.
13 Clean, here, is altogether, entirely, or quite. Repeatedly so. See Rich-
ard the Second, page 97, note 2. The mild scepticism of Cicero's speech
is very graceful and apt.
14 We should say, "What a night is this!" In such exclamative phrases,
as also in some others, the Poet omits the article when his verse wants it so.
15 Unbuttoned. Shakespeare gives the Romans his own dressing-gear-
16 Thunder-stone is the old word for thunder-bolt.
66
ACT 1.
JULIUS CÆSAR,
And when the cross 17 blue lightning seem'd to open
The breast of Heaven, I did present myself
Even in the aim and very flash of it.
Casca. But wherefore did you so much tempt the Heavens?
It is the part of men to fear and tremble,
When the most mighty gods by tokens send
Such dreadful heralds to astonish us.
Cass. You are dull, Casca; and those sparks of life
That should be in a Roman you do want,
Or else you use not. You look pale, and gaze,
And put on fear, and case yourself in wonder,18
To see the strange impatience of the Heavens :
But if you would consider the true cause
Why all these fires, why all these gliding ghosts,
Why birds and beasts, from quality and kind;19
Why old men fool, and children calculate ;
Why all these things change from their ordinance,
Their natures, and preformèd faculties,
To monstrous quality; 20—why, you shall find
17 Cross for the zigzag path of lightning. So in King Lear, iv. 7: "Was
this a face to stand in the most terrible and nimble stroke of quick, cross
lightning?"
18 That is, put on a look or expression of wonder. So in Much Ado, iv. 1:
"I am so attired in wonder, I know not what to say."
19 Quality is office or calling. Often so. Kind is nature. Also frequent.
So in Antony and Cleopatra, last scene: "The worm will do his kind"; that
is, will do as its nature is or prompts. The same in the old proverb, "The
cat will after kind."— To make sense of the line, some word must be under-
stood; probably change, from the second line below.
20 The grammar of this passage is rather confused, yet the meaning is
clear enough; the general idea being that of elements and animals, and
even of old men and children, acting in a manner out of or against their
nature; or changing their natures and original faculties from the course, in
which they were ordained to move, to monstrous or unnatural modes of
action.
1:
SCENE III.
67.
JULIUS CÆSAR.
That Heaven hath infused them with these spirits,
To make them instruments of fear and warning
Unto some monstrous state.21 Now could I, Casca,
Name thee a man most like this dreadful night;
That thunders, lightens, opens graves, and roars,
As doth the lion, in the Capitol ; 22
A man no mightier than thyself or me
In personal action; yet prodigious grown,
And fearful, as these strange eruptions are.
Casca. 'Tis Cæsar that you mean; is it not, Cassius?
Cass. Let it be who it is : 23 for Romans now
Have thews 24 and limbs like to their ancestors;
But, woe the while! our fathers' minds are dead,
And we are govern'd with 25 our mothers' spirits;
Our yoke and sufferance show us womanish.
Casca. Indeed, they say the Senators to-morrow
Mean to establish Cæsar as a king;
And he shall wear his crown by sea and land,
In every place, save here in Italy.
Cass. I know where I will wear this dagger then ;
21 That is, some prodigious or abnormal condition of things. Elsewhere
the Poet has "enormous state," with the same meaning. See King Lear,
page 110, note 31.- As Cassius is an avowed Epicurean, 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.
22 This reads as if a lion were kept in the Capitol to roar for them. But
the meaning is that Cæsar roars in the Capitol, like a lion. Perhaps Cassius
has the idea of Cæsar's claiming or aspiring to be among men what the lion
is among beasts.
23 Meaning, probably, "no matter who it is"; as the Clarendon notes.
24 Thews for sinews or muscles. Always so in Shakespeare.
25 Present usage would say "governed by." But Shakespeare very often
uses with to denote the agent of a passive verb. So afterwards in this play:
"Here is himself, marr'd, as you see, with traitors."
68
ACT L
JULIUS CÆSAR.
Cassius from bondage will deliver Cassius :
Therein, ye gods, you make the weak most strong;
Therein, ye gods, you tyrants do defeat:
Nor stony tower, nor walls of beaten brass,
Nor airless dungeon, nor strong links of iron,
Can be retentive to the strength of spirit; 26
But life, being weary of these worldly bars,
Never lacks power to dismiss itself.
If I know this, know all the world besides,
That part of tyranny that I do bear
I can shake off at pleasure.
Casca.
[Thunders still
So can I:
So every bondman in his own hand bears
The power to cancel his captivity.
Cass. And why should Cæsar be a tyrant then?
Poor man! I know he would not be a wolf,
But that he sees the Romans are but sheep:
He were no lion, were not Romans hinds.
Those that with haste will make a mighty fire
Begin it with weak straws: 27 what trash is Rome,
What rubbish, and what offal, when it serves
For the base matter to illuminate
So vile a thing as Cæsar ! 28 But, O grief,
Where hast thou led me? I perhaps speak this
Before a willing bondman: then I know
26 Can retain, hold in, or repress man's energy of soul.
27 The idea seems to be that, as men start a huge fire with worthless
straws or shavings, so Cæsar is using the degenerate Romans of the time,
to set the whole world a-blaze with his own glory. Cassius's enthusiastic
hatred of "the 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.
28 To shed splendour upon him, or to make a light for him to shine by.
SCENE III
69
JULIUS CÆSAR.
My answer must be made ;29 but I am arm'd,
And dangers are to me indifferent.
Casca. You speak to Casca; and to such a man
That is no fleering tell-tale.30 Hold, my hand :
Be factious for redress of all these griefs;31
And I will set this foot of mine as far
As who goes farthest.
Cass.
There's a bargain made.
Now know you, Casca, I have moved already
Some certain of the noblest-minded Romans
To undergo 32 with me an enterprise
Of honourable dangerous consequence;
And I do know, by this,33 they stay for me.
In Pompey's porch: for now, this fearful night,
There is no stir or walking in the streets;
And the complexion of the element
29 The meaning is, " Perhaps you will go and blab to Cæsar all I have
said about him; and then he will call me to account for it. Very well; go
tell him; and let him do his worst: I care not."
30 Fleering unites the two senses of flattering and mocking, and so is just
the right epithet for a tell-tale, who flatters you into saying that of another
which you ought not to say, and then mocks you by going to that other
and telling what you have said. The meaning of the next clause is,
"Hold, here is my hand"; as men clasp hands in striking or sealing a bar-
gain.
31 Be factious is, probably, form a party or faction. Or it may mean "Be
active"; the literal meaning of factious. — Here, as often, griefs is put for
grievances; that which causes griefs.
32 Undergo for undertake. So in 2 Henry the Fourth, i. 3: "How able
such a work to undergo." And in several other places.
33 By this for by this time. So in various instances. - Pompey's porch
was a spacious adjunct to the huge theatre that Pompey had built in the
Campus Martius, outside of the city proper; and where, as Plutarch says,
was set up an image of Pompey, which the city had made and consecrated
in honour of him." There it was, in fact, that the stabbing took place,
though Shakespeare transfers this to the Capitol.
70
ACT I.
JULIUS CÆSAR.
Is favour'd like 34 the work we have in hand,
Most bloody-fiery and most terrible.
Casca. Stand close 35 awhile, for here comes one in haste.
Cass. 'Tis Cinna; I do know him by his gait ;
He is a friend.
Enter CINNA.
Cinna, where haste you so?
Cin. To find out you.
Who's that? Metellus Cimber?
Cass. No, it is Casca; one incorporate 3
36
To our attempt. Am I not stay'd for, Cinna?
Cin. I'm glad on't. What a fearful night is this!
There's two or three of us have seen strange sights.
Cass. Am I not stay'd for? tell me.
Cin.
You are.
Yes,
O, Cassius, if you could but win
The noble Brutus to our party,
Cass. Be you content.
Good Cinna, take this paper,
And look you lay it in the prætor's chair,
Where Brutus may best find it; and throw this
In at his window; set this up with wax
Upon old Brutus' statue: all this done,
Repair to Pompey's porch, where you shall find us.
Is Decius Brutus and Trebonius there?
Cin. All but Metellus Cimber; and he's gone
34 Is featured, has the same aspect or countenance. Shakespeare often
uses favour in this sense. In the Poet's time, it was much in fashion to use
element for sky. We have a ludicrous instance of this from Falstaff, in
2 Henry the Fourth, iv. 3: "If you do not all show like gilt two-pences to
me, and I, in the clear sky of fame, o'ershine you as much as the full Moon
doth the cinders of the element, which show like pins' heads to her, believe
not the word of a noble."
35 Close is secret or in concealment. A frequent usage.
36 Incorporate is closely united, like the several parts of the body.
SCENE III.
JULIUS CÆSAR.
71
37
To seek you at your house. Well, I will hie,3
And so bestow these papers as you bade me.
Cass. That done, repair to Pompey's theatre. -
Come, Casca, you and I will yet, ere day,
See Brutus at his house: three parts of him
Is 38 ours already; and the man entire,
Upon the next encounter, yields him ours.
[Exit CINNA.
Casca. O, he sits high in all the people's hearts!
And that which would appear offence in us,
His countenance, like richest alchemy,39
Will change to virtue and to worthiness.
Cass. Him, and his worth, and our great need of him,
You have right well conceited.40 Let us go,
For it is after midnight; and, ere day,
We will awake him, and be sure of him.
[Exeunt.
87 Hie is hasten. So in Hamlet, i. 1: "Th' extravagant and erring spirit
hies to his confine." And in many other places.
38 Such combinations as parts and is were not then bad grammar,
39 Alchemy is the old ideal art of turning base metals into gold.
40 Conceited is conceived, understood, or apprehended.
72
ACT II,
JULIUS CÆSAR,
ACT II.
SCENE I. Rome. BRUTUS's Orchard.¹
Enter BRUTUS.
Bru. What, Lucius, ho!-
I cannot, by the progress of the stars,
Give guess how near to day. — Lucius, I say!
I would it were my fault to sleep so soundly.
When, Lucius, when !2 Awake, I say! what, Lucius!
Enter LUCIUS.
Luc. Call'd you, my lord?
Bru. Get me a taper in my study, Lucius :
When it is lighted, come and call me here.
Luc. I will, my lord.
Bru. It must be by his death:3 and, for my part,
I know no personal cause to spurn at him,
But for the general. He would be crown'd:
[Exit.
How that might change his nature, there's the question:
It is the bright day that brings forth the adder;
5
1 Orchard and garden were synonymous. In Romeo and Juliet, Capulet's
garden is twice called orchard.
2 When! was sometimes used as an exclamation of impatience.
3 Brutus has been casting about on all sides to find some other means to
prevent Cæsar's being king, and here gives it up that this can be done only
by killing him. Thus the speech opens in just the right way to throw us
back upon his antecedent meditations.
4 The public cause. This use of general was common.
5 The Poet is apt to be right in his observation of Nature. In a bright
warm day the snakes come out to bask in the sun. And the idea is, that the
sunshine of royalty will kindle the serpent in Cæsar.
SCENE I.
73
JULIUS CÆSAR.
ماحو
And that craves wary walking.
Crown him? — that :
And then, I grant, we put a sting in him,
That at his will he may do danger with.
Th' abuse of greatness is, when it disjoins
Remorse from power; and, to speak truth of Cæsar,
I have not known when his affections sway'd

7
More than his reason. But 'tis a common proof,8
That lowliness is young ambition's ladder,
Whereto the climber-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 9
By which he did ascend: so Cæsar may;
Then, lest he may, prevent, And, since the quarrel 10
Will bear no colour for the thing he is,
Fashion it thus, that what he is, augmented,
6 That is, do mischief with, and so be or prove dungerous.
7 Some obscurity here, owing to the use of certain words in uncommon
senses. Remorse, in Shakespeare, commonly means pity or compassion:
here it means conscience, or conscientiousness. So in Othello, iii. 3: "Let him
command, and to obey shall be in me remorse, what bloody work soe'er."
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.
8 Proof for fact, or the thing proved. So in Bacon's essay Of Parents and
Children: "The proof is best when men keep their authority towards their
children, but not their purse"; where the meaning is, it proves, or turns out,
best.
9 Base degrees is lower steps; degree being used in its primitive sense, and
for the rounds of the ladder. Elsewhere the Poet has base for lower. See
Richard II., page 115, note 17.
10 Quarrel for cause. So in the 35th Psalm of The Psalter: "Stand up
to judge my quarrel; avenge Thou my cause." And Shakespeare has it
repeatedly so. See Macbeth, page 141, note 23.
74
ACT II.
JULIUS CÆSAR.
Would run to these and these extremities : 11
And therefore think him as a serpent's egg,
Which, hatch'd, would, as his kind, grow mischievous;
And kill him in the shell.
Re-enter LUCIUS.
Luc. The taper burneth in your closet, sir.
Searching the window for a flint, I found
This paper thus seal'd up; and I am sure
It did not lie there when I went to bed.
Bru. Get you to bed again; it is not day.
Is not to-morrow, boy, the Ides of March?
Luc. I know not, sir.
Bru. Look in the calendar, and bring me word.
Luc. I will, sir.
Bru. The exhalations, 12 whizzing in the air,
[Exit.
11 Something of obscurity again. But the meaning is, "Since we have
no show or pretext of a cause, no assignable or apparent ground of com-
plaint, against Cæsar, in what he is, or in any thing he has yet done, let us
assume that the further addition of a crown will quite upset his nature, and
metamorphose him into a serpent." The strain of casuistry used in this
speech is very remarkable. Coleridge found it perplexing. Upon the sup-
posal that Shakespeare meant Brutus for a wise and good man, the speech
seems to me utterly unintelligible. But the Poet, I think, must have re-
garded 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 illumination of
the Spirit."
12 Exhalations for meteors, or meteoric lights; referring to the flashes of
lightning. In Plutarch's Opinions of Philosophers, as translated by Holland,
we have the following: "Aristotle supposeth that all these meteors come of
a dry exhalation, which, being gotten enclosed within a moist cloud, striveth
forcibly to get forth: now, by attrition and breaking together, it causeth the
clap of thunder." Shakespeare has meteor repeatedly in the same way. So
in Romeo and Juliet, iii. 5: “It is some meteor that the Sun exhales.”
...
SCENE I.
75
JULIUS CÆSAR,
Give so much light that I may read by them.
[Opens the paper, and reads.
Brutus, thou sleep'st: awake and see thyself.
Shall Rome, &c. Speak, strike, redress ! —
Brutus, thou sleep'st: awake! -
Such instigations have been often dropp'd
Where I have took them up.13
Shall Rome, &c. Thus must I piece it out:
Shall Rome stand under one man's awe? What, Rome?
My ancestor did from the streets of Rome.
The Tarquin drive, when he was call'd a king.-
Speak, strike, redress! - Am I entreated, then,
To speak and strike? O Rome, I make thee promise,
If the redress will follow, thou receivest
Thy full petition at the hand of Brutus !
13 Here the Poet had in his eye the following from Plutarch: "For
Brutus, his friends and countrymen, both by divers procurements and sun-
dry rumours of the city, and by many bills also, did openly call and procure
him to do that he did. For, under the image of his ancestor Junius Brutus,
that drave the kings out of Rome, they wrote, ' O, that it pleased the gods
thou wert now alive, Brutus!' and again, 'That thou wert here among us
now!' His tribunal or chair, where he gave audience during the time he
was Prætor, was full of such bills: 'Brutus, thou art asleep, and art not
Brutus indeed.' -Mr. Philip Smith, in his History of the World, comments
upon the matter as follows: "Brutus, having joined the Pompeian standard
with reluctance, had been the first to submit after the battle of Pharsalia,
and had been ever since distinguished by Cæsar's special favour. But hints
which his patron was said to have dropped of Brutus's worthiness to fill his
place aided the plausible appeals which his brother-in-law Cassius made to
his vanity. The mind which could be caught by such tricks as placards
hung upon the statue of the elder Brutus with the inscription, 'Would
thou wert alive!'—by billets thrust into his own hands, bearing the words,
'Brutus, thou sleepest, thou art no Brutus!' - had as little of stern princi-
ple as the heart that could plant the last dagger in Cæsar's bosom had of
gratitude." The same writer ascribes, and justly too, the concocting of the
conspiracy to "a narrow selfish jealousy of Cæsar's ascendency."
76
ACT II,
JULIUS CÆSAR.
Re-enter LUCIUS.
Luc. Sir, March is wasted fourteen days.
[Knocking within.
[Exit LUCIUS.
Bru. 'Tis good. Go to the gate; somebody knocks.-
Since Cassius first did whet me against Cæsar,
I have not slept.
Between the acting of a dreadful thing
And the first motion,14 all the interim is
Like a phantasma 15 or a hideous dream:
The genius and the mortal instruments
Are then in council; 16 and the state of man,
14 Motion for impulse, or the first budding of thought into purpose.
15 A phantasma is a phantom; something imagined or fancied; a vision
of things that are not, as in a nightmare.
16 Commentators differ about genius here; some taking it for the con-
science, others for the anti-conscience. Shakespeare uses genius, spirit, and
demon as synonymous, and all three, apparently, both in a good sense and
in a bad; as every man was supposed to have a good and a bad angel.
So, in this play, we have "thy evil spirit"; in The Tempest, “ our worser
genius"; in Troilus and Cressida, "Some say the genius so cries Come! to
him that instantly must die"; in Antony and Cleopatra, "Thy demon, that's
thy spirit which keeps thee"; where, as often, keeps is guards. In these and
some other cases, the words have some epithet or context that determines
their meaning; but not so with genius in the text. But, in all such cases,
the words, I think, mean the directive power of the mind. And so we often
speak of a man's better self, or a man's worser self, according as one is in
fact directed or drawn to good or to evil. The sense of mortal, here, is also
somewhat in question. The Poet sometimes uses it for perishable, or that
which dies; but oftener for deadly, or that which kills. Mortal instruments
may well be held to mean the same as when Macbeth says, "I'm settled,
and bend up each corporal agent to this terrible feat."- As Brutus is speak-
ing with reference to his own case, he probably intends genius in a good
sense; for the spiritual or immortal part of himself. If so, then he would
naturally mean, by mortal, his perishable part, or his ministerial faculties,
which shrink from executing what the directive power is urging them to.
SCENE I.
77
JULIUS CÆSAR.
Like to a little kingdom, suffers then
The nature of an insurrection.17
Re-enter LUCIUS.
Luc. Sir, 'tis your brother Cassius at the door,
Who doth desire to see you.
Bru.
Is he alone?
Luc. No, sir, there are more with him.
Bru.
Do you know them?
Luc. No, sir: their hats are pluck'd about their ears,
And half their faces buried in their cloaks,
That by no means I may discover them
By any mark of favour.
Bru.
They are the faction.
Let 'em enter.
O conspiracy,
[Exit LUCIUS.
Shamest thou to show thy dangerous brow by night,
When evils are most free? 18 O, then, by day
Where wilt thou find a cavern dark enough
To mask thy monstrous visage? Seek none, conspiracy;
Hide it in smiles and affability:
For if thou pass, thy native semblance on,19
Not Erebus itself were dim enough
To hide thee from prevention.20
dochness where
Ok. by l
The late Professor Ferrier, however, of Aberdeen, seems to take a some-
what different view of the passage. "Shakespeare," says he," has a fine de-
scription of the unsettled state of the mind when the will is hesitating about
the perpetration of a great crime, and when the passions are threatening to
overpower, and eventually do overpower, the reason and the conscience."
17 That is, a kind of insurrection, or something like an insurrection.
18 When crimes and mischiefs, or rather when evil and mischievous men
are most free from the restraints of law, or of shame. So Hamlet speaks of
night as the time "when Hell itself breathes out contagion to this world."
19 "Thy native semblance being on." Ablative absolute again.
20 "To hide thee from discovery," which would lead to prevention.— Of
78
ACT II.
JULIUS CÆSAR.
Enter CASSIUS, CASCA, DECIUS, CINNA, METELLUS CIMBER, and
TREBONIUS.
Cass. I think we are too bold upon your rest:
Good morrow, Brutus; do we trouble you?
Bru. I have been up this hour, awake all night.
Know I these men that come along with you?
Cass. Yes, every man of them; and no man here
But honours you; and every one doth wish
You had but that opinion of yourself
Which every noble Roman bears of you.
This is Trebonius.
Bru.
He is welcome hither.
He is welcome too.
Cass. This Decius 21 Brutus.
Bru.
Cass. This, Casca; this, Cinna; and this Metellus Cimber.
Bru. They are all welcome.
What watchful cares do interpose themselves
Betwixt your eyes and night?
Cass. Shall I entreat a word?
[BRUTUS and CASSIUS whisper apart.
Dec. Here lies the East: doth not the day break here?
Casca. No.
Cin. O, pardon, sir, it doth; and yon gray lines
the five divisions of Hades, Erebus was, properly, 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.
21 Shakespeare found the name thus in Plutarch. In fact, however, it
was Decimus, not Decius. The man is said to have been cousin to the other
Brutus of the play. He had been one of Cæsar's ablest, most favoured, and
most trusted lieutenants, and had particularly distinguished himself in his
naval service at Venetia and Massilia. After the murder of Cæsar, he was
found to be written down in his will as second heir.
SCENE I.
79
JULIUS CÆSAR.
That fret the clouds are messengers of day.
Casca. You shall confess that you are both deceived.
Here, as I point my sword, the Sun arises;
Which is a great way growing on the South,
Weighing the youthful season of the year.22
Some two months hence, up higher toward the North
He first presents his fire; and the high East
Stands, as the Capitol, directly here.23
Bru. Give me your hands all over, one by one.
Cass. And let us swear our resolution.
:
Bru. No, not an oath if not the face of men,24
The sufferance of our souls, the time's abuse,
If these be motives weak, break off betimes,
And every man hence to his idle bed;
So let high-sighted tyranny range on,
Till each man drop by lottery.2 25 But if these,
As I am sure they do, bear fire enough
To kindle cowards, and to steel with valour
The melting spirits of women; then, countrymen,
22 That is, verging or inclining towards the South, in accordance with the
early time of the year. Weighing is considering.
M
23 “The high East" is the perfect East. So the Poet has“ high morning"
for morning full-blown. This little side-talk on an indifferent theme is very
finely conceived, and aptly marks the men as seeking to divert off the anxious
thoughts of the moment by any casual chat. It also serves the double pur-
pose of showing that they are not listening, and of preventing suspicion, if
any were listening to them.
24 Meaning, probably, the shame and self-reproach with which Romans
must now look each other in the face, under the consciousness of having
fallen away from the republican spirit of their forefathers. The change in
the construction of the sentence gives it a more colloquial cast, without
causing any real obscurity.
25 Brutus seems to have in mind the capriciousness of a high-looking
and heaven-daring oriental tyranny, where men's lives hung upon the nod
and whim of the tyrant, as on the hazards of a lottery.
:
80
ACT II.
JULIUS CÆSAR.
What 26 need we any spur but our own cause
To prick us to redress? what other bond
Than secret Romans, that have spoke the word,
And will not palter ? 27 and what other oath
Than honesty to honesty engaged,28
That this shall be, or we will fall for it?
Swear priests, and cowards, and men cautelous,29
Old feeble carrions, 30 and such suffering souls
That welcome wrongs; unto bad causes swear
Such creatures as men doubt: but do not stain
The even virtue 31 of our enterprise,
Nor th' insuppressive 32 mettle of our spirits,
To think that or our cause or 33 our performance
Did need an oath; when every drop of blood
That every Roman bears, and nobly bears,
Is guilty of a several bastardy,
"
If he do break the smallest particle
Of any promise that hath pass'd from him.
26 What for why. The Poet often has it so. And so in St. Mark, xiv.
.63:
What need we any further witnesses ?"
27 To palter is to equivocute, to shuffle, as in making a promise with what
is called "a mental reservation."
28 Engaged is pledged, or put in pawn. A frequent usage.
29 Cautelous is here used in the sense of deceit or fraud; though its
original meaning is wary, circumspect, the same as cautious. The word is
said to have caught a bad sense in passing through French hands. But, as
the Clarendon edition notes, "the transition from caution to suspicion, and
from suspicion to craft and deceit, is not very abrupt."
30 Carrions for carcasses, or men as good as dead. Repeatedly so.
31 Meaning the virtue that holds an equable and uniform tenour, always
keeping the same high level.
32 Insuppressive for insuppressible; the active form with the passive sense.
So the Poet has unexpressive for inexpressible. See, also, Hamlèt, page 77,
note 9.
33 Or— or for either— or occurs very often in all English poetry; as also
nor-nor for neither-nor.— To think is by thinking.
SCENE 1.
81
JULIUS CÆSAR.
Cass. But what of Cicero? Shall we sound him?
I think he will stand very strong with us.
Casca. Let us not leave him out.
Cin.
·
No, by no means.
Met. O, let us have him! for his silver hairs
Will purchase us a good opinion,34
And buy men's voices to commend our deeds:
It shall be said, his judgment ruled our hands;
Our youths and wildness shall no whit appear,
But all be buried in his gravity.
Bru. O, name him not ! let us not break with him;
For he will never follow any thing
That other men begin.
Cass.
Then leave him out.
Casca. Indeed, he is not fit.
Dec. Shall no man else be touch'd but only Cæsar?
Cass. Decius, well urged. — I think it is not meet,
Mark Antony, so well beloved of Cæsar,
Should outlive Cæsar: we shall find of him 36
A shrewd contriver; and you know, his means,
If he improve them, may well stretch so far
As to annoy us all which to prevent,
Let Antony and Cæsar fall together.
35
34 Opinion for reputation or estimation. Often so. Observe the thread of
association in silver, purchase, and buy.
35 Old language for "let us not break the matter to him."-This bit of
dialogue is very charming. Brutus knows full well that Cicero is not the
man to play second fiddle to any of then that if he have any thing to do
with the enterprise it must be as the leader of it; and that is just what
Brutus wants to be himself. Merivale thinks it a great honour to Cicero,
that the conspirators did not venture to propose the matter to him.
36 We should say "find in him." So in The Merchant, iii. 5: "Even
such a husband hast thou of me as she is for a wife.”
82
ACT II.
JULIUS CÆSAR.
.
Bru. Our course will seem too bloody, Caius Cassius,
To cut the head off, and then hack the limbs,
Like wrath in death, and envy 37 afterwards;
For Antony is but a limb of Cæsar.
Let us be sacrificers, but not butchers, Caius.
We all stand up against the spirit of Cæsar;
And in the spirit of men there is no blood:
O, that we then could come by Cæsar's spirit,
And not dismember Cæsar! But, alas,
Cæsar must bleed for it! And, gentle friends,
Let's kill him boldiy, but not wrathfully;
Let's carve him as a dish fit for the gods,
Not hew him as a carcass fit for hounds:
And let our hearts, as subtle masters do,
Stir up their servants to an act of rage,
And after seem to chide 'em.38 This shall mark
Our purpose necessary,39 and not envious
Which so appearing to the common eyes,
We shall be call'd purgers,40 not murderers.
37 Here, as commonly in Shakespeare, envy is malice or hatred. And so,
a little after, envious is malicious. - North's Plutarch gives the matter of
this passage as follows: "They consulted whether they should kill An-
tonius with Cæsar. But Brutus would in no wise consent to it, saying that,
venturing on such an enterprise as that, for the maintenance of law and jus-
tice, it ought to be clear from all villainy. Yet they, fearing Antonius's power,
and the authority of his office, appointed certain of the conspiracy, that when
Cæsar were gone into the Senate, and while others should execute their
enterprise, they should keep Antonius in a talk out of the Senate-house."
38 So the King proceeds with Hubert in King John. And so men often
proceed when they wish to have thing done, and to shirk the responsi-
bility; setting it on by dark hints and allusions, and then, after it is done,
affecting to blame or to scold the doers of it.
39 That is, "will mark our purpose as necessary," or the offspring of ne-
cessity. The indiscriminate use of shall and will is frequent.
40 Meaning healers, who cleanse the land from the disease of tyranny.
SCENE I.
83
JULIUS CÆSAR.
And for Mark Antony, think not of him ;
For he can do no more than Cæsar's arm
When Cæsar's head is off.
Cass.
Yet I do fear him;
For in th' ingrafted love he bears to Cæsar
Bru. Alas, good Cassius, do not think of him :
If he love Cæsar, all that he can do
Is to himself, - take thought and die 41 for Cæsar:
And that were much he should; for he is given
To sports, to wildness, and much company.
Treb. There is no fear in him;42 let him not die ;
For he will live, and laugh at this hereafter.
Bru. Peace! count the clock.
Cass.
Treb. 'Tis time to part.
Cass.
[Clock strikes.
The clock hath stricken three.
But it is doubtful yet
Whêr Cæsar will come forth to-day or no ;
For he is superstitious grown of late,
Quite from the main 43 opinion he held once
Of fantasy, of dreams, and ceremonies.44
41 "Think and die," or "take thought and die," is an old phrase for
grieve one's self to death: and it would be much indeed, a very wonderful
thing, if Antony should fall into any killing sorrow, such a light-hearted,
jolly companion as he is. So the Poet uses think and thought repeatedly.
And so in the Scripture phrases, “take no thought for your life,” and “take
no thought for the morrow," the Greek word translated take thought prop-
erly means to be anxious or solicitous.
42 No fear on account of him, or because of him, is the meaning. So in
is used in several other places. See Macbeth, page 99, note 7.
43 Great, strong, mighty are among the old senses of main. And from, in
Shakespeare, often has the force of contrary to. So in Hamlet's saying, "is
from the purpose of playing."
44 Cæsar was, in his philosophy, an Epicurean, as most of the educated
Romans then also were. Hence he was, in opinion, strongly sceptical about
dreams and ceremonial auguries. Nevertheless, as is apt to be the case
84
ACT II.
JULIUS CÆSAR.
It may be, these apparent 45 prodigies,
The unaccustom'd terror of this night,
And the persuasion of his augurers,
May hold him from the Capitol to-day.
Dec. Never fear that: if he be so resolved,
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,46 and men with flatterers:
But, when I tell him he hates flatterers,
He says he does, being then most flatteréd.
Let me work;
For I can give his humour the true bent,
And I will bring him to the Capitol.
:
Cass. Nay, we will all of us be there to fetch him.
Bru. By the eighth hour is that the uttermost?
Cin. Be that the uttermost; and fail not then.
Met. Caius Ligarius doth bear Cæsar hard,
Who rated him for speaking well of Pompey :
I wonder none of you have thought of him.
Bru. Now, good Metellus, go along by him :47
with sceptics and freethinkers, his conduct, especially in his later years, was
marked with many gross instances of superstitious practice.
45 Apparent, here, is evident or manifest. A frequent usage.
5, 10.
46 The way to catch that fabulous old beast, the unicorn, is, to stand be-
´fore a tree, and, when he runs at you, to slip aside, and let him stick his horn
into the tree: then you have him. See The Faerie Queene, il.
Bears are said to have been caught by putting looking-glasses in their way,
they being so taken with the images of themselves, that the hunters could
easily master them.- Elephants were beguiled into pitfalls, lightly covered
over with hurdles and turf; a bait being placed thereon, to tempt them.-
Toil is trap or snare. So in Antony and Cleopatra, v. 2: “As she would
catch another Antony in her strong toil of grace."
47 That is, by his house: "make that your way home."
SCENE I.
85
JULIUS CÆSAR.
48
He loves me well, and I have given him reason ;
Send him but hither, and I'll fashion him.
Cass. The morning comes upon's: we'll leave you, Bru-
tus:
And, friends, disperse yourselves; but all remember
What you have said, and show yourselves true Romans.
Bru. Good gentlemen, look fresh and merrily ;
Let not our looks put on our purposes ; 49
But bear it as our Roman actors do,
With untired spirits and formal constancy :
And so, good-morrow to you every one.
[Exeunt all but BRUTUS.
Boy! Lucius ! - Fast asleep? It is no matter;
Enjoy the honey-heavy dew of slumber : 50
Thou hast no figures nor no fantasies,
Which busy care draws in the brains of men ;
Therefore thou sleep'st so sound.
Por.
Enter PORTIA.
Brutus, my lord !
Bru. Portia, what mean you? wherefore rise you now?
It is not for your health thus to commit
Your weak condition to the raw-cold morning.
Por. Nor for yours neither. You've ungently, Brutus,
48 The meaning probably is, "given him reason to love me."
49 “Let not our looks betray our purposes by wearing, or being attired
with, any indication of them."
50 The compound epithet honey-heavy is very expressive and apt. The
"dew of slumber" is called heavy because it makes the subject feel heavy,
and honey-heavy because the heaviness it induces is sweet. Brutus is natu-
rally led to contrast the free and easy state of the boy's mind with that of
his own, which the excitement of his present undertaking is drawing full of
visions and images of trouble.
86
ACT II
JULIUS CÆSAR.
Stole from my bed: and yesternight, at supper,
You suddenly arose, and walk'd about,
Musing and sighing, with your arms across ;
And, when I ask'd you what the matter was,
You stared upon me with ungentle looks:
I urged you further; then you scratch'd your head,
And too impatiently stamp'd with your foot:
Yet I insisted, yet you answer'd not ;
But, with an angry wafture of your hand,
Gave sign for me to leave you. So I did;
Fearing to strengthen that impatience
Which seem'd too much enkindled; and withal
Hoping it was but an effect of humour,
Which sometime hath his hour with every man.
It will not let you eat, nor talk, nor sleep;
And, could it work so much upon your shape
As it hath much prevail'd on your condition,51
I should not know you, Brutus. Dear my lord,
Make me acquainted with your cause of grief.
Bru. I am not well in health, and that is all.
Por. Brutus is wise, and, were he not in health,
He would embrace the means to come by it.
Bru. Why, so I do. Good Portia, go to bed.
Por. Is Brutus sick? and is it physical 52 ·
To walk unbracèd, and
52
suck up the humours
Of the dank morning? What, is Brutus sick,
And will he steal out of his wholesome bed,
To dare the vile contagion of the night,
51 Condition was much used for temper or disposition. The term ill-con-
ditioned is still in use for a cross-grained, irascible, or quarrelsome dispo-
sition, or an ugly temper.
52 The Poet has physical again for wholesome or medicinal, in Coriolanus,
i. 5: "The blood I drop is rather physical than dangerous to me.”

Asmile.
SCENE I.
JULIUS CÆSAR.
And tempt the rheumy 53 and unpurged air
To add unto his sickness? No, my Brutus ;
You have some sick offence within your mind,
Which, by the right and virtue of my place,
I ought to know of: and, upon my knees,
I charge you, by my once-commended beauty,
By all your vows of love, and that great vow
Which did incorporate and make us one,
That you unfold to me, yourself, your half,
Why you are heavy, and what men to-night
Have had resort to you; for here have been
Some six or seven, who did hide their faces
Even from darkness.
Bru.
Kneel not, gentle Portia.
Por. I should not need, if you were gentle Brutus.
Within the bond of marriage, tell me, Brutus,
Is it excepted I should know no secrets
That appertain to you? Am I yourself
But, as it were, in sort or limitation,
To keep with you at meals, comfort your bed,
And talk to you sometimes? Dwell I but in the suburbs
Of your good pleasure ?54 If it be no more,
Portia is Brutus' harlot, not his wife,
Bru. You are my true and honourable wife ;
As dear to me as are the ruddy drops
53 Rheum was specially used of the fluids that issue from the eyes or
mouth. So in Hamlet we have "bisson rheum" for blinding tears. Rheumy
here means that state of the air which causes the unhealthy issue of such
fluids, or perhaps which makes people rheumatic. So, in A Midsummer-
Night's Dream, ii, 1, Titania speaks of the Moon as "washing all the air,
that rheumatic diseases do abound."
54 In the outskirts or borders, and not at the centre or near the heart.
The image is exceedingly apposite and expressive.
88
ACT II.
JULIUS CÆSAR.
That visit my sad heart.55
Por. If this were true, then should I know this secret.
I grant I am a woman; but withal
A woman that Lord Brutus took to wife :
I grant I am a woman; but withal
A woman well-reputed, Cato's daughter.
Think you I am no stronger than my sex,
Being so father'd and so husbanded?
Tell me your counsels, I will not disclose 'em.
I have made strong proof of my constancy,
Giving myself a voluntary wound
Here in the thigh: can I bear that with patience,
And not my husband's secrets?
Bru.
O ye gods,
Render me worthy of this noble wife ! 56 —[Knocking within.
55 This embodies what was then known touching the circulation of the
blood. William Harvey was born in 1578, fourteen years after Shakespeare,
and his discovery was not published till 1628, twelve years after the Poet's
death. The general fact of the circulation of the blood was known in ancient
times; and Harvey's discovery lay in ascertaining the modus operandı of it,
and in reducing it to matter of strict science.
56 Because she would not ask her husband what he ailed before she had
made some proof by her self, she took a little razor, such as barbers occupy
to pare men's nails, and, causing her maids and women to go out of her
chamber, gave herself a great gash withal in her thigh, that she was straight
all of a gore blood; and incontinently after a vehement fever took her, by
reason of the pain of her wound. Then, perceiving her husband was mar-
vellously out of quiet, and that he could take no rest, even in her greatest
pain of all she spake in this sort unto him: "I being, O Brutus, the daugh-
ter of Cato was married unto thee, not to be thy companion in bed and at
board only, like a harlot, but to be partaker also with thee of thy good and
evil fortune. Now, for thyself, I can find no cause of fault in thee, touching
our match. But, for my part, how may I show my duty towards thee, and
how much I would do for thy sake, if I cannot constantly bear a secret mis-
chance or grief with thee, which requireth secresy and fidelity? I confess
that a woman's wit commonly is too weak to keep a secret safely; but yet,
SCENE 1.
89
JULIUS CÆSAR.
Hark, hark! one knocks: Portia, go in awhile;
And by-and-by thy bosom shall partake
The secrets of my heart :
All my engagements I will construe to thee,
All the charáctery of my sad brows: 57
Leave me with haste. [Exit PORTIA.] Lucius, who's that
knocks?
Re-enter LUCIUS with LIGARIUS.
Luc. Here is a sick man that would speak with you.
Bru. Caius Ligarius, that Metellus spake of. —
Boy, stand aside.-Caius Ligarius, - how !
Lig. Vouchsafe good-morrow from a feeble tongue.
Bru. O, what a time have you chose out, brave Caius,
!58
To wear a kerchief! 58 Would you were not sick!
Lig. I am not sick, if Brutus have in hand
Any exploit worthy the name of honour.
Brutus, good education and the company of virtuous men have some power
to reform the defect of nature. And, for myself, I have this benefit, more-
over, that I am the daughter of Cato and wife of Brutus. This notwith-
standing, I did not trust to any of these things before, until that now I have
found by experience, that no pain or grief whatsoever can overcome me."
With those words she showed him her wound on her thigh, and told him
what she had done to prove herself. Brutus was amazed to hear what she
said unto him; and, lifting up his hands to heaven, he besought the gods to
give him the grace he might bring his enterprise to so good pass, that he
might be found a husband worthy of so noble a wife as Portia. So he then
did comfort her the best he could.- PLUTARCH.
57 Charactery is defined "writing by characters or strange marks." Bru-
tus therefore means that he will divulge to her the secret cause of the sad-
ness marked on his countenance.
58 It was a common practice in England for those who were sick to wear
a kerchief on their heads. So in Fuller's Worthies of Cheshire: “If any
there be sick, they make him a posset and tye a kerchief on his head; and if
that will not mend him, then God be merciful to him."
90
ACT II.
JULIUS CÆSAR.
Bru. Such an exploit have I in hand, Ligarius,
Had you a healthful ear to hear of it.
Lig. By all the gods that Romans bow before,
I here discard my sickness. Soul of Rome !
Brave son, derived from honourable loins!
Thou, like an exorcist,59 hast conjured up
My mortified spirit.60 Now bid me run,
And I will strive with things impossible;
Yea, get the better of them.61 What's to do?
Bru. A piece of work that will make sick men whole.
Lig. But are not some whole that we must make sick?
Bru. That must we also. What it is, my Caius,
I shall unfold to thee, as we are going,
To whom it must be done.
Lig.
Set on your foot;
And with a heart new-fired I follow you,
To do I know not what: but it sufficeth
That Brutus leads me on.
Bru.
Follow me, then.
[Exeunt.
59 In Shakespeare's time, exorcist and conjurer were used indifferently.
The former has since come to mean only one who drives away spirits; the
latter, one who calls them up.
60 That is," my spirit which was dead in me." Such is the literal mean-
ing of mortified; and so the Poet has it repeatedly.
61 Amongst Pompey's friends, there was one called Caius Ligarius, who
had been accused unto Cæsar for taking part with Pompey, and Cæsar dis-
charged him. But Ligarius thanked not Cæsar so much for his discharge,
as he was offended with him for that he was brought in danger by his
tyrannical power: and therefore in his heart he was always his mortal
enemy, and was besides very familiar with Brutus, who went to see him being
sick in his bed, and said unto him: "Ligarius, in what a time art thou sick ?"
Ligarius, rising up in his bed, and taking him by the right hand, said unto
him: "Brutus, if thou hast any great enterprise in hand, worthy of thyself,
I am whole." — PLUTARCH.
SCENE II.
91
JULIUS CÆSAR.
SCENE II. — A Room in CÆSAR'S Palace.
Thunder and Lightning. Enter CÆSAR, in his night-gown.
Cæs. Nor Heaven nor Earth have been at peace to-night:
Thrice hath Calpurnia in her sleep cried out,
Help, ho! they murder Cæsar! — Who's within?
Serv. My lord?
Enter a Servant.
Cæs. Go bid the priests do present sacrifice,
And bring me their opinions of success.¹
Serv. I will, my lord.
Enter CALPURNIA.
[Exit.
Cal. What mean you, Cæsar? think you to walk forth?
You shall not stir out of your house to-day.
Cæs. Cæsar shall forth: the things that threaten me
Ne'er look but on my back; when they shall see
The face of Cæsar, they are vanished.
Cal. Cæsar, I never stood on ceremonies,2
Yet now they fright me. There is one within,
Besides the things that we have heard and seen,
Recounts most horrid sights seen by the watch.
A lioness hath whelped in the streets;
And graves have yawn'd, and yielded up their dead;
Fierce fiery warriors fought upon the clouds,
In ranks and squadrons and right form of war,
Which drizzled blood upon the Capitol ;
1 Their opinions of what is to follow. The Poet often uses success in this
sense: so that we have "good success and "ill success.'
2 Ceremonies is here put for the ceremonial or sacerdotal interpretation
of prodigies and omens.
92
ACT IL
JULIUS CÆSAR,
The noise of battle hurtled³ in the air;
Horses did neigh, and dying men did groan;
And ghosts did shriek and squeal about the streets.
O Cæsar, these things are beyond all use,
And I do fear them!
Cæs.
What can be avoided
Whose end is purposed by the mighty gods?
Yet Cæsar shall go forth; for these predictions.
Are to the world in general as to Cæsar.
Cal. When beggars die, there are no comets seen;
The heavens themselves blaze forth the death of princes.
Cas. 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.
Re-enter the Servant.
What say the augurers?
Serv. They would not have you to stir forth to-day.
Plucking the entrails of an offering forth,
They could not find a heart within the beast.
Cas. The gods do this in shame of cowardice :
8 To hurtle is to clash, or move with violence and noise.
4 Plutarch relates that, a short time before Cæsar fell, some of his friends
urged him to have a guard about him, and he replied that it was better to
die at once than live in the continual fear of death. He is also said to
have given as his reason for refusing a guard, that he thought Rome had
more need of him than he of Rome; which was indeed true. And it is
further stated that, on the eve of the fatal day, Cæsar being at the house of
Lepidus with some friends, and the question being raised, "What kind
of death is best?" he cut short the discussion by saying, "That which is
least expected.”
SCENE II.
93
JULIUS CÆSAR.
Cæsar should be a beast without a heart,
If he should stay at home to-day for fear.
No, Cæsar shall not: danger knows full well
That Cæsar is more dangerous than he :
We are two lions litter'd in one day,
And I the elder and more terrible;
And Cæsar shall go forth.
Cal.
Alas, my lord,
Your wisdom is consumed in confidence!
Do not go forth to-day call it my fear
:
That keeps you in the house, and not your own.
We'll send Mark Antony to the Senate-house;
And he shall say you are not well to-day :
Let me, upon my knee, prevail in this.
Cæs. Mark Antony shall say I am not well;
And, for thy humour, I will stay at home.5
Enter DECIUS.
Here's Decius Brutus, he shall tell them so.
5 Then going to bed the same night, as his manner was, and lying with
his wife Calpurnia, all the windows and doors of his chamber flying open,
the noise awoke him, and made him afraid when he saw such light; but
more, when he heard his wife Calpurnia, being fast asleep, weep and sigh,
and put forth many fumbling lamentable speeches: for she dreamed that
Cæsar was slain, and that she had him in her arms. Cæsar rising in the
morning, she prayed him, if it were possible, not to go out of the doors that
day, but to adjourn the session of the Senate until another day. And if
that he made no reckoning of her dream, yet that he would search further
of the soothsayers by their sacrifices, to know what should happen him that
day. Thereby it seemed that Cæsar did likewise fear or suspect somewhat,
because his wife Calpurnia until that time was never given to any fear and
superstition; and that then he saw her so troubled in mind with this dream
she had. But much more afterwards, when the soothsayers having sacri-
ficed many beasts one after another, told him that none did like them: then
he determined to send Antonius to adjourn the session of the Senate.—
PLUTARCH.
94
ACT II.
JULIUS CÆSAR.
Dec. Cæsar, all hail! Good morrow, worthy Cæsar:
I come to fetch you to the Senate-house.
Cas. 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.
Cal. Say he is sick.
Cæs.
Shall Cæsar send a lie?
Have I in conquest stretch'd mine arm so far,
To be afeard to tell gray-beards the truth? -
Decius, go tell them Cæsar will not come.
Dec. Most mighty Cæsar, let me know some cause,
Lest I be laugh'd at when I tell them so.
Cas. The cause is in my will; I will not come :
That is enough to satisfy the Senate.
But, for your private satisfaction,
Because I love you, I will let you know :
Calpurnia here, my wife, stays me at home:
She dreamt to-night she saw my statua,6
Which, like a fountain with an hundred spouts,
Did run pure blood; and many lusty Romans
Came smiling, and did bathe their hands in it:
And these doth she apply for warnings and porténts
Of evils imminent; and on her knee
Hath begg'd that I will stay at home to-day.
Dec. This dream is all amiss interpreted:
It was a vision fair and fortunate.
6 In Shakespeare's time statue was pronounced indifferently as a word
of two syllables or three. Bacon uses it repeatedly as a trisyllable, and spells
it statua, as in his Advancement of Learning: “It is not possible to have
the true pictures or statuas of Cyrus, Alexander, Cæsar, no, nor of the kings
or great personages of much later years."
SCENE II.
95
JULIUS CÆSAR.
Your statue spouting blood in many pipes,
In which so many smiling Romans bathed,
Signifies that from you great Rome shall suck
Reviving blood; and that great men shall press
For tinctures, stains, relics, and cognizance.7
This by Calpurnia's dream is signified.
Cas. And this way have you well expounded it.
Dec. I have, when you have heard what I can say ;
And know it now: The Senate have concluded
To give this day a crown to mighty Cæsar.8
If you shall send them word you will not come,
Their minds may change. Besides, it were a mock
Apt to be render'd,⁹ for some one to say,
Break up the Senate till another time,
When Caesar's wife shall meet with better dreams.
If Cæsar hide himself, shall they not whisper,
Lo, Cæsar is afraid?
7 Cognizance is here used in a heraldic sense, as meaning any badge or
token to show whose friends or servants the owners or wearers were. In
ancient times, when martyrs or other distinguished men were executed,
their friends. often pressed to stain handkerchiefs with their blood, or to get
some other relic, which they might keep, either as precious memorials of
them, or as having a kind of sacramental virtue.
8 The Roman people were specially yearning to avenge the slaughter of
Marcus Crassus and his army by the Parthians; and Cæsar was at this
time preparing an expedition against them. But a Sibylline oracle was
alleged, that Parthia could only be conquered by a king; and it was pro-
posed to invest Cæsar with the royal title and authority over the foreign
subjects of the State. It is agreed on all hands that, if his enemies did not
originate this proposal, they at least craftily urged it on, in order to make
him odious, and exasperate the people against him. To the same end,
they had for some time been plying the arts of extreme sycophancy, heaping
upon him all possible honours, human and divine, hoping thereby to kindle
such a fire of envy as would consume him.
9 It were apt, or likely, to be construed or represented as a piece of mock-
ery. So the Poet repeatedly uses the verb to render.
96
ACT II.
JULIUS CÆSAR.
Pardon me, Cæsar; for my dear dear love
To your proceeding bids me tell you this;
And reason to my love is liable.10
Cas. How foolish do your fears seem now, Calpurnia!
I am ashamèd I did yield to them.
Give me my robe, for I will go.11
Enter PUBLIUS, BRUTUS, LIGARIUS, METELLUS, CASCA, TRE-
BONIUS, and CINNA.
And look where Publius 12 is come to fetch me.
Pub. Good morrow, Cæsar.
Cæs.
Welcome, Publius.
What, Brutus, are you stirr'd so early too?-
Good morrow, Casca.
Caius Ligarius,
10 The thought here is, that love stands as principal, reason as second or
subordinate. "The deference which reason holds due from me to you is in
this instance subject and amenable to the calls of personal affection."
11 In the mean time Decius Brutus, surnamed Albinus, in whom Cæsar
put such confidence, that in his last will and testament he had appointed him
to be his next heir, and yet was of the conspiracy with Cassius and Brutus;
he, fearing that, if Cæsar did adjourn the session that day, the conspiracy
would be betrayed, laughed at the soothsayers, and reproved Cæsar, saying
that "he gave the Senate occasion to mislike with him, and they might think
he mocked them, considering that by his commandment they were assem-
bled, and that they were ready willingly to grant him all things, and to pro-
claim 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.
And furthermore, that if any man should tell them from him they should
depart for that present time, and return again when Calpurnia should have
better dreams, what would his enemies and ill-willers say, and how could
they like of his friends' words? And who could persuade them otherwise,
but that they should think his dominion a slavery unto them and tyrannical
in himself? And yet if it be so," said he, "that you utterly mislike of this
day, it is better that you go yourself in person, and, saluting the Senate, to
dismiss them till another time." Therewithal he took Cæsar by the hand,
and brought him out of his house. — PLUTARCH.
12 This was Publius Silicius; not one of the conspirators.
SCENE II.
97
JULIUS CÆSAR.
Cæsar was ne'er so much your enemy
As that same ague which hath made you lean.¹3
What is't o'clock?
Bru.
Cæsar, 'tis strucken eight.
Cæs. I thank you for your pains and courtesy.
Enter ANTONY.
See! Antony, that revels long o'nights,
-
Is notwithstanding up. Good morrow, Antony.
Ant. So to most noble Cæsar.
Cæs.
Bid them prepare within :
I am to blame to be thus waited for..
Now, Cinna;
now, Metellus ;- what, Trebonius !
I have an hour's talk in store for you :
Remember that you call on me to-day ;
Be near me, that I may remember you.
Treb. Cæsar, I will; - [Aside.] and so near will I be,
That your best friends shall wish I had been further.
Cæs. Good friends, go in, and taste some wine with me;
And we, like friends, will straightway go together.
Bru. [Aside.] That every like is not the same, O Cæsar,
The heart of Brutus yearns to think upon ! 14 [Exeunt.
13 Here, for the first time, we have Cæsar speaking fairly in character;
for he was probably the most finished gentleman of his time, one of the
sweetest of men, and as full of kindness as of wisdom and courage. Meri-
vale aptly styles him “Cæsar the politic and the merciful."
14 The winning and honest suavity of Cæsar here starts a pang of remorse
in Brutus. Drinking wine together was regarded as a sacred pledge of
truth and honour. Brutus knows that Cæsar is doing it in good faith; and
it hurts him to think that the others seem to be doing the like, and yet are
doing a very different thing. To yearn is to grieve, to be pained. Repeat-
edly used so by the Poet.
98
ACT II.
JULIUS CÆSAR.
SCENE III. — A Street near the Capitol.
Enter ARTEMIDORUS, reading a paper.
Artem. Cæsar, 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; thou hast wrong'd Caius Ligarius. There
is but one mind in all these men, and it is bent against
Cæsar. If thou be'st not immortal, look about you: security
gives way to conspiracy.¹ The mighty gods defend thee!
Thy lover,
Here will I stand till Cæsar pass along,
ARTEMIDORUS.

And as a suitor will I give him this, it cannot escape
My heart laments that yirtue cannes can
Out of the teeth of emulation.2-
live
If thou read this, O Cæsar, thou mayst live ;
If not, the Fates with traitors do contrive.
SCENE IV.
[Exit.
· Another part of the same Street, before the
House of BRUTUS.
Enter PORTIA and LUCIUS.
Por. I pr'ythee, boy, run to the Senate-house :
Stay not to answer me, but get thee gone.
Why dost thou stay?
Luc.
To know my errand, madam.
1 Negligence or over-confidence makes or opens a way for conspiracy. The
use of security and secure in this sense is very frequent. See Hamlet, page
83, note 8; also Macbeth, page 119, note 4.
2 Emulation is factious and envious rivalry. So in Troilus and Cressida,
i. 3: "An envious fever of pale and bloodless emulation."
SCENE IV.
99
JULIUS CÆSAR.
Por. I would have had thee there, and here again,
Ere I can tell thee what thou shouldst do there.
[Aside.] O constancy, be strong upon my side!
Set a huge mountain 'tween my heart and tongue!
I have a man's mind, but a woman's might.
How hard it is for women to keep counsel!
Art thou here yet?
Luc.
Madam, what should I do?
Run to the Capitol, and nothing else?
And so return to you, and nothing else?
intersfies
usperse

Por. Yes; bring me word, boy, if thy lord look well,
For he went sickly forth and take good note
What Cæsar doth, what suitors press to him.
Hark, boy! what noise is that?
Luc. I hear none, madam.
Por.
Pr'ythee, listen well:
I heard a bustling rumour,3 like a fray,
And the wind brings it from the Capitol.
Luc. Sooth, madam, I hear nothing.
4
Enter ARTEMIDORUS.
Por. Come hither, fellow: which way hast thou been?
Artem. At mine own house, good lady.
Por. What is't o'clock?
Artem. About the ninth hour, lady.
Por. Is Cæsar yet gone to the Capitol?
8 A loud noise or murmur, as of stir and tumult, is one of the old mean-
ings of rumour.— Since the interview of Brutus and Portia, he has un-
bosomed all his secrets to her; and now she is in such a fever of anxiety,
that she mistakes her own fancies for facts.
4 Sooth for in sooth; that is, in truth, or truly. A soothsayer is, properly,
a truth-speaker. So the Poet often uses sooth.
JorM
100
ACT IL
JULIUS CÆSAR.
Artem. Madam, not yet: I go to take my stand,
To see him pass on to the Capitol.
Por. Thou hast some suit to Cæsar, hast thou not?
Artem. That I have, lady: if it will please Cæsar
To be so good to Cæsar as to hear me,
I shall beseech him to befriend himself.
Por. Why, know'st thou any harm's intended towards
him?
Artem. None that I know will be, much that I fear may
chance.
Good morrow to you. - Here the street is narrow:
The throng that follows Cæsar at the heels,
Of Senators, of Prætors, common suitors,
Will crowd a feeble man almost to death:
I'll get me to a place more void, and there
Speak to great Cæsar as he comes along.
[Exit.
Por. I must go in. -[Aside.] Ah me, how weak a thing
The heart of woman is !-O Brutus,
The Heavens speed thee in thine enterprise!
Sure, the boy heard me. Brutus hath a suit
That Cæsar will not grant.5—O, I grow faint.
Run, Lucius, and commend me to my lord ;
Say I am merry: come to me again,
And bring me word what he doth say to thee.
[Exeunt.
5 These words Portia speaks aloud to Lucius, as a blind to cover the true
cause of her uncontrollable flutter of spirits.
SCENE I.
ΙΟΙ
JULIUS CÆSAR.
ACT III.
SCENE I.Rome. Before the Capitol; the Senate sitting.
A crowd of People in the street leading to the Capitol; among
them ARTEMIDORUS, and the Soothsayer. Flourish. Enter
CÆSAR, BRUTUS, CASSIUS, CASCA, DECIUS, METELLUS, TRE-
BONIUS, CINNA, ANTONY, LEPIDUS, POPILIUS, PUBLIUS, and
Others.
Cæs. The Ides of March are come.
Sooth. Ay, Cæsar; but not gone.1
Artem. Hail, Cæsar! read this schedule.
Dec. Trebonius doth desire you to o'er-read,
At your best leisure, this his humble suit.
Artem. O Cæsar, read mine first; for mine's a suit
That touches Cæsar nearer: read it, great Cæsar.-
Cæs. What touches us ourself shall be last served.
Artem. Delay not, Cæsar; read it instantly.2
mistake
Tragicror
1 There was a certain soothsayer, that had given Cæsar warning long
time afore, to take heed of the day of the Ides of March, which is the 15th
of the month; for on that day he should be in great danger. That day being
come, Cæsar, going into the Senate-house, and speaking merrily unto the
soothsayer, told him "the Ides of March be come." "So they be," softly
answered the soothsayer, "but yet are they not past."— PLUTARCH.
2 One Artemidorus also, born in the isle of Cnidos, a doctor of rhetoric
in the Greek tongue, who by means of his profession was very familiar with
certain of Brutus's confederates, and therefore knew the most part of all
their practices against Cæsar, came and brought him a little bill, written
with his own hand, of all that he meant to tell him. He, marking how
Cæsar received all the supplications that were offered him, and that he gave
them straight to his men that were about him, pressed nearer to him, and
said: "Cæsar, read this memorial to yourself, and that quickly, for they be
i
102
ACT IH.
JULIUS CÆSAR.
Cas. What, is the fellow mad?
Pub.
Sirrah, give place.
Cass. What, urge you your petitions in the street?
Come to the Capitol.3
CÆSAR enters the Capitol, the rest following. All the Senators
rise.
Pop. I wish your enterprise to-day may thrive.
Cass. What enterprise, Popilius ?
Pop. Fare you well.
Bru. What said Popilius Lena?
Cass. He wish'd to-day our enterprise might thrive.
I fear our purpose is discoveréd.
Bru. Look, how he makes to Cæsar: mark him.
Cass. Casca, be sudden, for we fear prevention.-
Brutus, what shall be done? If this be known,
Cassius or Cæsar never shall turn back,
For I will slay myself.4
Bru.
Cassius, be constant :
Popilius Lena speaks not of our purpose;
For, look, he smiles, and Cæsar doth not change.5
matters of great weight, and touch you nearly. Cæsar took it of 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-
self, went on withal to the Senate-house.- PLUTARCH.
3 The murder of Cæsar did not, in fact, take place in the Capitol, as is
here represented, but in a hall or Curia adjoining Pompey's theatre, where
a statue of Pompey had been erected. The Senate had various places of
meeting; generally in the Capitol, occasionally in some one of the Temples,
at other times in one of the Curiæ, of which there were several in and about
the city.
4 The meaning evidently is, “either Cassius or Cæsar shall never return
alive; for, if I do not kill him, I will slay myself."
5 A senator called Popilius Lena after he had saluted Brutus and Cas-
SCENE I.
103
JULIUS CÆSAR.
·
Cass. Trebonius knows his time; for, look you, Brutus,
He draws Mark Antony out of the way.
[Exeunt ANTONY and TREBONIUS. CÆSAR and the
Senators take their seats.
Dec. Where is Metellus Cimber? Let him go,
And presently prefer his suit to Cæsar.
Bru. He is address'd:6 press near and second him.
Cin. Casca, you are the first that rears your hand.
Casca. Are we all ready?
Cæs.
What is now amiss
That Cæsar and his Senate must redress?
Met. Most high, most mighty, and most puissant Cæsar,
Metellus Cimber throws before thy seat
An humble heart, -
[Kneeling.
sius more friendly than he was wont to do, he rounded softly in their ears,
and told them, "I pray the gods you may go through with that you have
taken in hand; but, withal, dispatch, I read you, for your enterprise is be-
wrayed." When he had said, he presently departed from them, and left
them both afraid that their conspiracy would out. When Cæsar came out
of the litter, Popilius Lena went unto him, and kept him a long time with
talk. Cæsar gave good ear unto him; wherefore the conspirators, not hear-
ing what he said, but conjecturing that his talk was none other but the very
discovery of their conspiracy, they were afraid every man of them; and one
looking in another's face, it was easy to see that they all were of a mind that
it was no tarrying for them till they were apprehended, but rather that they
should kill themselves with their own hands. And when Cassius and cer-
tain other clapped their hands on their swords under their gowns, to draw
them, Brutus marking the countenance and gesture of Lena, and consider-
ing that he did use himself rather like an humble and earnest suitor than
like an accuser, he said nothing to his companions, (because there were
many amongst them that were not of the conspiracy,) but with a pleasant
countenance encouraged Cassius; and immediately after, Lena went from
Cæsar, and kissed his hand, which showed plainly that it was for some
matter concerning himself that he had held him so long in talk.
PLUTARCH.
6 Address'd is ready, prepared. Often so. See Macbeth, page 75, note 10.
104
ACT III.
JULIUS CÆSAR.
Cæs.
7
I must prevent thee, Cimber.
These couchings and these lowly courtesies
Might fire the blood of ordinary men,
And turn pre-ordinance and first decree
Into the play of children. Be not fond,
To think that Cæsar bears such rebel blood
That will be thaw'd from the true quality
With that which melteth fools; I mean, sweet words,
Low-crooked curtsies, and base spaniel-fawning.
Thy brother by decree is banished:
If thou dost bend, and pray, and fawn for him,
I spurn thee like a cur out of my way.
Met. Cæsar, thou dost me wrong.
Cas. Cæsar did never wrong but with just cause,10
Nor without cause will he be satisfied.
Met. Is there no voice more worthy than my own,
To sound more sweetly in great Cæsar's ear
For the repealing 11 of my banish'd brother?
7 Among the proper senses of to couch, Richardson gives "to lower, to
stoop, to bend down"; and he says that “to couch and to lower have simi-
lar applications, and probably the same origin."
8 "Pre-ordinance and first decree" is, I take it, the ruling or enactment
of the highest authority in the State. "The play of children" here referred
to is, as soon as they have done a thing, to turn round and undo it, or to
build a house of blocks or cobs for the mere fun of knocking it over.
9 "Be not so fond as to think," is the language in full. The Poet often
omits the adverbs in such cases. Fond, here, is foolish; which was its ordi-
nary sense in Shakespeare's time.
10 Metellus and Cæsar here use wrong in different senses. But to hurt,
to offend, to cause pain were among its legitimate meanings in Shakespeare's
time. So he has it afterwards in this play: "It shall advantage more than
do us wrong." And so in several other places; as in Othello, ii. 3: "I per-
suade myself, to speak the truth shall nothing wrong him." To wring and
to wrest are from the same root as wrong. See Critical Notes.
11 To repeal from banishment is, in old English, to recall by repealing
the sentence. See Richard the Second, page 84, note 8.
SCENE I.
105
JULIUS CÆSAR.
Bru. I kiss thy hand, but not in flattery, Cæsar;
Desiring thee that Publius Cimber may
Have an immediate freedom of repeal.
Cæs. What, Brutus !
Cass.
Pardon, Cæsar; Cæsar, pardon:
As low as to thy foot doth Cassius fall,
To beg enfranchisement for Publius Cimber.
Cæs. I could be well moved, if I were as you ;
If I could pray to move, prayers would move me:12
But I am constant as the northern star,
Of whose true-fix'd and resting quality
There is no fellow in the firmament.
The skies are painted with unnumber'd sparks,
They are all fire, and every one doth shine;
But there's but one in all doth hold his place
So in the world; 'tis furnish'd well with men,
And men are flesh and blood, and apprehensive ; 13
Yet in the number I do know but one
That unassailable holds on his rank,
Unshaked of motion : 14 and that I am he,
Let me a little show it even in this,
That I was constant Cimber should be banish'd,
And constant do remain to keep him so.15
12 "If I could seek to move others by prayers, then I were capable of
being myself moved by the prayers of others."
13 Apprehensive is intelligent, capable of apprehending.
14 "Unshaked of motion" is simply unmoved, or not subject to motion.
Undisturbed by the motion of others. As all readers of the Bible know, of
was continually used, with passive verbs, to denote the agent.
15 All through this scene, Cæsar 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 Cæsar's mouth just before his fall. - It
}
106
ACT II.
JULIUS CÆSAR.
Cin. O Cæsar,
Cæs.
Dec. Great Cæsar,
Hence! wilt thou lift up Olympus?
Cas. Doth not Brutus bootless kneel?
Casca. Speak, hands, for me!
[CASCA stabs CÆSAR in the neck. CÆSAR catches hold
of his arm. He is then stabbed by several other
Conspirators, and at last by MARCUS BRUTUS.
Cæs. Et tu, Brute ? 16 - Then fall, Cæsar ! 17
[Dies. The Senators and People retire in confusion.
may be well to add, that the carrying of deadly weapons was unlawful in
Rome; but every educated citizen carried a stylus in a sheath; and on this
occasion the assassins had daggers hidden in their stylus-cases.
16 There is no classical authority for putting these words into the mouth
of Cæsar; and the English equivalent, Thou too, Brutus, sounds so much
better, that it seems a pity the Poet did not write so. Cæsar had been as a
father to Brutus, who was fifteen years his junior; and the Greek, Kai su
teknon, "You too, my son," which Dion and Suetonius put into his mouth,
though probably unauthentic, is good enough to be true.
17 Trebonius drew Antonius aside, as he came into the house where the
Senate sat, and held him with a long talk without. When Cæsar was come
into the house, all the Senate rose to honour him at his coming in. So,
when he was set, the conspirators flocked about him, and amongst them
they presented one Metellus Cimber, who made humble suit for the calling
home again of his brother that was banished. They all made as though
they were intercessors for him, and took Cæsar by the hands, and kissed his
head and breast. Cæsar at first simply refused their kindness and entreaties;
but afterwards, perceiving they still pressed on him, he violently thrust them
from him. Then Cimber with both his hands plucked Cæsar's gown over
his shoulders, and Casca, that stood behind him, drew his dagger first and
struck Cæsar upon the shoulder, but gave him no great wound. Cæsar,
feeling himself hurt, took him straight by the hand he held his dagger in,
and cried out in Latin: "O traitor Casca, what doest thou?" Casca on the
other side cried in Greek, and called his brother to help him. So divers
running on a heap together to fly upon Cæsar, he, looking about him to
have fled, saw Brutus with a sword drawn in his hand ready to strike at
him: then he let Casca's hand go, and, casting his gown over his face, suf-
fered every man to strike at himn that would. Then the conspirators throng-
SCENE I.
107
JULIUS CÆSAR.
Cin. Liberty! Freedom! Tyranny is dead!-
Run hence, proclaim, cry it about the streets.
Cass. Some to the common pulpits, and cry out,
Liberty, freedom, and enfranchisement ! 18
Bru. People, and Senators, be not affrighted;
Fly not; stand still ambition's debt is paid.
Casca. Go to the pulpit, Brutus.
Dec.
Bru. Where's Publius?
And Cassius too.
Cin. Here, quite confounded with this mutiny.
Met. Stand fast together, lest some friend of Cæsar's
Should chance
Bru. Talk not of standing. - Publius, good cheer!
There is no harm intended to your person,
Nor to no Roman else: so tell them, Publius.
Cass. And leave us, Publius; lest that the people,
Rushing on us, should do your age some mischief.
Bru. Do so ;· - and let no man abide 19 this deed,
But we the doers.

Re-enter TREBONIUS.
Cass. Where's Antony?
Tre.
Fled to his house amazed.
Men, wives, and children stare, cry out, and run,
As it were doomsday.
ing 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, because
he would make one in murdering of him, and all the rest also were every
man of them bloodied. — PLUTARCH.
18 This is somewhat in the style of Caliban, when he gets glorious with
"celestial liquor," The Tempest, ii. 2: "Freedom, hey-day! hey-day, free-
dom! freedom, hey-day, freedom!"
19 To abide a thing is to stand responsible for it, to bear the consequences.
108
ACT III.
JULIUS CÆSAR.
Bru.
Fates, we will know your pleasures:
That we shall die, we know ; 'tis but the time,
And drawing days out, that men stan put fo
йрон.
Casca. Why, he that cuts off twenty years of life
Cuts off so many years of fearing death.
Bru. Grant that, and then is death a benefit:
So are we Cæsar's friends, that have abridged
His time of fearing death. Stoop, Romans, stoop,
And let us bathe our hands in Cæsar's blood
Up to the elbows, and besmear our swords:
Then walk we forth, even to the market-place,
And, waving our red weapons o'er our heads,
Let's all cry, Peace, Freedom, and Liberty!
Cass. Stoop, then, and wash. How many ages hence
Shall this our lofty scene be acted o'er
In States unborn and accents yet unknown!
Bru. How many times shall Cæsar bleed in sport,
That now on Pompey's basis lies along 21
No worthier than the dust!
Cass.
So oft as that shall be,
So often shall the knot of us be call'd
The men that gave their country liberty.22
Dec. What, shall we forth?
20 "We all know that we are to die some time; and how long we can
draw out our life, is the only thing we concern ourselves about."
21 So it was in fact: Cæsar fell at the pedestal of Pompey's statue; the
statue itself dripping with the blood that spurted from him.
22 These three 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 ambitious 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."
SCENE I.
109
JULIUS CÆSAR.
Cass.
Ay, every man away :
Brutus shall lead; and we will grace his heels
With the most boldest 23 and best hearts of Rome.
Bru. Soft! who comes here?
Enter a Servant.
A friend of Antony's.
Serv. Thus, Brutus, did my master bid me kneel;
Thus did Mark Antony bid me fall down;
And, being prostrate, thus he bade me say:
Brutus is noble, wise, valiant, and honest;
Cæsar was mighty, bold, royal, and loving:
Say I love Brutus, and I honour him ;
Say I fear'd Cæsar, honour'd him, and loved him.
If Brutus will vouchsafe that Antony
May safely come to him, and be resolved 24
How Cæsar hath deserved to lie in death,
Mark Antony shall not love Cæsar dead
So well as Brutus living; but will follow
The fortunes and affairs of noble Brutus
Thorough 25 the hazards of this untrod state
With all true faith. So says my master Antony.
Bru. Thy master is a wise and valiant Roman ;
I never thought him worse.
Tell him, so please him come unto this place,
He shall be satisfied; and, by my honour,
Depart untouch'd.
23 This doubling of superlatives, as also of comparatives, and of nega-
tives, was very common in the Poet's time. So, in The Acts, xxvi. 5, St. Paul
says, "after the most straitest sect of our religion I lived a Pharisee.”
24 Informed, assured, satisfied are among the old senses of resolved.
25 Shakespeare uses through or thorough indifferently, as suits his verse.
The two are in fact but different forms of the same word.
IIO
ACT III.
JULIUS CÆSAR.
Serv.
I'll fetch him presently.
Bru. I know that we shall have him well to friend.
Cass. I wish we may : but yet have I a mind
That fears him much; and my misgiving still
Falls shrewdly to the purpose.
Bru. But here comes Antony.
Re-enter ANTONY.
[Exit.
Welcome, Mark Antony.
Ant. O mighty Cæsar! dost thou lie so low?
Are all thy conquests, glories, triumphs, spoils,
Shrunk to this little measure? Fare thee well.
I know not, gentlemen, what you intend,
Who else must be let blood, who else is rank : 26
If I myself, there is no hour so fit
As Cæsar's death-hour; nor no instrument
Of half that worth as those your swords, made rich
With the most noble blood of all this world.
a
I do beseech ye, if you bear me hard,
Now, whilst your purpled hands do reek and smoke,
Fulfil your pleasure. Live a thousand years,2
I shall not find myself so apt to die :
No place will please me so, no mean of death,
As here by Cæsar, and by you 28 cut off,
The choice and master spirits of this age.
26" Must be let blood" is a mere euphemism for "must be put to death."
Who else is rank" means “who else has too much blood in him." And
the idea is of one who has overtopped his equals, and grown too high for the
public safety. So in the speech of Oliver in As You Like It, i. 1, when in-
censed at the high bearing of Orlando: "Is it even so? begin you to grow
upon me? I will physic your rankness.”
27 That is, "if I live," or "should I live, a thousand years."
28 By is here used in two senses; first, in the sense of near, or as a sign
of place; second, to denote agency, as usual.
!
SCENE I.
III
JULIUS CÆSAR.
Bru. O Antony, beg not your death of us.
Though now we must appear bloody and cruel,
As, by our hands and this our present act,
You see we do; yet see you but our hands,
And this the bleeding business they have done :
Our hearts you see not; they are pitiful;
And pity to the general wrong of Rome—
As fire drives out fire,29 so pity pity-
Hath done this deed on Cæsar. For your part,

speaks for
هستند
To you our swords have leaden points, Mark Antony:
Our arms in strength of amity, and our hearts
Of brothers' temper, do receive you in
With all kind love, good thoughts, and reverence.
Cass. Your voice shall be as strong as any man's
In the disposing of new dignities.30
Bru. Only be patient till we have appeased
The multitude, beside themselves with fear, 31
29 As before noted, Shakespeare uses fire as one or two syllables indif-
ferently, to suit his metre. Here the first fire is two syllables, the second one.
The allusion is to the old way of salving a burn by holding it up to the
fire. So in Romeo and Juliet, i. 2: “Tut, man, one fire burns out another's
burning; one pain is lessen'd by another's anguish."
(
30 This little speech is snugly characteristic. Brutus has been talking
about our hearts," and "kind love, good thoughts, and reverence." To
Cassius, all that is mere rose-water humbug, and he knows it is so to Antony
too. He therefore hastens to put in such motives as he knows will have
weight with Antony, as they also have with himself. And it is somewhat re-
markable that several of these patriots, especially Cassius, the two Brutuses,
and Trebonius, afterwards accepted the governorship of fat provinces for
which they had been prospectively named by Cæsar; they being of course
too patriotic to resist the eloquence of such lucrative appointments.
31 When Cæsar was slain, the Senate-though Brutus stood in the
middest amongst them, as though he would have said something touching
this fact-presently ran out of the house, and, flying, filled all the city with
marvellous fear and tumult.- PLUTARCH.
II2
ACT III.
JULIUS CÆSAR.
And then we will deliver you the cause,
Why I, that did love Cæsar when I struck him,
Have thus proceeded.
Ant.
Let each man render me his bloody hand :
First, Marcus Brutus, will I shake with you ;
Next, Caius Cassius, do I take your hand;
I doubt not of your wisdom.
Now, Decius Brutus, yours ;
now yours, Metellus ;
Yours, Cinna; and, my valiant Casca, yours ;·
Though last, not least in love, yours, good Trebonius.
Gentlemen all, — alas, what shall I say?
My credit now stands on such slippery ground,
That one of two bad ways you must conceit me,
Either a coward or a flatterer.
That I did love thee, Cæsar, O, 'tis true:
If, then, thy spirit look upon us now,
Shall it not grieve thee dearer 33 than thy death,
To see thy Antony making his peace,
Shaking the bloody fingers of thy foes,-
Most noble !—in the presence of thy corse?
Had I as many eyes as thou hast wounds,
Weeping as fast as they stream forth thy blood,
It would become me better than to close
In terms of friendship with thine enemies.
32
Pardon me, Julius! Here wast thou bay'd,34 brave hart;
Here didst thou fall; and here thy hunters stand, lathe
Sign'd in thy spoil, and crimson'd in thy death.
32 Must conceive of me, or construe me. See page 71, note 40.
death
33 Formerly dear might signify whatever moved any strong feeling,
whether of pleasure or pain. The Poet has many instances of it used as
here. See Hamlet, page 64, note 39.
34 Bay'd is brought to bay, and so barked at and worried, as a deer by
hounds. Shakespeare has the word often in that sense.
SCENE I.
113
JULIUS CÆSAR.
O world, thou wast the forest to this hart;
And this indeed, O world, the heart of thee.
How like a deer, strucken by many princes,
Dost thou here lie!
Cass. Mark Antony,
Ant.
Pardon me, Caius Cassius :
The enemies of Cæsar shall say this;
Then, in a friend, it is cold modesty.35
Cass. I blame you not for praising Cæsar so ;
But what compact mean you to have with us?
Will you be prick'd 36 in number of our friends;
Or shall we on, and not depend on you?
Ant. Therefore 37 I took your hands; but was indeed
Sway'd from the point, by looking down on Cæsar.
Friends am I with you all, and love you all,
Upon this hope, that you shall give me reasons
Why and wherein Cæsar was dangerous.
Bru. Or else were this a savage spectacle :
Our reasons are so full of good regard
That, were you, Antony, the son of Cæsar,
You should be satisfied.

Ant.
That's all I seek:
And am moreover suitor that I may
Produce his body to the market-place ; 38
35 Modesty in its original sense of moderation. Frequent.
36 Prick'd is marked. The image is of a list of names written out, and
some of them distinguished by having holes pricked in the paper against
them.
37 Therefore is not the illative conjunction here; but means to that end,
or for that purpose.
38 Produce in the Latin sense of produco; implying motion to a place.
Here, and all through this play, market-place is the Forum, where several
rostra were provided for addressing the people. Shakespeare calls these
rostra pulpits.
114
ACT III.
JULIUS CÆSAR.
And in the pulpit, as becomes a friend,
Speak in the order of his funeral.
Bru. You shall, Mark Antony.
Cass.
Brutus, a word with you.
[Aside to BRU.] You know not what you do; do not con-
sent
That Antony speak in his funeral :
Know you how much the people may be moved
By that which he will utter?
Bru. [Aside to CASS.]
By your pardon:
I will myself into the pulpit first,
And show the reason of our Cæsar's death:
What Antony shall speak, I will protest
He speaks by leave and by permission;
And that we are contented Cæsar shall
Have all due rights and lawful ceremonies.
It shall advantage more than do us wrong.
39
Cass. [Aside to BRU.] I know not what may fall; I like
it not.
Bru. Mark Antony, here, take you Cæsar's body.
You shall not in your funeral speech blame us,
But speak all good you can devise of Cæsar ;
And say you do❜t by our permission ;
Else shall you not have any hand at all
About his funeral: and you shall speak
In the same pulpit whereto I am going,
After my speech is ended.
39 For this use of wrong, see page 104, note 10.-Note the high self-appre-
ciation of Brutus here, in supposing that if he can but 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 "turn his hid-
den worthiness into his eye."
SCENE I.
115
JULIUS CESAR.
Ant.
I do desire no more.
Be it so ;
Bru. Prepare the body, then, and follow us.
[Exeunt all but ANTONY.
Ant. O, pardon me, thou bleeding piece of earth,
That I am meek and gentle with these butchers!
Thou art the ruins of the noblest man
That ever livèd in the tide of times.
Woe to the hands that shed this costly blood!
Over thy wounds now do I prophesy,-
Which, like dumb mouths, do ope their ruby lips,
To beg the voice and utterance of my tongue,
A curse shall light upon the limbs of men ; 40
Domestic fury and fierce civil strife
Shall cumber all the parts of Italy;
Blood and destruction shall be so in use,
And dreadful objects so familiar,
That mothers shall but smile when they behold
Their infants quarter'd with the hands of war ;
All pity choked 41 with custom of fell deeds:
And Cæsar's spirit, ranging for revenge,
With Até 42 by his side come hot from Hell,
Shall in these confines with a monarch's voice
Cry Havoc! and let slip the dogs of war ;43
40 By men Antony means not mankind in general; the scope of the curse
being limited by the subsequent words, "the parts of Italy," and "in these
confines." - Limbs is merely the figure of speech called Synecdoche, or the
putting of a part of a thing for the whole.
41 "All pity being choked." Ablative absolute again.
42 Até is the old goddess of discord and mischief. So, in Much Ado, ii.
1, Benedick describes Beatrice as "the infernal Até in good apparel.”
43 Havoc was anciently the word of signal for giving no quarter in a bat-
de. It was a high crime for any one to give the signal without authority
from the general-in-chief; hence the peculiar force of monarch's voice.—To
116
ACT III.
JULIUS CÆSAR.
That this foul deed shall smell above the earth
With carrion men, groaning for burial.
Enter a Servant.
You serve Octavius Cæsar, do you not?
Serv. I do, Mark Antony.
Ant. Cæsar did write for him to come to Rome.
Serv. He did receive his letters, and is coming;
And bid me say to you by word of mouth,
[Seeing the body.] O Cæsar!-
Ant. Thy heart is big, get thee apart and weep.
Passion, I see, is catching; for mine eyes,
Seeing those beads of sorrow stand in thine,
Begin to water.
Is thy master coming?
Serv. He lies to-night within seven leagues of Rome.
Ant. Post back with speed, and tell him what hath chanced.
Here is a mourning Rome, a dangerous Rome,
No Rome of safety 44 for Octavius yet;
Hie hence, and tell him so. Yet, stay awhile
Thou shalt not back till I have borne this corse
Into the market-place: there shall I try,
In my oration, how the people take
The cruel issue of these bloody men;
According to the which, thou shalt discourse
To young Octavius of the state of things.
Lend me your hand.
[Exeunt with CESAR's body.
let slip a dog was a term of the chase, for releasing the hounds from the
leash or slip of leather whereby they were held in hand till it was time to let
them pursue the animal. The dogs of war are fire, sword, and famine. So
in King Henry V., first Chorus: "At his heels, leash'd in like hounds, should
famine, sword, and fire, crouch for employment."
44 Another play on Rome and room. See page 53, note 38.
SCENE II.
117
JULIUS CÆSAR.
SCENE II. — The Same.
The Same. The Forum.
Enter BRUTUS and CASSIUS, with a Throng of Citizens.
demand satisfaction
Citizens. We will be satisfied; let us be satisfied.
Bru. Then follow me, and give me audience, friends.
Cassius, go you into the other street,
And part the numbers.
Those that will hear me speak, let 'em stay here ;
Those that will follow Cassius, go with him;
And public reason shall be renderéd
Of Cæsar's death.
I Cit.
I will hear Brutus speak.
2 Cit. I will hear Cassius; and compare their reasons,
When severally we hear them renderéd.
[Exit CASSIUS, with some of the Citizens. BRUTUS
goes into the Rostrum
3 Cit. The noble Brutus is ascended: silence!
Bru. Be patient till the last.
Romans, countrymen, and lovers! hear me for my cause;
and be silent, that you may hear: believe me for mine hon-
Our
r; and have respect to mine honour, that you may believe :
censure 2 me in your wisdom; and awake your senses, that
you may the better judge. If there be any in this assembly,
any dear friend of Cæsar's, to him I say that Brutus' love to
Cæsar was no less than his. If, then, that friend demand
why Brutus rose against Cæsar, this is my answer, — Not
that I loved Cæsar less, but that I loved Rome more. Had
1 Lover and friend were used as synonymous in the Poet's time. Brutus
afterwards speaks of Cæsar as "my best lover.”
2 Censure is here, as often, judge; probably used for the jingle it makes
with senses.
118
ACT III.
JULIUS CESAR.
you rather Cæsar were living, and die all slaves, than that
Cæsar were dead, to live all freemen? As Cæsar loved me,
I weep for him; as he was fortunate, I rejoice at it; as he
was valiant, I honour him: but, as he was ambitious, I slew
him. There is tears for his love; joy for his fortune; hon-
our for his valour; and death for his ambition. Who is
Where so base that would be a bondman? If any, speak; for
him have I offended. Who is here so rude that would not
be a Roman? If any, speak; for him have I offended.
Who is here so vile that will not love his country? If any,
speak; for him have I offended. I pause for a reply.

Citizens. None, Brutus, none.
not
Bru. Then none have I offended. I have done no more
to Cæsar than you shall do to Brutus. The question of his
death is enroll'd in the Capitol; 3 his glory not extenuated,
wherein he was worthy; nor his offences enforced,ª for which
he suffered death.
Enter ANTONY and Others, with CESAR's body.
Here comes his body, mourn'd by Mark Antony; who,
though he had no hand in his death, shall receive the bene-
fit of his dying, a place in the commonwealth; as which of
you shall not? With this I depart, That, as I slew my
best lover for the good of Rome, I have the same dagger
for myself, when it shall please my country to need my
death.5
3 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.
4 His fame is not lessened or whittied down in those points wherein he was
worthy. Enforced is in antithesis to extenuated, meaning that his faults are
not magnified or forced out of just measure.
5 A great number of men being assembled together, Brutus made an
SCENE II.
119
JULIUS CÆSAR.
Citizens. Live, Brutus! live, live!
I Cit. Bring him with triumph home unto his house.
2 Cit. Give him a statue with his ancestors.
3 Cit. Let him be Cæsar.
4 Cit.
Cæsar's better parts
Shall now be crown'd in Brutus.
1 Cit. We'll bring him to his house with shouts and clam-
ours.
Bru. My countrymen, —
2 Cit.
1 Cit. Peace, ho!
Peace! silence! Brutus speaks.
Bru. Good countrymen, let me depart alone,
And, for my sake, stay here with Antony:
Do grace to Cæsar's corpse, and grace his speech
Tending to Cæsar's glory; which Mark Antony,
By our permission, is allow'd to make.
I do entreat you, not a man depart,
Save I alone, till Antony have spoke.
I Cit. Stay, ho! and let us hear Mark Antony.
[Exit.
oration unto them, to win the favour of the people, and to justify that they
had done. All those that were by said they had done well, and cried unto
them that they should boldly come down from the Capitol; whereupon
Brutus and his companions came boldly down into the market-place. The
rest followed in troop, but Brutus went foremost, very honourably com-
passed in round about with the noblest men of the city, which brought
him from the Capitol, through the market-place, to the pulpit for orations.
When the people saw him in the pulpit, although they were a multitude of
all sorts, and had a good will to make some stir; yet, being ashamed to do
it, for the reverence they bare unto Brutus, they kept silence to hear what
he would say. When Brutus began to speak, they gave him quiet audience:
howbeit, immediately after, they shewed him that they were not all contented
with the murder. For when another, called Cinna, would have spoken, and
began to accuse Cæsar, they fell into a great uproar among them, and mar-
vellously reviled him; insomuch that the conspirators returned again into
the Capitol.- PLUTARCH.
120
ACT III.
JULIUS CÆSAR.
3 Cit. Let him go up into the public chair;
We'll hear him. Noble Antony, go up.
Ant. For Brutus' sake, I am beholding to you. [Goes up.
4 Cit. What does he say of Brutus?
3 Cit.
He says, for Brutus' sake,
He finds himself beholding to us all.
4 Cit. 'Twere best he speak no harm of Brutus here.
I Cit. This Cæsar was a tyrant.
3 Cit.
Nay, that's certain :
We're bless'd, that Rome is rid of him.
2 Cit. Peace! let us hear what Antony can say.
Ant. You gentle Romans,-
Citizens.
Peace, ho! let us hear him.
7
Ant. Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me you ears;
I come to bury Cæsar, not to praise him.
The evil that men do lives after them ;
The good is oft interrèd with their bones :
So let it be with Cæsar. The noble Brutus
Hath told you Cæsar was ambitious: 8
If it were so, it was a grievous fault ;
And grievously hath Cæsar answer'd it.
Here, under leave of Brutus and the rest,
For Brutus is an honourable man;
So are they all, all honourable men,
6 Shakespeare always uses beholding, the active form, for beholden, the
passive. Here, as elsewhere, it means obliged, of course.
7 We have the same thought in Henry the Eighth, iv. 2: "Men's evil
manners live in brass; their virtues we write in water."
8 In Shakespeare's time, the ending -tious, and various others like it, when
occurring at the end of a verse, was often pronounced as two syllables. The
same was the case with -tion, -sion, and divers others. Many instances of
the latter have already occurred in this play; as in the preceding scene:
"And say you do't by our permission." Also in a former scene: Out of
the teeth of emulation." The usage occurs continually in Spenser.
"
SCENE II.
121
JULIUS CÆSAR.
Come I to speak in Cæsar's funeral.
He was my friend, faithful and just to me
But Brutus says he was ambitious;
And Brutus is an honourable man.
e:
He hath brought many captives home to Rome, He was
Whose ransoms did the general coffers9 fill :
Did this in Cæsar seem ambitious?
When that the poor have cried, Cæsar hath wept
cried, Cæsar hath wepte
Ambition should be made of sterner stuff:
Yet Brutus says he was ambitious;
And Brutus is an honourable man.
betrans
the

делев
завтов
You all did see that on the Lupercal 10
I thrice presented him a kingly crown,
Which he did thrice refuse: was this ambition?
Yet Brutus says he was ambitious;
11
And, sure, he is an honourable man.
I speak not to disprove what Brutus spoke,
But here I am, to speak what I do know.
You all did love him once, not without cause:
9 Cæsar's campaigns in Gaul put vast sums of money into his hands, a
large part of which he kept to his own use, as indeed he might have kept it
all; but he did also, in fact, make over much of it to the public treasury.
This was a very popular act of course, as it lightened the taxation of the
city.
10 That is, on the day when the feast of Lupercalia was held.
11 Of course these repetitions of honourable man are intensely ironical;
and for that very reason the irony should be studiously kept out of the voice
in pronouncing them. I have heard speakers and readers utterly spoil the
effect of the speech by specially 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 delicacy 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. The consummate adroit-
ness which he uses to this end is the great charm of this incomparable
oration.
122
ACT III
JULIUS CÆSAR.
What cause withholds you, then, to mourn 12 for him? -
O judgment, thou art fled to brutish beasts, 13
And men have lost their reason! - Bear with me;
My heart is in the coffin there with Cæsar,
And I must pause till it come back to me.
1 Cit. Methinks there is much reason in his sayings.
2 Cit. If thou consider rightly of the matter,
Cæsar has had great wrong.
3 Cit.
Has he not, masters?
I fear there will a worse come in his place.
4 Cit. Mark'd ye his words? He would not take the
crown;
Therefore 'tis certain he was not ambitious.
I Cit. If it be found so, some will dear abide it.14
2 Cit. Poor soul! his eyes are red as fire with weeping.
3 Cit. There's not a nobler man in Rome than Antony.
4 Cit. Now mark him; he begins again to speak.
Ant. But yesterday the word of Cæsar might
Have stood against the world: now lies he there,
And none so poor
For to do him reverence.^
O masters, if I were disposed to stir
Your hearts and minds to mutiny and rage,
I should do Brutus wrong, and Cassius wrong,
Who, you all know, are honourable men :
I will not do them wrong; I rather choose
To wrong the dead, to wrong myself, and you,
12 To mourn for from mourning. Another gerundial infinitive.
13 Brutish is by no means tautological here; the antithetic sense of hu-
man brutes being most artfully implied.
14 Here, again, to abide a thing is to suffer for it, or, as we now say, to
pay for it. See page 107, note 19.
15 And there are none so humble but that he is beneath their reverence,
or too low for their regard.
SCENE II.
123
JULIUS CÆSAR,
Than I will wrong such honourable men.
But here's a parchment with the seal of Cæsar,
I found it in his closet, 'tis his will:
Let but the commons hear this testament,
Which, pardon me, I do not mean to read,
And they would go and kiss dead Cæsar's wounds,
And dip their napkins 16 in his sacred blood;
Yea, beg a hair of him for memory,
And, dying, mention it within their wills,
Bequeathing it as a rich legacy
Unto their issue.
4 Cit. We'll hear the will: read it, Mark Antony.
Citizens. The will, the will! we will hear Cæsar's will.
Ant. Have patience, gentle friends, I must not read it;
It is not meet you know how Cæsar loved you.
You are not wood, you are not stones, but men ;
And, being men, hearing the will of Cæsar,.
It will inflame you, it will make you mad.
'Tis good you know not that you are his heirs;
For, if you should, O, what would come of it!
4 Cit. Read the will! we'll hear it, Antony;
You shall read us the will,— Cæsar's will!
Ant. Will you be patient? will you stay awhile?
I have o'ershot myself to tell you of it:
I fear I wrong the honourable men
Whose daggers have stabb'd Cæsar ; 17 I do fear it.
16 Napkin and handkerchief were used indifferently.
17 Antony now sees that he has the people wholly with him, so that he is
perfectly safe in stabbing the stabbers with these terrible words.—"I have
o'ershot myself to tell you of it" is, “I have gone too far, and hurt my own
cause, in telling you of it." The infinitive used gerundively again. We have
a like expression in Henry the Eighth, i. 1: "We may outrun, by violent
swiftness, that which we run at, and lose by over-running." See, also, Mac-
beth, page 74, note 8.
I24
ACT III.
JULIUS CÆSAR.
I
4 Cit. They were traitors: honourable men!
Citizens. The will! the testament !
2 Cit. They were villains, murderers. The will! read the
will!
Ant. You will compel me, then, to read the will?
Then make a ring about the corpse of Cæsar,
And let me show you him that made the will.
Shall I descend? and will you give me leave?
Citizens. Come down.
2 Cit. Descend.
3 Cit. You shall have leave.
4 Cit. A ring! stand round.
[He comes down.
I Cit. Stand from the hearse, stand from the body.
2 Cit. Room for Antony !—most noble Antony!
Ant. Nay, press not so upon me; stand far' 18 off,
Citizens. Stand back; room! bear back.
Ant. If you have tears, prepare to shed them now.
You all do know this mantle : I remember
The first time ever Cæsar put it on ;
'Twas on a Summer's evening, in his tent,
That day he overcame the Nervii.19
Look, in this place ran Cassius' dagger through:
3:
18 The Poet has far' for further repeatedly. So in The Winter's Tale, iv.
"Not hold thee of our blood, no, not our kin, far' than Deucalion off.”
19 This is the artfullest and most telling stroke in Antony's speech. The
Romans prided themselves most of all upon their military virtue and re-
nown: Cæsar was their greatest military hero; and his victory over the
Nervii was his most noted military exploit. It occurred during his second
campaign in Gaul, in the Summer of the year B.C. 57, and is narrated with
surpassing vividness in the second book of his Bellum Gallicum. Of course
the matter about the "mantle" is purely fictitious: Cæsar had on the civic
gown, not the military cloak, when killed and it was, in fact, the mangled
toga that Antony displayed on this occasion: but the fiction has the effect
of making the allusion to the victory seem perfectly artless and incidental.
SCENE II.
125
JULIUS CÆSAR.
See what a rent the envious 20 Casca made:
Through this the well-belovèd Brutus stabb'd;
And, as he pluck'd his cursèd steel away,
Mark how the blood of Cæsar follow'd it,
As rushing out of doors, to be resolved 21
If Brutus so unkindly knock'd, or no ;
For Brutus, as you know, was Cæsar's angel: 22
Judge, O you gods, how dearly Cæsar loved him!
This was the most unkindest cut of all;
For, when the noble Cæsar saw him stab,
Ingratitude, more strong than traitors' arms,
Quite vanquish'd him: then burst his mighty heart;
And, in his mantle muffling up his face,
Even at the base of Pompey's statua,
Which all the while ran blood,23 great Cæsar fell.
O, what a fall was there, my countrymen !
Then I, and you, and all of us fell down,
Whilst bloody treason flourish'd over us.
O, now you weep; and, I perceive, you feel
20 Envious, again, in its old sense of malicious or malignant.
21 Resolved, again, for informed or assured. See page 109, note 24.
22 Angel here means, apparently, his counterpart, his good genius, or a
kind of better and dearer self. See page 76, note 16.
23 They that had conspired his death compassed him in on every side
with their swords drawn in their hands, that Cæsar turned him nowhere
but he was stricken at by some, and still had naked swords in his face, and
was hackled and mangled among them, as a wild beast taken of hunters.
For it was agreed among them that every man should give him a wound,
because all their parts should be in this murder. Men report also, that
Cæsar did still defend himself against the rest, running every way with his
body: but when he saw Brutus with his sword drawn in his hand, then he
pulled his gown over his head, and made no more resistance, and was driven
either casually or purposedly, by the counsel of the conspirators, against the
base whereupon Pompey's image stood, which ran all of a gore-blood till he
was slain. - PLUTARCH.
ས
1
126
ACT III.
JULIUS CÆSAR.
The dint 24 of pity: these are gracious drops.
Kind souls, what, weep you, when you but behold
Our Cæsar's vesture wounded? Look you here,
Here is himself, marr'd, as you see, with 25 traitors.
I Cit. O piteous spectacle!

2 Cit. O noble Cæsar !
3 Cit. O woeful day!
4 Cit. O traitors, villains!
I Cit. O most bloody sight!
2 Cit. We will be revenged.
Citizens. Revenge,
about,
kill, — slay, — let not a traitor live !
Ant. Stay, countrymen.
seek,
burn,
- fire,
I Cit. Peace there! hear the noble Antony.
2 Cit. We'll hear him, we'll follow him, we'll die with him.
Ant. Good friends, sweet friends, let me not stir you up
To such a sudden flood of mutiny.
They that have done this deed are honourable :
What private griefs 26 they have, alas, I know not,
That made them do't; they're wise and honourable,
And will, no doubt, with reasons answer you.
I come not, friends, to steal away your hearts:
I am no orator, as Brutus is ;
But, as you know me all, a plain blunt man,
That love my friend; and that they know full well
That gave me public leave to speak of him :
For I have neither wit,27 nor words, nor worth,
24 Dint is, properly, blow or stroke; here put for the impression made by
the blow.
25 With, again, as often, instead of by, to denote the relation of agent.
Marr'd is mangled. See note 23.
26 Griefs, again, for grievances. See page 69, note 31.
27 Wit formerly meant understanding, and was so used by all writers.
SCENE II.
127
JULIUS CÆSAR.
Action, nor utterance, nor the power of speech,
To stir men's blood: I only speak right on ;
I tell you that which you yourselves do know ;
Show you sweet Cæsar's wounds, poor, poor dumb mouths,
And bid them speak for me but
but were I Brutus,
And Brutus Antony, there were an Antony
Would ruffle up your spirits, and put a tongue
In every wound of Cæsar, that should move
The stones of Rome to rise and mutiny.
Citizens. We'll mutiny.
I Cit. We'll burn the house of Brutus.
3 Cit. Away, then! come, seek the conspirators.
Ant. Yet hear me, countrymen ; yet hear me speak.
Citizens. Peace, ho! hear Antony; most noble Antony.
Ant. Why, friends, you go to do you know not what.
Wherein hath Cæsar thus deserved your loves?
Alas, you know not; I must tell you, then :
You have forgot the will I told you of.
Citizens. Most true; the will! — let's stay, and hear the
will.
Ant. Here is the will, and under Cæsar's seal.
To every Roman citizen he gives,
To every several man, seventy-five drachmas.28
2 Cit. Most noble Cæsar !— we'll revenge his death.
3 Cit. O, royal Cæsar!
Ant. Hear me with patience.
Citizens. Peace, ho !
Ant. Moreover, he hath left you all his walks,
28 The drachma was a Greek coin, equal to 7d. English. In fact, how-
ever, Cæsar left to each citizen three hundred sesterces, equivalent to about
$14; which was practically as good as at least $100 in our time: no small
lift for a poor man,
128
ACT III.
JULIUS CÆSAR.
His private arbours, and new-planted orchards,
On this side Tiber: 29 he hath left them you,
And to your heirs for ever; common pleasures,
To walk abroad, and recreate yourselves.
Here was a Cæsar! when comes such another?
1 Cit. Never, never. Come, away, away!
We'll burn his body in the holy place,
And with the brands fire the traitors' houses.
Take up the body.
2 Cit. Go, fetch fire.
3 Cit. Pluck down benches.
4 Cit. Pluck down forms,30 windows, any thing.31
[Exeunt Citizens, with the body.
29 As this scene lies in the Forum, near the Capitol, Cæsar's gardens are,
in fact, on the other side Tiber. But the Poet wrote as he read in Plutarch.
See next note but one.
30 A form is a long seat, like those in an audience-room or a school.
31 They came to talk of Cæsar's will and testament, and of his funerals
and tomb. Then Antonius, thinking good his testament should be read
openly, and also that his body should be honourably buried, and not in
hugger-mugger, lest the people might thereby take occasion to be worse
offended if they did otherwise; Cassius stoutly spoke against it. But Brutus
went with the motion, and 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-conspirators, that Antonius should be slain; and therefore he was
justly accused, that thereby he had saved and strengthened a strong and
grievous enemy of their conspiracy. The second fault was, when he agreed
that Cæsar's funerals should be as Antonius would have them, the which in-
deed marred all. For, first of all, when Cæsar's testament was openly read
among them, whereby it appeared that he bequeathed unto every citizen of
Rome 75 drachmas a man; and that he left his gardens and arbours unto
the people, which he had on this side of the river Tiber, in the place where
now the temple of Fortune is built; the people then loved him, and were
marvellous sorry for him. Afterwards, when Cæsar's body was brought
into the market-place, Antonius making his funeral oration in praise of the
dead, according to the ancient custom of Rome, and perceiving that his
words moved the common people to compassion, he framed his eloquence
SCENE III.
129
JULIUS CÆSAR.
Ant. Now let it work.
Mischief, thou art afoot,
Take thou what course thou wilt!
Enter a Servant.
How now, fellow !
Serv. Sir, Octavius is already come to Rome.
Ant. Where is he?
Serv. He and Lepidus are at Cæsar's house.
Ant. And thither will I straight to visit him:
He comes upon a wish. Fortune is merry,
And in this mood will give us any thing.
Serv. I heard 'em say, Brutus and Cassius
Are rid like madmen through the gates of Rome.
Ant. Belike they had some notice of the people,
How I had moved them. Bring me to Octavius. [Exeunt.
SCENE III. — The Same.
The Same. A Street.
Enter CINNA, the Poet.
Comme
relief
Cin. I dreamt to-night that I did feast with Cæsar,
And things unlucky charge my fantasy: 1
to make their hearts yearn the more; and taking Cæsar's gown all bloody
in his hand, he laid it open to the sight of them all, shewing what a number
of cuts and holes it had upon it. Therewithal the people fell presently into
such a rage and mutiny, that there was no more order kept amongst the
common people. For some of them cried out" Kill the murderers"; others
plucked up forms, tables, and stalls about the market-place, as they had
done before at the funerals of Clodius, and having laid them all on a heap
together, they set them on fire, and thereupon did put the body of Cæsar,
and burnt it in the midst of the most holy places. And furthermore, when
the fire was throughly kindled, some here, some there, took burning fire-
brands, and ran with them to the murderers' houses that killed him, to set
them on fire. Howbeit the conspirators, foreseeing the danger before, had
wisely provided for themselves and fled. — PLUTARCH.
1 Unlucky is ill-boding or portentous. Charge is burden or oppress.
130
ACT III.
JULIUS CÆSAR.
+
•
I have no will to wander forth of doors,
Yet something leads me forth.
Enter Citizens.
I Cit. What is your name?
2 Cit. Whither are you going?
3 Cit. Where do you dwell?
4 Cit. Are you a married man or a bachelor?
2 Cit. Answer every man directly.
1 Cit. Ay, and briefly.
4 Cit. Ay, and wisely.
3 Cit. Ay, and truly; you were best.
Cin. What is my name? Whither am I going? Where
do I dwell? Am I a married man or a bachelor? Then, to
answer every man directly and briefly, wisely and truly.
Wisely I say I am a bachelor.
2 Cit. That's as much as to say, they are fools that marry :
you'll bear me a bang for that,2 I fear. Proceed; directly.
Cin. Directly, I am going to Cæsar's funeral.
I Cit. As a friend, or an enemy?
Cin. As a friend.
2 Cit. That matter is answered directly.
4 Cit. For your dwelling, - briefly.
Cin. Briefly, I dwell by the Capitol.
3 Cit. Your name, sir, truly.
Cin. Truly, my name is Cinna.
1 Cit. Tear him to pieces! he's a conspirator.
Cin. I am Cinna the poet, I am Cinna the poet.
4 Cit. Tear him for his bad verses, tear him for his bad
verses.
Cin. I am not Cinna the conspirator.
2 "You'll get a banging of me for that."
SCENE 1.
131
JULIUS CÆSAR.
4 Cit. It is no matter; his name's Cinna: pluck but his
name out of his heart, and turn him going.³
3 Cit. Tear him, tear him! Come; brands, ho! fire-
brands! To Brutus', to Cassius'; burn all. Some to De-
cius' house, and some to Casca's; some to Ligarius': away,
go!
[Exeunt.
6.
ACT IV.
SCENE I. — Rome. A Room in ANTONY's House.¹
ANTONY, OCTAVIUS, and LEPIDUS, seated at a table.
forsscribed

Ant. These many, then, shall die; their names are prick'd.
Oct. Your brother too must die: consent you, Lepidus?
3 There was a poet called Cinna, who had been no partaker of the con-
spiracy, but was always one of Cæsar's chiefest friends: he dreamed, the
night before, that Cæsar bad him to supper with him, and that, he refusing
to go, Cæsar was very importunate with him, and compelled him; so that
at length he led him by the hand into a great dark place, where, being mar-
vellously afraid, he was driven to follow him in spite of his heart. This
dream put him all night into a fever; and yet, notwithstanding, the next
morning, when he heard that they carried Cæsar's body to burial, being
ashamed not to accompany his funerals, he went out of his house, and
thrust himself into the press of the common people that were in a great
uproar. And because some one called him by his name Cinna, the people,
thinking he had been that Cinna who in an oration he made had spoken very
evil of Cæsar, they, falling upon him in their rage slew him outright in the
market-place. PLUTARCH.
-
1 The time of this scene was, historically, in November, B.C. 43; some
nineteen months after the preceding. The place of the scene is shown to
be at Rome, by Lepidus's being sent to Cæsar's house, and told that he will
find his confederates "or here, or at the Capitol." In fact, however, the
triumvirs, Octavius, Antonius, and Lepidus, did not meet at Rome to settle
the proscription, but on a small island near Bologna. Plutarch relates the
matter as follows: "All three met together in an island environed round
132
ACT IV.
JULIUS CÆSAR.
Lep. I do consent,
Oct.
Prick him down, Antony.
ep. Upon condition Publius shall not live,
Who is your sister's son, Mark Antony.?
Ant. He shall not live; look, with a spot I damn ³ him.
But, Lepidus, go you to Cæsar's house;
Fetch the will hither, and we shall determine
How to cut off some charge in legacies.
Lep. What, shall I find you here?
Oct. Or here, or at the Capitol.
Ant. This is a slight unmeritable 4 man,
Meet to be sent on errands: is it fit,
The threefold world divided, he should stand
One of the three to share it?
Oct.
[Exit LEPIDUS.
So you thought him ;
And took his voice who should be prick'd to die,
about with a little river, and there remained three days together. Now, as
touching all other matters they were easily agreed, and did divide all the
empire of Rome between them, as if it had been 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 spurned all reverence of blood and holiness of friendship at their feet.
For Cæsar left Cicero to Antonius's will; Antonius also forsook Lucius
Cæsar, who was his uncle by his mother; and both of them together suf-
fered Lepidus to kill his own brother Paulus. Yet some writers affirm that
Cæsar and Antonius requested Paulus might be slain, and that Lepidus was
contented with it."
2 According to Plutarch, as quoted in the preceding note, this was Lucius
Cæsar, not Publius; nor was he Antony's nephew, but his uncle by the
mother's side. A mistake by the Poet, probably.
3 Both the verb to damn and the noun damnation were often used in the
sense of to condemn simply. So it is, properly, in the English Bible.
4 Unmeritable for unmeriting or undeserving. This indiscriminate use
of active and passive forms, both in adjectives and participles, is very fre-
quent in Shakespeare. The usage was common.
SCENE I.
JULIUS CÆSAR.
lintiry

In our black sentence and proscription.
Ant. Octavius, I have seen more days than you :
And, though we lay these honours on this man,
To ease ourselves of divers slanderous loads,
He shall but bear them as the ass bears gold,
To groan and sweat under the business,
Either led or driven, as we point the way ;
And having brought our treasure where we will,
Then take we down his load, and turn him off,
Like to the empty ass, to shake his ears,
And graze in commons.5
Oct.
You may do your will;
But he's a tried and valiant soldier.
Ant. So is my horse, Octavius; and for that
I do appoint him store of provender:
It is a creature that I teach to fight,
6
To wind, to stop, to run directly on,
His corporal motion govern'd by my spirit.
And, in some taste, is Lepidus but so ;
He must be taught, and train'd, and bid go forth :
A barren-spirited fellow; one that feeds
On objects, arts, and imitations,
Which, out of use and staled by other men,
Begin his fashion: 7 do not talk of him,
a
133

هي
بحة
5 Commons, here, is such pasture-lands as in England were not owned or
appropriated by individuals, but occupied by a given neighbourhood in
common.
6 To wind is to turn or bend to the right or the left; the opposite of run-
ning "directly on," that is, straight ahead.
7 That is, one who is always interested in, and talking about, such things
-books, works of art, &c. -as everybody else has got tired of and thrown
aside. So Falstaff's account of Shallow, in 2 Henry the Fourth, iii. 2: "He
came ever in the rearward of the fashion; and sung those tunes to the over-
scutch'd huswives which he heard the carmen whistle, and sware they were
134
ACT IV.
JULIUS CÆSAR.
But as a property. And now, Octavius,
Listen great things: Brutus and Cassius
Are levying powers: we must straight make head:
Therefore let our alliance be combined,
Our best friends made, our means stretch'd out;
And let us presently go sit in council,
How covert matters may be best disclosed,
And open perils surest answeréd.
Oct. Let us do so: for we are at the stake,
And bay'd⁹ about with many enemies;
And some that smile have in their hearts, I fear,
Millions of mischiefs.
8
[Exeunt.
SCENE II. — Before BRUTUS' Tent, in the Camp near Sardis.¹
Drum. Enter BRUTUS, LUCILIUS, TITINIUS, and Soldiers;
PINDARUS meeting them; LUCIUS at some distance.
Bru. Stand, ho!
Lucil. Give the word, ho! and stand.
Bru. What now, Lucilius! is Cassius near?
Lucil. He is at hand; and Pindarus is come
To do you salutation from his master.
[PINDARUS gives a letter to BRUTUS.
his Fancies or his Good-nights." In the text, staled is outworn or grown
stale; and the reference is not to objects, &c., generally, but only to those
which have lost the interest of freshness.
8 To make head is to raise an army, or to lead one forth. Often so.
9 An allusion to bear-baiting. One of the old English sports was, to tie
a bear to a stake, and then set a pack of dogs to barking at him and worry-
ing him. So in Macbeth, v. 7: "They've tied me to a stake; I cannot fly,
but, bear-like, I must fight the course.' See, also, page 112, note 34.
#
1 This scene, again, is separated from the foregoing, historically, by about
a year; the remaining events of the drama having taken place in the Fall,
B.C. 42.

SCENE II.
135
JULIUS CÆSAR.
Bru. He greets me well. — Your master, Pindarus,
In his own charge, or by ill officers,2
Hath given me some worthy cause to wish
Things done, undone : but, if he be at hand,
I shall be satisfied.
Pin.
I do not doubt
But that my noble master will appear
Such as he is, full of regard and honour.
Bru. He is not doubted. A word, Lucilius :
How he received you, let me be resolved.
Lucil. With courtesy and with respect enough;
But not with such familiar instances,
Nor with such free and friendly conference,
As he hath used of old.

Bru.
Thou hast described
A hot friend cooling: ever note, Lucilius,
When love begins to sicken and decay,
It useth an enforcèd ceremony.
There are no tricks in plain and simple faith :
But hollow men, like horses hot at hand,³
Make gallant show and promise of their mettle;
But, when they should endure the bloody spur,
They fall their crests, and, like deceitful jades,
Sink in the trial. Comes his army on?
Lucil. They mean this night in Sardis to be quarter'd:
The greater part, the Horse in general,
Are come with Cassius.
[March within.
2 That is, either by his own command, or by officers, subordinates, who
have abused their trust, prostituting it to the ends of private gain.
3 Horses spirited or mettlesome when held back, or restrained.
4 Here, as often, fall is transitive; let fall.— A deceitful jade is an unre-
liable horse, or one that promises well in appearance, but "sinks in the
trial."
(

136
ACT IV.
JULIUS CÆSAR.
Bru.
Hark! he is arrived.
March gently on to meet him.
Enter CASSIUS and Soldiers.
Cass. Stand, ho!
Bru. Stand, ho! Speak the word along.
Within. Stand!
Within. Stand!
Within. Stand!
Cass. Most noble brother, you have done me wrong.
Bru. Judge me, you gods! wrong I mine enemies?
And, if not so, how should I wrong a brother?
Cass. Brutus, this sober form of yours hides wrongs ;
And when you do them
Bru.
Cassius, be content;
Speak your griefs softly; I do know you well.
Before the eyes of both our armies here,
Which should perceive nothing but love from us,
Let us not wrangle: bid them move away;
5
Then in my tent, Cassius, enlarge your griefs,
And I will give you audience.
Cass.
Pindarus,
6
Bid our commanders lead their charges off
A little from this ground.
Bru. Lucius, do you the like; and let no man
Come to our tent, till we have done our conference.
Lucilius and Titinius, guard our door.
[Exeunt.
5 To enlarge is, properly, to set free or to let go at large; here it means
speak freely of or unfold.
6 "Their charges" are, of course, the troops under their command.
SCENE III.
137
JULIUS CÆSAR.
SCENE III. Within the tent of BRUTUS.
Enter BRUTUS and CASSIUS.
Cass. That you have wrong'd me doth appear in this :
You have condemn'd and noted¹ Lucius Pella
For taking bribes here of the Sardians ;
Whereas my letters, praying on his side
Because I knew the man, were slighted off.
Bru. You wrong'd yourself to write 2 in such a case.
Cass. In such a time as this it is not meet
That every nice offence should bear his comment.³
Bru. And let me tell you, Cassius, you yourself
Are much condemn'd to have an itching palm;
To sell and mart your offices for gold
To undeservers.
Cass.
I an itching palm!
You know that you are Brutus that speak this,
Or, by the gods, this speech were else your last.
Bru. The name of Cassius honours this corruption,
And chastisement doth therefore hide his head.
Cass. Chastisement !
1 That is, disgraced him, set a mark or stigma upon him.
2" Wrong'd yourself by writing." The infinitive used gerundively again.
So too in the second speech after, "condemn'd to have" is condemn'd for
having; also "to sell and mart," for selling and marting. The usage is un-
commonly frequent in this play.
3 His for its, as usual, referring to offence. The meaning is that every
petty or trifling offence should not be rigidly scrutinized and censured.
Nice was often used thus.- Cassius naturally thinks that “the honourable
men whose daggers have stabb'd Cæsar" should not peril their cause by
moral squeamishness. And it is a very noteworthy point, that the digesting
of that act seems to have entailed upon Brutus a sort of moral dyspepsia.
It appears, a little further on, that he is more willing to receive and apply
money got by others than to se the necessary means of getting it.
138
ACT IV,
JULIUS CÆSAR,
Bru. Remember March, the Ides of March remember:
Did not great Julius bleed for justice' sake?
What villain touch'd his body, that did stab,
And not for justice ?4 What! shall one of us,
That struck the foremost man of all this world
But for supporting robbers, shall we now
Contaminate our fingers with base bribes,
And sell the mighty space of our large honours
For so much trash as may be grasped thus?
I had rather be a dog, and bay the Moon,
Than such a Roman.5
Cass.
Brutus, bay not me,
I'll not endure it: you forget yourself,
To hedge me in ;6 I am a soldier, ay,
Older in practice, abler than yourself
4 Of course the meaning is, "Who of the stabbers was such a villain as
to stab from any other motive than justice?"
5 Brutus, upon complaint of the Sardians, did condemn and note Lucius
Pella for a defamed person, that had been a Prætor of the Romans, and
whom Brutus had given charge unto; for that he was accused and con-
victed of robbery and pilfery in his office. This judgment much misliked
Cassius, because he himself had secretly (not many days before) warned
two of his friends, attainted and convicted of the like offences, and openly
had cleared them: but yet he did not therefore leave to employ them in any
manner of service as he did before. And therefore he greatly reproved
Brutus, for that he would shew himself so straight and severe, in such a
time as was meeter to bear a little than to take things at the worst. Brutus
in contrary manner answered, that he should remember the Ides of March,
at which time they slew Julius Cæsar, who neither pilled nor polled the
country, but only was a favourer and suborner of all them that did rob and
spoil, by his countenance and authority. And if there were any occasion
whereby they might honestly set aside justice and equity, they should have
had more reason to have suffered Cæsar's friends to have robbed and done
what wrong and injury they had would than to bear with their own men.
PLUTARCH.
• Still another gerundial infinitive: "In hedging me in.”
SCENE III.
139
JULIUS CÆSAR.
To make conditions.7
Bru.
Cass. I am.
8
Go to ; you are not, Cassius.
Bru. I say you are not.
Cass. Urge me no more, I shall forget myself;
Have mind upon your health, tempt me no further.
Bru. Away, slight man!
Cass. Is't possible?
Bru.
Hear me, for I will speak.
Must I give way and room to your rash choler?
Shall I be frighted when a madman stares?
Cass. O ye gods, ye gods! must I endure all this?
Bru. All this! ay, more: fret, till your proud heart
break;
Go show your slaves how choleric you are,
And make your bondmen tremble. Must I budge?
-Must I observe you? Must I stand and crouch
Under your testy humour? By the gods,
You shall digest the venom of your spleen,⁹
Though it do split you; for from this day forth
I'll use you for my mirth, yea, for my laughter,
When you are waspish.
Cass.
Is it come to this?
7 Now 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.- PLUTARCH.
8 Go to is a phrase of varying import, sometimes of reproof, sometimes of
encouragement. Hush up, come on, go ahead, be off are among its mean-
ings. It was used a great deal, especially in colloquial speech.
9 The spleen was held to be the special seat of the sudden and explosive
emotions and passions, whether of mirth or anger.
140
ACT IV.
JULIUS CÆSAR.
Bru. You say you are a better soldier:
Let it appear so; make your vaunting true,
And it shall please me well: for mine own part,
I shall be glad to learn of abler men.
Cass. You wrong me every way, you wrong me, Brutus ;
I said an elder soldier, not a better: 10
Did I say better?
Bru.
If you did, I care not.
fully Cass. When Cæsar lived he durst not thus have moved
1
me.
Bru. Peace, peace! you durst not so have tempted him.
Cass. I durst not!
Bru. No.
Cass. What, durst not tempt him?
Bru.
For your life you durst not.
Cass. Do not presume too much upon my love;
I may do that I shall be sorry for.
Bru. You have done that you should be sorry for.
There is no terror, Cassius, in your threats;
For I am arm'd so strong in honesty,
That they pass by me as the idle wind,
Which I respect not. I did send to you
For certain sums of gold, which you denied me;
For I can raise no money by vile means:
By Heaven, I had rather coin my heart,
10 This mistake of Brutus is well conceived. Cassius was much the abler
soldier, and Brutus knew it; and the mistake grew from his consciousness
of the truth of what he thought he heard. Long before this time, Cassius
had served as Quæstor under Marcus Crassus in his expedition against
the Parthians; and when the army was torn all to pieces, both Crassus and
his son being killed, Cassius displayed great ability in bringing off a rem-
nant; as he also did for some time after that, in the military administration
of Syria.
SCENE III.
141
JULIUS CÆSAR.
}
And drop my blood for drachmas, than to wring
From the hard hands of peasants their vile trash
By any indirection: I—I did send
To you for gold to pay my legions,
Which you denied me was that done like Cassius?
Should I have answer'd Caius Cassius so?
When Marcus Brutus grows so covetous,
To lock such rascal counters 12 from his friends,
Be ready, gods, with all your thunderbolts,
Dash him to pieces!
Cass.
Bru. You did.
Cass.
I denied you not.13
I did not he was but a fool
That brought my answer back. Brutus hath rived my heart :
11 Indirection is, properly, crookedness. As the Latin directus is straight,
hence right, so indirectus is crooked, hence wrong.
M
12" So covetous as to lock," of course. The Poet often omits as in such
cases, for prosodical reasons. Rascal was much used as a general term of
contempt, meaning worthless or base. Counters were round pieces of cheap
metal used in making calculations. — Professor Dowden comments snugly
on what we have here: "Brutus loves virtue and despises gold; but in the
logic of facts there is an irony cruel or pathetic. Brutus maintains a lofty
position of immaculate honour above Cassius; but ideals, and a heroic
contempt for gold, will not fill the military coffer, or pay the legions; and
the poetry of noble sentiment suddenly drops down to the prosaic complaint
that Cassius had denied the demands made by Brutus for certain sums of
money. Nor is Brutus, though he worships an ideal of Justice, quite just in
matters of concrete practical detail."
18 Whilst 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. Cassius's friends hindered this request, and earnestly dissuaded him
from it; persuading him, that it was no reason that Brutus should have the
money which Cassius had gotten together by sparing, and levied with great
evil will of the people their subjects, for him to bestow liberally upon his
soldiers, and by this means to win their good wills, by Cassius's charge.
Notwithstanding, Cassius gave him the third part of this total sum.—
PLUTARCH.
142
ACT IV.
JULIUS CÆSAR.
A friend should bear his friends infirmities,
But Brutus makes mine greater than they are.
Bru. I do not, till you practise them on me.
Cass. You love me not.
Bru.
I do not like your faults.
Cass. A friendly eye could never see such faults.
Bru. A flatterer's would not, though they did appear
As huge as high Olympus.
Cass. Come, Antony and young Octavius, come,
Revenge yourselves alone on Cassius,
For Cassius is a-weary of the world;
Hated by one he loves; braved 14 by his brother;
Check'd like a bondman; all his faults observed,
Set in a note-book, learn'd, and conn'd by rote,
To cast into my teeth., I could weep
My spirit from mine eyes!— There is my dagger,
And here my naked breast; within, a heart
Dearer than Plutus' mine, 15 richer than gold :
If that thou be'st a Roman, take it forth;
I, that denied thee gold, will give my heart:
Strike as thou didst at Cæsar; for I know,
When thou didst hate him worst, thou lovedst him better
Than ever thou lovedst Cassius.
Bru.
Sheath your dagger:
Be angry when you will, it shall have scope ;
Do what you will, dishonour shall be humour.16
© Cassius, you are yokèd with a lamb
14 Braved is defied, or treated with bluster and bravado.
15 Plutus is the old god of riches, who had all the world's gold in his
keeping and disposal.
16" Whatever dishonourable thing you may do, I will set it down to the
humour or infirmity of the moment."
SCENE III.
143
JULIUS CÆSAR.
17
That carries anger as the flint bears fire ;
Who, much enforced, shows a hasty spark,
And straight is cold again. Y
Cass.
Hath Cassius lived
To be but mirth and laughter to his Brutus,
Briefe and blood illtempord, vexeth-bima?
Bru. When I spoke that, I was ill-temper'd too.
Cass. Do you confess so much? Give me your hand.
Bru. And my heart too.

Cass.
O Brutus,
Bru.
What's the matter?
Cass. Have you not love enough to bear with me,
When that rash humour which my mother gave me
Makes me forgetful?
Bru.
Yes, Cassius; and henceforth,
When you are over-earnest with your Brutus,
He'll think your mother chides, and leave you so.
[Noise within.
Poet. [Within.] Let me go in to see the generals:
There is some grudge between 'em ; 'tis not meet
They be alone.
Lucil. [Within.] You shall not come to them.
Poet. [Within.] Nothing but death shall stay me.
Enter Poet, followed by LUCILIUS and TITINIUS.
Cass. How now! What's the matter?
17 In my boyhood, the idea was common, of fire sleeping in the flint, and
being awaked by the stroke of the steel. I am not sure whether it was
known in the Poet's time, that in fact the flint cuts off microscopic bits of
steel, which are ignited by the friction. Hooker takes it as Shakespeare
does; Ecclesiastical Polity, vii. 22, 3: "It is not sufficient to carry religion
in our hearts, as fire is carried in flint-stones, but we are outwardly, visibly,
apparently, to serve and honour the living God.”
144
ACT IV.
JULIUS CÆSAR.
Poet. For shame, you generals! what do you mean?
Love, and be friends, as two such men should be;
For I have seen more years, I'm sure, than ye.18
Cass. Ha, ha! how vilely doth this cynic rhyme !
Bru. Get you hence, sirrah; saucy fellow, hence !
Cass. Bear with him, Brutus; 'tis his fashion.
Bru. I'll know his humour, when he knows his time:
What should the wars do with these jigging fools ? -
Companion, hence ! 19
Cass.
!
Away, away, be gone! [Exit Poet.
18 Before they fell in hand with any other matter, they went into a little
chamber together, and bade every man avoid, and did shut the doors to
them. Then they began to pour out their complaints one to the other, and
grew hot and loud, earnestly accusing one another, and at length both fell
a-weeping. Their friends that were without the chamber, hearing them
loud within, and angry between themselves, were both amazed and afraid
also, lest it would grow to further matter; but yet they were commanded
that no man should come to them. Notwithstanding, one Marcus Favo-
nius, that took upon him to counterfeit a philosopher, not with wisdom and
discretion, but with a certain bedlam and frantic motion; he would needs
come into the chamber, though the men offered to keep him out. But it
was no boot to let Favonius, when a mad mood or toy took him in the
head: for he was an hot hasty man, and sudden in all his doings, and
cared for never a Senator of them all. Now, though he used this bold
manner of speech after the profession of the Cynic philosophers, (as who
would say, Dogs,) yet his boldness did not hurt many times, because they
did but laugh at him to see him so mad. This Favonius at that time, in
despite of the door-keepers, came into the chamber, and with a certain
scoffing and mocking gesture, which he counterfeited of purpose, he res
hearsed the verses which old Nestor said in Homer:
My lords, I pray you hearken both to me,
For I have seen mo years than suchie three.
Cassius fell a-laughing at him; but Brutus thrust him out of the chamber,
and called him dog, and counterfeit Cynic. Howbeit his coming in brake
their strife at that time, and so they left each other. - PLUTARCH.
19 Fig signified a ballad or ditty, as well as a dance. Companion is here
a term of contempt, as we now use fellow.
}
SCENE III.
145
JULIUS CÆSAR.
Bru. Lucilius and Titinius, bid the commanders
Prepare to lodge their companies to-night.
Cass. And come yourselves, and bring Messala with you
Immediately to us.
Bru.
[Exeunt LUCILIUS and TITINIUS.
Lucius, a bowl of wine!
Cass. I did not think you could have been so angry.
Bru. O Cassius, I am sick of many griefs.
Cass. Of your philosophy you make no use, pa for
If you give place to accidental evils.20
Bru. No man bears sorrow better. Portia is dead.

Cass. Ha! Portia !
Bru. She is dead.
tother
Cass. How 'scaped I killing, when I cross'd you so?—
O insupportable and touching loss! -
Upon what sickness?
Bru.
Impatient 21 of my absence,
And grief that young Octavius with Mark Antony
Have made themselves so strong; for with her death
That tidings came ; with this she fell distract,22
And, her attendants absent, swallow'd fire.23
20 In his philosophy, Brutus was a mixture of the Stoic and the Platonist.
What he says of Portia's death is among the best things in the play, and is
in Shakespeare's noblest style. Deep grief loves not many words.
21 Strict harmony of construction would require impatience here, or else
grieved for grief in the next line. But the Poet is not very particular in
such matters. The sense is clear enough.
22 Distract for distracted. The shortening of preterites in this way was
very common; and Shakespeare has many instances of it. See Hamlet,
page 165, note 32.
23 It appears something uncertain whether Portia's death was before or
after her husband's. Plutarch represents it as occurring before; but Meri-
vale follows those who place it after. Plutarch's account is as follows: "For
Portia, Brutus's wife, Nicolaus the philosopher and Valerius Maximus do
write, that she determining to kill herself (her friends carefully looking to
her to keep her from it) took hot burning coals, and cast them into her
146
ACT IV.
JULIUS CÆSAR.
notting
Cass. And died so?
Bru. Even so.
Cass. O ye immortal gods!
Enter LUCIUS, with wine and a taper.
Bru. Speak no more of her. — Give me a bowl of wine.
In this I bury all unkindness, Cassius.
Cass. My heart is thirsty for that noble pledge. -
Fill, Lucius, till the wine o'erswell the cup;

[Drinks.
[Drinks.
[Exit LUCIUS.
Welcome, good Messala.-
I cannot drink too much of Brutus' love.
Bru. Come in, Titinius!
Re-enter TITINIUS, with MESSALA.
Now sit we close about this taper here,
And call in question 24 our necessities.
Cass. Portia, art thou gone?
Bru.
No more, I pray you.
Messala, I have here receivèd letters,
That young Octavius and Mark Antony
Come down upon us with a mighty power,
Bending their expedition 25 toward Philippi.
Mes. Myself have letters of the selfsame tenour.
Bru. With what addition?
Mes. That, by proscription and bills of outlawry,
Octavius, Antony, and Lepidus,
mouth, and kept her mouth so close that she choked herself. There was a
letter of Brutus found, written to his friends, complaining of their negligence,
that, his wife being sick, they would not help her, but suffered her to kill her-
self, choosing to die rather than to languish in pain."
24 "Call in question" here means talk or converse about. Question, both
as noun and verb, was often used in that sense.
25 Directing their march. So the Poet has expedition repeatedly.
SCENE III.
147
JULIUS CÆSAR.
Have put to death an hundred Senators.
Bru. Therein our letters do not well agree:
Mine speak of seventy Senators that died
By their proscriptions, Cicero being one.26
Cass. Cicero one!
Mes. Cicero is dead,
And by that order of proscription.-
Had you your letters from your wife, my lord?
Bru. No, Messala.
Mes. Nor nothing in your letters writ of her?
Bru. Nothing, Messala.27
Mes.
That, methinks, is strange.
Bru. Why ask you? hear you ought of her in yours?
Mes. No, my lord.
Bru. Now, as you are a Roman, tell me true.
Mes. Then like a Roman bear the truth I tell :
For certain she is dead, and by strange manner.
Bru. Why, farewell, Portia.
We must die, Messala :
With meditating that she must die once,28
I have the patience to endure it now.
Mes. Even so great men great losses should endure.
26 These three, Octavius Cæsar, Antonius, and Lepidus, made an agree-
ment among themselves, and by those articles divided the provinces belong-
ing to the empire of Rome among themselves, and did set up bills of pro-
scription and outlawry, condemning two hundred of the noblest men of
Rome to suffer death, and among that number Cicero was one. —— - PLU-
TARCH.
27 This may seem inconsistent with what has gone before: but we are to
suppose that Brutus's friends at Rome did not write to him directly of Por-
tia's death, lest the news might upset him too much; but wrote to some
common friends in the army, directing them to break the news to him, as
they should deem it safe and prudent to do so.
28 Once for one time or other, sometime. So in The Merry Wives, iii. 4:
"I pray thee, once to-night give my sweet Nan this ring."


148
ACT IV.
JULIUS CÆSAR.
What do
What do you think
Cass. I have as much of this in art 29 as you,
But yet my nature could not bear it so.
Bru. Well, to our work alive.30
Of marching to Philippi presently?
Cass. I do not think it good.
Bru.
Cass.
Your reason?
This it is:
'Tis better that the enemy seek us:
So shall he waste his means, weary his soldiers,
Doing himself offence; whilst we, lying still,
Are full of rest, defence, and nimbleness.
Bru. Good reasons must, of force,31 give place to better.
The people 'twixt Philippi and this ground
Do stand but in a forced affection ;
For they have grudged us contribution:
The enemy, marching along by them,
By them shall make a fuller number up,
Come on refresh'd, new-aided, and encouraged;
From which advantage shall we cut him off,
If at Philippi we do face him there,
These people at our back.
Cass.
Hear me, good brother.
29 Art was sometimes used for theory as opposed to practice.
30 Probably meaning "the work we have to do with the living."
31 Of force is of necessity, or necessarily.— Plutarch represents this talk
as occurring at Philippi just before the battle: "Cassius was of opinion not
to try this war at one battle, 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 armour. But Brutus, in contrary manner, did always before and
at that time also, desire nothing more than to put all to the hazard of battle,
as soon as might be possible; to the end he might either quickly restore his
country to her former liberty, or rid him forthwith of this miserable world,
being still troubled in following and maintaining of such great armies to-
gether."
A
SCENE III.
149
JULIUS CÆSAR.
Bru. Under your pardon. You must note besides,
That we have tried the utmost of our friends,
Our legions are brim-full, our cause is ripe:
The enemy increaseth every day;
We, at the height, are ready to decline.
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.
On such a full sea are we now afloat;
And we must take the current when it serves,
Or lose our ventures.32
Cass.
Then, with your will, go on :
We will along ourselves, and meet them at Philippi.
Bru. The deep of night is crept upon our talk,
And nature must obey necessity;
Which we will niggard with a little rest.
There is no more to say?
Cass.
No more.
Good night:
Early to-morrow will we rise, and hence.
Bru. Lucius, my gown!-Farewell now, good Messala :-
Good night, Titinius: - noble, noble Cassius,
Good night, and good repose.
Cass.
O my dear brother!
This was an ill beginning of the night:
Never come such division 'tween our souls!
Let it not, Brutus.
Bru.
Every thing is well.
Cass. Good night, my lord.
32 Ventures for what is risked or adventured. The figure of a ship is kept
up; and venture denotes whatever is put on board, in hope of profit. The
Poet has it repeatedly so.
150
ACT IV.
JULIUS CÆSAR.
Bru.
Good night, good brother.
Tit.
Mes.
}
Good night, Lord Brutus.
Bru.
Farewell, every one.
[Exeunt CASSIUS, TITINIUS, and MESSALA.
Re-enter LUCIUS, with the gown.
Give me the gown. Where is thy instrument?
Luc. Here in the tent.
Bru.
What, thou speak'st drowsily:
Poor knave,33 I blame thee not; thou art o'er-watch'd.
Call Claudius and some other of my men ;
I'll have them sleep on cushions in my tent.
Luc. Varro and Claudius !
Enter VARRO and CLAUDIUS.
Var. Calls my lord?
Bru. I pray you, sirs, lie in my tent, and sleep;
It may be I shall raise you by-and-by
On business to my brother Cassius.
Var. So please you, we will stand and watch your pleasure.
Bru. I will not have it so ; lie down, good sirs:
It may be I shall otherwise bethink me.
Look, Lucius, here's the book I sought for so;
I put it in the pocket of my gown.34 [Servants lie down.
Luc. I was sure your lordship did not give it me.
Bru. Bear with me, good boy; I am much forgetful.
33 Knave was much used as a term of endearment, or of loving familiarity
with those of lower rank.
34 These two simple lines are among the best things in the play. Just
consider how much is implied in them, and what a picture they give of the
earnest, thoughtful, book-loving Brutus. And indeed all his noblest traits
of character come out, "in simple and pure soul," in this exquisite scene-
with Lucius, which is hardly surpassed by any thing in Shakespeare.
!
yoots
كلب
مومه
5 well
151
SCENE II.
JULIUS CÆSAR.
Canst thou hold up thy heavy eyes awhile,
And touch thy instrument a strain or two?
Luc. Ay, my lord, an't please you.
Bru.
It does, my boy:
I trouble thee too much, but thou art willing.
Luc. It is my duty, sir.
Bru. I should not urge thy duty past thy might;
I know young bloods 35 look for a time of rest.
Luc. I have slept, my lord, already.
Bru. It was well done; and thou shalt sleep again;
I will not hold thee long: if I do live,
I will be good to thee. -
[Lucius plays and sings till he falls asleep.
This is a sleepy tune. — O murderous Slumber,
Lay'st thou thy leaden mace upon my boy,
That plays thee music? 36 Gentle knave, good night;
I will not do thee so much wrong to wake thee :
If thou dost nod, thou breakst thy instrument;
I'll take it from thee; and, good boy, good night.
Let me see, let me see; is not the leaf turn'd down
Where I left reading? Here it is, I think.
Enter the Ghost of CESAR.
How ill this taper burns !37 Ha! who comes here?
85 Bloods for persons. So in Much Ado, iii. 3: "How giddily he turns
about all the hot bloods between fourteen and five-and-thirty."
36 Mace was formerly used for sceptre. The mace is called leaden, from
its causing heaviness in the subject of it.—Slumber has the epithet mur-
derous, because sleep is regarded as the image of death; or, as Shelley puts
it, "Death and his brother Sleep."— The boy is spoken of as playing music
to Slumber, because the purpose of his music is to soothe the perturbations
out of his master's mind, and put him to sleep.
37 The coming of a ghost was believed to make lights burn dimly. So,
in Richard the Third, v. 3, when the ghosts appear to Richard, he says, “The
lights burn blue."
152
ACT IV.
JULIUS CÆSAR.
I think it is the weakness of mine eyes
That shapes this monstrous apparition.
It comes upon me.
Art thou any thing?
Art thou some god, some angel, or some devil,
That makest my blood cold, and my hair to stare ?38
Speak to me what thou art.
Ghost. Thy evil spirit, Brutus.
Bru.
Why comest thou?
Ghost. To tell thee thou shalt see me at Philippi.
Bru. Well; then I shall see thee again?
Ghost. Ay, at Philippi.
Bru. Why, I will see thee at Philippi, then.
Now I have taken heart, thou vanishest: 39
Ill spirit, I would hold more talk with thee.40
[Ghost vanishes.
38 A singular use of stare. Of course it must mean to stick out, or, as it
is in Hamlet, to “stand on end, like quills upon the fretful porpentine." We
have a similar expression in The Tempest, i. 2: "Ferdinand, with hair up-
staring, then like reeds, not hair."
39 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
weighing upon him, he might well see ghosts. The thickening of calami-
ties upon him, as the consequences of his stabbing exploit, naturally awakens
remorse.
40 Above all, the ghost that appeared unto Brutus shewed plainly that the
gods were offended with the murder of Cæsar. The vision was thus: Bru-
tus, being ready to pass over his army from the city of Abydos to the other
coast lying directly against it, slept every night (as his manner was) in his
tent; and being yet awake, thinking of his affairs (for by report he was as
careful a captain, and lived with as little sleep as ever man did) he thought
he heard a noise at his 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
greatness and dreadful look, which at the first made him marvellously afraid.
But when he saw that it did him no hurt, but stood at his bed-side and said
!
SCENE III.
153
JULIUS CÆSAR.
Boy! Lucius
Claudius !
E
Varro Claudius! Sirs, awake!
!
Luc. The strings, my lord, are false.
Bru. He thinks he still is at his instrument.
Lucius, awake!
Luc. My lord?
Bru. Didst thou dream, Lucius, that thou so criedst out?
Luc. My lord, I do not know that I did cry.
Bru. Yes, that thou didst : didst thou see any thing?
Luc. Nothing, my lord.
Bru. Sleep again, Lucius.
Sirrah Claudius !·
[To VAR.] Fellow thou, awake!
Var. My lord?
Clau. My lord?
Bru. Why did you so cry out, sirs, in your sleep?
Var.
Clau.
}
Did we, my lord?
Bru.
Ay: saw you any thing?
Nor I, my lord.
Var. No, my lord, I saw nothing.
Clau.
Bru. Go and commend me to my brother Cassius;
Bid him set on his powers betimes 41 before,
And we will follow.
Var.
Clau.
}
It shall be done, my lord.
[Exeunt.
nothing; at length he asked him what he was. The image answered him:
"I am thy ill angel, Brutus, and thou shalt see me by the city of Philippes.”
Then Brutus replied again, and said, "Well, I shall see thee then." There,
withal the spirit presently vanished from him. — PLUTARCH.
41 Betimes is early, promptly, or in good time.
154
ACT V.
JULIUS CESAR.
ACT V.
SCENE I. — The Plains of Philippi.
Enter OCTAVIUS, ANTONY, and their Army.
Oct. Now, Antony, our hopes are answered.
You said the enemy would not come down,
But keep the hills and upper regions:
It proves not so; their battles¹ are at hand:
They mean to warn 2 us at Philippi here,
Answering before we do demand of them.
Ant. Tut, I am in their bosoms, and I know
Wherefore they do it: they could 3 be content
To visit other places; and come down
4
With fearful bravery, thinking by this face
To fasten in our thoughts that they have courage ;
But 'tis not so.
Mess.
Enter a Messenger.
Prepare you, generals :
1 Battle was used for an army, especially an army embattled, or ordered
in battle-array. The plural is here used with historical correctness, as Bru-
tus and Cassius had each an army: the two armies of course co-operating,
and acting together as one.
2 To warn for to summon.
So in King John: "Who is it that hath
warn'd us to the walls?" And in King Richard III.: “And sent to warn
them to his royal presence."
3 Could for would. The auxiliaries could, should, and would were often
used indiscriminately.-Content, here, means more than in our use, and has
the sense of be glad, or prefer.
4 Bravery is bravado or defiance. Often so. The epithet fearful prob-
ably means that fear is what thus puts them upon attempting to intimidate
by display and brag.
SCENE I.
155
JULIUS CÆSAR.
}
The enemy comes on in gallant show ;
Their bloody sign of battle is hung out,
And something to be done immediately.
Ant. Octavius, lead your battle softly on,
Upon the left hand of the even field.
Oct. Upon the right hand I; keep thou the left.
Ant. Why do you cross me in this exigent?
Oct. I do not cross you; but I will do so.5
[March.
Drum. Enter BRUTUS, CASSIUS, and their Army; LUCILIUS,
TITINIUS, MESSALA, and Others.
جر
Bru. They stand, and would have parley.
Cass. Stand fast, Titinius: we must out and talk.
Oct. Mark Antony, shall we give sign of battle?
Ant. No, Cæsar, we will answer on their charge.6
Make forth; the generals would have some words.
Oct. Stir not until the signal.
Bru. Words before blows: is it so, countrymen?
Oct. Not that we love words better, as you do.
Bru. Good words are better than bad strokes, Octavius.
5 That is, "I will do as I have said"; not, "I will cross you."— At this
time, Octavius was but twenty-one years old, and Antony was old enough to
be his father. At the time of Cæsar's death, when Octavius was in his nine-
teenth year, Antony thought he was going to manage him easily and have
it all his own way with him, but he found the youngster as stiff as a crow-
bar, and could do nothing with him. Cæsar's youngest sister Julia was
married to Marcus Atius Balbus, and their daughter Atia, again, was mar-
ried to Caius Octavius, a nobleman of the Plebeian order. From this mar-
riage sprang the present Octavius, who afterwards became the Emperor
Augustus. He was mainly educated by his great-uncle, was advanced to
the Patrician order, and was adopted as his son and heir; so that his full
and proper designation at this time was Caius Julius Cæsar Octavianus.
The text gives a right taste of the man, who always stood firm as a post
against Antony, till the latter finally knocked himself to pieces against him.
• Charge for attack; and answer in the sense of meet in combat.
6
•
156
ACT V.
JULIUS CÆSAR.
Ant. In your bad strokes, Brutus, you give good words:
Witness the hole you made in Cæsar's heart,
Crying, Long live! hail, Cæsar!
Cass.
Antony,
The posture of your blows are yet unknown ;7
But, for your words, they rob the Hybla bees,
And leave them honeyless.8
Ant.
Not stingless too.
Bru. O, yes, and soundless too;
For you have stol'n their buzzing, Antony,
And very wisely threat before you sting.
Ant. Villains, you did not so when your vile daggers
Hack'd one another in the sides of Cæsar :
You show'd your teeth like apes, and fawn'd like hounds,
And bow'd like bondmen, kissing Cæsar's feet;
Whilst damnèd Casca, like a cur, behind
Struck Cæsar on the neck. O flatterers!
Cass. Flatterers! Now, Brutus, thank yourself:
-
This tongue had not offended so to-day,
If Cassius might have ruled.
Oct. Come, come, the cause: if arguing makes us sweat,
The proof of it will turn to redder drops.
Look,
I draw a sword against conspirators :
When think you that the sword goes up again?
Never, till Cæsar's three-and-thirty wounds
Posture for nature or character, probably; rather an odd use of the
word. The verb are is made to agree with the nearest substantive, blows,
instead of with its proper nominative, posture. Such loosenesses of
grammar
were common. See Hamlet, page 57, note 12.
8 Hybla was the name of a place in Sicily, noted for the fine flavour of its
honey. The meaning is, that Antony could not be so "honey-tongued,"
unless he had quite exhausted thyme-flavoured Hybla,
SCENE I.
157
JULIUS CÆSAR.
"
Be well avenged; 9 or till another Cæsar
Have added siaughter to the sword of traitors.10
Bru. Cæsar, thou canst not die by traitor's hands,
Unless thou bring'st them with thee.
Oct.
I was not born to die on Brutus' sword.
So I hope;
Bru. O, if thou wert the noblest of thy strain,11
Young man, thou couldst not die more honourably. but
Cass. A peevish schoolboy, worthless of such honour,
Join'd with a masker and a reveller ! 12
Ant. Old Cassius still!
Oct.
Quit
Come, Antony; away!-
Defiance, traitors, hurl we in your teeth :
If you dare fight to-day, come to the field;
If not, when you have stomachs.13
[Exeunt OCTAVIUS, ANTONY, and their Army.
Cass. Why, now, blow wind, swell billow, and swim bark!
9 The historical number of Cæsar's wounds is three-and-twenty, and so
Shakespeare read it in Plutarch. But the poets care little for exactness in
such matters. In Beaumont and Fletcher's Two Noble Gentlemen, we have
"Cæsar's two-and-thirty wounds." — This man, Octavius, has been a stand-
ing puzzle and enigma to the historians, from the seeming contradictions of
his character. The later writers, however, especially Merivale and Smith,
find that the one principle that gave unity to his life and reconciled those
contradictions, was a steadfast, inflexible purpose to avenge the murder of
his illustrious uncle and adoptive father.
10 "Till you, traitors as you are, have added the slaughtering of me, an-
other Cæsar, to that of Julius."
11 Strain is stock, lineage, or race; a common use of the word in Shake-
speare's time. So in King Henry V., ii. 4: “He is bred out of that bloody
strain, that haunted us in our familiar paths."
12 A peevish school-boy, joined with a masker and a reveller, and un-
worthy even of that honour. The more common meaning of peevish was
foolish.
13 Stomach was often used for appetite. Here it means an appetite for
fighting, of course. See Hamlet, page 51, note 29.
158
ACT V.
JULIUS CÆSAR.
The storm is up, and all is on the hazard.
Bru. Ho, Lucilius! hark, a word with you.
Lucil. My lord?
[BRUTUS and LUCILIUS talk apart.
Cass. Messala, —
Mes.
What says my General?
Cass.
Messala,
This is my birth-day; as this very day
Was Cassius born. Give me thy hand, Messala :
Be thou my witness that against my will,
As Pompey was,14 I am compell'd to set
Upon one battle all our liberties.
You know that I held Epicurus strong,15
And his opinion: now I change my mind,
And partly credit things that do presage.
Coming from Sardis, on our foremost ensign
Two mighty eagles fell; and there they perch'd,
Gorging and feeding from our soldiers' hands;
Who to Philippi here consorted us :
This morning are they fled away and
gone;
16
14 Alluding to the battle of Pharsalia, which took place in the year B.C. 48.
Pompey was forced into that battle, against his better judgment, by the in-
experienced and impatient men about him, who, inasmuch as they had
more than twice Cæsar's number of troops, fancied they could easily crunch
him up if they could but meet him. So they tried it, and he quickly
crunched up them.
15 "I was strongly attached to the doctrines of Epicurus." Plutarch has
the following in reference to the ghosting of Brutus: "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
do not always feel or see that which we suppose we do both see and feel,
but that our senses, being credulous and therefore easily abused, (when they
are idle and unoccupied in their own objects,) are induced to imagine they
see and conjecture that which in truth they do not.'
16 When they raised their camp, there came two eagles that, flying with
a marvellous force, lighted upon two of the foremost ensigns, and always
*
SCENE I.
159
JULIUS CÆSAR.
And in their steads do ravens, crows, and kites
Fly o'er our heads, and downward look on us,
As we were sickly prey:
17 their shadows seem
A canopy most fatal, under which
Our army lies, ready to give up the ghost.
Mes. Believe not so.
Cass.
I but believe it partly;
For I am fresh of spirit, and resolved
To meet all perils very constantly.18
Bru. Even so, Lucilius.
Cass.
Now, most noble Brutus,
The gods to-day stand friendly, that we may,
Lovers in peace, lead on our days to age!
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.
17 And yet further, there were seen a marvellous number of fowls of prey,
that feed upon dead carcases; and bee-hives also were found where bees
were gathered together in a certain place within the trenches of the camp;
the which place the soothsayers thought good to shut out of the precinct
of the camp, for to take away the superstitious fear and mistrust men would
have of it: the which began somewhat to alter Cassius's mind from Epi-
curus's opinions, and had put the soldiers also in a marvellous fear.
PLUTARCH.
18 Touching Cassius, Messala reporteth that he supped by himself in his
tent with a few of his friends, and that all supper-time he looked very sadly,
and was full of thoughts, although it was against his nature; and that after
supper he took him by the hand, and, holding him fast, (in token of kind-
ness, 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. And yet we must be lively, and of good courage, con-
sidering our good fortune, whom we should wrong too much to mistrust
her, although we follow evil counsel." Messala writeth, that Cassius hav-
ing spoken these last words unto him, he bade him farewell, and willed him
to come to supper to him the next night following, because it was his birth-
day.- PLUTARCH.
160
ACT V.
JULIUS CÆSAR.
1
But, since th' affairs of men rest still incertain,
Let's reason with 19 the worst that may befall.
If we do lose this battle, then is this
The very last time we shall speak together:
What are you then determinéd to do?
Bru. Even by the rule of that philosophy
By which I did blame Cato for the death
Which he did give himself; I know not how,
But I do find it cowardly and vile,
ૐ
For fear of what might fall, so to prevent
The time of life; 20-arming myself with patience
To stay the providence of some high powers
That govern us below.
Cass.
Then, if we lose this battle,
You are contented to be led in triumph
Thorough the streets of Rome?
Bru. No, Cassius, no: think not, thou noble Roman,
That ever Brutus will go bound to Rome;
He bears too great a mind.21 But this same day
19 To reason with here means to talk or discourse about. The use of to
reason for to converse or discourse occurs repeatedly.
20 Prevent is here used in its literal sense of anticipate.-By time is meant
the full time, the natural period.—To the understanding of this speech, it
must be observed, that the sense of the words, "arming myself," &c., follows
next after the words, "which he did give himself.' In this passage, Shake-
speare was misled by an error in North's version of Plutarch, where we
have trust instead of trusted. See the next note; where, instead of" Brutus
answered him, being yet but a young man, in the world: 'I trust,'" &c.,
it ought to be," Brutus answered him: 'Being yet but a young man, — in
the world, I trusted,'" &c.
21 The next morning, by break of day, the signal of battle was set out in
Brutus's and Cassius's camp, which was an arming scarlet coat; and both
the chieftains spake together in the midst of their armies. There Cassius.
began to speak first, and said: "The gods grant us, O Brutus, that this day
we may win the field, and ever after to live all the rest of our life quietly one
SCENE II.
161
JULIUS CÆSAR.
Must end that work the Ides of March begun;
And whether we shall meet again I know not.
Therefore our everlasting farewell take :
For ever, and for ever, farewell, Cassius !
If we do meet again, why, we shall smile;
If not, why, then this parting was well made.
Cass. For ever, and for ever, farewell, Brutus !
If we do meet again, we'll smile indeed;
If not, 'tis true this parting was well made.
Bru. Why, then lead on. O, that a man might know
The end of this day's business ere it come!
But it sufficeth that the day will end,
And then the end is known. -Come, ho! away! [Exeunt.
SCENE II.
II. — The Same. The Field of Battle.
Alarum.
Enter BRUTUS and MESSALA.
Bru. Ride, ride, Messala, ride, and give these bills
Unto the legions on the other side :1
with another. But, sith the gods have so ordained it, that the greatest and
chiefest things amongst men are most uncertain, and that if the battle fall out
otherwise to-day than we wish or look for, we shall hardly meet again, what
art thou determined to do, to fly, or die?" 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 philosophy, by the which I did greatly
blame and reprove Cato for killing himself, as being no lawful nor godly
act, touching the gods; nor, concerning men, valiant; not to give place and
yield to divine providence, and not constantly and patiently to take whatso-
ever it pleaseth him to send us, but to draw back and fly: but, being now in
the midst of the danger, I am of a contrary mind. For, if it be not the will
of God that this battle fall out fortunate for us, I will look no more for hope,
neither seek to make any new supply for war again, but will rid me of this
miserable world, and content me with my fortune."
fortune." - PLUTARCH.
1 "The legions on the other side" are those commanded by Cassius;
the left wing, in fact, of the joint army of Brutus and Cassius. Brutus wants
162
ACT V.
JULIUS CÆSAR.
Let them set on at once; for I perceive
But cold demeanor in Octavius' wing,
And sudden push gives them the overthrow.
Ride, ride, Messala: let them all come down.
SCENE III. — Another Part of the Field.
Alarum. Enter CASSIUS and TITINIUS.
Cass. O, look, Titinius, look, the villains fly!
Myself have to mine own turn'd enemy :
This ensign here of mine was turning back;
I slew the coward, and did take it from him.2
Tit. O Cassius, Brutus gave the word too early;
Who, having some advantage on Octavius,
Took it too eagerly: his soldiers fell to spoil,
Whilst we by Antony are all enclosed.
Enter PINDARUS.
Pin. Fly further off, my lord, fly further off;
Mark Antony is in your tents, my lord:
Fly, therefore, noble Cassius, fly far' off.
[Exeunt.
Cass. This hill is far enough. — Look, look, Titinius ;
Are those my tents where I perceive the fire?
Tit. They are, my lord.
Cass.
Titinius, if thou lovest me,
Mount thou my horse, and hide thy spurs in him,
Cassius to attack the enemy at the same time that he himself does. In the
next scene, Messala and his escort are met by Titinius coming from Cas-
sius.
2 Ensign was used, as it is still, either for the flag or for the bearer of it:
here it is used for both at once. It was in killing the cowardly ensign that
Cassius "to his own turn'd enemy."
!
SCENE III.
163
JULIUS CÆSAR.
7
Till he have brought thee up to yonder troops,3
And here again; that I may rest assured
Whether yond troops are friend or enemy.
Tit. I will be here again, even with a thought.
Cass. Go, Pindarus, get higher on that hill: 4
My sight was ever thick: regard Titinius,
And tell me what thou notest about the field.
[Exit.
[PINDARUS goes up.
This day I breathed first time is come round,
And where I did begin, there shall I end;
My life is run his compass.
- Sirrah, what news?

Pin. [Above.] O my lord!
Cass. What news?
Pin. Titinius is enclosèd round about
t
With horsemen, that make to him on the spur:
Yet he spurs on. Now they are almost on him.
Now, Titinius !— Now some 'light.5 O, he 'lights too:
He's ta'en; [Shout.] and, hark! they shout for joy.
Cass. Come down; behold no more.
O, coward that I am, to live so long,
To see my best triend ta'en before my face!
Come hither, sirrah :
PINDARUS descends.
In Parthia did I take thee prisoner;
And then I swore thee, saving of thy life,
That whatsoever I did bid thee do,
Thou shouldst attempt it. Come now, keep thine oath ;
8 "Yonder troops" are Messala and his escort coming from Brutus.
4 Cassius is now on a hill: he therefore means a hill somewhat higher
than that he is on. Cassius was, in fact, what we now call near-sighted.
5 Some alight, or dismount.
164
ACT V.
JULIUS CÆSAR.
Now be a freeman; and with this good sword,
That ran through Cæsar's bowels, search this bosom.
Stand not to answer: here, take thou the hilts; 6
And, when my face is cover'd, as 'tis now,
Guide thou the sword.
Cæsar, thou art revenged,
Even with the sword that kill'd thee.7
[Dies.
Pin. So, I am free; yet would not so have been,
Durst I have done my will. — O Cassius!
Far from this country Pindarus shall run,
Where never Roman shall take note of him.8
[Exit.
6 Hilts, plural, for hilt was the common usage in the Poet's time. So too
with funerals, later in this play.
7 It was a dagger, not a sword, that Cassius stabbed Cæsar with. But
the same weapon is put for the same owner; a common figure of speech.
8 Cassius was at length compelled to fly, with a few about him, unto a little
hill, from whence they might easily see what was done in all the plain: how-
beit Cassius himself saw nothing, for his sight was very bad, saving that he
saw (and yet with much ado) how the enemies spoiled his camp before his
eyes. He also saw a great troop of horsemen, whom Brutus sent to aid
him, and thought that they were his enemies that followed him; but yet
he sent Titinius, one of them that was with him, to go and know what they
were. Brutus's horsemen saw him coming afar off, whom when they knew
that he was one of Cassius's chiefest friends, 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 on
horseback, with songs of victory and great rushing of their harness, so that
they made all the field ring again for joy. But this marred all. For Cassius,
thinking indeed that Titinius was taken of the enemies, he then spake these
words: "Desiring too much to live, I have lived to see one of my best friends
taken, for my sake, before my face." After that, he got into a tent where
nobody was, and took Pindarus with him, one of his bondsmen whom he
reserved ever for such a pinch, since the cursed battle of the Parthians,
where Crassus was slain, though he notwithstanding scaped from that over-
throw but then, casting his cloak over his head, and holding out his bare
neck unto Pindarus, he gave him his head to be stricken off. So the head
was found severed from the body: but after that time Pindarus was never
seen more.- - PLUTARCH.
SCENE III.
165
JULIUS CÆSAR.
Re-enter TITINIUS, with MESSALA.
&
Mess. It is but change,9 Titinius; for Octavius
Is overthrown by noble Brutus' power,
As Cassius' legions are by Antony.
Tit. These tidings will well comfort Cassius.
Mes. Where did you leave him?
Tit.
All disconsolate,
With Pindarus his bondman, on this hill.
Mes. Is not that he that lies upon the ground?
Tit. He lies not like the living. O my heart!
Mes. Is not that he?
Tit.
No, this was he, Messala,
But Cassius is no more. - O setting Sun,
As in thy red rays thou dost sink to night,
So in his red blood Cassius' day is set;
The sun of Rome is set! Our day is gone;
Clouds, dews, and dangers come; our deeds are done!
Mistrust of my success hath done this deed.
Mes. Mistrust of good success hath done this deed.
O hateful Error, Melancholy's child!
Why dost thou show to the apt thoughts of men
The things that are not?10 O Error, soon conceived,
Thou never comest unto a happy birth,
But kill'st the mother that engender'd thee!
Tit. What, Pindarus! where art thou, Pindarus?
Mes. Seek him, Titinius, whilst I go to meet
The noble Brutus, thrusting this report
Into his ears: I may say, thrusting it ;
9 That is, interchange of victory and defeat.
10 Cassius is said to have been of a highly choleric or bilious tempera-
ment; as such, predisposed to melancholy, and hence apt to be taken with
imaginary evils, or to construe things to the worst.
#.
166
ACT V.
JULIUS CÆSAR.
For piercing steel and darts envenoméd
Shall be as welcome to the ears of Brutus
As tidings of this sight.
Tit.
Hie you, Messala,
And I will seek for Pindarus the while.
[Exit MESSALA.
Why didst thou send me forth, brave Cassius?
Did I not meet thy friends? and did not they
Put on my brows this wreath of victory,
And bid me give it thee? Didst thou not hear their shouts ?
Alas, thou hast misconstrued every thing
But, hold thee, take this garland on thy brow;
Thy Brutus bid me give it thee, and I
Will do his bidding. Brutus, come apace,
And see how I regarded Gaius Cassius.
By your leave, gods: this is a Roman's part:
Come, Cassius' sword, and find Titinius' heart.11
[Dies.
Alarum. Re-enter MESSALA, with BRUTUS, young CATO,
STRATO, VOLUMNIUS, and LUCILIUS.
Bru. Where, where, Messala, doth his body lie?
Mes. Lo, yonder, and Titinius mourning it.
Bru. Titinius' face is upward.
Cato.
He is slain.
Bru. O Julius Cæsar, thou art mighty yet!
Bru.
Thy spirit walks abroad, and turns our swords
11 By-and-by they knew the horsemen that came towards them, and might
see Titinius crowned with a garland of triumph, who came before with great
speed unto Cassius. But when he perceived, by the cries and tears of his
friends which tormented themselves, the misfortune that had chanced to
his captain Cassius by mistaking, he drew out his sword, cursing himself a
thousand times that he had tarried so long, and so slew himself presently
in the field. Brutus in the meantime came forward still, and understood
also that Cassius had been overthrown; but he knew nothing of his death
till he came very near to his camp. PLUTARCH.
SCENE III.
167
JULIUS CÆSAR.
In our own proper entrails."
Cato.
12
[Low alarums.
Brave Titinius !
Look, wher he have not crown'd dead Cassius!
Bru. Are yet two Romans living such as these ?·
Thou last of all the Romans, fare thee well!
It is impossible that ever Rome
Should breed thy fellow. — Friends, I owe more tears
To this dead man than you shall see me pay.
I shall find time, Cassius, I shall find time.
Come, therefore, and to Thassos send his body:
His funerals shall not be in our camp,
Lest it discomfort us.13 - – Lucilius, come;
And come, young Cato ;- let us to the field.
Labeo and Flavius, 14 set our battles on:-
'Tis three o'clock; and, Romans, yet ere night
We shall try fortune in a second fight.15
[Exeunt.
12 Brutus here strikes the proper key-note of the play. The matter is
well stated by Mr. Froude: "The murderers of Cæsar, and those who had
either instigated them secretly or applauded them afterwards, were included
in a proscription list, drawn by retributive justice on the model of Sulla's.
Such of them as were in Italy were immediately killed. Those in the prov-
inces, as if with the curse of Cain upon their heads, came one by one to
miserable ends. In three years the tyrannicides of the Ides of March, with
their aiders and abettors, were all dead; some killed in battle, some in
prison, some dying by their own hand."
13 So when he was come thither, after he had lamented the death of Cas-
sius, calling him the last of all the Romans, being unpossible that Rome
should ever breed again 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 funerals
within his camp should cause great disorder. PLUTARCH.
14 These two men are not named among the persons of the drama, be-
cause they speak nothing. Labeo was one of the stabbers of Cæsar; and it
is related that when he saw that all was lost, having dug his own grave, he
enfranchised a slave, and then thrust a weapon into his hand to kill him,
15 The Poet very judiciously represents both battles as occurring the
same day. They were in fact separated by an interval of twenty days.
168
ACT V.
JULIUS CÆSAR.
SCENE IV. — Another Part of the Field.
Alarum. Enter, fighting, Soldiers of both Armies; then
BRUTUS, Young CATO, LUCILIUS, and Others.
Bru. Yet, countrymen, O, yet hold up your heads!
Cato. What bastard doth not?1
Who will go with me?
I will proclaim my name about the field:
I am the son of Marcus Cato, ho !
A foe to tyrants, and my country's friend;
I am the son of Marcus Cato, ho !
[Charges the Enemy.
Bru. And I am Brutus, Marcus Brutus, I;
Brutus, my country's friend; know me for Brutus.
[Exit, charging the Enemy. CATO is
overpowered, and falls
Lucil. O young and noble Cato, art thou down?
Why, now thou diest as bravely as Titinius ;
And mayst be honour'd, being Cato's son.2
1 Sold. Vield, or thou diest.
Lucil.
Only I yield to die:
There is so much that thou wilt kill me straight;
[Offering money:
Kill Brutus, and be honour'd in his death.
I Sold. We must not. A noble prisoner!
2 Sold. Room, ho! Tell Antony, Brutus is ta’en.
I Sold. I'll tell the news.
Here comes the General. ·
1 Meaning, of course, "Who is such a bastard as not to do so?" For
another like expression, see page 138, note 4.
2 There was the son of Marcus Cato slain, valiantly fighting among the
lusty youth. For notwithstanding that he was very weary and over-harried,
yet would he not therefore fly, but manfully fighting and laying about him,
telling aloud his name, and also his father's name, at length he was beaten
down amongst many other dead bodies of his enemies which he had slain
round about him.- PLUTARCH.
SCENE IV.
169
JULIUS CÆSAR.
Enter ANTONY.
Brutus is ta'en, Brutus is ta'en, my lord.
Ant. Where is he?
Lucil. Safe, Antony; Brutus is safe enough:
I dare assure thee that no enemy
Shall ever take alive the noble Brutus :
The gods defend him from so great a shame!
When you do find him, or alive or dead,
He will be found like Brutus, like himself.
Go on,
Ant. This is not Brutus, friend; but, I assure you,
A prize no less in worth. Keep this man safe,
Give him all kindness: I had rather have
Such men my friends than enemies.3
And see whêr Brutus be alive or dead;
And bring us word unto Octavius' tent
How every thing is chanced.
[Exeunt.
* There was one of Brutus's friends called Lucilius, who seeing a troop
of barbarous men going right against Brutus, determined to stay them with
the hazard of his life, and, being left behind, told them that he was Brutus;
and, because they should believe him, he prayed them to bring him to An-
tonius, for he said he was afraid of Cæsar, and that he did trust Antonius
better. These barbarous men, being very glad of this good hap, carried him
in the night, and sent some before unto Antonius to tell him of their com-
ing. He was marvellous glad of it, and went out to meet them that brought
him. When they came near together, Antonius stayed awhile, bethinking
himself how he should use Brutus. In the meantime Lucilius was brought
to him, who stoutly with a bold countenance said: "Antonius, I dare assûre
thee, that no enemy hath taken or shall take Marcus Brutus alive, and I be-
seech God keep him from that fortune: for wheresoever he be found, alive
or dead, he will be found like himself. And now, for myself, I am come
unto thee, having deceived these men of arms here, bearing them down that
I was Brutus, and do not refuse to suffer any torment thou wilt put me to."
Lucilius's 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 sorry you have failed of your purpose, and
!
170
ACT V.
JULIUS CÆSAR.
SCENE V. — Another Part of the Field.
Enter BRUTUS, DARDANIUS, CLITUS, STRATO, and VOLUMNIUS.
Bru. Come, poor remains of friends, rest on this rock.
Cli. Statilius show'd the torch-light; but, my lord,
He came not back: he is or ta'en or slain.¹
Bru. Sit thee down, Clitus: slaying is the word;
It is a deed in fashion.2 Hark thee, Clitus.
[Whispering.
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."
Then he embraced Lucilius, and at that time delivered him to one of his
friends in custody; and Lucilius ever after served him faithfully, even to his
death. PLUTARCH.
1 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 Sta-
tilius be alive, he will come again." But his evil fortune was such that, as
he came back, he lighted in his enemies' hands and was slain.— PLU-
TARCH.
2 The philosopher indeed renounced all confidence in his own principles.
He had adopted them from reading or imitation; they were not the natural
growth of instinct or genuine reflection; and, as may easily happen in such
a case, his faith in them failed when they were tested by adversity. As long
as there seemed a chance that the godlike stroke would be justified by suc-
cess, Brutus claimed the glory of maintaining a righteous cause; but, when
all hope fled, he could take leave of philosophy and life together, and ex-
claim, I once dreamed that virtue was a thing; I find her only a name, and
the mere slave of fortune. He had blamed Cato for flying from misery by
self-murder; but he learnt to justify the same desperate act when he con-
templated committing it himself. - MERIVALE,
SCENE V.
171
JULIUS CÆSAR,
Cli. What, I, my lord? No, not for all the world.
Bru. Peace then! no words.
Cli.
Bru. Hark thee, Dardanius.
Dar.
Cli. O Dardanius!
Dar. O Clitus !
I'll rather kill myself.
[Whispers him.
Shall I do such a deed?
Ch. What ill request did Brutus make to thee?
Dar. To kill him, Clitus. Look, he meditates.
Cli. Now is that noble vessel full of grief,
That it runs over even at his eyes.
Bru. Come hither, good Volumnius; list a word.
Vol. What says my lord?
Bru
Why, this, Volumnius :
The ghost of Cæsar hath appear'd to me
Two several times by night; at Sardis once,
And, this last night, here in Philippi fields:
I know my hour is come.3
Vol.
Not so, my lord.
Read Bru. Nay, I am sure it is, Volumnius.
[Low alarums.
Thou see'st the world, Volumnius, how it goes;
Our enemies have beat us to the pit:
It is more worthy to leap in ourselves
Than tarry till they push us.

Good Volumnius,
3 So the Poet read in Plutarch: "The second battle being at hand, this
spirit appeared again unto him, but spake never a word. Thereupon Bru-
tus, knowing that he should die, did put himself to all hazard in battle, but
yet fighting could not be slain." Merivale has a strong sentence on this
point: "The legend that when preparing for the encounter with the trium-
virs he was visited by the ghost of Cæsar, which summoned him to meet
again at Philippi, marks the conviction of the ancients that in the crisis of
his fate he was stung by guilty remorse, and haunted by the presentiment
of final retribution."
172
ACT V.
JULIUS CÆSAR.
Thou know'st that we two went to school together :
Even for that our love of old, I pr'ythee,
Hold thou my sword-hilts, whilst I run on it.
Read
Vol. That's not an office for a friend, my lord.
[Alarums still.
Cli. Fly, fly, my lord! there is no tarrying here.
Bru. Farewell to you; -and you;- and you, Volum-
nius.
Strato, thou hast been all this while asleep;
Farewell to thee, too, Strato. - Countrymen,
My heart doth joy, that yet in all my life
I found no man but he was true to me.
I shall have glory by this losing day,
More than Octavius and Mark Antony
By their vile conquest shall attain unto.
So, fare you well at once; for Brutus' tongue
Hath almost ended his life's history:
Night hangs upon mine eyes; my bones would rest,
That have but labour'd to attain this hour.
[Alarums. Cry within, Fly, fly, fly!

Cli. Fly, my lord, fly !
Bru.
Hence! I will follow.
[Exeunt CLIT., Dardan., and Volum.
I pr'ythee, Strato, stay thou by thy lord:
Thou art a fellow of a good respect ; 4
Thy life hath had some smack of honour in it :
Hold, then, my sword, and turn away thy face,
While I do run upon it. Wilt thou, Strato?
Stra. Give me your hand first: fare you well, my lord.
Bru. Farewell, good Strato.
Cæsar, now be still:
4 A fellow well esteemed, or of good reputation. See page 48, note 17.
SCENE V.
173
JULIUS CÆSAR.
I kill'd not thee with half so good a will.5
[He runs on his sword, and dies.
Alarum. Retreat. Enter OCTAVIUS, ANTONY, MESSALA, LU-
CILIUS, and Army.
Oct. What man is that?
Mes. My master's man.
Strato, where is thy master?
Stra. Free from the bondage you are in, Messala :
The conquerors can but make a fire of him ;
For Brutus only overcame himself,
And no man else hath honour by his death.
Year
Lucil. So Brutus should be found. - I thank thee, Brutus,
5 Now the night being far spent, Brutus as he sat bowed towards Clitus,
one of his men, and told him somewhat in his ear: the other answered him
not, but fell a-weeping. Thereupon he proved Dardanius, and said some-
what also to him: at length he came to Volumnius himself, and, speaking
to him in Greek, prayed him for the studies' sake which brought them
acquainted together, that he would help him to put his hand to his sword,
to thrust it in him to kill him. Volumnius denied his request, and so did
many others; and, amongst the rest, one of them said, there was no tarrying
for them there, but 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." Then, taking every man by the hand, he said these words unto them
with a cheerful countenance: "It rejoiceth my heart, that not one of my
friends hath failed me at my need, and I do not complain of my fortune,
but only for my country's sake: for, as for me, I think myself happier than
they that have overcome, considering that I leave a perpetual fame of virtue
and honesty, the which our enemies the conquerors shall never attain unto
by force or money; neither can let their posterity to say that they, being
naughty and unjust men, have slain good men, to usurp tyrannical power
not pertaining to them." Having so said, he prayed every man to shift for
himself, and then he went a little aside with two or three only, among the
which Strato was one, with whom he came first acquainted by the study of
rhetoric. He came as near him as he could, and taking his sword by the
hilt with both his hands, and falling down upon the point of it, ran himself
through. Others
Others say that not he, but Strato, at his request, held the sword
in his hand, and turned his head aside, and that Brutus fell down upon it,
and so ran himself through, and died presently. — PLUTARCH,
174
ACT V.
JULIUS CÆSAR.
ד.
That thou hast proved Lucilius' saying true.
Oct. All that served Brutus, I will entertain them.6.
Fellow, wilt thou bestow thy time with me?
Stra. Ay, if Messala will prefer me to you.7
Oct. Do so, good Messala.
Mes. How died my master, Strato?
Stra. I held the sword, and he did run on it.
Mes. Octavius, then take him to follow thee,
That did the latest service to my master.
Ant. This was the noblest Roman of them all :
All the conspirators, save only he,
Did that they did in envy of great Cæsar ;
He only, in a general-honest thought
And common good to all,8 made one of them.
His life was gentle; and the elements
So mix'd in him,9 that Nature might stand up
And say to all the world, This was a man,
Oct. According to his virtue let us use him,
With all respect and rites of burial.
Within my tent his bones to-night shall lie,
Most like a soldier, order'd honourably. -
So, call the field to rest; and let's away,
To part the glories of this happy day.
[Exeunt.
6 "I will take them into my service." So in The Two Gentlemen, ii. 4:
"Sweet lady, entertain him for your servant."
Prefer was a common term for recommending a servant.
8 The force of in is, properly, continued over common good.
9 Referring to the old doctrine of the four elements, as they were called,
earth, water, air, and fire, the right mixing and tempering of which was sup-
posed to be the principle of all excellence in Nature. The Poet has a num-
ber of allusions to the doctrine, which was a commonplace of the time. The
sense of the word elements has so changed as to make the passage just as
true to the ideas of our time, as it was to those of three hundred years ago.
A rather curious fact.
workings
за
N

THE FUNERAL OF CÆSAR.*
THE
HE Dictator had bequeathed to each citizen the sum
of three hundred sesterces, or rather less than three
pounds sterling. The money itself, indeed, was not forth-
coming; for Antonius had already disposed of the whole
treasure which had fallen into his hands. But Octavius had
not yet arrived to discharge his patron's legacies; many
formalities and some chances lay between the public avowal
of these generous intentions and the claim for their actual
fulfilment; and Antonius in the meantime might turn to his
own account the grateful acknowledgment of the people for
a largess they might never be destined to enjoy. The bare
recital of Cæsar's testament operated on their feelings most
favourably to his interests. Now for the first time they were
fully roused to a sense of their benefactor's wrongs. Now
for the first time the black ingratitude of Decimus and the
others, his confidants and his assassins, stood revealed in its
hideous deformity. The sense of personal loss stifled every
* The paragraphs that follow under this heading are from Merivale's
History of the Romans under the Empire, Chapter xxiii. Taken all to-
gether, they form, to my judgment, one of the finest pieces of historical
portraiture that I know of in the language. And the passage illustrates so
happily the most interesting scene of the foregoing drama, that no apology
seems needful for reproducing it here. I have often read it, with good
effect, to my own Shakespeare classes in connection with that scene.
175
176
JULIUS CAESAR.
specious argument that could be advanced to extenuate the
crime. The vindication of the laws, the assertion of liberty,
the overthrow of a tyrant and a dynasty of tyrants, all sank at
once before the paramount iniquity of destroying the only
substantial benefactor the Roman people had ever had. Many
a magistrate or conqueror indeed had lavished shows and
festivals upon them; the city owed its noblest ornaments to
the rivalry of suitors for popularity; but these were candi-
dates for honours and distinctions, and had all a personal
object to serve; while the bequest of the murdered Julius
was deemed an act of pure generosity, for the dead can have
no selfish interests.
The heralds proclaimed throughout the city the appointed
place and hour of the obsequies. A funeral pyre was con-
structed in the Field of Mars, close to the spot where lay the
ashes of Julia; for the laws forbade cremation within the
walls; and the laws, enacted for purposes of health, were
reinforced by feelings of superstition. But the funeral ora-
tion was to be pronounced in the Forum, and a temporary
chapel, open on every side, modelled, it is said, after the
temple of Venus the Ancestress, was erected before the ros-
tra, and gorgeously gilded, for the reception of the body.
The bier was a couch inlaid with ivory, and strewn with
vestments of gold and purple. At its head was suspended,
in the fashion of a warrior's trophy, the toga in which the
Dictator had been slain, pierced through and through by the
assassins' daggers. Calpurnius Piso walked at the head of
the procession, as chief mourner; the body was borne by the
highest magistrates and most dignified personages of the
State; the people were invited to make oblations for the
pyre, of garments, arms, trinkets, and spices. So great was
the concourse of the offerers, that the order in which they
THE FUNERAL OF CÆSAR.
177
were appointed to present themselves could not be preserved,
but every one was allowed to approach the spot by whatever
route he chose from every corner of the city. When the
mangled remains were deposited in their place, they were
concealed from the gaze of the multitude; but in their stead
a waxen effigy was raised aloft, and turned about by ma-
chinery in every direction; and the people could distinctly
mark the three-and-twenty wounds represented faithfully
upon it.
Dramatic shows formed, as usual, a part of the
ceremony. Passages from the Electra of Atillius, and the
Contest for the Arms of Achilles, a celebrated piece of
Pacuvius, were enacted on the occasion. The murder of
Agamemnon, and the requital of Ajax, who complained that
in saving the Greeks he had saved his own assassins, fur-
nished pungent allusions to the circumstances of the time,
and moved the sensibilities of an inflammable populace.
While the feelings of the citizens were thus melting with
compassion or glowing with resentment, Antonius came for-
ward, as the first magistrate of the republic, to deliver the
funeral eulogy due to the mighty dead. Historians and
poets have felt the intense interest of the position he at that
moment occupied, and have vied with each other in delineat-
ing with the nicest touches the adroitness he displayed in guid-
ing the passions of his audience. Suetonius indeed asserts
that he added few words of his own to the bare recital of the
decrees of the Senate, by which every honour, human and
divine, had been heaped upon Cæsar, and of the oath by
which his destined assassins had bound themselves to his de-
fence. But Cicero tells a different story. He speaks with
bitter indignation of the praises, the commiseration, and the
inflammatory appeals, which he interwove with the address.
With such contemporary authority before us, we may believe
178
JULIUS CÆSAR,
that the speech reported by Appian is no rhetorical fiction,
but a fair representation, both in manner and substance, of
the actual harangue. The most exquisite scene in the truest
of all Shakespeare's historical delineations adds little, except
the charm of verse and the vividness of dramatic action, to
the graphic painting of the original record.
This famous speech was in fact a consummate piece of
dramatic art. The eloquence of Antonius was less moving
than the gestures which enforced it, and the accessory cir-
cumstances which he enlisted to plead on his behalf. He
addressed himself to the eyes, no less than to the ears of his
audience. He disclaimed the position of a panegyrist his
friendship with the deceased might render his testimony
suspected. He was, indeed, unworthy to praise Cæsar: the
voice of the people alone could pronounce his befitting
eulogy. He produced the Acts of the Senate, and of the
faction by whose hands Cæsar had fallen, as the vouchers of
his assertions. These he recited with a voice tremulous with
grief, and a countenance struggling with emotions. He read
the decrees which had within a twelvemonth heaped hon-
ours upon Cæsar, and which declared his person inviolable,
his authority supreme, and himself the chief and father of
his country. Were these honours excessive or dangerous to
the State, the Senate had bestowed them: did they even
trench upon the attributes of the gods, the pontiffs had sanc-
tioned them. And when he came to the words consecrated,
inviolable, father of his country, the orator pointed with
artful irony to the bleeding and lifeless corpse, which neither
laws nor oaths had shielded from outrage. He paused, and
the dramatic chorus sent forth some ancient wail, such as
ages before had been consecrated to the sorrows of heroes,
who like Cæsar had been kings of men, and of Houses which
like the Julian had sprung from gods and goddesses.
THE FUNERAL OF CÆSAR.
179
Then, from these examples of high fortune and its tragic.
issues, he passed on to recite the solemn oath by which the
Senate, the nobles, and among them the conspirators them-
selves, had devoted their hearts and hands to their hero's
defence; and thereupon, turning with glowing emotion
towards the temple of Jupiter, conspicuous on the Capitol,
he exclaimed: "And I, for my part, am prepared to main-
tain my vow, to avenge the victim I could not save." Such
words from the chief magistrate of the State were deeply
impressive. The Senators scowled and murmured. Anto-
nius pretended to check his impetuosity and address him-
self to soothing their alarm. After all, he said, it was not
the work of men, it was the judgment of the gods. Cæsar
was too great, too noble, too far above the race of men, too
nigh to the nature of the immortals, to be overthrown by
any power but that of divinity itself. "Let us bow," he ex-
claimed, "to the stroke as mortal men. Let us bury the
past in oblivion. Let us bear away these venerable remains
to the abodes of the blessed, with due lamentations and
deserved eulogies!"
With these words the consummate actor girt his robes
closely around him, and striding to the bier, with his head
inclined before it, muttered a hymn to the body, as to the
image of a god. In rapid verse or solemn modulated prose
he chanted the mighty deeds and glories of the deceased,
the trophies he had won, the triumphs he had led, the riches
he had poured into the treasury. "Thou, Cæsar, alone wast
never worsted in battle. Thou alone hast avenged our de-
feats and wiped away our disgraces. By thee the insults of
three hundred years stand requited. Before thee has fallen the
hereditary foe who burned the city of our fathers." So did
the Potitii and Pinarii recite their hymns to Hercules: so did
180
JULIUS CÆSAR.
the frantic hierophant sing the praises of Apollo. The flamen
of Julius seemed instinct with the inspiration of the altar and
the tripod, while he breathed the fanatic devotion of the
ancient faith.
The blood-smeared image was turned this way and that
for all eyes to gaze upon; and, as it seemed to writhe in the
agonies of death, the groans of men and the shrieks of
women drowned the plaintive accents of the speaker. Sud-
denly Antonius raised the mangled garment which hung over
the body itself, and waving it before the people disclosed the
rents of the murderers' daggers. The excitement of the
populace now became uncontrollable. Religious enthusiasm
fanned the flame of personal sympathy. They forbade the
body to be carried to the Field of Mars for cremation. Some
pointed to the temple of Jupiter, where the effigy of the demi-
god had been enthroned in front of the deity himself, and
demanded that it should be burnt in the holy shrine, and its
ashes deposited among its kindred divinities. The priests
stepped forward to avert this profanation; and it was then
proposed to consume the body in the Pompeian Curia,
whence the mighty spirit had winged its flight to the celes-
tial mansions.
Meanwhile chairs, benches, and tables had been snatched
from the adjacent buildings, a heap of fuel was raised before
the door of the pontifical mansion in the Forum, and the
body snatched by tumultuary hands was cast upon it in a
frenzy of excitement. Two young men, girt with swords, and
javelin in hand, were seen to apply the torch. Such a vision
had appeared in ancient times in the heat of battle. Castor
and Pollux, it was believed, had descended more than once
in human form to save the republic. A divine sanction
was thus given to the deed: every scruple was overruled;
CÆSAR AND THE CONSPIRATORS.
181
and it was resolved to consume the hero's remains in the
heart of his own city. The people continued to pile up
branches and brushwood; the musicians and players added
their costly garments to the heap, the veterans their arms,
the matrons their ornaments; even the trinkets which adorned
the children's frocks were torn off, and offered in the blazing
conflagration.
Cæsar was beloved by the Romans: he was not less dear
to the foreigners who owed so much to his ascendency, and
had anticipated so much more. Gauls, Iberians, Africans,
and Orientals, crowded in successive groups around the pyre,
and gave vent to the sense of their common misfortune.
Among them the Jews were eminently conspicuous. Cæsar
was the only Roman who had respected their feelings, and
assured them of his sympathy. Many of this people con-
tinued for several nights to assemble with sorrow and resent-
ment on the spot, and uttered another funeral dirge over the
blighted hopes of their nation.
Cæsar and the Conspirators.*
SIXTY Senators, in all, were parties to the immediate conspiracy.
Of these, nine tenths were members of the old faction whom Cæsar
had pardoned, and who, of all his acts, resented most that he
* The following pages are from the last three chapters of Mr. J. A.
Froude's new book entitled Cæsar: A Sketch. I am far from concurring
always, or even generally, in the accomplished author's opinions; and his
style, though eminently readable, lacks, I must think, something of the
calmness and candour proper to historic writing: but what he says of
Cæsar and his stabbers is, to my sense, no less true and just in matter than
fresh, vigorous, and tasteful in manner. The surpassing greatness both of
Cæsar himself and of the space he occupies in history will, I trust, be held
a sufficient reason for giving the matter a place in this volume.
182
JULIUS CÆSAR.
had been able to pardon them. Their motives were the ambition
of their order and personal hatred of Cæsar: but they persuaded
themselves that they were animated by patriotism; and as, in
their hands, the Republic had been a mockery of liberty, so they
aimed at restoring it by a mock tyrannicide. Their oaths and
their professions were nothing to them. If they were entitled to
kill Cæsar, they were entitled equally to deceive him. No stronger
evidence is needed of the demoralization of the Roman Senate
than the completeness with which they were able to disguise from
themselves the baseness of their treachery. One man only they
were able to attract into coöperation who had a reputation for
honesty, and could be conceived, without absurdity, to be ani-
mated by a disinterested purpose.
Marcus Brutus was the son of Cato's sister Servilia; and
although, under the influence of his uncle, he had taken the Sen-
ate's side in the war, he had accepted afterwards not pardon only
from Cæsar, but favours of many kinds, for which he had pro-
fessed, and probably felt, some real gratitude. He had married
Cato's daughter, Portia, and, on Cato's death had published a
eulogy upon him. Cæsar left him free to think and write what
he pleased. He had made him Prætor; he had nominated him
to the governorship of Macedonia. Brutus was perhaps the only
member of the senatorial party in whom Cæsar felt genuine con-
fidence. His known integrity, and Cæsar's acknowledged regard
for him made his accession to the conspiracy an object of partic-
ular importance. The name of Brutus would be a guaranty to
the people of rectitude of intention. Brutus, as the world went,
was of more than average honesty. He had sworn to be faithful
to Cæsar, as the rest had sworn; and an oath with him was not
a thing to be emotionalized away: but he was a fanatical repub-
lican, a man of gloomy habits, given to dreams and omens, and
easily liable to be influenced by appeals to visionary feelings.
Caius Cassius, his brother-in-law, was employed to work upon
him. Cassius, too, was Prætor that year, having been also nomi-
nated to office by Cæsar. He knew Brutus, he knew where and
how to move him. He reminded him of the great traditions of
CÆSAR AND THE CONSPIRATORS.
183
his name.
A Brutus had delivered Rome from the Tarquins.
The blood of a Brutus was consecrated to liberty. This, too,
was mockery: Brutus, who expelled the Tarquins, had put his
sons to death, and died childless: Marcus Brutus came of good
plebeian family, with no glories of tyrannicide about them; but
the imaginary genealogy suited well with the spurious heroics
which veiled the motives of Cæsar's murderers.
Brutus, once wrought upon, became with Cassius the most
ardent in the cause, which assumed the aspect to him of a sacred
duty. Behind them were the crowd of Senators of the familiar
faction, and others worse than they, who had not even the excuse
of having been partisans of the beaten cause; men who had
fought at Cæsar's side till the war was over, and believed, like
Labienus, that to them Cæsar owed his fortune. One of these
was Trebonius, who had misbehaved himself in Spain, and was
smarting under the recollection of his own failures. Trebonius
had been named by Cæsar for a future consulship; but a distant
reward was too little for him. Another and yet a baser traitor
was Decimus Brutus, whom Cæsar valued and trusted beyond all
his officers; whom he had selected as guardian for Octavius, and
had noticed, as was seen afterwards, with special affection in his
will. The services of these men were invaluable to the conspira-
tors on account of their influence with the army. Decimus
Brutus, like Labienus, had enriched himself in Cæsar's cam-
paigns, and had amassed near half a million of English money.
So composed was this memorable band, to whom was to fall
the bad distinction of completing the ruin of the senatorial rule.
Cæsar would have spared something of it; enough, perhaps, to
have thrown up shoots again as soon as he had himself passed
away in the common course of nature. By combining in a focus
the most hateful characteristics of the order, by revolting the
moral instincts of mankind by ingratitude and treachery, they
stripped their cause of the false glamour which they hoped to
throw over it. The profligacy and avarice, the cynical disregard
of obligation, which had marked the Senate's supremacy for a
century, had exhibited abundantly their unfitness for the high
184
JULIUS CÆSAR.
functions which had descended to them; but custom, and natural
tenderness for a form of government, the past history of which
had been so glorious, might have continued still to shield them
from the penalty of their iniquities. The murder of Cæsar filled
the measure of their crimes, and gave the last and necessary im-
pulse to the closing act of the revolution.
Cæsar was dead. But Cæsar still lived. 'It was not possible
that the grave should hold him." The people said that he was
a god, and had gone back to Heaven, where his star had been
seen ascending; his spirit remained on Earth, and the vain blows
of the assassins had been but "malicious mockery." "We have
killed the king," exclaimed Cicero in the bitterness of his disen-
chantment,
but the kingdom is with us still": "we have taken
away the tyrant; the tyranny survives."
..
Cæsar had not overthrown the oligarchy: their own incapacity,
their own selfishness, their own baseness, had overthrown them.
Cæsar had been but the reluctant instrument of the Power which
metes out to men the inevitable penalties of their own misdeeds.
They had dreamt that the Constitution was a living force which
would revive of itself as soon as its enemy was gone. They did
not know that it was dead already, and that they had themselves
destroyed it. The Constitution was but an agreement by which
the Roman people had consented to abide for their common good.
It had ceased to be for the common good. The experience of
fifty miserable years had proved that it meant the supremacy of
the rich, maintained by the bought votes of demoralized electors.
The soil of Italy, the industry and happiness of tens of millions
of mankind, from the Rhine to the Euphrates, had been the spoil
of five hundred families and their relatives and dependents, of
men whose occupation was luxury, and whose appetites were for
monstrous pleasures. The self-respect of reasonable men could
no longer tolerate such a rule in Italy or out of it.
In killing Cæsar the Optimates had been as foolish as they
were treacherous; for Cæsar's efforts had been to reform the
Constitution, not to abolish it. The Civil War had risen from
PERSONAL TRAITS OF CESAR.
185
their dread of his second consulship, which they had feared would
make an end of their corruptions; and that the Constitution
should be purged of the poison in its veins, was the sole condition
on which its continuance was possible. The obstinacy, the
ferocity, the treachery of the aristocracy had compelled Cæsar to
crush them; and the more desperate their struggles, the more
absolute the necessity became. But he alone could have restored
as much of popular liberty as was consistent with the responsi-
bilities of such a government as the Empire required. In Cæsar
alone were combined the intellect and the power necessary for
such a work: they had killed him, and in doing so had passed
final sentence on themselves. Not as realities any more, but as
harmless phantoms, the forms of the old Republic were hence-
forth to persist.
Personal Traits of Cæsar.
In person Cæsar was tall and slight. His features were more
refined than was usual in Roman faces; the forehead was wide
and high, the nose large and thin, the lips full, the eyes dark gray
like an eagle's, the neck extremely thick and sinewy. His com-
plexion was pale. His beard and moustache 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.
His health was uniformly strong until his last year, when he be-
came subject to epileptic fits. He was a great bather, and scru-
pulously clean in all his habits; abstemious in his food, and
careless in what it consisted; rarely or never touching wine, and
noting sobriety as the highest of qualities, when describing any
new people. He was an athlete in early life, admirable in all
manly exercises, and especially in riding. In Gaul he rode a
remarkable horse, which he had bred himself, and which would
let no one but Cæsar mount him. From his boyhood it was
observed that he was the truest of friends, that he avoided quar-
rels, and was most easily appeased when offended. In manner
186
JULIUS CÆSAR.
he was quiet and gentlemanlike, with the natural courtesy of high
breeding. On an occasion when he was dining somewhere, the
other guests found the oil too rancid for them: Cæsar took it
without remark, to spare his entertainer's feelings. When on a
journey through a forest with his friend Oppius, he came one
night to a hut where there was a single bed. Oppius being
unwell, Cæsar gave it up to him, and slept on the ground.
Cæsar as a Statesman.
Like Cicero, Cæsar entered public life at the bar. He belonged
by birth to the popular party, but he showed no disposition, like
the Gracchi, to plunge into political agitation. His aims were
practical. He made war only upon injustice and oppression;
and, when he commenced as a pleader, he was noted for the
energy with which he protected a client whom he believed to
have been wronged. When he rose into the Senate, his powers
as a speaker became strikingly remarkable. Cicero, who often
heard him, and was not a favourable judge, said that there was a
pregnancy in his sentences and a dignity in his manner which no
orator in Rome could approach. But he never spoke to court
popularity: his aim from first to last was better government, the
prevention of bribery and extortion, and the distribution among
deserving citizens of some portion of the public land which the
rich were stealing. The Julian laws, which excited the indigna-
tion of the aristocracy, had no other objects than these; and had
they been observed they would have saved the Constitution.
The purpose of government he conceived to be the execution of
justice; and a constitutional liberty under which justice was made
impossible did not appear to him to be liberty at all.
Cæsar, it was observed, when any thing was to be done, selected
the man who was best able to do it, not caring particularly who
or what he might be in other respects. To this faculty of dis-
cerning and choosing fit persons to execute his orders may be
ascribed the extraordinary success of his own provincial adminis-
tration, the enthusiasm which was felt for him in the North of
CÆSAR IN WAR.
187
Italy, and the perfect quiet of Gaul after the completion of the
conquest. Cæsar did not crush the Gauls under the weight of
Italy. He took the best of them into the Roman service, pro-
moted them, led them to associate the interests of the Empire
with their personal advancement and the prosperity of their own
people. No act of Cæsar's showed more sagacity than the intro-
duction of Gallic nobles into the Senate; none was more bitter
to the Scipios and Metelli, who were compelled to share their
august privileges with these despised barbarians.
Cæsar in War.
It was by accident that Cæsar took up the profession of a sol-
dier; yet perhaps no commander who ever lived showed greater
military genius. The conquest of Gaul was effected by a force
numerically insignificant, which was worked with the precision
of a machine. The variety of uses to which it was capable of
being turned implied, in the first place, extraordinary forethought
in the selection of materials. Men whose nominal duty was
merely to fight were engineers, architects, mechanics of the
highest order. In a few hours they could extemporize an im-
pregnable fortress on an open hillside. They bridged the Rhine
in a week. They built a fleet in a month. The legions at Alesia
held twice their number pinned within their works, while they
kept at bay the whole force of insurgent Gaul, entirely by scien-
tific superiority.
The machine, which was thus perfect, was composed of human
beings who required supplies of tools, and arms, and clothes,
and food, and shelter; and for all these it depended on the fore-
thought of its commander. Maps there were none. Countries
entirely unknown had to be surveyed; routes had to be laid out;
the depths and courses of rivers, the character of mountain passes,
had all to be ascertained. Allies had to be found among tribes
as yet unheard of. Countless contingent difficulties had to be
provided for, many of which must necessarily arise, though the
exact nature of them could not be anticipated.
188
JULIUS CÆSAR.
When room for accidents is left open, accidents do not fail to
be heard of. But Cæsar was never defeated when personally
present, save once at Gergovia, and once at Durazzo: the failure
at Gergovia was caused by the revolt of the Ædui; and the man-
ner in which the failure at Durazzo was retrieved showed Cæsar's
greatness inore than the most brilliant of his victories. He was
rash, but with a calculated rashness, which the event never failed
to justify. His greatest successes were due to the rapidity of his
movements, which brought him on the enemy before they heard
of his approach. He travelled sometimes a hundred miles a-day,
reading or writing in his carriage, through countries without
roads, and crossing rivers without bridges. No obstacle stopped
him when he had a definite end in view. In battle he sometimes
rode; but he was more often on foot, bareheaded, and in a con-
spicuous dress, that he might be seen and recognized. Again
and again by his own efforts he recovered a day that was half lost.
He once seized a panic-stricken standard-bearer, turned him
round, and told him that he had mistaken the direction of the
enemy. He never misled his army as to an enemy's strength;
or, if he misstated their numbers, it was only to exaggerate.
Yet he was singularly careful of his soldiers. He allowed his
legions rest, though he allowed none to himself. He rarely
fought a battle at a disadvantage. He never exposed his men to
unnecessary danger; and the loss by wear and tear in the cam-
paigns in Gaul was exceptionally and even astonishingly slight.
When a gallant action was performed, he knew by whom it had
been done; and every soldier, however humble, might feel
assured that if he deserved praise he would have it. The army
was Cæsar's family. When Sabinus was cut off, he allowed his
beard to grow, and he did not shave it till the disaster was
avenged. If Quintus Cicero had been his own child, he could
not have run greater personal risk to save him when shut up at
Charleroy. In discipline he was lenient to ordinary faults. and
not careful to make curious inquiries into such things. He liked
his men to enjoy themselves. Military mistakes in his officers,
too, he always endeavoured to excuse, never blaming them for
CÆSAR AS AN AUTHOR.
189
misfortunes, unless there had been a defect of courage as well as
judgment. Mutiny and desertion only he never overlooked.
And thus no general was ever more loved by, or had greater
power over, the army which served under him.
His leniency to the Pompeian faction may have been politic,
but it arose also from the disposition of the man. Cruelty origi-
nates in fear, and Cæsar was too indifferent to death to fear any
thing. So far as his public action was concerned, he betrayed
no passion save hatred of injustice; and he moved through life
calm and irresistible, like a force of Nature.
Cæsar as an Author.
i
Cicero has said of Cæsar's oratory, that he surpassed those who
practised no other art. His praise of him as a man of letters is
yet more delicately and gracefully emphatic. Most of his writ-
ings are lost; but their remain seven books of Commentaries on
the wars in Gaul, and three books upon the Civil War. Of these
it was that Cicero said, in an admirable image, that fools might
think to improve on them, but that no wise man would try it;
they were bare of ornament, the dress of style dispensed with,
like an undraped human figure perfect in all its lines, as Nature
made it. In his composition, as in his actions, Cæsar is entirely
simple. He indulges in no images, no laboured descriptions, no
conventional reflections. His art is unconscious, as the highest
art always is. The actual fact of things stands out as it really
was, not as mechanically photographed, but interpreted by the
calmest intelligence, and described with unexaggerated feeling.
No military narrative has approached the excellence of the history
of the war in Gaul. Nothing is written down which could be
dispensed with; nothing important is left untold; while the inci-
dents themselves are set off by delicate and just observations on
human character.
The books on the Civil War have the same simplicity and
clearness, but a vein runs through them of strong if subdued
emotion. They contain the history of a great revolution related
190
JULIUS CÆSAR.
by the principal actor in it; but no effort can be traced to set his
own side in a favourable light, or to abuse or depreciate his ad-
versaries. Cæsar does not exult over his triumphs or parade the
honesty of his motives. The facts are left to tell their own story;
and the gallantry and endurance of his own troops are not related
with more feeling than the contrast of the confident hopes of the
patrician leaders at Pharsalia and the luxury of their camp with
the overwhelming disaster which fell upon them. About himself
and his own exploits there is not one word of self-complacency
or self-admiration. In his writings, as in his life, Cæsar is
always the same, direct, straightforward, unmoved save by
occasional tenderness, describing with unconscious simplicity
how the work which had been forced upon him was accom-
plished. He wrote with extreme rapidity in the intervals of
other labour; yet there is not a word misplaced, not a sign of
haste anywhere, save that the conclusion of the Gallic war was
left to be supplied by a weaker hand.
CRITICAL NOTES.
ACT I., SCENE I.
Page 39. Enter FLAVIUS, MARULLUS, &c.— In the original, the
latter of these names is printed Murellus. So all through the play ex-
cept in one instance, where it is Murrellus.
P. 40. Mar. What trade, thou knave? thou naughty knave,
what trade? The original prefixes Fla." to this speech; but the
next two speeches prove, beyond question, that it belongs to Marullus.
Corrected by Capell.
A
P. 41. I meddle with no tradesman's matters, nor women's
matters, but with awl. The original has "but withal." Of course
a quibble is intended between all and awl; and it is not clear which
form ought to be used. As the quibble is addressed to the ear, it mat-
ters little. Some have found fault with tradesman's, and Farmer pro-
posed to read “no trade,—man's matters, nor woman's." Walker
observes, "Surely this is at least a step to the right reading."
ACT I., SCENE II.
P. 44. Stand you directly in Antonius' way. - Here, and gen-
erally, the name is printed Antonio in the original. And so with sev-
eral other names, Octavio, Flavio, and Claudio. Perhaps this grew, as
Steevens thought, from the players being more used to Italian than to
Roman terminations.
191
192
JULIUS CÆSAR.
P. 47. No, Cassius; for the eye sees not itself
But by reflection from some other thing.
The original
reads "by reflection, by some other things." Here by was doubtless
repeated by mistake; and singulars and plurals were very often con-
founded. The first of these corrections was made by Pope; the other,
by Walker.
P. 48. That you have no such mirror as will turn
Your hidden worthiness into your eye.
mirrors instead of mirror. Corrected by Walker.
P. 48. Were I a common laugher, or did use
To stale with ordinary oaths my love
The old text has
To every new protester. So Pope. Instead of laugher,
the original has Laughter; which, after all, may possibly be right, in
the sense of laughingstock. Some one has proposed "a common
lover": 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.
P. 49. Set honour in one eye, and death i' the other,
And I will look on death indifferently. — So Theobald and
Warburton. In the second of these lines, the original has both instead
of death. With both, the paralogism is surely too glaring, even for so
loose-knit a genius as Brutus.
P. 53. When could they say, till now, that talk'd of Rome,
That her wide walls encompass'd but one man?- The
original has walkes instead of walls. Perhaps the error grew from
talk'd in the preceding line. Corrected by Rowe.
er.
P. 55. As we have seen him in the Capitol,
*
Being cross'd in conference by some Senator. So Walk-
The original has Senators.
P. 60. Ay, if I be alive, and your mind hold, and your dinner
worth the eating. — Walker says, "Surely, and my mind hold.'
Your is absurd." Perhaps so; but I do not quite see it.
CRITICAL NOTES.
193
ACT I., SCENE III.
P. 63. A common slave-you'd know him well by sight—
Held up his left hand, &c.—The original reads “you know
him," &c. The correction is proposed by Dyce. The propriety of it
is, I think, evident. See foot-note 6.
P. 63. Against the Capitol I met a lion,
Who glared upon me, &c.—The original has glaz'd instead
of glared. Hardly worth noting, perhaps.
P. 64.
When these prodigies
Do so conjointly meet, let not men say,
These are their reasons; they are natural. — Collier's sec-
ond folio changes reasons to seasons. Upon this reading Professor
Craik comments thus: "This is their season might have been conceiv-
able;
but who ever heard it remarked of any description of phenom-
ena that these are their seasons." Nevertheless I am pretty sure that
similar phrases are current in common speech. And if any one were
to say,
"These parts of the year," or, "these months of Spring,
are just the times," or "the seasons for such storms," where would be
the absurdity of it? Besides, I do not see but that strict propriety of
speech requires this is their reason, as much as this is their season. So
I am apt to think that seasons is the right reading. See, however, foot-
note II.
P. 66.
You look pale, and gaze,
And put on fear, and case yourself in wonder, &c.—The
old text has cast instead of case. The correction occurred indepen-
dently to Mr. Swynfen Jervis and Mr. W. W. Williams, and is certainly
favoured by the words put on fear. See foot-note 18.
P. 66. Why old men fool, and children calculate.-The orig-
inal reads "Why Old men, Fooles, and Children calculate." This
makes the sense incoherent. The reading here adopted is coherent,
and gives the right sense, that old men in being foolish, and children
in being considerate, are acting as much against nature as the fires and
194
JULIUS CÆSAR.
ghosts, the birds and beasts, are in what has just been related of them.
The correction was proposed by Mitford. Lettsom says, "Read ‘old
men fool,' if this has not been noticed before.”
P. 67. To make them instruments of fear and warning
Unto some monstrous state. Now could I, Casca,
Name thee a man most like this dreadful night, &c.—So
Capell. The original reads "Name to thee a man."
P. 70. And the complexion of the element
Is favour'd like the work we have in hand,
A
Most bloody-fiery and most terrible. In the second of
these lines, the original has "Is Favors, like the Worke," &c. John-
son's reading, “In Favour's like," is commonly adopted; but I prefer
Capell's. See foot-note 34. — In the third line, the old text has "Most
bloodie, fierie." The correction is Walker's.
P. 70. No, it is Casca; one incorporate
To our attempt.
So Walker. The old text has Attempts.
The confusion of plurals and singulars is especially frequent in this
play.
P. 70.
Good Cinna, take this paper,
And look you lay it in the prætor's chair,
Where Brutus may best find it.—The original has “may
but find it." The correction was proposed by Professor Craik.
ACT II., SCENE I.
P. 74. Is not to-morrow, boy, the Ides of March? — The orig-
inal reads "the first of March." This evidently cannot be right, though
it may be what the Poet wrote: for in Plutarch, Life of Brutus, North's
translation, he read as follows: "Cassius asked him if he were deter-
mined to be in the Senate-house the first day of the month of March,
because he heard say that Cæsar's friends should move the Council
that day, that Cæsar should be called king by the Senate." Neverthe-
less the whole ordering of dates in the play is clearly against the old
reading; so that Theobald's correction must be accepted.
CRITICAL NOTES.
195
P. 75. My ancestor did from the streets of Rome
The Tarquin drive, &c. - So Dyce. The original has "my
Ancestors." See page 53, note 39.
P. 75. Speak, strike, redress!
To speak and strike?
Am I entreated, then,
So Pope. The old text lacks then,
which is needful to the metre, and helpful to the sense.
·
P. 76. Sir, March is wasted fourteen days. - So Theobald.
The original has “fifteene dayes," which cannot be right, as the Ides
fell on the fifteenth of March, and this is the day before the Ides.
P. 76. The genius and the mortal instruments
Are then in Council; and the state of man,
Like to a little kingdom, &c.—So the second folio. The
original has "the state of a man." Both sense and metre are evi-
dently against this reading; and Walker points out many like instances
of a interpolated. — I am all but certain that we ought to read con-
flict instead of council. See foot-note 16.
P. 77. For if thou pass, thy native semblance on,
Not Erebus itself were dim enough, &c.-The original
reads "For if thou path," &c. This has been defended by some, and
several instances cited of the verb to path; but those instances are
quite beside the mark, as they do not use the word in any such sense
as would justify its retention here. Coleridge proposed put, Walker
strongly approves it, and Dyce adopts it. This is certainly strong au-
thority, still I cannot reconcile myself to such a use of put. Surely a
man cannot be rightly said to put on his native looks; though he may
well be said to put them off, or to keep them on. On the other hand,
to pass may very well mean to walk abroad, or to pass the streets,
which is the sense wanted here. Of course, with this reading, "thy
native semblance on " is the ablative absolute; "thy native semblance
being on."
P. 79. No, not an oath: if not the face of men,
There
The sufferance of our souls, the time's abuse, &c.
has been much stumbling at the word face here; I hardly know why,
196
JULIUS CÆSAR.
{
Warburton reads fate; Mason proposed faith, Malone faiths, which
latter seems much the best of the three, as it would mean the plighted
faith of the conspirators. See foot-note 24.
P. 82.
This shall mark
Our purpose necessary, and not envious. So Collier's
second folio. The original has make instead of mark. The former
can only be explained "make our purpose seem necessary,"
which the word will hardly bear, but which the context plainly requires.
P. 83.
Yet I do fear him;
For, in th' ingrafted love he bears to Cæsar.
The original lacks do.
a sense
-So Pope.
So
P. 85. He loves me well, and I have given him reason.
Walker. The original has Reasons instead of reason. See foot-note 48.
P. 87.
And, upon my knees,
I charge you, by my once commended beauty, &c. - So
Pope and Hanmer; Walker, also, says, "I think, charge." The orig-
inal has "I charm you."
P. 91.
ACT II., SCENE II.
The things that threaten me
Ne'er look but on my back; when they shall see
The face of Cæsar, they are vanished. — The original has
threaten'd instead of threaten, which seems fairly required by the con-
text. Walker's correction.
P. 91. Fierce fiery warriors fought upon the clouds,
In ranks and squadrons and right form of war,
Which drizzled blood upon the Capitol;
The noise of battle hurtled in the air;
Horses did neigh, and dying men did groan; &c.— In the
first of these lines, the original has "fight upon the clouds," and, in the
last, "Horses do neigh," — errors which the context readily corrects.
CRITICAL NOTES.
197
P. 93. We are two lions litter'd in one day, &c.—The original
reads "We heare two lions." Theobald changed heare to were; but
are is evidently the right word; and so Capell.
P. 94. She dreamt to-night she saw my statua,
Which, like a fountain, &c.—The original has statue. It
appears that the word, though spelt statue, was sometimes used as a
trisyllable, statuië. But it is certain that the Latin form statua was
often used till long after Shakespeare's time. See foot-note 6.
P. 94. And these doth she apply for warnings and porténts
Of evils imminent; &c.- So Hanmer. The original has
"And evils"; doubtless an accidental repetition of And from the line
above.
ACT II., SCENE IV.
P. 99. Enter Artemidorus.—The original has "Enter the Sooth-
sayer." Rowe substitutes Artemidorus, and the change is thus justified
by Tyrwhitt: "The introduction of the Soothsayer here is unneces-
sary, and, I think, improper. All that he is made to say should be
given to Artemidorus; who is seen and accosted by Portia on his pas-
sage from his first stand to one more convenient."
an
P. 100. None that I know will be, much that I fear may chance.
— Dyce suspects, as he well may, that the words may chance are
interpolation." Certainly both sense and metre would be better with-
out them. Pope omits them.
ACT III., SCENE I.
If this be known,
P. 102.
Cassius or Cæsar never shall turn back,
M
For I will slay myself. - White and Professor Craik substi-
tute on for or; very injudiciously, I think. The change was proposed
by Malone, with the remark that "the next line strongly supports this
conjecture"; whereupon Ritson comments as follows: "He must
mean, it is presumed, in the Irish way; as a mere English reader
198
JULIUS CÆSAR.
would conclude that the next line totally destroys it. Cassius says, if
the plot be discovered, at all events either he or Cæsar shall never
return alive; for, if the latter cannot be killed, he is determined to
slay himself. The sense is as plain, as the alternative is just and
necessary, or the proposed reading ignorant and absurd."
P. 102. Popilius Lena speaks not of our purpose.
- The orig-
inal has purposes. But Cassius has just said, "I fear our purpose is
discoveréd." Corrected by Theobald.
P. 103. Casca. Are we all ready? - So Collier's second folio.
The original makes this question the beginning of Cæsar's next speech.
Ritson thought it should be given to one of the conspirators; and
Cinna has just said, "Casca, you are the first that rears your hand."
P. 104. And turn pre-ordinance and first decree
Into the play of children.—The original has lane instead
of play; a very palpable blunder. The correction is Mason's. John-
son proposed law, and several have adopted that reading. But what
is "the law of children"? To be sure, lane, in manuscript, looks more
like law than like play; but I do not see that this amounts to much.
P. 104. Met. Cæsar, thou dost me wrong.
Cæs. Cæsar did never wrong but with just cause,
Nor without cause will he be satisfied. I here restore a
genuine piece of the Poet's text as preserved and authenticated to us
by Ben Jonson. Instead of the three lines here quoted, the folio has
only a line and a half, thus: " Know, Cæsar doth not wrong, nor with-
out cause will he be satisfied." Jonson, in his Discoveries, speaking
of Shakespeare, has the following: "Many times he fell into those
things could not escape laughter: as when he said in the person of
Cæsar, one speaking to him, 'Cæsar, thou dost me wrong,' he replied,
'Cæsar did never wrong but with just cause,' and such like; which
were ridiculous." Jonson's personal and professional relations with
Shakespeare gave him every possible opportunity of knowing that
whereof he speaks. But, as compared with his great friend, he was
something of a purist in language; and his censure in this case has long
seemed to me rather captious. At all events Shakespeare repeatedly
CRITICAL NOTES.
199.
uses wrong, both noun and verb, in the sense of to hurt, to offend,
to cause pain. See foot-note 10. He seems to have been acquainted
with the etymological relationship of wrong, wring, and wrest. In the
text, Metellus uses wrong in the ordinary sense; Cæsar, in the sense
of to hurt, to wring, or to punish. Besides, the passage, as it stands
in the folio, carries in its face evident marks of mutilation: the words,
"Cæsar doth not wrong," &c., come in abruptly, and without any
proper occasion: hence Gifford justly supposed the Poet to have writ-
ten as in the text. As given in the folio, the word satisfied also seems
quite out of place; at least Cæsar has no apparent reason for using it.
But, in the passage as censured by Jonson, that word comes in natu-
rally, and in perfect dialogical order; the meaning being, "Cæsar did
never punish without just cause, nor without cause will he be satisfied
in the matter of punishment, or so as to revoke the sentence." How,
then, came the passage to be as the folio gives it? This question of
course cannot be definitively answered. As Jonson had some hand in
getting up the folio, it is nowise unlikely 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 understanding the two senses of wrong, struck out the
words but with just cause, 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. Such being the case, I can
offer no apology for the reading given in the text. I have already
cited Gifford's opinion in the matter. Halliwell has in substance ex-
pressed a like judgment. And Dr. Ingleby avows it as his conviction,
that the line which Jonson and his fellow-censors "laughed at 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."
P. 108. Casca. Why, he that cuts off twenty years of life
Cuts off so many years of fearing death. Some modern
editors transfer this speech to Cassius; but why? Surely it is more
characteristic of Casca than of Cassius. And I am the more unwilling
to take it from Casca, as it is the last he utters.
200
JULIUS CÆSAR.
P. 108.
How many ages hence
Shall this our lofty scene be acted o'er
In States unborn and accents yet unknown!- The orig-
inal has over instead of o'er, and State instead of States. Walker says,
"The flow requires o'er. Over for o'er is a frequent error of the folio."
The other correction was made in the second folio.
P. 108. That now on Pompey's basis lies along. So the sec-
ond folio. The first has lye instead of lies.
P. III. To you our swords have leaden points, Mark Antony:
Our arms in strength of amity, and our hearts
Of brothers' temper, do receive you in, &c.—The orig-
inal reads, "Our armes in strength of malice"; from which no con-
gruent sense can possibly be gathered. Many other changes have
been made or proposed, the best of which hitherto given is, I think,
Capell's, our swords have leaden points, Our arms no strength of
malice;" &c. But the logic and rhythm of the passage seem to re-
quire that the words "Our arms," &c., should be construed with what
follows, not with what precedes; for which cause I have never been
fully satisfied with Capell's reading. The reading in the text is Sing-
er's. Collier has lately proposed “strength of manhood”; which seems
to me exceedingly apt and happy; but amity, if not better in itself,
involves less of literal change, and has more support from other pas-
sages of Shakespeare. So in Antony and Cleopatra, ii. 6: "That
which is the strength of their amity shall prove the immediate author
of their variance."
P. 112.
And here thy hunters stand,
Sign'd in thy spoil, and crimson'd in thy death. — So
Pope, Theobald, and Collier's second folio. Instead of death, the orig-
inal has Lethee, which is commonly printed lethe. Capell says that
lethe here is "a term used 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."
P. 114. And that we are contented Cæsar shall
Have all due rites and lawful ceremonies.—So Pope,
Walker, and Collier's second folio. The origianl has true instead of due.
CRITICAL NOTES.
201
P. 115. Woe to the hands that shed this costly blood! - The
original has hand instead of hands. But Antony says to the stabbers
a little before, "whilst your purpled hands do reek," &c.
P. 115. A curse shall light upon the limbs of men. It is
quite amazing how much has been done, to help this innocent passage:
as changes made and proposed, in order to get rid of limbs, we have
kind, line, loins, lives, times, tombs, sons, and minds. If any change be
necessary, I should say souls, which, beginning with the long s, might
easily be misprinted limbs. But what need of change? See foot-
note 40.
P. 116. Passion, I see, is catching; for mine eyes,
Seeing those beads of sorrow stand in thine,
Begin to water. —The original has from instead of for, and
Began instead of Begin; — palpable errors, both.
P. 119.
ACT III., SCENE II.
Cæsar's better parts
Shall now be crown'd in Brutus. - So Pope. The original
lacks now.
P. 119. Do grace to Cæsar's corpse, and grace his speech,
Tending to Cæsar's glory. - The original has "Cæsar's Glo-
ries." Corrected by Walker. Brutus has just said "his glory not
extenuated."
P. 122. If thou consider rightly of the matter,
Cæsar has had great wrong.
3 Cit.
Has he not, masters? - The
original lacks not. Inserted by Professor Craik. Walker says, "Per-
haps we should read 'Has he, my masters?'"
P. 126. For I have neither wit, nor words, nor worth, &c.
So the second folio. The first has writ instead of wit.
P. 129. I heard 'em say, Brutus and Cassius
Are rid like madmen through the gates of Rome. -The
original reads "I heard him say."
202
JULIUS CÆSAR.
ACT III., SCENE III.
P. 129. I dreamt to-night that I did feast with Cæsar,
And things unlucky charge my fantasy. So Warburton.
The original has unluckily instead of unlucky. Walker says, "undoubt-
edly unlucky." See foot-note 1.
ACT IV., SCENE I.
P. 133. A barren-spirited fellow; one who feeds
On objects, arts, and imitations,
Which, out of use and staled, &c. - Theobald and, after
him, Dyce read “abject orts and imitations." This is, to me, little less
than shocking. It is true, Shakespeare uses both abject and orts; and
I presume we all know the meaning of both those words: but is it
credible that he could have been guilty of such a combination as
abject orts? Besides, does not the word imitations show that he had
in mind works of art? And why may not objects stand for any com-
mon objects of interest or curiosity? The Clarendon edition prints
abjects, orts and imitations"; which is certainly no improvement on
Theobald's reading. As to the objections urged against the old read-
ing, I can but say they are to me only not quite so absurd as the
changes they are made to cover. See foot-note 7.
CC
P. 134. Therefore let our alliance be combined,
Our best friends made, our means stretch'd out. So the
first folio, with the exception of the word out. The second folio makes
a full line, such as it is, thus: "Our best friends made, and our best
means stretch'd out." Neither reading is satisfactory, and modern
editors are, I believe, about equally divided between the two.
P. 135.
ACT IV., SCENE II.
Your master, Pindarus,
In his own charge, or by ill officers, &c. So Hanmer and
Warburton. The old text has change instead of charge. The latter
word, it seems to me, does not give the right sense; and we have
many instances of change and charge misprinted for each other.
CRITICAL NOTES.
203
P. 136. Lucius, do you the like; and let no man
Come to our tent till we have done our conference. -
Lucilius and Titinius, guard the door. Here, in the orig-
inal, the names Lucius and Lucilius got shuffled each into the other's
place; and then, to cure the metrical defect in the third line, that line
was made to begin with Let. Modern editors generally have rectified
the metre of the first line by striking out you,-"Lucilius, do the
like," &c. But this leaves things quite wrong in regard to the per-
sons; for Lucilius is an officer of rank; yet he is thus put to doing
the work of what we call an orderly, while Lucius, the orderly, or
errand-boy, is set in the officer's place. We are indebted to Professor
Craik for rectifying this piece of disorder.—In the third line, the
original reads "guard our door." Probably an accidental repetition
of our from the line above. Corrected by Rowe.
ACT IV., SCENE III.
P. 137. Whereas my letters, praying on his side
Because I knew the man, were slighted off.
Instead
of Whereas, the original has Wherein, which cannot easily be made to
yield a fitting sense.
P. 137. And let me tell you, Cassius, you yourself
Media
Are much condemn'd to have an itching palm. - So
Capell. The original is without And at the beginning of the speech.
Other editors have supplied Yet. Some such insertion is fairly required
for the prosody.
P. 138. I had rather be a dog, and bay the Moon,
Than such a Roman.
Cass.
-
Brutus, bay not me, &c.— Instead
of the second bay, the original reads baite, which has the same mean-
ing indeed; but probably, as Dyce says, "the author intended Cassius
to echo the word used by Brutus." The correction is Theobald's.
P. 138.
I am a soldier, ay,
Older in practice, abler than yourself, &c.—So Steevens.
The original reads "I am a Souldier, I," &c. The affirmative particle
204
JULIUS CÆSAR.
ay is there very often printed I; and such I think is the case here;
for the repetition of the pronoun I seems awkward and unnatural.
P. 140.
For mine own part,
So Collier's second
""
-
I shall be glad to learn of abler men.
folio. The original has "of Noble men. As Cassius has in fact used
the word abler, there can, I think, bę little scruple about the correction.
P. 142. A flatterer's would not, though they did appear
As huge as high Olympus. So Collier's second folio. The
original has "though they do appear."
P. 143.
Yes, Cassius; and henceforth,
When you are over-earnest with your Brutus, &c.— The
original reads "and from henceforth." Here from is palpably redun-
dant both in metre and in sense. Shakespeare probably wrote from
hence, and then corrected the latter word into henceforth; and both
got printed together. Capell omits from.
P. 148. Come on refresh'd, new-aided, and encouraged. So
Dyce and Singer. The original has new added instead of new-aided.
Collier's second folio has "new-hearted.”
P. 149. Lucius, my gown! - Farewell now, good Messala:-
Good night, Titinius: &c.—The original is without now.
Some such insertion is required for the metre. Hanmer printed “Now,
farewell," and Walker says, "Perhaps fare you well."
P. 150. Varro and Claudius!— Here, and again afterwards, in
the text, as also in the stage-directions, the original has Varrus and
Claudio. There is, I believe, no doubt that the right names are Clau-
dius and Varro. As before noted, Flavius and Qctavius are repeat-
edly misprinted Flavio and Octavio.
ACT V., SCENE I.
P. 156. Whilst damnèd Casca, like a cur, behind
Struck Cæsar on the neck. O flatterers! -The original
has "O you Flatterers." Reasons of prosody caused you to be struck
out long ago; but some recent editors restore it.
CRITICAL NOTES.
205
P. 158. Be thou my witness that against my will,
As Pompey was, I am compell'd to set
Upon one battle all our liberties. — The original inverts the
But "be witness that am I compell'd" is not an Eng-
Corrected by Walker.
order of I am.
lish construction.
P. 158. Coming from Sardis, on our foremost ensign
Two mighty eagles fell; &c. — Instead of foremost, the orig-
inal has former, which is said to have been sometimes used in the
sense of foremost. But the passage cited as proving such a usage
seems to me irrelevant. The correction is Rowe's.
ACT V., SCENE III.
P. 167. Thou last of all the Romans, fare thee well! - Instead
of Thou, the original has The. The old abbreviations of the and
thou were often confounded. Corrected by Rowe.
P. 167. Come, therefore, and to Thassos send his body:
His funerals shall not be in our camp,
Lest it discomfort us.
Corrected by Theobald.
The original has Thassus for Thas-
Properly it should be Thasos; but
North's Plutarch has it Thassos. - Some have changed funerals to
SOS.
funeral; also, in the next scene but one, hilts to hilt.
and hilts are old forms of the singular in those words.
note 6.
But funerals
See page 164,
ACT V., SCENE IV.
P. 168. I'll tell the news.
Here comes the general. — The
original reads "Ile tell thee newes." Pope's correction.
ACT V., SCENE V.
P. 172. I shall have glory by this losing day,
More than Octavius and Mark Antony
By their vile conquest shall attain unto. - The original
reads "By this vile conquest." Walker proposes their, and adds,
"The repetition seems awkward and un-Shakespearian."
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