Part 8
[Note 312: /humour./ To 'humor' a man, as the word is here used, is to turn and wind and manage him by watching his moods and crotchets, and to touch him accordingly. It is somewhat in doubt whether the 'he' in the preceding line refers to Brutus or to Cæsar. If to Brutus, the meaning of course is: he should not play upon my humors and fancies as I do upon his. And this sense is 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. Johnson refers 'he' to Cæsar.]
[Note 313: /hands:/ handwritings. So the word is used colloquially to-day.]
[Note 319: We will either shake him, or endure worse days in suffering the consequences of our attempt.--Shakespeare makes Cassius overflow with intense personal spite against Cæsar. This is in accordance with what he read in North's Plutarch.]
[Page 30]
## SCENE III. _The same. A street_
_Thunder and lightning. Enter, from opposite sides_, CASCA, _with his sword drawn, and_ CICERO
CICERO. Good even, Casca: brought you Cæsar home? Why are you breathless? and why stare you so?
CASCA. Are you not mov'd, when all the sway of earth Shakes like a thing unfirm? O Cicero, I have seen tempests, when the scolding winds 5 Have riv'd the knotty oaks, and I have seen Th' ambitious ocean swell and rage and foam, To be exalted with the threatening clouds; But never till to-night, never till now, Did I go through a tempest dropping fire. 10 Either there is a civil strife in heaven, Or else the world, too saucy with the gods, Incenses them to send destruction.
[Note: SCENE III Capell | Scene VI Pope.]
[Note: _Enter, from ..._ | Enter Caska, and Cicero Ff.]
[Note 10: /tempest dropping fire/ Rowe | tempest-dropping-fire Ff.]
[Note: SCENE III. Rowe added "with his sword drawn" to the Folio stage direction, basing the note on l. 19.
A month has passed since the machinery of the conspiracy was set in motion. The action in the preceding scene took place on the day of the Lupercalia; the action in this is on the eve of the Ides of March.]
[Note 1: /brought:/ accompanied. Cf. _Richard II_, I, iv, 2.]
[Note 3-4: /sway of earth:/ established order. "The balanced swing of earth."--Craik. "The whole weight or momentum of this globe."--Johnson. In such a raging of the elements, it seems as if the whole world were going to pieces, or as if the earth's steadfastness were growing 'unfirm.' "'Unfirm' is not firm; while 'infirm' is weak."--Clar.]
[Note 11-13: Either the gods are fighting among themselves, or else they are making war on the world for being overbearing in its attitude towards them. For Shakespeare's use of 'saucy,' see Century.]
[Note 13: /destruction./ Must be pronounced as a quadrisyllable.]
[Page 31]
CICERO. Why, saw you any thing more wonderful?
[Note 14: /any thing more wonderful./ This may be interpreted as 'anything that was more wonderful,' or 'anything more that was wonderful.' The former seems the true interpretation. For the 'wonderful' things that Casca describes, Shakespeare was indebted to the following passage from Plutarch's _Julius Cæsar_, which North in the margin entitles "Predictions and foreshews of Cæsar's death": "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 furthermore, that there was a slave of the soldiers that did cast a marvellous burning 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." This passage is worth special attention, as Shakespeare uses many of the details again in II, ii, 17-24, 39-40. Cf. _Hamlet_, I, i, 113-125.]
[Page 32]
CASCA. A common slave--you know him well by sight-- 15 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, 20 Who glaz'd upon me and went surly by Without annoying me: and there were drawn Upon a heap a hundred ghastly women, Transformed with their fear, who swore they saw Men all in fire walk up and down the streets. 25 And yesterday the bird of night did sit Even at noon-day upon the market-place, Hooting and shrieking. When these prodigies Do so conjointly meet, let not men say, 'These are their reasons; they are natural;' 30 For, I believe, they are portentous things Unto the climate that they point upon.
[Note 21: /glaz'd/ Ff | glar'd Rowe.--/surly/ F1 F4 | surely F2 F3.]
[Note 28: /Hooting/ Johnson | Howting F1 F2 F3 | Houting F4.]
[Note: 15. /you know./ Dyce suggested 'you'd know'; Craik, 'you knew.' But the text as it stands is dramatically vivid and realistic.]
[Note 21: /Who./ See Abbott, § 264.--/glaz'd./ Rowe's change to 'glar'd' is usually adopted as the reading here, but 'glaze' is used intransitively in Middle English in the sense of 'shine brilliantly,' and Dr. Wright (Clar) says: "I am informed by a correspondent that the word 'glaze' in the sense of 'stare' is common in some parts of Devonshire, and that 'glazing like a conger' is a familiar expression in Cornwall." See Murray for additional examples.]
[Note 23: /Upon a heap:/ together in a crowd. 'Heap' is often used in this sense in Middle English as it is colloquially to-day. The Anglo-Saxon _héap_ almost always refers to persons. In _Richard III_, II, i, 53, occurs "princely heap." So "Let us on heaps go offer up our lives" in _Henry V_, IV, v, 18.]
[Note 26: /the bird of night./ The old Roman horror of the owl is well shown in this passage (spelling modernized) of Holland's Pliny, quoted by Dr. Wright (Clar): "The screech-owl betokeneth 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."]
[Note 30: /These:/ such and such. Cf. "these and these" in II, i, 31. Casca refers to the doctrine of the Epicureans, who were slow to believe that such pranks of the elements had any moral significance in them, or that moral causes had anything to do with them, and held that the explanation of them was to be sought for in the simple working of natural laws and forces. Shakespeare deals humorously with these views in _All's Well that Ends Well_, II, iii, 1-6.]
[Note 32: /climate:/ region, country. So _Richard II_, IV, i, 130. Cf. _Hamlet_, I, i, 125: "Unto our climatures and countrymen."]
[Page 33]
CICERO. Indeed, it is a strange-disposed time: But men may construe things after their fashion, Clean from the purpose of the things themselves. 35 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.
CICERO. Good night then, Casca: this disturbed sky 39 Is not to walk in.
CASCA. Farewell, Cicero. [_Exit_ CICERO]
_Enter_ CASSIUS
CASSIUS. Who's there?
CASCA. A Roman.
CASSIUS. Casca, by your voice.
CASCA. Your ear is good. Cassius, what night is this!
[Note 36: /to/ F1 F2 | up F3 F4.]
[Note 41: Scene VII Pope.]
[Note 42: Two lines in Ff.--/this!/ Dyce this? Ff.]
[Note 35: /Clean:/ quite, completely. From the fourteenth century to the seventeenth 'clean' was often used in this sense, usually with verbs of removal and the like, and so it is still used colloquially. For 'from' without a verb of motion, see Abbott, § 158.]
[Note 42: /what:/ what a. For the omission of the indefinite article, common in Shakespeare, see Abbott, § 86. In the Folios the interrogation mark and the exclamation mark are often interchanged.]
[Page 34]
CASSIUS. A very pleasing night to honest men.
CASCA. Who ever knew the heavens menace so?
CASSIUS. Those that have known the earth so full of faults. For my part, I have walk'd about the streets, 46 Submitting me unto the perilous night, And thus unbraced, Casca, as you see, Have bar'd my bosom to the thunder-stone: And when the cross blue lightning seem'd to open 50 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 55 Such dreadful heralds to astonish us.
[Note 50: /blue/ | blew F1.]
[Note 48: /unbraced:/ unbuttoned, with open doublet. For such anachronisms see note, p. 26, l. 263; also p. 48, l. 73.]
[Note 49: /thunder-stone:/ thunder-bolt. It is still a common belief in Scotland and Ireland that a stone or bolt falls with lightning. Cf. _Cymbeline_, IV, ii, 271: "Nor the all-dreaded thunder-stone."]
[Note 50: /cross:/ zigzag. So in _King Lear_, IV, vii, 33-35:
To stand against the deep, dread-bolted thunder? In the most terrible and nimble stroke Of quick, cross lightning?]
[Page 35]
CASSIUS. 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 cast yourself in wonder, 60 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, Why old men, fools, and children calculate; 65 Why all these things change from their ordinance, Their natures and preformed faculties, To monstrous quality, why, you shall find That heaven hath infus'd them with these spirits, To make them instruments of fear and warning 70 Unto some monstrous state. Now could I, Casca, name to thee a man Most like this dreadful night, That thunders, lightens, opens graves, and roars As doth the lion in the Capitol, 75 A man no mightier than thyself or me In personal action, yet prodigious grown, And fearful, as these strange eruptions are.
[Note 57-60: Five lines in Ff.]
[Note 65: /old men, fools, and/ | Old men, Fooles, and F1 F2 | Old men, Fools, and F3 F4 | old men fools, and Steevens | old men fool and White.]
[Note 74: /roars/ | roares F1 | teares F2.]
[Note 60: /cast yourself in:/ throw yourself into a state of. In previous editions of Hudson's Shakespeare Jervis's conjecture 'case' for 'cast' was adopted. The change is unnecessary. Cf. _Cymbeline_, III, ii, 38: "Though forfeiters you cast in prison."]
[Note 63-68: The construction here is involved, and the grammar confused, but the meaning is clear enough. The general idea is that of elements and animals, and even human beings,
## 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.]
[Note 64: /from quality and kind:/ turn from their disposition and nature. Emerson and Browning use 'quality' (cf. l. 68) in this old sense of 'disposition.' 'Kind,' meaning 'nature,' is common in Shakespeare.]
[Note 65: There seems no necessity for changing the reading of the Folios. This conjunction of old men, fools, and children is found in country sayings in England to-day. So in a Scottish proverb: "Auld fowks, fules, and bairns should never see wark half dune," White's reading was first suggested by Mitford.]
[Note 67: /preformed:/ originally created for some special purpose.]
[Note 71: /monstrous state:/ abnormal condition of things. 'Enormous state' occurs with probably the same general meaning in _King Lear_, II, ii, 176. 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 hesitate to say what he does not himself believe.]
[Note 75: This reads as if a lion were kept in the Capitol. But the meaning probably 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. Dr. Wright suggests that Shakespeare had in mind the lions kept in the Tower of London, "which there is reason to believe from indications in the play represented the Capitol to Shakespeare's mind." It is possible, too, that we have here a reference to the lion described by Casca in ll. 20-22.]
[Note 77: /prodigious:/ portentous. As in _A Midsummer Night's Dream_, V, i, 419: "Never mole, hare lip, nor scar, Nor mark prodigious."]
[Page 36]
CASCA. 'Tis Cæsar that you mean, is it not, Cassius?
CASSIUS. Let it be who it is; for Romans now 80 Have thews and limbs like to their ancestors; But, woe the while! our fathers' minds are dead, And we are govern'd with our mothers' spirits; Our yoke and sufferance show us womanish.
CASCA. Indeed, they say the senators to-morrow 85 Mean to establish Cæsar as a king; And he shall wear his crown by sea and land, In every place save here in Italy.
[Note 79: Two lines in Ff.]
[Note 81: /thews/ | Thewes F1 F2 | Sinews F3 F4.]
[Note 80: /Let it be who it is:/ "no matter who it is."--Clar.]
[Note 81: /thews:/ muscles. So in _Hamlet_, I, iii, 12, and _2 Henry IV_, III, ii, 276. In Chaucer and Middle English the word means 'manners,' though in Layamon's _Brut_ (l. 6361), in the singular, it seems to mean 'sinew' or 'strength.' See Skeat for a suggestive discussion.]
[Note 83: /with:/ by. So in III, ii, 196. See Abbott, § 193.]
[Page 37]
CASSIUS. I know where I will wear this dagger then; Cassius from bondage will deliver Cassius. 90 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; 95 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. [_Thunder still_]
CASCA. So can I: 100 So every bondman in his own hand bears The power to cancel his captivity.
CASSIUS. 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: 105 He were no lion, were not Romans hinds. Those that with haste will make a mighty fire Begin it with weak straws: what trash is Rome, What rubbish and what offal, when it serves For the base matter to illuminate 110 So vile a thing as Cæsar! But, O grief, Where hast thou led me? I perhaps speak this Before a willing bondman; then I know My answer must be made. But I am arm'd, And dangers are to me indifferent. 115
[Note 95: Can repress by force man's energy of soul.]
[Note 101: /bondman./ The word 'cancel' in the next line shows that Casca plays on the two senses of 'bond.' Cf. _Cymbeline_, V, iv, 28.]
[Note 107-108: 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 surely better than Brutus's stabbing sentimentalism.]
[Note 112-115: The meaning is, Perhaps you will go and tell 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.]
[Page 38]
CASCA. You speak to Casca, and to such a man That is no fleering tell-tale. Hold, my hand: Be factious for redress of all these griefs, And I will set this foot of mine as far As who goes farthest.
CASSIUS. There's a bargain made. 120 Now know you, Casca, I have mov'd already Some certain of the noblest-minded Romans To undergo with me an enterprise Of honourable-dangerous consequence; And I do know, by this they stay for me 125 In Pompey's porch: for now, this fearful night, There is no stir or walking in the streets, And the complexion of the element In favour's like the work we have in hand, Most bloody, fiery, and most terrible. 130
[Note 129: /In favour's like/ Camb | In favour's, like Johnson | Is Favors, like F1 F2 | Is Favours, like F3 F4 | Is favour'd like Capell | Is feav'rous, like Rowe.]
[Note 130: /bloody, fiery/ | bloodie, fierie Ff | bloody-fiery Dyce.]
[Note 117: /Fleering./ This word of Scandinavian origin seems to unite the senses of 'grinning,' 'flattering' (see _Love's Labour's Lost_, V, ii, 109, and Ben Jonson's "fawn and fleer" in _Volpone_, III, i, 20), and 'sneering,' and so is just the right epithet for a telltale, 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.--/Hold, my hand:/ stay! here is my hand. As men clasp hands in sealing a bargain. In Rowe's text the comma is omitted.]
[Note 118: /Be factious:/ be active. Or it may mean, 'form a party,' 'join a conspiracy.'--/griefs:/ grievances. The effect put for the cause. A common Shakespearian metonymy. Cf. III, ii, 211; IV, ii, 42, 46.]
[Note 123: /undergo:/ undertake. So in _2 Henry IV_, I, iii, 54; _The Winter's Tale_, II, iii, 164; IV, iv, 554.]
[Note 125: /by this:/ by this time. So in _King Lear_, IV, vi, 45.]
[Note 126: /Pompey's porch./ This was a spacious adjunct to the huge theater that Pompey had built in the Campus Martius, outside of the city proper; and there, as Plutarch says in _Marcus Brutus_, "was set up the image of Pompey, which the city had made and consecrated in honour of him, when he did beautify that part of the city with the theatre he built, with divers porches about it." Here it was that Cæsar was stabbed to death; and though Shakespeare transfers the assassination to the Capitol, he makes Cæsar's blood stain the statue of Pompey. See III, ii, 187, 188.]
[Note 128: /element:/ sky. Twice Shakespeare seems to poke fun at the way in which the Elizabethans overdid the use of 'element' in this sense, in _Twelfth Night_, III, i, 65, and in _2 Henry IV_, IV, iii, 58.]
[Note 129: /favour:/ appearance. So in I, ii, 91. Johnson's emendation, though pleonastic, makes least change upon the text of the Folios.]
[Page 39]
_Enter_ CINNA.
CASCA. Stand close awhile, for here comes one in haste.
CASSIUS. 'Tis Cinna; I do know him by his gait; He is a friend. Cinna, where haste you so?
CINNA. To find out you. Who's that? Metellus Cimber?
CASSIUS. No, it is Casca; one incorporate 135 To our attempts. Am I not stay'd for, Cinna?
[Note 132: /gait/ Johnson | gate Ff.]
[Note 131: /close:/ hidden. So in _1 Chronicles_, xii, 1: "He yet kept himself close because of Saul the son of Kish."]
[Note 135: /incorporate:/ closely united. Shakespeare uses this word nine times,--four times as an adjective and five times as a verb. With regard to the omission of _-ed_ in
## participial forms, see Abbott, § 342.]
[Page 40]
CINNA. I'm glad on't. What a fearful night is this! There's two or three of us have seen strange sights.
CASSIUS. Am I not stay'd for? tell me.
CINNA. Yes, you are. O, Cassius, if you could 140 But win the noble Brutus to our party--
CASSIUS. Be you content. Good Cinna, take this paper, And look you lay it in the prætor's chair, Where Brutus may but find it; and throw this In at his window; set this up with wax 145 Upon old Brutus' statue: all this done, Repair to Pompey's porch, where you shall find us. Is Decius Brutus and Trebonius there?
[Note 137: Two lines in Ff.]
[Note 140: /O, Cassius/ | Ff print in line 139.]
[Note 141: /the noble Brutus/ | Ff print in line 140.]
[Note 143: /in the prætor's chair./ "But for Brutus, his friends and countrymen, both by divers procurements and sundry rumours of the city, and by many bills[A] 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.'"--Plutarch, _Marcus Brutus_.]
[Note A: i.e. /scrolls/.]
[Note 144: /Brutus may but find it:/ only Brutus may find it.]
[Note 148: For a discussion of singular verbs with plural subjects, see Abbott, § 333. Cf. l. 138, l. 155; III, ii, 26.--/Decius Brutus/. As indicated in the notes to the Dramatis Personæ, this should be 'Decimus Brutus.' Shakespeare found the form 'Decius' in North's Plutarch, who translated from Amyot, in whose French version the blunder was originally made. Decimus Brutus is said to have been cousin to the other Brutus of the play. He had been one of Cæsar's ablest, most favored, 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.]
[Page 41]
CINNA. All but Metellus Cimber; and he's gone To seek you at your house. Well, I will hie, 150 And so bestow these papers as you bade me.
CASSIUS. That done, repair to Pompey's theatre.
[_Exit_ CINNA]
Come, Casca, you and I will yet ere day See Brutus at his house: three parts of him Is ours already, and the man entire 155 Upon the next encounter yields him ours.
CASCA. O, he sits high in all the people's hearts; And that which would appear offence in us, His countenance, like richest alchemy, Will change to virtue and to worthiness. 160
CASSIUS. Him and his worth and our great need of him, You have right well conceited. Let us go, For it is after midnight, and ere day 163 We will awake him and be sure of him. [_Exeunt_]
[Note 151: /bade/ Rowe | bad Ff.]