Part 9

[Note 159: /countenance/: support.--/alchemy/: the old ideal art of turning base metals into gold. So in _Sonnets_, XXXIII, 4: "Gilding pale streams with heavenly alchemy." Cf. _King John_, III, i, 78.]

[Note 162: /conceited/: formed an idea of, conceived, judged. 'Conceit' as a verb occurs again in III, i, 193, and in _Othello_, III, iii, 149.]

[Page 42]

## ACT II

## SCENE I. _Rome._ BRUTUS'S _orchard_

_Enter_ BRUTUS

BRUTUS. 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? awake, I say! what, Lucius!

_Enter_ LUCIUS

LUCIUS. Call'd you, my lord?

BRUTUS. Get me a taper in my study, Lucius: When it is lighted, come and call me here.

LUCIUS. I will, my lord. [_Exit_]

[Note: _Rome ... Enter_ BRUTUS Malone | Enter Brutus in his Orchard Ff.]

[Note 5: /when?/ Ff | when! Delius.--/what, Lucius!/ | what Lucius? Ff.]

[Note: _orchard._ Shakespeare generally uses 'orchard' in its original sense of 'garden' (literally 'herb-garden,' Anglo-Saxon _ort-geard_).]

[Note 1: /What./ A common exclamation frequent in Shakespeare. So in V, iii, 72. The 'when' of l. 5 shows increasing impatience.]

[Page 43]

BRUTUS. It must be by his death: and, for my part, 10 I know no personal cause to spurn at him, But for the general. He would be crown'd: How that might change his nature, there's the question. It is the bright day that brings forth the adder, And that craves wary walking. Crown him?--that;-- 15 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 20 More than his reason. But '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, 25 Looks in the clouds, scorning the base degrees By which he did ascend. So Cæsar may; Then, lest he may, prevent. And, since the quarrel Will bear no colour for the thing he is, Fashion it thus; that what he is, augmented, 30 Would run to these and these extremities; And therefore think him as a serpent's egg Which, hatch'd, would, as his kind, grow mischievous, And kill him in the shell.

[Note 15: /him?--that;/--Camb Globe | him that, Ff | him--that--Rowe.]

[Note 23: /climber upward/ Ff | climber-upward Warburton.]

[Note 28: /lest/ F2 F3 F4 | least F1.]

[Note 10: Brutus has been casting about on all sides to find some means to prevent Cæsar's being king, and here admits that it can be done only by killing him. Thus the soliloquy opens in just the right way to throw us back upon his antecedent meditations. In expression and in feeling it anticipates _Hamlet_, III, i, 56-88. From now onwards the speeches of Brutus strangely adumbrate those of Hamlet.]

[Note 12: /the general/: the general public, the community at large. Cf. _Hamlet_, II, ii, 457, "pleas'd not the million; 't was caviare to the general." See III, ii, 89, and V, v, 71-72.]

[Note 14: The sunshine of royalty will kindle the serpent in Cæsar. The figure in 32-34 suggests that 'bring forth' may here mean 'hatch.']

[Note 17: /do danger with/: do mischief with, prove dangerous. Cf. _Romeo and Juliet_, V, ii, 20: "neglecting it May do much danger."]

[Note 19: /Remorse./ Constantly in Shakespeare 'remorse' is used for 'pity' or 'compassion.' Here it seems to mean something more, 'conscience,' 'conscientiousness.' So in _Othello_, III, iii, 468:

Let him command, And to obey shall be in me remorse, What bloody business ever.

The possession of dictatorial power is apt to stifle or sear the conscience, so as to make a man literally remorseless.]

[Note 20: /affections sway'd/ passions (inclinations) governed.]

[Note 21: /proof:/ experience. So in _Twelfth Night_, III, i, 135.]

[Note 23: Warburton put a hyphen between 'climber' and 'upward.' Delius, however, would connect 'upward' with 'whereto' and 'turns.']

[Note 26: /base degrees/: lower steps. 'Degrees' is here used in its original, literal sense for the rounds, or steps, of the ladder.]

[Note 28: /prevent/: anticipate.--/quarrel/: cause of complaint.]

[Note 29-34: /colour/: pretext, plausible appearance. The general meaning of this somewhat obscure passage is, Since we have no show or pretext of a cause, no assignable ground or apparent ground of complaint, against Cæsar, in what he is, or in anything 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. On the supposition that Shakespeare meant Brutus for a wise and good man, the speech seems unintelligible. But Shakespeare must have regarded him simply as a well-meaning but conceited and shallow idealist; and such men are always cheating and puffing themselves with the thinnest of sophisms, feeding on air and conceiving themselves inspired, or "mistaking the giddiness of the head for the illumination of the Spirit."]

[Page 44-45]

_Re-enter_ LUCIUS

LUCIUS. The taper burneth in your closet, sir. 35 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.

[_Gives him the letter_]

BRUTUS. Get you to bed again; it is not day. Is not to-morrow, boy, the first of March? 40

LUCIUS. I know not, sir.

BRUTUS. Look in the calendar, and bring me word.

LUCIUS. I will, sir. [_Exit_]

BRUTUS. The exhalations whizzing in the air Give so much light that I may read by them. 45

[_Opens the letter and reads_]

Brutus, thou sleep'st: awake, and see thyself. Shall Rome, etc. Speak, strike, redress! Brutus, thou sleep'st: awake!

Such instigations have been often dropp'd Where I have took them up. 50 'Shall Rome, etc.' Thus must I piece it out: Shall Rome stand under one man's awe? What, Rome? My ancestors did from the streets of Rome The Tarquin drive, when he was call'd a king. 'Speak, strike, redress!' Am I entreated 55 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!

[Note 35, 59, 70: _Re-enter_ | Enter Ff.]

[Note 40: /first/ Ff | Ides Theobald.]

[Note 49: /dropp'd/ | dropt, F1 F2.]

[Note 52: /What, Rome?/ Rowe | What Rome Ff.]

[Note 53: /ancestors/ Ff | ancestor Dyce.]

[Note 56: /thee/ F1 F4 | the F2 F3.]

[Note 40: The Folio reading 'first of March' cannot be right chronologically, though it is undoubtedly what Shakespeare wrote, for in Plutarch, _Marcus Brutus_, he read: "Cassius asked him if he were determined 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." This inconsistency is not without parallels in Shakespeare. Cf. the "four strangers" in _The Merchant of Venice_, I, ii, 135, when six have been mentioned. In Scott, too, are many such inconsistencies.]

[Note 44: /exhalations/: meteors. In Plutarch's _Opinions of Philosophers_, Holland's translation, is this passage (spelling modernized): "Aristotle supposeth that all these meteors come of a dry exhalation, which, being gotten enclosed within a moist cloud, seeketh means, and striveth forcibly to get forth." Shakespeare uses 'meteor' repeatedly in the same way. So in _Romeo and Juliet_, III, v, 13.]

[Note 48: The Folios give this line as it is here. Some editors arrange it as the beginning of the letter repeated ponderingly by Brutus.]

[Note 49-50: See quotation from Plutarch in note, p. 40, l. 143.]

[Page 46-47]

_Re-enter_ LUCIUS

LUCIUS. Sir, March is wasted fifteen days.

[_Knocking within_]

BRUTUS. 'T is good. Go to the gate; somebody knocks.

[_Exit_ LUCIUS]

Since Cassius first did whet me against Cæsar, 61 I have not slept. Between the acting of a dreadful thing And the first motion, all the interim is Like a phantasma or a hideous dream: 65 The Genius and the mortal instruments Are then in council; and the state of a man, Like to a little kingdom, suffers then The nature of an insurrection.

[Note 59: /fifteen/ Ff | fourteen Theobald.]

[Note 60, 76: [_Exit_ LUCIUS] Ff omit.]

[Note 67: /a man/ F1 | man F2 F3 F4.]

[Note 59: /fifteen./ This, the Folio reading, is undoubtedly correct. Lines 103-104 and 192-193 show that it is past midnight, and Lucius is including in his computation the dawn of the fifteenth day, a natural thing for any one to do, especially a Roman.]

[Note 64: /motion/: prompting of impulse. Cf. _King John_, IV, ii, 255.]

[Note 65: /phantasma/: a vision of things that are not. "Shakespeare seems to use it ('phantasma') in this passage in the sense of nightmare, which it bears in Italian."--Clar. What Brutus says here is in the very spirit of Hamlet's speeches. Cf. also the King's speech to Laertes, _Hamlet_, IV, vii, 115-124, and _Macbeth_, I, vii, 1-28.]

[Note 66: Commentators differ about 'Genius' here; some taking it for the 'conscience,' 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, IV, iii, 282, we have "thy evil spirit"; in _The Tempest_, IV, i, 27, "our worser genius"; in _Troilus and Cressida_, IV, iv, 52, "some say the Genius so Cries 'come' to him that instantly must die"; in _Antony and Cleopatra_, II, iii, 19, "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 indicate 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. Shakespeare 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 what Macbeth refers to when he says, "I'm settled, and bend up Each corporal agent to this terrible feat."--As Brutus is speaking 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 directing power is urging them to. The late Professor Ferrier of St. Andrews seems to take a somewhat different view of the passage. He says, "In this speech of Brutus, Shakespeare gives a fine description 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."]

[Note 67-69: Cf. I, ii, 39-47; _Macbeth_, I, iii, 137-142.]

[Page 48]

_Re-enter_ LUCIUS

LUCIUS. Sir, 't is your brother Cassius at the door, 70 Who doth desire to see you.

BRUTUS. Is he alone?

LUCIUS. No, sir, there are moe with him.

BRUTUS. Do you know them?

LUCIUS. 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 75 By any mark of favour.

BRUTUS. Let 'em enter. [_Exit_ LUCIUS] They are the faction. O conspiracy, Sham'st thou to show thy dangerous brow by night, When evils are most free? O, then, by day Where wilt thou find a cavern dark enough 80 To mask thy monstrous visage? Seek none, conspiracy; Hide it in smiles and affability: For if thou path, thy native semblance on, Not Erebus itself were dim enough To hide thee from prevention. 85

[Note 72: /moe/ Ff | more Rowe.]

[Note 74: /cloaks/ | Cloakes F1 | cloathes F2 | cloaths F3 F4.]

[Note 76: /'em/ F1 F2 F3 | them F4.]

[Note 83: /path, thy/ F2 | path thy F1 F3 F4 | hath thy Quarto (1691) | march, thy Pope | put thy Dyce (Coleridge conj.).]

[Note 70: /brother./ Cassius was married to Junia, the sister of Brutus.]

[Note 72: /moe/: more. The old comparative of 'many.' In Middle English 'moe,' or 'mo,' was used of number and with collective nouns; 'more' had reference specifically to size. See Skeat.]

[Note 73: Pope was evidently so disgusted with Shakespeare's tendency to dress his Romans like Elizabethans, that in his two editions he omits 'hats' altogether, indicating the omission by a dash!]

[Note 76: /favour/: countenance. So in I, ii, 91; I, iii, 129.]

[Note 79: /evils/: evil things. So in _Lucrece_, l. 1250, we have 'cave-keeping evils.' The line in the text means, When crimes and mischiefs, and 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." Cf. l. 265.]

[Note 83: /path:/ take thy way. Drayton employs 'path' as a verb, both transitively and intransitively, literally and figuratively, in _England's Heroicall Epistles_ (1597-1598). The verb seems to have been in use from the fourteenth century to the close of the seventeenth.]

[Note 84: /Erebus:/ the region of nether darkness between Earth and Hades. Cf. _The Merchant of Venice_, V, i, 87: "dark as Erebus."]

[Note 85: /prevention:/ discovery, anticipation. This, the original sense, would lead to 'prevention,' as the term is used to-day.]

[Page 49]

_Enter the conspirators_, CASSIUS, CASCA, DECIUS, CINNA, METELLUS CIMBER, _and_ TREBONIUS.

CASSIUS. I think we are too bold upon your rest: Good morrow, Brutus; do we trouble you?

BRUTUS. I have been up this hour, awake all night. Know I these men that come along with you?

CASSIUS. Yes, every man of them; and no man here 90 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.

BRUTUS. He is welcome hither.

CASSIUS. This, Decius Brutus.

BRUTUS. He is welcome too. 95

CASSIUS. This, Casca; this, Cinna; and this, Metellus Cimber.

[Note 86: Scene II Pope.]

[Note 95: /Decius Brutus./ See notes, Dramatis Personæ, and p. 40, l. 148.]

[Page 50]

BRUTUS. They are all welcome. What watchful cares do interpose themselves Betwixt your eyes and night? 99

CASSIUS. Shall I entreat a word? [_They whisper_]

DECIUS. Here lies the east: doth not the day break here?

CASCA. No.

CINNA. O, pardon, sir, it doth; and yon gray lines That fret the clouds are messengers of day.

CASCA. You shall confess that you are both deceiv'd. 105 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. Some two months hence up higher toward the north He first presents his fire, and the high east 110 Stands, as the Capitol, directly here.

BRUTUS. Give me your hands all over, one by one.

CASSIUS. And let us swear our resolution.

[Note 101-111: This little side-talk on a theme so different from the main one of the scene, is finely conceived, and aptly marks the men as seeking to divert anxious thoughts of the moment by any casual chat. It also serves the double purpose of showing that they are not listening, and of preventing suspicion if any were listening to them. In itself it is thoroughly Shakespearian; and the description of the dawn-light flecking the clouds takes high place among Shakespeare's great sky pictures.]

[Note 104: /fret:/ "mark with interlacing lines like fretwork."--Clar. There are two distinct verbs spelled 'fret,' one meaning 'to eat away,' the other 'to ornament.' See Skeat. In _Hamlet_, II, ii, 313, we have "this majestical roof fretted with golden fire."]

[Note 107: /growing on:/ encroaching upon, tending towards.]

[Note 108: /Weighing:/ if you take into consideration.]

[Note 110: /high:/ full, perfect. Cf. 'high day,' 'high noon,' etc.]

[Note 112: /all over:/ one after the other until all have been included.]

[Page 51-52]

BRUTUS. No, not an oath: if not the face of men, The sufferance of our souls, the time's abuse,-- 115 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. But if these, As I am sure they do, bear fire enough 120 To kindle cowards and to steel with valour The melting spirits of women, then, countrymen, What need we any spur but our own cause To prick us to redress? what other bond Than secret Romans, that have spoke the word, 125 And will not palter? and what other oath Than honesty to honesty engag'd, That this shall be, or we will fall for it? Swear priests and cowards and men cautelous, Old feeble carrions and such suffering souls 130 That welcome wrongs; unto bad causes swear Such creatures as men doubt; but do not stain The even virtue of our enterprise, Nor th' insuppressive mettle of our spirits, To think that or our cause or our performance 135 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. 140

CASSIUS. But what of Cicero? shall we sound him? I think he will stand very strong with us.

[Note 114: /No, not an oath./ This is based on Plutarch's statement in _Marcus Brutus:_ "Furthermore, the only name and great calling of Brutus did bring on the most of them to give consent to this conspiracy: who having never taken oaths together, nor taken or given any caution or assurance, nor binding themselves one to another by any religious oaths, they all kept the matter so secret to themselves, and could so cunningly handle it, that notwithstanding the gods did reveal it by manifest signs and tokens from above, and by predictions of sacrifices, yet all this would not be believed."--/if not the face of men./ This means, 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. Modern editors have offered strange substitutes for 'face' here,--'faith,' 'faiths,' 'fate,' 'fears,' 'yoke,' etc.]

[Note 115: /sufferance:/ suffering. So in _Measure for Measure_, III, i, 80; _Coriolanus_, I, i, 22. In I, iii, 84, 'sufferance' is used in its ordinary modern sense.--/the time's abuse:/ the miserable condition of things in the present. Such 'time's abuse' in his own day Shakespeare describes in detail in _Sonnets_, LXVI.]

[Note 118-119: 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.]

[Note 123: /What need we:/ why need we. So in _Antony and Cleopatra_, V, ii, 317; _Titus Andronicus_, I, i, 189. Cf. _Mark_, xiv, 63.]

[Note 125: /secret Romans:/ Romans who had promised secrecy.]

[Note 126: /palter:/ equivocate, quibble. The idea is of shuffling as in making a promise with what is called a "mental reservation." "Palter with us in a double sense" is the famous expression in _Macbeth_, V, viii, 20, and it brings out clearly the meaning implicit in the term.]

[Note 129: /cautelous:/ deceitful. The original meaning is 'wary,' 'circumspect.' It is the older English adjective for 'cautious.' "The transition from caution to suspicion, and from suspicion to craft and deceit, is not very abrupt."--Clar. Cf. 'cautel' in _Hamlet_, I, iii, 5.]

[Note 130: /carrions:/ carcasses, men as good as dead.]

[Note 133: /The even virtue:/ the virtue that holds an equable and uniform tenor, always keeping the same high level. Cf. _Henry VIII_, III, i, 37.]

[Note 134: /insuppressive:/ not to be suppressed. The active form with the passive sense. Cf. 'unexpressive,' in _As You Like It_, III, ii, 10.]

[Note 135: /To think:/ by thinking. The infinitive used gerundively.]

[Page 53]

CASCA. Let us not leave him out.

CINNA. No, by no means.

METELLUS. O, let us have him, for his silver hairs Will purchase us a good opinion, 145 And buy men's voices to commend our deeds: It shall be said, his judgment rul'd our hands; Our youths and wildness shall no whit appear, But all be buried in his gravity.

BRUTUS. O, name him not; let us not break with him, For he will never follow any thing 151 That other men begin.

CASSIUS. Then leave him out.

CASCA. Indeed he is not fit.

DECIUS. Shall no man else be touch'd but only Cæsar?

[Note 145: /opinion:/ reputation. So in _The Merchant of Venice_, I, i, 91.]

[Note 150: /break with him:/ broach the matter to him. This bit of dialogue is very charming. Brutus knows full well that Cicero is not the man to take a subordinate position; that if he have anything 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 honor to Cicero that the conspirators did not venture to propose the matter to him. In Plutarch, _Marcus Brutus_, the attitude of the conspirators to Cicero is described thus: "For this cause they durst not acquaint Cicero with their conspiracy, although he was a man whom they loved dearly and trusted best; for they were afraid that he, being a coward by nature, and age also having increased his fear, he would quite turn and alter all their purpose, and quench the heat of their enterprise (the which specially required hot and earnest execution), seeking by persuasion to bring all things to such safety, as there should be no peril."]

[Page 54]

CASSIUS. Decius, well urg'd: I think it is not meet, 155 Mark Antony, so well belov'd of Cæsar, Should outlive Cæsar: we shall find of him 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, 160 Let Antony and Cæsar fall together.

BRUTUS. Our course will seem too bloody, Caius Cassius, To cut the head off and then hack the limbs, Like wrath in death and envy afterwards; For Antony is but a limb of Cæsar. 165 Let's 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, 170 Cæsar must bleed for it! And, gentle friends, Let's kill him boldly, 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, 175 Stir up their servants to an act of rage, And after seem to chide 'em. This shall make Our purpose necessary and not envious; Which so appearing to the common eyes, We shall be call'd purgers, not murderers. 180

[Note 166: /Let's/ Ff | Let us Theobald.]

[Note 168: /men/ Ff | man Pope.]

[Note 169: /spirit/ F1 | spirits F2 F3 F4.]