[102. And I will looke on both indifferently] the recanter; and repent him that a reading of his three predecessors had not a place in his text; for, notwithstanding all the plausible reasons that have been urged for the old one [by Upton], a more intent examen of the passage at large has convinc'd him it will not proceed rightly without reading as they do-death for ‘both': 'And I will look on death indifferently, or with indifference,' i. e., unconcern. The subjoin'd assertion of Brutus concerning 'honour' contradicts the equality which the old reading sets up between that and death; and his friend's declaration that what he had to impart to him, his story's subject, was 'honour,' is every whit as repugnant to the reading of elder copies and of this copy after them. For what sensible man would urge a topic from 'honour' to one who had just told him that 'honour' had no weight with him when put in balance with 'good,' the good of the general.-Coleridge (Notes, p. 132): I prefer the old text. There are here three things-the public good, the individual Brutus' honour, and his death. The latter so balanced each other that he could decide for the first by equipoise; nay, the thought growing,-that honour had more weight than death. That Cassius understood it as Warburton is the beauty of Cassius as contrasted with Brutus.-CRAIK (p. 154): What Brutus means by saying that he will look upon Death and Honour indifferently, if they present themselves together, is merely that, for the sake of the honour, he will not mind the death, or the risk of death, by which it may be accompanied; he will look as fearlessly and steadily upon one as upon the other. He will think the honour to be cheaply purchased even by the loss of life; that price will never make him falter or hesitate at clutching such a prize. He must be understood to set honour above life from the first; that he should ever have felt otherwise for a moment would have been the height of the unheroic. -WRIGHT: Warburton ought to have remembered the clause in the prayer for the Church Militant: 'that they may truly and indifferently administer justice.'— L. F. MOTT (Mod. Lang. Notes, May, 1897, p. 160): The difficulty which both Johnson and Coleridge have felt seems to have been occasioned by their failure to perceive that Brutus is here punning on the word 'honor,' which means not only personal integrity, but also high rank, dignity, distinction. In this latter sense we find it, for example, in the Mer. of Ven.: 'O, that estates, degrees and offices Were not derived corruptly, and that clear honour Were purchased by the merit of the wearer!... How much low peasantry would then be glean'd From the true seed of honour! and how much honour Pick'd from the chaff and ruin of the times.'II, ix, 142. A score of further examples might be cited, but I content myself with one from Cymb.: '—of him I gathered honour Which he to seek of me, again perforce, Behoves me keep at utterance.'-III, i, 70. According to the interpretation here advanced, Brutus' meaning might be stated thus: In matters concerning the public good, I will take indifferently high position or death, for I love my personal integrity more than I fear death. The probability of this explanation is increased by the fact that the same play upon the word 'honor' is found in another of Shakespeare's dramas: 'Meantime receive such welcome at my hand As honour without breach of honour may Make tender of to thy true worthiness.'-Love's Labour's Lost, III, i, 170. I have been unable to find either of these puns upon 'honor' in Wurth's Wortspiel bei Shakspere.—MARK HUNTER: Brutus looks at honour and death together; death has become a necessary condition or consequence of honour, and, since that is so, Brutus loves the one as well as the other; the love of honour has taken away the fear of death. We may, therefore, paraphrase the whole: If Caffi. I know that vertue to be in you Brutus, 105 As well as I do know your outward fauour. I cannot tell, what you and other men Thinke of this life: But for my single felfe, I had as liefe not be, as liue to be In awe of fuch a Thing, as I my selfe. I was borne free as Cæfar, so were you, The troubled Tyber, chafing with her Shores, 117-119. Dar'ft...Point?] Ff, Rowe, Pope, Warb. As quotation Theob. Johns. Var. '73, Knt, Coll. Dyce, Wh. Hal. Cam.+, Huds. In Italics Han. et cet. Rowe,+. the thing be for the public good, even though it cost me my life, I will do it, for the cause of honour is more to me than the fear of death. 105. Cassi. I know that vertue, etc.] F. GENTLEMAN (ap. Bell, p. 10): Tho' this speech of Cassius is unusually and, perhaps, blameably long, yet there is such an exquisite variety of expression and richness of description that the actor must be very deficient of capability who does not entertain, if not strike, in it; however, we think attention would be greatly strengthened, and the actor's powers much relieved, if a couple of lines were given to Brutus after the words: 'Did I the tired Cæsar,' [l. 131].-[The above note, with its patronising suggestion of a dramatic improvement, is here given merely to show the attitude of the majority of the early criticasters and adapters toward Shakespeare.-ED.] 110. I had... as liue to be] SHUCKBURGH (iv, 244) calls attention to the similarity of thought in this and the following passage in a letter written by Brutus to Cicero in B. C. 43, wherein the writer is speaking of Octavius: "The one and only thing you say-that is demanded and expected of him is that he consent to the safety of those citizens, of whom the loyalists and the people have a good opinion. What? If he doesn't consent, shall we not be safe? And yet it is better not to be than to be by his favour.'-[The original reads: 'Quid? si nolit, non erimus? Atqui, non esse, quam esse per illum praestat.'-ed. LeMaire, iii, 683.—ED.] 116. her Shores] For the feminine gender as applied to rivers, see note on I, i, 55. 117-119. Dar'st thou ... to yonder Point] MALONE: Shakespeare probably recollected the story which Suetonius has told of Cæsar's leaping into the sea when he was in danger by a boat's being overladen, and swimming to the next ship with his Commentaries in his left hand. (Holland's Translation, ed. 1606, p. 120 Accoutred as I was, I plunged in, And bad him follow: fo indeed he did. I (as Æneas, our great Ancestor, Did from the Flames of Troy, vpon his shoulder The old Anchyfes beare) so, from the waues of Tyber Is now become a God, and Caffius is 120. Accoutred] Accounted Ff. plunged] plungèd Dyce. 121. bad] Ff, Rowe, Pope i, Han. Cap. bid Pope ii, Theob. Warb. Johns. Var. '73. bade Var. '78 et seq. 122. we] he Pope ii. 125. ere] e're F1. 125 130 126. Helpe...finke] Ff, Rowe, Pope, Warb. As quotation Theob. Johns. Var. '73, Knt, Coll. Dyce, Wh. Hal. Cam.+, Huds. In Italics Han. et cet. 130. tyred] tirèd Dyce. 26.) So also ibid., p. 24: 'Were rivers in his way to hinder his passage, cross over them he would, either swimming, or else bearing himself upon blowed leather bottles.' [Plutarch also relates this story of Cæsar's swimming, 'holding diuers books in his hand,' and if this anecdote be not due to Shakespeare himself, Plutarch is, I think, more likely than Suetonius to have furnished it.—ED.] 125. arriue the Point] STEEVENS quotes as another example of the use of 'arrive' without the preposition: '-the powers that the queen Hath raised in Gallia, have arriv'd our coast.'-3 Hen. VI: V, iii, 8.-ABBOTT (§ 198) also quotes the above and the present passage as the only two wherein 'arrive' is thus used, although several others are given wherein the preposition is omitted after a verb of motion.-ED. 127. I (as Æneas] CRAIK (p. 159): This commencement of the sentence, although necessitating the not strictly grammatical repetition of the first personal pronoun, is in fine rhetorical accordance with the character of the speaker, and vividly expresses his eagerness to give prominence to his own part in the adventure. Even the repetition (of which, by the way, we have another instance in this same speech) assists the effect. At the same time, it may just be noted that the 'I' here is not printed differently from the adverb of affirmation in 'I, and that tongue of his,' l. 140. 129. The old... of Tyber] CRAIK (p. 160) suggests that the redundant syllables in this line typify the efforts and emotion of Cassius. [It is, however, to be remembered that proper nouns, particularly at the end of a line, are not always strictly metrical.-ED.]-DELIUS compares: 'As did Aeneas old Anchises bear, So bear I thee upon my manly shoulders.'-2 Hen. VI: V, ii, 62. 130, 131. this Man... God] HUDSON (Life, etc., ii, 230): [Cassius] 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, A wretched Creature, and muft bend his body, 132 If Cæfar carelefly but nod on him. He had a Feauer when he was in Spaine, And when the Fit was on him, I did marke 135 134. Feauer] Feaher F2. 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 sympathised rather in 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.' 132. Creature] For many examples wherein 'creature' is pronounced as a trisyllable, see WALKER, Crit., ii, 19. 134. He had a Feauer, etc.] VOLTAIRE, in a note on this passage in his translation, says: 'All these incidents which Cassius recounts resemble a discourse made by a mountebank at a fair. It is natural, yes; but it is the naturalness of a man of the populace who is conversing with his crony in a pot-house. Not thus did the great men of the Roman republic talk.'-Theatre de Corneille, ii, 272. [An efficacious antidote to the virulence of the foregoing is supplied by the following remarks by Trevelyan on Macauley's attitude towards the Roman dramas of Shakespeare: 'He knew that what Shakespeare could teach him about human nature was worth more than anything which he could have taught Shakespeare about Roman history and Roman institutions. He was well aware how very scanty a stock of erudition will qualify a transcendent genius to produce admirable literary effects; and he infinitely preferred Shakespeare's Romans, and even his Greeks, to the classical heroes of Ben Jonson, and Addison, and Racine, and Corneille, and Voltaire. Of the conversation in the street between Brutus and Cassius, Act I, sc. ii, Macauley says [in a marginal note]: "These two or three pages are worth the whole French drama ten times over."-edition 1908, p. 704.-ED.]— T. R. GOULD (p. 151): [J. B. Booth's] description of Cassius and Cæsar swimming in the Tiber on that 'raw and gusty day,' and of Cæsar's sickness were especially noteworthy. Booth's vivid portraiture recreated the event. He touched the arm of Brutus; leaned, but without undue familiarity, upon his shoulder. In the line: 'His coward lips did from their color fly' Cassius, by a subtle reversion of the common phrase, the color fled from his lips, implies a sarcasm on Cæsar's quality as a soldier. Booth illustrated the meaning by a momentary gesture, as if carrying a standard. The movement was fine, as giving edge to the sarcasm, but pointed to a redundancy of action which sometimes appeared in this great actor's personations. 135. I did marke] Appian says that Cæsar appointed Quintus Cassius governor of Spain on his departure after the Ilerda campaign in B. C. 49 (Bk II, ch. vi, § 43), and, according to Shuckburgh (iii, 173), on Cæsar's second invasion of Spain Caius Cassius refused to accompany him, and spent that winter, B. C. 45, at Brundisium. Plutarch does not refer to an attack of fever in his account of Cæsar in Spain; he says, however, that it was at Corduba that Cæsar had the falling sickness. The present incident is, therefore, an invention of Shakespeare.-ED. How he did shake: Tis true, this God did shake, I, and that Tongue of his, that bad the Romans As a ficke Girle Ye Gods, it doth amaze me, : A man of fuch a feeble temper should So get the start of the Maiesticke world, 138. bend] beam Daniel (Sh. Notes, p. 70). 139. his] its Pope,+, Cap. 140. bad] bade Theob. ii,+, Varr. Mal. Ran. Steev. Varr. Sing. Knt, Coll. Dyce, Wh. i. 141. write] writ F3F4. 136 142. Alas] 'Alas!' Sta. 140 145 Giue...Titinius] Ff, Rowe, Pope, Warb. As quotation Theob. Johns. Var. '73, Knt, Coll. Dyce, Wh. Hal. Cam.+, Huds. In Italics Han. et cet. A plain man 137. lippes did... flye] WARBURTON: would have said the colour fled from his.lips, and not his lips from their colour. But the false impression was for the sake of as false a piece of wit: a poor quibble, alluding to a coward flying from his colours.-WHITER (p. 107): Warburton has discovered the association which had escaped the author; who, indeed, intended no quibble, but was himself entangled by the similitude of colour and 'colours.' This introduced to him the appropriate terms of 'coward' and 'fly'; and thus, under the influence of such an embarrassment, it was scarcely possible to express the sentiment in a form less equivocal than the present. Let me add likewise another circumstance, which might operate in suggesting this military metaphor, that the cowardice of a soldier is the subject of the narrative.-WRIGHT quotes Warburton's note and adds: 'No doubt; but Shakespeare does not always say what a plain man would have said.' 138. bend] MURRAY (N. E. D., s. v. sb1. I. 3) quotes the present line as the only example of ‘bend' in the sense of ‘an inclination of the eye in any direction, glance.'-SCHMIDT (Lex.) furnishes several examples of the verb 'to bend' as applied to the act of looking. 139. his Lustre] For a philological account of the use of the personal possessive pronoun 'his' in place of the neuter pronoun, see MURRAY, N. E. D., s. v. Its. 139. I did heare him grone] MARK HUNTER: Cassius shows himself wanting in tact, or true judgment of character, in addressing such arguments as these to a man of Brutus' disposition and philosophy. Brutus was the last man 'to spurn at' Cæsar for shivering and turning pale when a fever was on him. But Cassius has no craft or cunning, save such as suggests the simple artifice of throwing papers in different hands through Brutus' windows. He influences others only by the energy and earnestness of his character. 145. get the start, etc.] WARBURTON: This image is extremely noble: it is taken from the Olympic games. 'The majestic world' is a fine periphrasis for the Roman empire: their citizens set themselves on a footing with kings, and they called their dominion Orbis Romanus. But the particular allusion seems to be to the known |