Witness the hole you made in Cæsar's heart, CAS. Antony, The posture of your blows are yet unknown; But for your words, they rob the Hybla bees, And leave them honeyless. ANT. Not stingless too. BRU. O, yes, and soundless too; For you have stol'n their buzzing, Antony, 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; 4 The posture of your blows ARE yet unknown;] It should be -is yet unknown. But the error was certainly Shakspeare's. MALONE. Rather, the mistake of his transcriber or printer; which therefore ought, in my opinion, to be corrected. Had Shakspeare been generally inaccurate on similar occasions, he might more justly have been suspected of inaccuracy in the present instance. STEEVENS. What transcriber or printer, finding the sentence right, would industriously construct it wrong. More correct writers than our poet have been guilty of this error where a plural noun immediately precedes the verb, although it be not the nominative case by which it is governed. I have already pointed out various instances of a similar inaccuracy in Shakspeare in a note on Love's Labour's Lost, vol. iv. p. 389. MALONE. 5 Casca,] Casca struck Cæsar on the neck, coming like a degenerate cur behind him. JOHNSON. - O flatterers!] Old copy, unmetrically,-O you flatterers! STEEVENS. Flatterers!-Now, Brutus, thank yourself:] It is natural to This tongue had not offended so to-day, OCT. Come, come, the cause: If arguing make us sweat, The proof of it will turn to redder drops. I draw a sword against conspirators; 8 When think you that the sword goes up again ?— Ост. I was not born to die on Brutus' sword. So I hope; BRU. O, if thou wert the noblest of thy strain, Young man, thou could'st not die more honourable. CAS. A peevish schoolboy, worthless of such honour, Join'd with a masker and a reveller. ANT. Old Cassius still! suppose, from the defective metre of this line, that our author wrote: "Flatterers! Now, Brutus, you may thank yourself." STEEVENS. 8 three and TWENTY Wounds-] [Old copy-three and thirty;] but I have ventured to reduce this number to three and twenty, from the joint authorities of Appian, Plutarch, and Suetonius: and I am persuaded, the error was not from the poet but his transcribers. THEOBALD. Beaumont and Fletcher have fallen into a similar mistake, in their Noble Gentleman: 66 66 So Cæsar fell, when in the Capitol, They gave his body two and thirty wounds." RITSON. 9- till another Cæsar Have added slaughter to the sword of traitors.] A similar idea has already occurred in King John: "Or add a royal number to the dead, "With slaughter coupled to the name of kings." STEEVENS. Ост. Come, Antony; away.— Defiance, traitors, hurl we' in your teeth: [Exeunt OCTAVIUS, ANTONY, and their Army. CAS. Why now, blow, wind; swell, billow; and swim, bark! The storm is up, and all is on the hazard. BRU. HO! Paradise Lost, b. i. v. 669 : "Hurling defiance toward the vault of Heaven." Hurl is peculiarly expressive. The challenger in judicial combats was said to hurl down his gage, when he threw his glove down as a pledge that he would make good his charge against his adversary. So, in King Richard II.: 2 "And interchangeably hurl down my gage Upon this over-weening traitor's foot." HOLT WHITE. when you have stomachs.] So, in Chapman's version of the ninth Iliad : Fight when his stomach serves him best, or when," &c. This common metaphor frequently occurs in Shakspeare, as for example, in Henry V. Act IV. Sc. III. : "Rather proclaim it, Westmoreland, through my host, "Let him depart." BOSWELL. Messala, &c.] Almost every circumstance in this speech is taken from Sir Thomas North's translation of Plutarch: "But touching Cassius, Messala reporteth that he supped by himselfe in his tent with a few of his friendes, and that all supper tyme he looked very sadly, and was full of thoughts, although it was against his nature: and that after supper he tooke him by the hande, and holding him fast (in token of kindnes as his manner was) told him in Greeke, Messala, I protest vnto thee, and make thee my witnes, that I am compelled against my minde This is my birth-day; as this very day Was Cassius born. Give me thy hand, Messala: As Pompey was, am I compell'd to set You know, that I held Epicurus strong, This morning are they fled away, and gone; and will (as Pompey the Great was) to ieopard the libertie of our contry, to the hazard of a battel. And yet we must be liuely, and of good corage, considering our good fortune, whom we should wronge too muche to mistrust her, although we follow euill counsell. Messala writeth, that Cassius hauing spoken these last wordes unto him, he bid him farewell, and willed him to come to supper to him the next night following, bicause it was his birth day." STEEVENS. 4- Our FORMER ensign-] Thus the old copy, and, I suppose, rightly. Former is foremost. Shakspeare sometimes uses the comparative instead of the positive and superlative. See King Lear, Act IV. Sc. III. Either word has the same origin; nor do I perceive why former should be less applicable to place than time. STEEVENS. Former is right; and the meaning-“ our fore ensign." So, in Adlyngton's Apuleius, 1596: "First hee instructed me to sit at the table vpon my taile, and howe I should leape and daunce, holding up my former feete." Again, in Harrison's Description of Britaine: "It [i. e. brawn] is made commonly of the fore part of a tame bore set uppe for the purpose by the space of an whole year or two. Afterwarde he is killed-and then of his former partes is our brawne made." RITSON. I once thought that for the sake of distinction the word should be spelt foremer, but as it is derived from the Saxon forma, first, I have adhered to the common spelling. MALONE. As we were sickly prey; their shadows seem Our army lies, ready to give up the ghost. CAS. I but believe it partly; For I am fresh of spirit, and resolv'd CAS. Now, most noble Brutus, The gods to-day stand friendly; that we may, But, since the affairs of men rest still uncertain *, BRU. Even by the rule of that philosophy", 5 *First folio, incertaine. as we were SICKLY PREY ;] So, in King John: 66 As doth a raven on a sick-fall'n beast-." STEEVENS. 6 The very last time we shall speak together: What are you then determined to do?] i. e. I am resolved in such a case to kill myself. What are you determined of? WARBURTON. 7 - of that philosophy,] There is an apparent contradiction between the sentiments contained in this and the following speech which Shakspeare has put into the mouth of Brutus. In this, Brutus declares his resolution to wait patiently for the determinations of Providence; and in the next, he intimates, that though he should survive the battle, he would never submit to be led in chains to Rome. This sentence in Sir Thomas North's translation, is perplexed, and might be easily misunderstood. Shakspeare, in the first speech, makes that to be the present opinion of Brutus, which in Plutarch, is mentioned only as one he formerly entertained, though he now condemned it. So, in Sir Thomas North :-" There Cassius beganne to speake first, and sayd: the gods graunt vs, O Brutus, that this day we may winne the field, and euer after to liue all the rest of our life quietly, one with another. But sith the gods haue so ordeyned it, that the greatest & chiefest amongest men are most vncertayne, |
