Casca. Stand close awhile, for here comes one in haste. Cas. 'Tis Cinna; I do know him by his gait :

There's two or three of us have seen strange sights.

Cas. Am I not stay'd for?

Cin.

Tell me.

Yes, you are.

140

O Cassius! if you could

But win the noble Brutus to our party

Cas. 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

144. but] Ff, best Hudson.

131. Stand close] keep yourselves concealed, as in 3 Henry VI. IV. v. 17: "Stand you thus close to steal the bishop's deer?"

134. Metellus Cimber] This conspirator is so called in North's translation of the Life of Brutus. His real name was Tillius Cimber.

138. there's] For the plural in "s,' which appears to be a relic of the plural of the old northern dialect in English, see III. ii. 30, Abbott, secs. 333, 335, 336. It is, as might be expected, common in Dunbar and Burns. Compare at the end of the Twa Dogs: "There's some exceptions, man and woman.' In old

145

Scotch marriage contracts provision
was usually made for children "gif
ony beis" (if there are any). Skeat
asks in Notes and Queries,
"What
had a Warwickshire man to do with a
northern plural?" To this it may be
replied that the boundaries of the
dialects were not fixed by hard-and-
fast lines. Even at the present day,
Scotticisms and northern peculiarities
of speech may be found farther south
than Warwickshire.

144. Where Brutus may but find it] "only taking care to place it so that Brutus may be sure to find it " (Craik). But see Abbott, sec. 128, where different interpretations are given.

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

To seek you at your house. Well, I will hie, 150 And so bestow these papers as you bade me. Cas. 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
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.

155

160

Cas. Him and his worth and our great need of him
You have right well conceited.
For it is after midnight; and ere day
We will awake him and be sure of him.

Let us go,

[Exeunt.

156. yields] the present used to express certainty of the future. Compare P. L. iv. 965, and Othello, II. iii. 276: "Sue to him again, and he's yours.' This usage may be accounted for by the fact that in A.S. there was no distinct form for the future, so that the present was used in a future sense.

159. countenance] approval. 159. alchemy] Compare ii. 314.

162. conceited] thought. Compare "horrible conceit," Othello, III. iii. 115. The meaning has become specialised in a bad sense since Shakespeare's time.

ACT II

SCENE I.-Rome.

Brutus's Orchard.

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! Awake, I say! What,

Lucius!

5

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: and for my part,
I know no personal cause to spurn at him,

Orchard] is by derivation an ortgeard or enclosure for worts (herbs). In Shakespeare's time the word was not, as it now is, confined to the meaning of fruit garden, but used in a more general sense. Compare III. ii. 255, where "orchards' corresponds to "gardens" in North's Plutarch. Here, also, "orchard" means 'garden."

1. What, ho!] a shout used to rouse any one. "What" is used alone in the same sense in v. iii. 72.

5. When] elliptical for "When are you coming?" expresses impatience. Compare "Come thou tortoise when," Tempest, 1. ii. 316, and Jacob and Esau, IV. iii. 7, "Come forth: when

[Exit.

ΙΟ

Abra! What, Abra, I say!" which combines "when" and "what" as exclamations of impatience.

8. come and call me here] come here and call me. An adverbial phrase is similarly misplaced in P. L. ii. 917.

II. no personal cause] no "private grief" (III. ii. 220). On the contrary, he had a strong personal cause for gratitude, as Cæsar spared his life after Pharsalia and made him Governor of Cisalpine Gaul in 46 and city Prætor in 44 B.C.

II. spurn] which by derivation means kick, usually implies contempt, as here and in III. i. 46. Here it expresses angry opposition under the

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!

And then, I grant, we put a sting in him,
That at his will he may do danger with.

The abuse of greatness is when it disjoins

15

Remorse from power; and, to speak truth of
Cæsar,

I have not known when his affections sway'd 20

15. Crown him! that!] Crown him that, Ff. image of a refractory horse, as in King John, III. i. 141:

66

Why thou against the church, our holy mother,

So wilfully dost spurn." 12. for the general] for the sake of the general public, for "public reasons" (III. ii. 7). Compare 1. i. 75, and Hamlet, II. ii. 457, Caviare to the general.' The sentence is concluded as if it had begun "I know no cause to spurn at him." For this common form of sense construction compare notes on 125, 127, and III. i. 47.

14. brings forth] out of its hole. 15. that craves wary walking] the fact that adders are about makes it necessary to guide our footsteps warily.

15. Crown] the uninflected form of the verb, merely presents the idea for consideration. "That" is in apposition to the idea of crowning, and indicates that the speaker is dwelling on the idea. Perring, however, in his Hard Knots in Shakespeare compares III. i. 103: "Grant that and then is death a benefit," which indicates that "that" may be governed by "grant understood.

16. we put a sting] Brutus talks as

if the practically absolute power that Cæsar already possessed could not do any harm unless he had the title of king. "What is singular enough,' Plutarch remarks, "while the Romans endured everything that regal power could impose, they dreaded the name of king as destructive of their liberty.'

17. do danger] work mischief, Compare Romeo and Juliet, v. ii. 20: "the neglecting it

May do much danger."

19. Remorse] pity, as often in Shakespeare, e.g. Macbeth, I. v. 44: "Stop up the access and passage to remorse.

20. affections] is here used in a wider sense than that in which we now use the term. It means the feelings, as opposed to the reason. In this sense the word is used by Hobbes, who speaks of "anger, envy, fear, pity, and other affections," and by Bishop Butler in his Sermons. Thus Brutus means that he does not remember any occasion on which Cæsar allowed himself to be ruled by his feelings rather than by reason. For the wider sense of the term compare 1 Henry IV. III. ii. 30, Henry V. IV. i. 110, and Spenser, F. Q. 11. iv. 34:

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,

25

He then unto the ladder turns his back, 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, 23. climber-upward] climber upward Ff.

Cuts off those means by which

دو

himself got up. 26. base degrees] low steps which he now scorns. "Base" combines the ideas of lowness and contempt. For this use of "degree" compare Twelfth Night, III. i. 134: "I pity you; that's a degree to love."

28. prevent] first person plural of the subjunctive used imperatively as "fashion" (line 30), "think" (line 32), "kill" (line 34), "pass" (I. ii. 24), "break" (II. i. 116), and " (IV. iii. 223).

go

28. quarrel] (Lat. querela, complaint) ground or principle of opposition. Compare "I could not die anywhere so contented as in the king's company, his cause being just, and his quarrel honourable (Henry V. IV. i. 133), and Bacon's 29th Essay: "The Turk hath at

30

hand for cause of war the propagation of his law or sect; a quarrel that he may always command."

29. Will bear no colour] cannot be justified on the ground of his actual conduct. Compare 2 Henry VI. III. i. 236: "But yet we want a colour for his death." Coleridge well remarks that "surely nothing can seem more discordant with our historical preconceptions of Brutus, or more lowering to the intellect of the StoicoPlatonic tyrannicide, than the tenets here attributed to him, the stern Roman Republican, namely, that he would have no objection to a king, or to Cæsar, a monarch in Rome, would Cæsar but be as good a monarch as he now seems disposed to be." Perhaps Shakespeare was afraid that he might offend his royal patron if he attributed pure republican sentiments to the most attractive character in the play, and therefore represented him here as opposed not to monarchy in the abstract, but only to bad monarchy.

30. Fashion it thus] let us regard it in this light. Brutus here, as in 175-180, is wrongly supposed to be contemplating deliberate hypocrisy. He is really trying to put such a construction on the deed as will satisfy his own conscience, and is not thinking of the opinion of the world.