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ACT SECOND

SCENE I

Rome. Brutus' 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!

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.

[Exit. Bru. 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;

"Brutus' orchard"; orchard and garden appear to have been synonymous with our ancestors. In Romeo and Juliet Capulet's garden is twice called orchard. The word was anciently written hort-yard.-H. N. H.

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
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,
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 color 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 grew mis-
chievous,

And kill him in the shell.

30-34. The subtle casuistry of Brutus in finding out reasons for his foregone conclusion of patriotism, is thus commented on by Coleridge: "This speech is singular;—at least, I do not at present see into Shakespeare's motive, his rationale, or in what point of view he meant Brutus' character to appear. For, surely, nothing can seem more discordant with our historical preconceptions of Brutus, or more lowering to the intellect of the Stoico-Platonic tyrannicide, than the tenets here attributed to him; namely, that he would have no objection to a king, or to Cæsar, a monarch in Rome, would

Re-enter Lucius.

Luc. The taper burneth in your closet, sir.
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.

Bru. Get you to bed again; it is not day.

Is not to-morrow, boy, the ides of March? 40 Luc. I know not, sir.

Bru. Look in the calendar and bring me word.
Luc. I will, sir.

Bru. The exhalations whizzing in the air

[Exit.

Give so much light that I may read by them.
[Opens the letter and reads.

'Brutus, thou sleep'st: awake and see thyself.

Cæsar but be as good a monarch as he now seems disposed to be! How, too, could Brutus say that he found no personal cause, none in Cæsar's past conduct as a man? Had he not passed the Rubicon? Had he not entered Rome as a conqueror? Had he not placed his Gauls in the Senate?-Shakespeare, it may be said, has not brought these things forward. True; and this is just the ground of my perplexity. What character did Shakespeare mean his Brutus to be?" -H. N. H.

40. "the ides of March"; Theobald's correction of Ff., "the first of March."-I. G.

It is possible that Shakespeare may casually have written "first," the first of March having been originally fixed for the Senate meeting. He read in Plutarch that “Cassius asked (Brutus) if he were determined to be in the Senate-house the 1st 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." But it is clear from i. 2. 19, that Brutus is meant here to be struck with the fulfillment of the soothsayer's prophecy.-C. H. H.

46-58. This passage is based upon the following from Plutarch's Life of Brutus: "But, for Brutus, his friends and countrimen, both by divers procurements and sundry rumours of the city, and by many bils also, did openly call him to do that he did. For under the image of his ancestor, Junius Brutus, that drave the kings out

Shall Rome, &c. Speak, strike, redress.
Brutus, thou sleep'st: awake.'

Such instigations have been often dropp'd
Where I have took them up.

'Shall Rome, &c.'

Thus must I piece it out:

50

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

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!

Re-enter Lucius.

Luc. Sir, March is wasted fifteen days.

59

[Knocking within. Bru. 'Tis good. Go to the gate; somebody knocks. [Exit Lucius. Since Cassius first did whet me against Cæsar 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:
The Genius and the mortal instruments

of Rome, they wrote, 'O, that it pleased the gods thou wert now alive, Brutus!' and againe,-"That thou wert here among us now! His tribunall or chaire, where he gave audience during the time he was Prætor, was full of such bils,—'Brutus, thou art asleep, and art not Brutus indeed!"-H. N. H.

59. "fifteen"; so Ff. Warburton (followed by many modern edd.) wrongly altered to "fourteen." It is, in fact, the dawn of the fifteenth, which Lucius may be supposed to include.-C. H. H.

Are then in council, and the state of man,
Like to a little kingdom, suffers then
The nature of an insurrection.

Re-enter Lucius

Luc. Sir, 'tis your brother Cassius at the door, 70 Who doth desire to see you.

Bru.

Is he alone?

Do you know them?

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

Bru.

Luc. 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

By any mark of favor.

Bru.

Let 'em enter. [Exit Lucius.

They are the faction. O conspiracy,

Shamest 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,

67. "state of man"; the original reads, "the state of a man"; which is retained by Knight, Collier and Verplanck, while all other modern editions leave out the a. Mr. Dyce says, "For my own part, I am convinced that a is the barbarous and impertinent addition of a transcriber or printer." It were indeed strange that the Poet should have thrust in an a here, to no end, apparently, but to spoil the meter.-H. N. H.

70. Cassius had married Junia, the sister of Brutus; hence the former is here spoken of as the latter's brother.—H. N. H.

83. "For if thou path, thy native semblance on"; so F. 2: Ff. 1, 3, 4, "For if thou path thy "; Pope, "For if thou march, thy

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