Enter LUCIUS and LIGARIUS. 8 Lucius, who is that, knocks ? Luc. Here is a sick man, that would speak with you. BRU. Caius Ligarius, that Metellus spake of.— Boy, stand aside.-Caius Ligarius! how? LIG. Vouchsafe good morrow from a feeble tongue. BRU. O, what a time have you chose out, brave Caius, To wear a kerchief' ? 'Would you were not sick! 7 All the CHARACTERY -] i. e. "all that is character'd on," &c. The word has already occurred in The Merry Wives of Windsor. STEEVENS. See Mr. Tyrwhitt's note, vol. ix. p. 180, n. 8. MALone. 8 - who is that, knocks ?] i. e. who is that, who knocks? Our poet always prefers the familiar language of conversation to grammatical nicety. Four of his editors, however, have endeavoured to destroy this peculiarity, by reading-" who's there that knocks?" and a fifth has, "who's that, that knocks?" 9 O, what a time have you chose out, brave Caius, 66 To wear a kerchief?] So, in Plutarch's Life of Brutus, translated by North: Brutus went to see him being sicke in his bedde, and sayed unto him, O Ligarius, in what a time art thou sicke? Ligarius rising up in his bedde, and taking him by the right hande, sayed unto him, Brutus, (sayed he,) if thou hast any great enterprise in hande worthie of thy selfe, I am whole." Lord Sterline also has introduced this passage into his Julius Cæsar : "By sickness being imprison'd in his bed "Whilst I Ligarius spied, whom pains did prick, "If worthy of thyself thou would'st do aught, "Then Brutus I am whole, and wholly thine." Here it may be observed, Shakspeare gives to Rome the manners of his own time. (It was a common practice in England for those who were sick to wear a kerchief on their heads, and still continues among the common people in many places." If" says Fuller, "this county [Cheshire], hath bred no writers in that LIG. I am not sick, if Brutus have in hand Any exploit worthy the name of honour. BRU. Such an exploit have I in hand, Ligarius, Had you a healthful ear to hear of it. LIG. By all the gods that Romans bow before, I here discard my sickness. Soul of Rome! Brave son, deriv'd from honourable loins! Thou, like an exorcist, hast conjur❜d up My mortified spirit'. Now bid me run, And I will strive with things impossible; Yea, get the better of them. What's to do? BRU. A piece of work, that will make sick men whole. LIG. But are not some whole, that we must make sick? BRU. That must we also. What it is, my Caius, I shall unfold to thee, as we are going To whom it must be done. LIG. BRU. Follow me, then. [Exeunt. faculty [physick,] the wonder is the less, if it be true what I read, that if any there be sick, they make him a posset, and tye a kerchief on his head, and if that will not mend him, then God be merciful to him." Worthies: Cheshire, p. 180. MALONE. I Thou, like an EXORCIST, hast conjur'd up My mortified spirit.] Here, and in all other places where the word occurs in Shakspeare, to exorcise means to raise spirits, not to lay them; and I believe he is singular in his acceptation of it. M. MASON. See vol. x. p. 490, n. 3. MALONE. SCENE II. The Same. A Room in CÆSAR'S Palace. Thunder and Lightning. Enter Cæsar, in his Night-gown. CES. Nor heaven, nor earth, have been at peace to-night: Thrice hath Calphurnia in her sleep cried out, Help, ho! They murder Cæsar! Who's within? Enter a Servant. SERV. My lord? CES. Go bid the priests do present sacrifice, And bring me their opinions of success. SERV. I will, my lord. Enter CALPHURNIA. [Exit. CAL. What mean you, Cæsar? Think you to walk forth? You shall not stir out of your house to-day. CAS. Cæsar shall forth: The things that threat en'd me, Ne'er look'd but on my back; when they shall see The face of Cæsar, they are vanished. CAL. Cæsar, I never stood on ceremonies 2, 2 Cæsar, I never stood on CEREMONIES,] i. e. I never paid a ceremonious or superstitious regard to prodigies or òmens. The adjective is used in the same sense in The Devil's Charter, 1607: "The devil hath provided in his covenant, "I never was so ceremonious." The original thought is in the old translation of Plutarch: Calphurnia, until that time, was never given to any fear or superstition." STEEVENS. 13 Yet now they fright me. There is one within, And graves have yawn'd, and yielded up their Fierce firy warriors fight upon the clouds, The noise of battle hurtled in the air", 3 And graves have yawn'd, and yielded up their dead: &c.] So, in a funeral song in Much Ado About Nothing: "Graves, yawn, and yield your dead." Again, in Hamlet: "A little ere the mightiest Julius fell, "The graves stood tenantless, and the sheeted dead 4 Fierce firy warriors fight upon the clouds, MALONE. In ranks, and squadrons, and right form of war,] So, in Tacitus, Hist. b. v.: "Visa per cœlum concurrere acies, rutilantia arma, & subito nubium igne collucere," &c. STEEVENS. Again, in Marlowe's Tamburlaine, 1590: "I will persist a terror to the world ; 66 Making the meteors that like armed men "Are seen to march upon the towers of heaven, "Run tilting round about the firmament, "And break their burning launces in the ayre, "For honour of my wondrous victories." MALone. 5 The noise of battle HURTLED in the air,] To hurtle is, I suppose, to clash, or move with violence and noise. So, in Selimus, Emperor of the Turks, 1594: "Here the Polonian he comes hurtling in, Again, ibid.: "To toss the spear, and in a warlike gyre 66 in which hurtling, STEEVENS. "From miserable slumber I awak'd." Again, in The History of Arthur, Part I. c. xiv.: "They made both the Northumberland battailes to hurtle together." BowLE. To hurtle originally signified to push violently; and, as in such an action a loud noise was frequently made, it afterwards seems Horses do neigh, and dying men did groan; And I do fear them. CES. What can be avoided, Whose end is purpos'd by the mighty gods? CAL. When beggars die, there are no comets seen; The heavens themselves blaze forth the death of princes R. to have been used in the sense of to clash. So, in Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, v. 2618: "And he him hurtleth with his hors adoun." 6 Horses DID neigh,] predecessor reads : MALONE. Thus the second folio. Its blundering "Horses do neigh." STEEVENS. Yet Mr. Steevens does not object to "fierce firy warriors fight," not fought. Mr. Malone has followed the original copy. BOSWELL. 7 And ghosts did shriek, and squeal about the streets.] So, in Lodge's Looking Glasse for London and England, 1598: "The ghosts of dead men howling walke about, Crying Ve, Ve, woe to this citie, woe." TODD. 8 When beggars die, there are no COMETS seen; The heavens themselves BLAZE forth the death of PRINCES.] "Next to the shadows and pretences of experience, (which have been met withall at large,) they seem to brag most of the strange events which follow (for the most part,) after blazing starres; as if they were the summoners of God to call princes to the seat of judgment. The surest way to shake their painted bulwarks of experience is, by making plaine, that neyther princes_always dye when comets blaze, nor comets ever [i. e. always] when princes dye." Defensative against the Poison of supposed Prophecies, by Henry Howard, Earl of Northampton, 1583. Again, ibid. Let us look into the nature of a comet, by the face of which it is supposed that the same should portend plague, famine, warre, or the death of potentates.” I will add one more quotation from the same work, as it contains an anecdote of Queen Elizabeth: "I can affirme thus much as a present witnesse by mine owne experience, that when dyvers upon greater scrupulosity then cause, went about to disswade her majestye, (lying then at Richmonde) from looking on the comet |