The New Hudson Shakespeare: Julius Caesar Part 13

[Note 307: /that it is dispos'd:/ that which it is disposed to. For the omission of prepositions in Shakespeare, see Abbott, ---- 198-202. Ca.s.sius in this speech is chuckling over the effect his talk has had upon Brutus.]

[Note 310: /bear me hard:/ has a grudge against me. This remarkable expression occurs three times in this play, but nowhere else in Shakespeare. Professor Hales quotes an example of it from Ben Jonson's _Catiline_, IV, v. It seems to have been borrowed from horsemanship, and to mean 'carries tight rein,' or 'reins hard,' like one who distrusts his horse. So before, ll. 35, 36:

You bear too stubborn and too strange a hand Over your friend that loves you.]

[Note 312: /humour./ To 'humor' a man, as the word is here used, is to turn and wind and manage him by watching his moods and crotchets, and to touch him accordingly. It is somewhat in doubt whether the 'he' in the preceding line refers to Brutus or to Caesar. If to Brutus, the meaning of course is: he should not play upon my humors and fancies as I do upon his. And this sense is fairly required by the context, for the whole speech is occupied with the speaker's success in cajoling Brutus, and with plans for cajoling and shaping him still further. Johnson refers 'he' to Caesar.]

[Note 313: /hands:/ handwritings. So the word is used colloquially to-day.]

[Note 319: We will either shake him, or endure worse days in suffering the consequences of our attempt.--Shakespeare makes Ca.s.sius overflow with intense personal spite against Caesar.

This is in accordance with what he read in North's Plutarch.]

[Page 30]

SCENE III. _The same. A street_

_Thunder and lightning. Enter, from opposite sides_, CASCA, _with his sword drawn, and_ CICERO

CICERO. Good even, Casca: brought you Caesar home?

Why are you breathless? and why stare you so?

CASCA. Are you not mov'd, when all the sway of earth Shakes like a thing unfirm? O Cicero, I have seen tempests, when the scolding winds 5 Have riv'd the knotty oaks, and I have seen Th' ambitious ocean swell and rage and foam, To be exalted with the threatening clouds; But never till to-night, never till now, Did I go through a tempest dropping fire. 10 Either there is a civil strife in heaven, Or else the world, too saucy with the G.o.ds, Incenses them to send destruction.

[Note: SCENE III Capell Scene VI Pope.]

[Note: _Enter, from ..._ Enter Caska, and Cicero Ff.]

[Note 10: /tempest dropping fire/ Rowe tempest-dropping-fire Ff.]

[Note: SCENE III. Rowe added "with his sword drawn" to the Folio stage direction, basing the note on l. 19.

A month has pa.s.sed since the machinery of the conspiracy was set in motion. The action in the preceding scene took place on the day of the Lupercalia; the action in this is on the eve of the Ides of March.]

[Note 1: /brought:/ accompanied. Cf. _Richard II_, I, iv, 2.]

[Note 3-4: /sway of earth:/ established order. "The balanced swing of earth."--Craik. "The whole weight or momentum of this globe."--Johnson. In such a raging of the elements, it seems as if the whole world were going to pieces, or as if the earth's steadfastness were growing 'unfirm.' "'Unfirm' is not firm; while 'infirm' is weak."--Clar.]

[Note 11-13: Either the G.o.ds are fighting among themselves, or else they are making war on the world for being overbearing in its att.i.tude towards them. For Shakespeare's use of 'saucy,'

see Century.]

[Note 13: /destruction./ Must be p.r.o.nounced as a quadrisyllable.]

[Page 31]

CICERO. Why, saw you any thing more wonderful?

[Note 14: /any thing more wonderful./ This may be interpreted as 'anything that was more wonderful,' or 'anything more that was wonderful.' The former seems the true interpretation. For the 'wonderful' things that Casca describes, Shakespeare was indebted to the following pa.s.sage from Plutarch's _Julius Caesar_, which North in the margin ent.i.tles "Predictions and foreshews of Caesar's death": "Certainly destiny may easier be foreseen than avoided, considering the strange and wonderful signs that were said to be seen before Caesar's death. For, touching the fires in the element, and spirits running up and down in the night, and also the solitary birds to be seen at noondays sitting in the great market-place, are not all these signs perhaps worth the noting, in such a wonderful chance as happened? But Strabo the philosopher writeth, that divers men were seen going up and down in fire, and furthermore, that there was a slave of the soldiers that did cast a marvellous burning flame out of his hand, insomuch as they that saw it thought he had been burnt; but when the fire was out, it was found he had no hurt. Caesar self also, doing sacrifice unto the G.o.ds, found that one of the beasts which was sacrificed had no heart: and that was a strange thing in nature, how a beast could live without a heart." This pa.s.sage is worth special attention, as Shakespeare uses many of the details again in II, ii, 17-24, 39-40. Cf. _Hamlet_, I, i, 113-125.]

[Page 32]

CASCA. A common slave--you know him well by sight-- 15 Held up his left hand, which did flame and burn Like twenty torches join'd, and yet his hand, Not sensible of fire, remain'd unscorch'd.

Besides--I ha' not since put up my sword-- Against the Capitol I met a lion, 20 Who glaz'd upon me and went surly by Without annoying me: and there were drawn Upon a heap a hundred ghastly women, Transformed with their fear, who swore they saw Men all in fire walk up and down the streets. 25 And yesterday the bird of night did sit Even at noon-day upon the market-place, Hooting and shrieking. When these prodigies Do so conjointly meet, let not men say, 'These are their reasons; they are natural;' 30 For, I believe, they are portentous things Unto the climate that they point upon.

[Note 21: /glaz'd/ Ff glar'd Rowe.--/surly/ F1 F4 surely F2 F3.]

[Note 28: /Hooting/ Johnson Howting F1 F2 F3 Houting F4.]

[Note: 15. /you know./ Dyce suggested 'you'd know'; Craik, 'you knew.' But the text as it stands is dramatically vivid and realistic.]

[Note 21: /Who./ See Abbott, -- 264.--/glaz'd./ Rowe's change to 'glar'd' is usually adopted as the reading here, but 'glaze' is used intransitively in Middle English in the sense of 'shine brilliantly,' and Dr. Wright (Clar) says: "I am informed by a correspondent that the word 'glaze' in the sense of 'stare' is common in some parts of Devonshire, and that 'glazing like a conger' is a familiar expression in Cornwall."

See Murray for additional examples.]

[Note 23: /Upon a heap:/ together in a crowd. 'Heap' is often used in this sense in Middle English as it is colloquially to-day. The Anglo-Saxon _heap_ almost always refers to persons. In _Richard III_, II, i, 53, occurs "princely heap."

So "Let us on heaps go offer up our lives" in _Henry V_, IV, v, 18.]

[Note 26: /the bird of night./ The old Roman horror of the owl is well shown in this pa.s.sage (spelling modernized) of Holland's Pliny, quoted by Dr. Wright (Clar): "The screech-owl betokeneth always some heavy news, and is most execrable ...

in the presages of public affairs.... In sum, he is the very monster of the night.... There fortuned one of them to enter the very sanctuary of the Capitol, in that year when s.e.xtus Papellio Ister and Lucius Pedanius were Consuls; whereupon, at the Nones of March, the city of Rome that year made general processions, to appease the wrath of the G.o.ds, and was solemnly purged by sacrifices."]

[Note 30: /These:/ such and such. Cf. "these and these" in II, i, 31. Casca refers to the doctrine of the Epicureans, who were slow to believe that such pranks of the elements had any moral significance in them, or that moral causes had anything to do with them, and held that the explanation of them was to be sought for in the simple working of natural laws and forces. Shakespeare deals humorously with these views in _All's Well that Ends Well_, II, iii, 1-6.]

[Note 32: /climate:/ region, country. So _Richard II_, IV, i, 130. Cf. _Hamlet_, I, i, 125: "Unto our climatures and countrymen."]

[Page 33]

CICERO. Indeed, it is a strange-disposed time: But men may construe things after their fashion, Clean from the purpose of the things themselves. 35 Comes Caesar to the Capitol to-morrow?

CASCA. He doth; for he did bid Antonius Send word to you he would be there to-morrow.

CICERO. Good night then, Casca: this disturbed sky 39 Is not to walk in.

CASCA. Farewell, Cicero. [_Exit_ CICERO]

_Enter_ Ca.s.sIUS

Ca.s.sIUS. Who's there?

CASCA. A Roman.

Ca.s.sIUS. Casca, by your voice.

CASCA. Your ear is good. Ca.s.sius, what night is this!

[Note 36: /to/ F1 F2 up F3 F4.]

[Note 41: Scene VII Pope.]

[Note 42: Two lines in Ff.--/this!/ Dyce this? Ff.]