The New Hudson Shakespeare: Julius Caesar Part 17

[Note 56: /thee/ F1 F4 the F2 F3.]

[Note 40: The Folio reading 'first of March' cannot be right chronologically, though it is undoubtedly what Shakespeare wrote, for in Plutarch, _Marcus Brutus_, he read: "Ca.s.sius asked him if he were determined to be in the Senate-house the first day of the month of March, because he heard say that Caesar's friends should move the Council that day that Caesar should be called king by the Senate." This inconsistency is not without parallels in Shakespeare. Cf. the "four strangers"

in _The Merchant of Venice_, I, ii, 135, when six have been mentioned. In Scott, too, are many such inconsistencies.]

[Note 44: /exhalations/: meteors. In Plutarch's _Opinions of Philosophers_, Holland's translation, is this pa.s.sage (spelling modernized): "Aristotle supposeth that all these meteors come of a dry exhalation, which, being gotten enclosed within a moist cloud, seeketh means, and striveth forcibly to get forth." Shakespeare uses 'meteor' repeatedly in the same way. So in _Romeo and Juliet_, III, v, 13.]

[Note 48: The Folios give this line as it is here. Some editors arrange it as the beginning of the letter repeated ponderingly by Brutus.]

[Note 49-50: See quotation from Plutarch in note, p. 40, l.

143.]

[Page 46-47]

_Re-enter_ LUCIUS

LUCIUS. Sir, March is wasted fifteen days.

[_Knocking within_]

BRUTUS. 'T is good. Go to the gate; somebody knocks.

[_Exit_ LUCIUS]

Since Ca.s.sius first did whet me against Caesar, 61 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: 65 The Genius and the mortal instruments Are then in council; and the state of a man, Like to a little kingdom, suffers then The nature of an insurrection.

[Note 59: /fifteen/ Ff fourteen Theobald.]

[Note 60, 76: [_Exit_ LUCIUS] Ff omit.]

[Note 67: /a man/ F1 man F2 F3 F4.]

[Note 59: /fifteen./ This, the Folio reading, is undoubtedly correct. Lines 103-104 and 192-193 show that it is past midnight, and Lucius is including in his computation the dawn of the fifteenth day, a natural thing for any one to do, especially a Roman.]

[Note 64: /motion/: prompting of impulse. Cf. _King John_, IV, ii, 255.]

[Note 65: /phantasma/: a vision of things that are not.

"Shakespeare seems to use it ('phantasma') in this pa.s.sage in the sense of nightmare, which it bears in Italian."--Clar.

What Brutus says here is in the very spirit of Hamlet's speeches. Cf. also the King's speech to Laertes, _Hamlet_, IV, vii, 115-124, and _Macbeth_, I, vii, 1-28.]

[Note 66: Commentators differ about 'Genius' here; some taking it for the 'conscience,' others for the 'anti-conscience.'

Shakespeare uses 'genius,' 'spirit,' and 'demon,' as synonymous, and all three, apparently, both in a good sense and in a bad, as every man was supposed to have a good and a bad angel. So, in this play, IV, iii, 282, we have "thy evil spirit"; in _The Tempest_, IV, i, 27, "our worser genius"; in _Troilus and Cressida_, IV, iv, 52, "some say the Genius so Cries 'come' to him that instantly must die"; in _Antony and Cleopatra_, II, iii, 19, "Thy demon, that's thy spirit which keeps thee"; where, as often, 'keeps' is 'guards.' In these and some other cases the words have some epithet or context that determines their meaning, but not so with 'Genius' in the text. But, in all such cases, the words indicate the directive power of the mind. And so we often speak of a man's 'better self,' or a man's 'worser self,' according as one is in fact directed or drawn to good or to evil.--The sense of 'mortal'

here is also somewhat in question. Shakespeare sometimes uses it for 'perishable,' or that which dies; but oftener for 'deadly,' or that which kills. 'Mortal instruments' may well be held to mean what Macbeth refers to when he says, "I'm settled, and bend up Each corporal agent to this terrible feat."--As Brutus is speaking with reference to his own case, he probably intends 'Genius' in a good sense, for the spiritual or immortal part of himself. If so, then he would naturally mean by 'mortal' his perishable part, or his ministerial faculties, which shrink from executing what the directing power is urging them to. The late Professor Ferrier of St. Andrews seems to take a somewhat different view of the pa.s.sage. He says, "In this speech of Brutus, Shakespeare gives a fine description of the unsettled state of the mind when the will is hesitating about the perpetration of a great crime, and when the pa.s.sions are threatening to overpower, and eventually do overpower, the reason and the conscience."]

[Note 67-69: Cf. I, ii, 39-47; _Macbeth_, I, iii, 137-142.]

[Page 48]

_Re-enter_ LUCIUS

LUCIUS. Sir, 't is your brother Ca.s.sius at the door, 70 Who doth desire to see you.

BRUTUS. Is he alone?

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

BRUTUS. Do you know them?

LUCIUS. 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 75 By any mark of favour.

BRUTUS. Let 'em enter. [_Exit_ LUCIUS]

They are the faction. O conspiracy, Sham'st 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, Not Erebus itself were dim enough To hide thee from prevention. 85

[Note 72: /moe/ Ff more Rowe.]

[Note 74: /cloaks/ Cloakes F1 cloathes F2 cloaths F3 F4.]

[Note 76: /'em/ F1 F2 F3 them F4.]

[Note 83: /path, thy/ F2 path thy F1 F3 F4 hath thy Quarto (1691) march, thy Pope put thy Dyce (Coleridge conj.).]

[Note 70: /brother./ Ca.s.sius was married to Junia, the sister of Brutus.]

[Note 72: /moe/: more. The old comparative of 'many.' In Middle English 'moe,' or 'mo,' was used of number and with collective nouns; 'more' had reference specifically to size.

See Skeat.]

[Note 73: Pope was evidently so disgusted with Shakespeare's tendency to dress his Romans like Elizabethans, that in his two editions he omits 'hats' altogether, indicating the omission by a dash!]

[Note 76: /favour/: countenance. So in I, ii, 91; I, iii, 129.]

[Note 79: /evils/: evil things. So in _Lucrece_, l. 1250, we have 'cave-keeping evils.' The line in the text means, When crimes and mischiefs, and evil and mischievous men, are most free from the restraints of law or of shame. So Hamlet speaks of night as the time "when h.e.l.l itself breathes out Contagion to this world." Cf. l. 265.]

[Note 83: /path:/ take thy way. Drayton employs 'path' as a verb, both transitively and intransitively, literally and figuratively, in _England's Heroicall Epistles_ (1597-1598).

The verb seems to have been in use from the fourteenth century to the close of the seventeenth.]

[Note 84: /Erebus:/ the region of nether darkness between Earth and Hades. Cf. _The Merchant of Venice_, V, i, 87: "dark as Erebus."]

[Note 85: /prevention:/ discovery, antic.i.p.ation. This, the original sense, would lead to 'prevention,' as the term is used to-day.]

[Page 49]

_Enter the conspirators_, Ca.s.sIUS, CASCA, DECIUS, CINNA, METELLUS CIMBER, _and_ TREBONIUS.

Ca.s.sIUS. I think we are too bold upon your rest: Good morrow, Brutus; do we trouble you?

BRUTUS. I have been up this hour, awake all night.

Know I these men that come along with you?