Drum. Enter BRUTUS, CASSIUS, and their Army; LUCILIUS, TITINIUS, MESSALA, and Others. BRU. They stand, and would have parley. CAS. Stand fast, Titinius: We must out and talk. OCT. Mark Antony, shall we give sign of battle? ANT. No, Cæsar, we will answer on their charge. Make forth, the generals would have some words. OCT. Stir not until the signal. BRU. Words before blows: Is it so, countrymen? OCT. Not that we love words better, as you do. › BRU. Good words are better than bad strokes,. Octavius. ANT. In your bad strokes, Brutus, you give good words: Witness the hole you made in Cæsar's heart, CAS. Antony, ANT. Not stingless too. BRU. O, yes, and soundless too; For you have stol'n their buzzing, Antony, * The posture of your blows are yet unknown;] It should be -is yet unknown. But the error was certainly Shakspeare's. MALONE. Rather, the mistake of his transcriber or printer; which therefore ought, in my opinion, to be corrected. Had Shakspeare been generally inaccurate on similar occasions, he might more justly have been suspected of inaccuracy in the present instance. STEEVENS. ANT. Villains, you did not so, when your vile daggers Hack'd one another in the sides of Cæsar: You show'd your teeth like apes, and fawn'd like hounds, And bow'd like bondmen, kissing Cæsar's feet; Whilst damned Casca,5 like a cur, behind, Struck Cæsar on the neck. O flatterers !6 CAS. Flatterers!-Now, Brutus, thank yourself:7 This tongue had not offended so to-day, If Cassius might have rul❜d. OCT. Come, come, the cause: If arguing make us sweat, The proof of it will turn to redder drops. I draw a sword against conspirators; When think you that the sword goes up again?Never, till Cæsar's three and twenty wounds 5 8 Casca,] Casca struck Cæsar on the neck, coming like a degenerate cur behind him. JOHNSON. 6 terers! O flatterers!] Old copy, unmetrically, you flat 7 Flatterers! Now, Brutus, thank yourself:] It is natural to suppose, from the defective metre of this line, that our author wrote: 8 Flatterers! Now, Brutus, you may thank yourself. three and twenty wounds-] [Old copy-three and thirty;] but I have ventured to reduce this number to three and twenty, from the joint authorities of Appian, Plutarch, and Suetonius and I am persuaded, the error was not from the poet but his transcribers. THEObald. Beaumont and Fletcher have fallen into a similar mistake, in their Noble Gentleman: "So Cæsar fell, when in the Capitol, "They gave his body two and thirty wounds." RITSON. Be well aveng'd; or till another Cæsar Have added slaughter to the sword of traitors." Ост. So I hope; I was not born to die on Brutus' sword. BRU. O, if thou wert the noblest of thy strain, Young man, thou could'st not die more honourable. CAS. A peevish schoolboy, worthless of such honour, Join'd with a masker and a reveller. ANT. Old Cassius still! Ост. Come, Antony; away. Defiance, traitors, hurl we1 in your teeth: Exeunt OCTAVIUS, ANTONY, and their Army. till another Cæsar Have added slaughter to the sword of traitors.] A similar idea has already occurred in King John: "Or add a royal number to the dead,— "With slaughter coupled to the name of kings." STEEVENS. Defiance, traitors, hurl we-] Whence perhaps Milton, Paradise Lost, B. I. v. 669: 66 Hurling defiance toward the vault of Heaven." Hurl is peculiarly expressive. The challenger in judicial combats was said to hurl down his gage, when he threw his glove down as a pledge that he would make good his charge against his adversary. So, in King Richard II: "And interchangeably hurl down my gage HOLT WHITE. when you have stomachs.] So, in Chapman's version of the ninth Iliad: "Fight when his stomach serves him best, or when" &c. STEEVENS. CAS. Why now, blow, wind; swell, billow; and swim, bark! The storm is up, and all is on the hazard. This is my birth-day; as this very day Messala,3 Was Cassius born. Give me thy hand, Messala: You know, that I held Epicurus strong, 3 Messala, &c.] Almost every circumstance in this speech is taken from Sir Thomas North's translation of Plutarch: "But touching Cassius, Méssala reporteth that he supped by himselfe in his tent with a few of his friendes, and that all supper tyme he looked very sadly, and was full of thoughts, although it was against his nature: and that after supper he tooke him by the hande, and holding him fast (in token of kindnes as his manner was) told him in Greeke, Messala, I protest vnto thee, and make thee my witnes, that I am compelled against my minde and will (as Pompey the Great was) to ieopard the libertie of our contry, to the hazard of a battel. And yet we must be liuely, and of good corage, considering our good fortune, whom we should wronge too muche to mistrust her, although we follow euill counsell. Messala writeth, that Cassius hauing spoken these last wordes unto him, he bid him farewell, and willed him to come to supper to him the next night following, bicause it was his birth day." STEEVENS. 4 our former ensign-] Thus the old copy, and, I suppose, rightly. Former is foremost. Shakspeare sometimes uses Two mighty eagles fell; and there they perch'd, This morning are they fled away, and gone; Our army lies, ready to give up the ghost. MES. Believe not so. CAS. I but believe it partly; For I am fresh of spirit, and resolv❜d CAS. the comparative instead of the positive and superlative. See King Lear, Act IV. sc. iii. Either word has the same origin; nor do I perceive why former should be less applicable to place than time. STEEVENS. Former is right; and the meaning-our fore ensign. So, in Adlyngton's Apuleius, 1596: "First hee instructed me to sit at the table vpon my taile, and howe I should leape and daunce, holding up my former feete." Again, in Harrison's Description of Britaine: "It [i. e. brawn] is made commonly of the fore part of a tame bore set uppe for the purpose by the space of an whole year or two. Afterwarde he is killed-and then of his former partes is our brawne made." RITSON. I once thought that for the sake of distinction the word should be spelt foremer, but as it is derived from the Saxon foɲma, first, I have adhered to the common spelling. MALONE. as we were sickly prey ;] So, in King John: "As doth a raven on a sick-fall'n beast,—.' STEEVENS. |