each as worthy of the final éloge pronounced over his body: His life was gentle, and the elements So mix'd in him that Nature might stand up And the praise of Antony is confirmed and ratified by the perfect love of Portia. Yet from first to last Brutus is in the wrong. In one of his earliest playsif not the earliest of all-Love's Labour's Lost, Shakespeare had playfully, and also seriously, declared that life is to be learnt not in the school or the academy, but by the exercise of intelligence and passions among the facts of life itself. Brutus has been secluded from reality by an environment of abstract ideas. Even his manner of speech, when it is studied and deliberate, as was noted by Plutarch of his epistles, shows a suppression of what is natural that almost becomes a pose; and yet a deep emotional temper underlies the formality of these 'Lacedemonian' utterances. As Cæsar idealizes himself as the representative of Cæsarism, so Brutus regards himself too often as the quester for moral perfection. He has impressed those around him in the same way, and has acquired over them a moral authority, which is not without its dangers. Through his very cult of virtue he lies open to temptation, and can be seduced into a great crime, which a process of abstract reasoning can transform into the semblance of an act of disinterested public spirit. The historical Brutus has been described by M. Gaston Boissier as a man of study, who, in spite of his natural repugnance, has become a man of action, and has been carried by the stream of events into circumstances foreign to his nature'. It is thus that Shakespeare has imagined the Brutus of his tragedy. The counsel which he tenders to his fellow conspirators, and afterwards to his fellows in military operations is always accepted, so overmastering is the authority of his character, and is always disastrous to the cause which he has at heart. He strikes Cæsar not because he is himself a republican, but because he has accepted the hypothesis of a possible tyranny. He addresses a Roman mob as if he were reasoning with students in a philosophic school. And gradually there comes upon Brutus a great disillusionment. He discovers that Cæsar is more potent at the last than at the first: O Julius Cæsar! thou art mighty yet! Thy spirit walks abroad, and turns our swords And so he finds that refuge of death, which, since the loss of Portia, borne with such fortitude, must have been desired by him. Portia speaks but a few lines in the play, but the impression which they leave is poignant and ineffaceable. We seem to know her through and through as the perfect wife, who would fain be the philosopher that Brutus's wife should be, and yet needs must be a woman, and a woman trembling under a burden too great to be sustained. Shakespeare found her in Plutarch, but there she was a young widow, before she became the wife of Brutus, who had also a young sonne called [after her first husband] Bibulus, who afterwards wrote a booke of the actes and gestes of Brutus.' On the one side of Brutus, in the chronological order of the plays, stands a great man of action, Henry V; but his wooing of Katharine, at once soldierly and diplomatic, can never lead on to a love like that which lived in the hearts of Brutus and Portia. On the other side stands a thinker and a student forced into action like Brutus, but of another type than the Roman tyrannicide, Hamlet, with his piteous, foiled love for one who can give him no help or understanding sympathy. Perhaps Shakespeare felt that Brutus, with all his errors and all his grief, had a happiness unknown to the others. The nobility of Brutus's nature is thrown into relief by the character of his brother-in-law Cassius. Unlike Brutus he is a great observer, who 'looks quite through the deeds of men'. In Plutarch we read of him as a chollericke man', who hated Cæsar privately more than he did the tyranny openly. Shakespeare accepted the characterization of the historian; but he will not permit us to think ignobly of Cassius. He is zealous for his cause, clear-sighted, efficient; and, if choleric, he can be gentle under provocation, as we see in the great tent-scene of the fourth Act, where in spite of the rash humour that his mother gave him, he is perhaps less in the wrong than his brother, and at the close cannot drink too much of Brutus' love'. LUCILIUS, TITINIUS, MESSALA, Young CATO, and VOLUMNIUS; Friends to Brutus and Cassius. VARRO, CLITUS, CLAUDIUS, STRATO, LUCIUS, DARDANIUS; Servants to Brutus. PINDARUS, Servant to Cassius CALPHURNIA, Wife to Cæsar. PORTIA, Wife to Brutus. Senators, Citizens, Guards, Attendants, &c. SCENE.-During a great part of the Play, at Rome; 'afterwards, Sardis and near Philippi. JULIUS CÆSAR ACT I. SCENE I.-Rome. A Street. Enter FLAVIUS, MARULLUS, and certain Commoners. FLAVIUS. Hence! home, you idle creatures, get you home: Is this a holiday? What! know you not, Being mechanical, you ought not walk Of your profession? Speak, what trade art thou? MARULLUS. rule? Where is thy leather apron, and thy What dost thou with thy best apparel on? 8 SECOND COMMONER. Truly, sir, in respect of a fine workman, I am but, as you would say, a cobbler. MARULLUS. But what trade art thou? Answer me directly. SECOND COMMONER. 12 A trade, sir, that, I hope, I may use with a safe conscience; which is, indeed, sir, a mender of bad soles. MARULLUS. What trade, thou knave? thou naughty knave, what trade? 16 SECOND COMMONER. Nay, I beseech you, sir, be not out with me yet, if you be out, sir, I can mend you. MARULLUS. What meanest thou by that? Mend me, thou saucy fellow ! SECOND COMMONER. Why, sir, cobble you. 20 SECOND COMMONER. Truly, sir, all that I live by is with the awl: I meddle with no tradesman's matters, nor women's matters, but with awl. I am, indeed, sir, |