More than his reason. But 'tis a common proof, 25 He then unto the ladder turns his back, Looks in the clouds, scorning the base degrees By which he did ascend. So Cæsar may: Then, lest he may, prevent. And, since the quarrel Will bear no colour for the thing he is, Fashion it thus; that what he is, augmented, 23. climber-upward] climber upward Ff. "Most wretched man, That to affections does the bridle lend. Wrath, jealousy, grief, love, this squire have laid thus low." 21. a common proof] a matter of common experience. 22. young ambition's ladder] Malone compares Daniel's Civil Wars, 1602: "The aspirer once attained unto the top Cuts off those means by which himself got up." 26. base degrees] low steps which he now scorns. "Base" combines the ideas of lowness and contempt. For this use of "degree" compare Twelfth Night, III. i. 134: “I pity you; that's a degree to love." 28. prevent] first person plural of the subjunctive used imperatively as "fashion" (line 30), "think" (line 32), "kill" (line 34), "pass" (I. ii. 24), "break" (11. i. 116), and “go" (IV. iii. 223). 28. quarrel] (Lat. querela, com. plaint) ground or principle of opposition. Compare "I could not die anywhere so contented as in the king's company, his cause being just, and his quarrel honourable (Henry V. IV. i. 133), and Bacon's 29th Essay: "The Turk hath at 30 hand for cause of war the propagation of his law or sect; a quarrel that he may always command." 29. Will bear no colour] cannot be justified on the ground of his actual conduct. Compare 2 Henry VI. III. i. 236: "But yet we want a colour for his death." Coleridge well remarks that "surely nothing can seem more discordant with our historical preconceptions of Brutus, or more lowering to the intellect of the StoicoPlatonic tyrannicide, than the tenets here attributed to him, the stern Roman Republican, namely, that he would have no objection to a king, or to Cæsar, a monarch in Rome, would Cæsar but be as good a monarch as he now seems disposed to be." Perhaps Shakespeare was afraid that he might offend his royal patron if he attributed pure republican sentiments to the most attractive character in the play, and therefore represented him here as opposed not to monarchy in the abstract, but only to bad monarchy. 30. Fashion it thus] let us regard it in this light. Brutus here, as in 175-180, is wrongly supposed to be contemplating deliberate hypocrisy. He is really trying to put such a construction on the deed as will satisfy his own conscience, and is not thinking of the opinion of the world. Would run to these and these extremities; And therefore think him as a serpent's egg Which, hatch'd, would, as his kind, grow mis chievous, And kill him in the shell. Re-enter LUCIUS. Luc. The taper burneth in your closet, sir. 35 [Gives him a letter. Bru. Get you to bed again; it is not day. Is not to-morrow, boy, the first of March? Luc. I know not, sir. Bru. Look in the calendar, and bring me word. 40. first] Ff, ides Theobald and later editors. 31. these and these extremities] certain extremes that he has in his mind but does not specify. Compare the use of "these" in 1. iii. 30. 33. his kind its species. "His" is neuter possessive, as in 1. ii. 123. 34. in the shell] Craik well remarks that "it is impossible not to feel the expressive effect of the hemistich here. The line itself is, as it were, killed in the shell." 40. first of March] As is plain from the answer of Lucius (line 59), the morrow, or rather the day then commencing, for it is evident from I. iii. 163 that it was past midnight, was the fifteenth or Ides of March. It is therefore generally supposed that "first" in the Folios is a misprint for 40 [Exit. "Ides." It is more probably a slip of the poet's, traceable to a passage in the life of Brutus in which we read that Cassius asked Brutus "if he were determined to be in the Senate House the first day of the month of March, because he heard say that Cæsar's friends should move the Council that day, that Cæsar should be called king by the Senate." Shakespeare, reading this passage, naturally supposed that it referred to the day of the assassination, on which the Senate had resolved to give a crown to Cæsar (II. ii. 93). He thus from his original got two dates mixed up in his mind, and in the hurry of writing for the stage may have overlooked the inconsistency. Bru. The exhalations whizzing in the air Give so much light that I may read by them. 45 [Opens the letter. Brutus, thou sleep'st: awake, and see thyself. Shall Rome, etc. Speak, strike, redress! Such instigations have been often dropp'd Where I have took them up. 50 "Shall Rome, etc." Thus must I piece it out: Shall Rome stand under one man's awe? What, Rome? My ancestors did from the streets of Rome The Tarquin drive, when he was call'd a king. Speak, strike, redress!" Am I entreated 55 To speak and strike? O Rome! I make thee promise; If the redress will follow, thou receiv'st Thy full petition at the hand of Brutus! 52. What, Rome?] What Rome? Ff. 56. thee] F 1, 4; the F 2, 3. 53. ancestors] Ff, ancestor Dyce. 44. exhalations] meteors. See note indignation that Rome should be so on I. iii. 10. servile and submissive. 48.] This is not the end of the letter, but the beginning repeated as a subject for reflection. 51. piece it out] fill up the gap. Brutus by the uncertain light of the meteors reads only the beginning and end of the letter, and conjectures the rest to be of a tenor similar to the instigations that have been dropt in his way before. 52. stand under one man's awe] be cowed by one man. For the possessive used as an objective genitive, compare Richard II. 1. i. 128: “my sceptre's awe." 52. What] expresses surprise and 53. My ancestors] The plural may be justified on the supposition that several members of the Brutus family took part in the expulsion of the Tarquins. Brutus was a plebeian, and not descended from the patrician family to which the old Brutus belonged. The common name, however, naturally made people believe that the later was descended from the earlier Brutus, and expect that he would emulate the glory of his supposed ancestor. To give credit to this belief, a third son was invented for the old Brutus in addition to the two sons whom he executed in their youth Re-enter LUCIUS. Luc. Sir, March is wasted fifteen days. [Knocking within. Bru. 'Tis good. Go to the gate: somebody knocks. 60 [Exit Lucius. Since Cassius first did whet me against Cæsar, 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 : The genius and the mortal instruments 59. fifteen] Ff, fourteen Theobald and later editors. 59. wasted here merely expresses the lapse of time, as perhaps in Othello, 1. iii. 84: "Till now some nine moons wasted." 59. fifteen] As this was the morning of the fifteenth of March, strictly speaking only a little more than fourteen days of the month had run. Therefore most editors alter "fifteen " into "fourteen.' The change is, however, not warranted. Shakespeare merely made Lucius reckon inclusively, as many people still do and as the Romans themselves did in reckoning time, e.g., in the Roman Calendar the thirteenth of March was called the third day before the Ides, although according to our reckoning it is only two days before the Ides or fifteenth of March. Compare Matthew xxvii. 63, and Iliad, ix. 363 as interpreted by Socrates at the beginning of the Crito. 63. Between the acting, etc.] Addison reproduces the sense of these lines in his Cato, I. iii. : "O think what anxious moments 65 Oh! 'tis a dreadful interval of time, Fill'd up with horror all and big with death." 65. phantasma] an apparition, something horrible and unreal. The Greek termination shows that the word was not perfectly naturalised in Shakespeare's time. Elsewhere Shakespeare uses the Anglicised form phantasm." 66 66. genius and the mortal instruments] the spirit or mind, and the "corporal agents” (Macbeth, 1. vii. 80) by which it carries out its purposes. The key to this difficult passage may be found in lines 175, 176, iv. i. 33, and in Othello, I. iii. 271, where Othello speaks of his "speculative and active instruments," meaning respectively his organs of thought and action. "Genius" here corresponds to "speculative instruments there, and the "mortal instruments" of this passage are the "active instruments' spoken of in that passage, which are here distinguished from the genius or mind by their mortality and as being the instruments employed by the mind. The epithet "mortal" shows that Are then in council; and the state of man, Like to a little kingdom, suffers then Re-enter LUCIUS. Luc. Sir, 'tis your brother Cassius at the door, Bru. 70 Is he alone? Luc. No, sir, there are moe with him. Do you know them? Luc. No, sir; their hats are pluck'd about their ears, And half their faces buried in their cloaks, 67. of man,] F 2, 3, 4; of a man, F 1. 74. cloaks] cloakes F 1; cloathes F2; cloaths F 3, 4. Shakespeare here follows the doctrine of Aristotle, who denied the immortality of all but the rational soul. The general meaning of the passage is that the mind takes counsel with the active organs by help of which the deed is to be accomplished. It is no doubt strange to make the bodily organs deliberate, but they are represented as doing so again in Coriolanus, 1. i. 105. For genius" in the sense of "mind' or "spirit" Craik quotes The Comedy of Errors, V. i. 332: " "One of these men is genius to the other; And so of these: which is the natural man And which the spirit?" 68. Like to a little kingdom] The comparison between the mind of man and a political state is elaborately worked out in Plato's Republic. 69. insurrection] So in Winter's Tale, 1. ii. 355, Leontes contemplating the murder of Polixenes is described as being "in rebellion with himself." For the civil conflict in the soul of Brutus, see I. ii. 39. A similar war of contending feelings is described in Macbeth, in Othello, in the Medea of Euripides, and in the Choëphora of Æschylus as preceding the execution of dreadful deeds. Macbeth in describing his state of mind (1. iii. 137) says: "My thought, whose murder yet is but fantastical, Shakes so my single state of man, that function Is smothered in surmise," which supports the omission of "a" before "man" in the later Folios. 70. brother] for "brother-in-law." Cassius married Junia, the sister of Brutus. 73. their hats] Ancient Romans of high rank generally went about bareheaded, but they would naturally cover their heads at this early hour of the morning. Suetonius mentions that Nero used a cap as a disguise, when he went incognito through the streets. The ancient Greeks and Romans also sometimes wore a felt hat (petasus), the brim of which could be pulled down over the ears. 74. cloaks] The Romans were in the habit of covering their heads with a portion of their togas. This, how |