Cæs. And graves have yawn'd and yielded up their dead; In ranks and squadrons and right form of war, The noise of battle hurtled in the air, Horses did neigh, and dying men did groan, 20 And ghosts did shriek and squeal about the streets. And I do fear them. What can be avoided 25 22. 19. fight] Ff; fought Grant White, Dyce; did fight Keightley. hurtled] F 1; hurried F 2, 3, 4. 23. did neigh] F 2, 3, 4; do neigh F 1. 19. fight upon the clouds] Compare Georgies, i. 474, and P. L. ii. 533: "As when to warn proud cities war appears Waged in the troubled sky, and armies rush To battle in the clouds"; which passage is based on the account given by Josephus of the signs that foretold the destruction of Jerusalem. 21. drizzled] used transitively. Red rain, such as lately (April 1901) fell in Italy and other parts of the Continent, is mentioned as ominous of coming bloodshed in Iliad, xvi. 459, and in the Ramayana. The change in tense from "fight" to "drizzled" may be reasonably defended. Calpurnia as she spoke could still see, or seemed to see, the battle in the sky. The red rain falling on the Capitol, which could not be seen by her, must have been announced by a messenger, and might, for anything she knew, have ceased. The variation of tenses in the first Folio reading of line 23 may be corrected, as it is much harsher, and admits of no reasonable justification, and as the 22. hurtled] vividly expresses the shock of battle. The word is used with effect by Gray in his Fatal Sisters: "Iron sleet of arrowy shower Hurtles in the darken'd air." 24. shriek and squeal] Compare the quotation from Hamlet given above. "Squeal," which in the Merchant of Venice is used of the sound of the fife, expresses the shrill voice of ghosts. It corresponds to Horace's "triste et acutum" (Sat. 1. viii. 41), and the Homeric τpíšεw applied to the ghosts, whose voices are compared in the Odyssey to the voices of bats. 25. beyond all use] entirely unusual, prodigious. 26. What can be avoided] Compare Hamlet, v. ii. 10: "There's a divinity that shapes our ends, Rough hew them how we will." 28. Yet] in spite of the signs and wonders mentioned by Calpurnia. 28. these predictions] what is fore Are to the world in general as to Cæsar. Cal. When beggars die, there are no comets seen; 30 princes. Cas. Cowards die many times before their deaths; Of all the wonders that I yet have heard, It seems to me most strange that men should fear; Seeing that death, a necessary end, Will come when it will come. Re-enter Servant. 35 What say the augurers? Serv. They would not have you to stir forth to-day. Plucking the entrails of an offering forth, Cas. The gods do this in shame of cowardice: Cæsar should be a beast without a heart If he should stay at home to-day for fear. No, Cæsar shall not; danger knows full well That Cæsar is more dangerous than he : told by the prodigies. Cæsar does not see why the prodigies foreboded evil to him particularly. 31. blaze forth] express in signs of fire. Plutarch relates there was a "great comet which seven nights together was seen very bright after Cæsar's death." 32. Cowards die many times] because, as Isabella says in Measure for Measure, "The sense of death is most in apprehension," and cowards, as often as they fear death, feel the pangs of death. Plutarch says that "when some of Cæsar's friends did counsel 40 45 him to have a guard for the safety of his person, he would never consent to it, but said, it was better to die once, than always to be afraid of death." Malone quotes a letter of Essex in which he observes that "as he which dieth nobly doth live for ever, so he that doth live in fear doth die continually." 33. taste of death] Compare Matt. xvi. 28. 37. Will come when it will come] an expression of fatalism. Compare 26, 27. 45. more dangerous than he] a hyperbole the sense of which will We are two lions litter'd in one day, And Cæsar shall go forth. Cal. Alas! my lord, 50 Your wisdom is consum'd in confidence. Do not go forth to-day: call it my fear Cæs. Mark Antony shall say I am not well; Enter DECIUS. Here's Decius Brutus, he shall tell them so. Dec. Cæsar, all hail! Good morrow, worthy Cæsar : I come to fetch you to the senate-house. 46. are] Capell; heare F 1, 2; hear F 3, 4; were Theobald. not bear analysis. We may compare such expressions as "Hibernicis Hiberniores" and " plus sages que les sages." 46. We are two lions] This conjectural emendation gives good sense, but no explanation is suggested to explain how "are" came to be transformed into "heare," the reading of the first and second Folios. Is it not probable that the right reading may be "I and he are," pronounced "I'nd he 're"? The elisions would present no difficulty, except in so far as they give a rough beginning to the line. For the first we may compare Mac beth, III. vi. 14: "Was not this nobly done? Ay, and wisely too. For the second compare the common "we're" and Macbeth, I. v. 32: "The king comes here to-night. Thou 'rt mad to say it," and III. ii. 221, where 55 also we find two elisions together. We may well suppose that some copyist chose to alter "I and he" into 'we," but did not draw his pen distinctly through the "he," which therefore remained in the printed text. Or possibly the imperfect correction was made by Shakespeare's own pen, in which case we should of course accept it. I. Schmidt retains the reading of the Folio, understanding "hear" to mean "hear of." It might also be suggested that "hear" is used here as in P. L. iii. 7, so that "We hear two lions" would mean "We are spoken of or called two lions." But it is highly improbable that Shakespeare should have anticipated Milton's bold Latinism, which does not seem to occur in any other passage of Elizabethan literature. Cæs. And you are come in very happy time Shall Cæsar send a lie? Have I in conquest stretch'd mine arm so far Dec. Most mighty Cæsar, let me know some cause, Cas. The cause is in my will: I will not come; 60 65 70 75 76. to-night] Ff; last night Rowe, Pope; statue,] Ff; statua, Steevens, Dyce. 60. in very happy time] most opportunely. Compare Othello, III. i. 32. 76. to-night] here as in III. iii. I means the night just past. This is in accordance with the Jewish mode of reckoning the day from sunset to sunset. Compare Genesis i. 5 and Merchant of Venice, 11. v. 18: "For I did dream of money-bags to-night," where this use of "to-night" is appropriately put in the mouth of a Jew. If Lucius reckoned thus, we have a further explanation of " fifteen" in i. 59. 76. statue] must here, as in III. ii. 195, be pronounced as a trisyllable. In Richard III. III. vii. 25 we find the trisyllabic plural: 'But like dumb statues or breathing stones." Beaumont has the plural "statuas," adding the English suffix to the Latin form. In Bacon the plural takes the form of "statuæs." These forms, intermediate between the Latin and the final English form, are due to the fact that the word was not perfectly naturalised in the English language in Shakespeare's time. And these does she apply for warnings and portents, And evils imminent; and on her knee Hath begg'd that I will stay at home to-day. It was a vision fair and fortunate: 81. And] Ff; of Capell, Warburton. 80, 81. portents, And evils] hendiadys for " portents of evils." Compare P. L. x. 346, "joy and tidings" =tidings of joy. 83. all amiss] Compare the double interpretation of the dream of Polycrates in Herodotus. Plutarch says that Calpurnia in her sleep "deemed that Cæsar was slain." He also tells us that, according to Livy, "the Senate having set upon the top of Caesar's house, for an ornament and setting forth of the same, a certain pinnacle, Calpurnia dreamed that she saw it broken down, and that she thought she lamented and wept for it." 89. tinctures, etc.] "There are two allusions; one to coats armorial, to which princes make additions, or give new tinctures and new marks of cognizance; the other to martyrs, whose relics are preserved with veneration. The Romans, says Decius, all come to you, as to a saint, for relics; as to a prince, for honours.' So Johnson. Compare the expression "fountain of honour," commonly 80 85 90 applied to the sovereign. Malone can |