And graves have yawn'd and yielded up their dead;
Fierce fiery warriors fight upon the clouds

In ranks and squadrons and right form of war,
Which drizzled blood upon the Capitol;

The noise of battle hurtled in the air,

Horses did neigh, and dying men did groan,

And ghosts did shriek and squeal about the streets.
O Cæsar! these things are beyond all use,

What can be avoided
Whose end is purpos'd by the mighty gods?
Yet Cæsar shall go forth; for these predictions

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.

Are to the world in general as to Cæsar.

Cal. When beggars die, there are no comets seen;
The heavens themselves blaze forth the death of

30

princes.

Cas. Cowards die many times before their deaths;
The valiant never taste of death but once.

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,
They could not find a heart within the beast.

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 I the elder and more terrible;

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
That keeps you in the house, and not your own.
We'll send Mark Antony to the senate-house,
And he shall say you are not well to-day:
Let me, upon my knee, prevail in this.

Cæs. Mark Antony shall say I am not well;
And, for thy humour, I will stay at home.

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
To bear my greeting to the senators,
And tell them that I will not come to-day:
Cannot, is false, and that I dare not, falser;
I will not come to-day: tell them so, Decius.
Cal. Say he is sick.
Cæs.

Shall Cæsar send a lie?

Have I in conquest stretch'd mine arm so far
To be afeard to tell greybeards the truth?
Decius, go tell them Cæsar will not come.

Dec. Most mighty Cæsar, let me know some cause,
Lest I be laugh'd at when I tell them so.

Cas. The cause is in my will: I will not come;
That is enough to satisfy the senate :
But for your private satisfaction,
Because I love you, I will let you know:
Calpurnia here, my wife, stays me at home:
She dream'd to-night she saw my statue,
Which, like a fountain with an hundred spouts,
Did run pure blood; and many lusty Romans
Came smiling, and did bathe their hands in it.

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.
Dec. This dream is all amiss interpreted;

It was a vision fair and fortunate:
Your statue spouting blood in many pipes,
In which so many smiling Romans bath'd,
Signifies that from you great Rome shall suck
Reviving blood, and that great men shall press
For tinctures, stains, relics, and cognizance.
This by Calpurnia's dream is signified.
Cas. And this way have you well expounded it.

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
and Steevens suppose that the allusion
in "tinctures and stains" is to the
practice of dipping handkerchiefs in
the blood of martyrs or other revered
leaders when executed. Compare III.
ii. 141. But this would imply that
Cæsar's blood was shed and be in
accordance with the interpretation of
the dream which Decius is trying
to prove wrong. Perhaps Decius by
a kind of dramatic irony is repre-
sented as against his will speak-
ing like a true prophet, although he
began with the deliberate intention of
making a false prophecy. Compare
the story of Balaam in the Bible. In
the line under consideration "cogni-
zance" suggests the heraldic inter-
pretation, "stains" and "relics
suggest the idea of preserving hand-
kerchiefs red with blood and other
relics of one slain, while " tinctures
will suit either interpretation about
equally well. "Cognizance
hardly bear the meaning of memento,
which is given to the word in Schmidt's
Shakespeare Lexicon.

can