Caesar Critique

Act i. sc. i.

Mar. What meanest thou by that? Mend me, thou saucy fellow!

THE speeches of Flavius and Manillas are in blank verse. Wherever regular metre can be rendered truly imitative of character, passion, or personal rank, Shakspeare seldom, if ever, neglects it. Hence this line should be read:Ð'--

What mean'st by that? mend me, thou saucy fellow!

I say regular metre: for even the prose has in the highest and lowest dramatic personage, a Cobbler or a Hamlet, a rhythm so felicitous and so severally appropriate, as to be a virtual metre.

Ib. sc. 2.

Bru. A soothsayer bids you beware the Ides of March.

If my ear does not deceive me, the metre of this line was meant to express that sort of mild philosophic contempt, characterizing Brutus even in his first casual speech. The line is a trimeter,Ð'--each dipobia containing two accented and two unaccented syllables, but variously arranged, as thus;Ð'--

u Ð'-- Ð'-- u | Ð'-- u u Ð'-- | u Ð'-- u Ð'--

A soothsayer | bids you beware | the Ides of March.

Ib. Speech of Brutus:

Set honour m one eye, and death i' the other,

And I will look on both indifferently.

Warburton would read 'death' for 'both'; but I prefer the old text. There are here three things, the public

Good, the individual Brutus' honour, and his death. The latter two so balanced each other, that he could decide for the first by equipoise; nayÐ'--the thought growingÐ'--that honour had more weight than death. That Cassius understood it as Warburton, is the beauty of Cassius as contrasted with Brutus.

Ib. CÐ"¦sar's speech:Ð'--

He loves no plays,

As thou dost, Antony; he hears no music, &c.

This is not a trivial observation, nor does our poet mean barely by it, that Cassias was not a merry, sprightly man; bat that he had not a due temperament of harmony in his disposition. Theobald's Note.

O Theobald! what a commentator wast thou, when thou would'st affect to understand Shakspeare, instead of contenting thyself with collating the text! The meaning here is too deep for a line ten-fold the length of thine to fathom.

Ib. sc. 3. Casca's speech:Ð'--

Be factious for redress of all these griefs

And I will set this foot of mine as far,

As who goes farthest.

I understand it thus: 'You have spoken as a conspirator; be so in fact, and I will join you. Act on your principles, and realize them in a fact.'

Act ii. sc. i. Speech of Brutus:Ð'--

It must be by his death; and, for my part,

I know no personal cause to spurn at him,

But for the general. He would be crown'd:

How that might change his nature, there's the question.

Ð'--Ð'--Ð'--Ð'--Ð'--And, to speak truth of CÐ"¦sar,

I have not known when bis affections sway'd

More than his reason.

Ð'--Ð'--Ð'--Ð'--Ð'--So Caesar may;

Then, lest he may, prevent.

This speech is singular;Ð'--at least, I do not at present see into Shakspeare's motive, his rationale, or in what point of view be meant Brutus' character to appear. For surelyÐ'-- (this, I mean, is what I say to myself, with my present quantum of insight, only modified by my experience in how many instances I have ripened into a perception of beauties, where I had before descried faults;) surely, nothing can seem more discordant with our historical preconceptions of Brutus, or more lowering to the intellect of the Stoico-Platonic tyrannicide, than the tenets here attributed to himÐ'--to him, the stem Roman republican; namely,Ð'--that he would have no objection to a king, or to CÐ"¦sar, a monarch in Rome, would CÐ"¦sar but be as good a monarch as he now seems disposed to be! How, too, could Brutus say that he found no personal causeÐ'--none in Caesar's past conduct as a man? Had he not passed the Rubicon? Had he not entered Rome as a conqueror? Had he not placed his Gauls in the Senate?Ð'--Shakspeare, it may be said, has not brought these things forwardsÐ'--True;Ð'--and this is just the ground of my perplexity. What character did Shakspeare mean his Brutus to be?

Ib. Speech of Brutus:Ð'--