realizes the very perfection of its kind. Adapted at once to the comprehension of the lowest mind and to the delectation of the highest, and running its pathos into the very quick of them that hear it, it tells with terrible effect on the people; and when it is done we feel that Cæsar's blood is mightier than ever his genius and his fortune were. The quarrel of Brutus and Cassius is deservedly celebrated. Dr. Johnson thought it "somewhat cold and unaffecting." Coleridge thought otherwise: "I know," says he, "no part of Shakespeare that more impresses on me the belief of his genius being superhuman, than this scene." We are content to err with Coleridge herein, if it be an error. But there is nothing in the play that seems to us more divinely touched than the brief dialogue of Brutus and his servant Lucius, near the close of Act IV. The gentle and loving nature of Brutus is here out in its noblest and sweetest transpiration. COMMENTS By SHAKESPEAREAN SCHOLARS CÆSAR The character of Cæsar in our play has been much blamed. He is declared to be unlike the idea conceived of him from his "Commentaries"; it is said that he does nothing, and only utters a few pompous, thrasonical, grandiloquent words; and it has been asked whether this be the Cæsar that "did awe the world"? The poet, if he intended to make the attempt of the republicans his main theme, could not have ventured to create too great an interest in Cæsar; it was necessary to keep him in the background and to present that view of him which gave a reason for the conspiracy. According even to Plutarch, whose biography of Cæsar is acknowledged to be very imperfect, Cæsar's character altered much for the worse shortly before his death, and Shakespeare has represented him according to this suggestion. With what reverence Shakespeare viewed his character as a whole, we learn from several passages of his works, and even in this play from the way in which he allows his memory to be respected as soon as he is dead. In the descriptions of Cassius we look back upon the time when the great man was natural, simple, undissembling, popular, and on an equal footing with others. Now he is spoiled by victory, success, power, and by the republican courtiers who surround him. He stands close on the borders between usurpation and discretion; he is master in reality, and is on the point of assuming the name and the right; he desires heirs to the throne; he hesitates to accept the crown which he would gladly possess; he is ambitious, and fears he may have betrayed this in his paroxysms of epilepsy; he exclaims against flatterers and cringers, and yet both please him. All around him treat him as a master, his wife, as a prince, the senate allow themselves to be called his senate; he assumes the appearance of a king even in his house, even with his wife he uses the language of a man who knows himself secure of power, and he maintains everywhere the proud strict bearing of a soldier, which is represented even in his statues. If one of the changes at which Plutarch hints lay in this pride and haughtiness, another lay in his superstition. In the suspicion and apprehension before the final step, he was seized, contrary to his usual nature and habit, with misgivings and superstitious fears, which affected likewise the hitherto free-minded Calpurnia. These conflicting feelings divide him, his forebodings excite him, his pride and his defiance of danger struggle against them, and restore his former confidence, which was natural to him and which causes his ruin, just as a like confidence, springing from another source, ruined Brutus. The actor must make his high-sounding language appear as the result of this discord of feeling. Sometimes they are only incidental words intended to characterize the hero in the shortest way. Generally they appear in the cases where Cæsar has to combat with his superstition, where he uses effort to take a higher stand in his words than at the moment he actually feels. He speaks so much of having no fear, that by this very thing he betrays his fear. Even in the places where his words sound most boastful, where he compares himself with the north star, there is more arrogance and ill-concealed pride at work than real boastfulness. It is intended there with a few words to show him at that point when his behavior could most excite those free spirits against him. It was fully intended that he should take but a small part in the action; we must not, therefore, say with Scottowe that he was merely brought on the stage to be killed. The poet has handled this historical piece like his English historical plays. He had in his eye the whole context of the Roman civil wars for this single drama, not as yet thinking of its continuation in Antony and Cleopatra. He casts a glance back upon the fall of Pompey, and makes it evident that Cæsar falls for the same reason as that for which he had made Pompey fall. In the triumph over him, men's minds rise up at first against Cæsar, the conspirators assemble in Pompey's porch, and Cæsar is slain in front of his statue. As his death arose out of the civil war, so civil war recommences at his death, and just as Antony predicts :— Cæsar's spirit, ranging for revenge, With Até by his side, come hot from hell, In this symbolic sense Cæsar, after his death, has a share in the action of the play, which does not bear his name without a reason. That curse of Antony's, too, falls back upon himself in Antony and Cleopatra, because he had destroyed those who had spared him and offered him friendship, and even there the manes of Pompey interfere with continuous power, giving his history also the background of remoter histories, to which this drama is but an episode. -GERVINUS, Shakespeare-Commentaries. PORTIA Portia, as Shakespeare has truly felt and represented the character, is but a softened reflection of that of her husband Brutus: in him we see an excess of natural sensibility, an almost womanish tenderness of heart, repressed by the tenets of his austere philosophy: a stoic by profession, and in reality the reverse-acting deeds against his nature by the strong force of principle and will. In Portia there is the same profound and passionate feeling, and all her sex's softness and timidity, held in check by that self-discipline, that stately dignity, which she thought became a woman "so fathered and so husbanded." The fact of her inflicting on herself a voluntary wound to try her own fortitude, is perhaps the strongest proof of this disposition. JAMESON, Shakespeare's Heroines. BRUTUS Brutus is the political Girondin. He is placed in contrast with his brother-in-law Cassius, the political Jacobin. Brutus is an idealist; he lives among books; he nourishes himself with philosophies; he is secluded from the impression of facts. Moral ideas and principles are more to him than concrete realities; he is studious of self-perfection, jealous of the purity of his own character, unwilling that so clear a character should receive even the apparent stain of misconception or misrepresentation. He is, therefore, as such men are, too much given to explanation of his conduct. Had he lived he would have written an Apology for his life, educing evidence, with a calm superiority, to prove that each act of his life proceeded from an honorable motive. Cassius, on the contrary, is by no means studious of moral perfection. He is frankly envious, and hates Cæsar. Yet he is not ignoble. Brutus loves him, and the love of Brutus is a patent which establishes a man's nobility: The last of all the Romans, fare thee well! It is impossible that ever Rome Should breed thy fellow. And Cassius has one who will die for him. Titinius crowns the dead brow of the conspirator: Brutus come apace, And see how I regarded Caius Cassius. By your leave, gods-this is a Roman's part: Cassius has a swift and clear perception of the fact. He is not, like Brutus, a theorist, but "a great observer," who "looks quite through the deeds of men." Brutus lives in the abstraction, in the idea; Cassius lives in the concrete, in the fact.-DOWDEN, Shakspere-His Mind and Art. |