309 Por. If this were true, then should I know this secret. I grant, I am a woman; but, withal, A woman that Lord Brutus took to wife: Tell me your counsels, I will not disclose them: Here, in the thigh: Can I bear that with patience, Bru. O ye gods, Render me worthy of this noble wife! [Knocking within. Hark, hark! one knocks: Portia, go in a while; And by and by thy bosom shall partake The secrets of my heart. All my engagements I will construe to thee, Leave me with haste. [Exit PORTIA. Enter LUCIUS and LIGARIUS. Lucius, who is that knocks? Luc. Here is a sick man, that would speak with you. Bru. Caius Ligarius, that Metellus spake of.— Boy, stand aside.-Caius Ligarius! how? Lig. Vouchsafe good morrow from a feeble tongue. To wear a kerchief? 'Would, you were not sick! 32 Charactery is defined' writing by characters or strange marks.' Brutus therefore means that he will divulge to her the secret cause of the sadness marked on his countenance. In The Merry Wives of Windsor, Act v. Sc. 1, it is said, 'Fairies use flowers for their charactery.' Lig. I am not sick, if Brutus have in hand Any exploit worthy the name of honour 33. Bru. Such an exploit have I in hand, Ligarius, Had you a healthful ear to hear of it. Lig. By all the gods that Romans bow before, I here discard my sickness. Soul of Rome! Brave son, deriv'd from honourable loins! Thou, like an exorcist 34, hast conjur❜d up My mortified spirit. Now bid me run, And I will strive with things impossible; Yea, get the better of them. What's to do? Bru. A piece of work, that will make sick men whole. Lig. But are not some whole, that we must make sick? Bru. That must we also. What it is, my Caius, I shall unfold to thee, as we are going To whom it must be done. Lig. 33 This is from Plutarch's Life of Brutus, as translated by North: Brutus went to see him being sicke in his bedde, and sayed unto him, O Ligarius, in what a time art thou sicke? Ligarius, rising up in his bed and taking him by the right hande, sayed unto him, Brutus, if thou hast any great enterprise in hande worthie of thy selfe, I am whole.' Lord Sterline has also introduced this passage into his Julius Cæsar. Shakspeare has given to Romans the manners of his own time. It was a common practice in England for those who were sick to wear a kerchief on their heads, and still continues among the common people in many places. If (says Fuller) this county [Cheshire] hath bred no writers in that faculty [physic], the wonder is the less, if it be true what I read, that if any there be sick, they make him a posset and tye a kerchief on his head, and if that will not mend him, then God be merciful to him.'-Worthies. Cheshire, p. 180. 34 Here and in all other places Shakspeare uses exorcist for one who raises spirits, not one who lays them; but it has been erroneously said that he is singular in this use of the word. See vol. iii. p. 335, note 31. To do I know not what: but it sufficeth, Bru. Follow me then. [Exeunt. SCENE II. The same. A Room in Cæsar's Palace. Thunder and Lightning. Enter CÆSAR, in his Cæs. Nor heaven, nor earth, have been at peace Thrice hath Calphurnia in her sleep cried out, Serv. My lord? Enter a Servant. Cæs. Go bid the priests do present sacrifice, Serv. I will, my lord. Enter CALPHURNIA. [Exit. Cal. What mean you, Cæsar? Think you to walk forth? You shall not stir out of your house to-day. Cæs. Cæsar shall forth: The things that threat en'd me, Ne'er look'd but on my back; when they shall see The face of Cæsar, they are vanished. Cal. Cæsar, I never stood on ceremonies1, See note 23, 1 Never paid a regard to prodigies or omens. in the preceding scene. The adjective is used in the same sense in The Devil's Charter, 1607 : "The devil hath provided in his covenant Yet now they fright me. There is one within, Besides the things that we have heard and seen, And graves have yawn'd, and yielded up their dead2: The noise of battle hurtled in the air, And I do fear them. Cæs. Cal. When beggars die, there are no comets seen; The heavens themselves blaze forth the death of princes 5. 2 Shakspeare has adverted to this again in Hamlet:- The graves stood tenantless, and the sheeted dead 3 Visa per cœlum concurrere acies, rutilantia arma, et subito nubium igne collucere,' &c.-Tacitus Hist. b. v. 4 To hurtle is to clash or move with violence and noise. See As You Like It, vol. iii. p. 195, note 29. 5 This may have been suggested by Suetonius, who relates that a blazing star appeared for seven days together during the celebration of games, instituted by Augustus, in honour of Julius. The common people believed that this indicated his reception among the gods, his statues were accordingly ornamented with its figure, and medals struck on which it was represented; one of them is engraved in Mr. Douce's Illustrations, vol. ii. p. 82; from whence this note is taken. Henry Howard, Earl of Northampton, in his Defensative against the Poison of supposed Prophecies, 1583, says, 'Next to the shadows and pretences of experience (which have been met with all at large), they seem to brag most of the strange events which follow (for the Cæs. Cowards die: many times before their deaths"; The valiant never taste of death but once. Of all the wonders that I yet have heard, Will come, when it will come. Re-enter a Servant. 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. Cæs. 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. most part) after blazing starres; as if they were the summonses of God to call princes to the seat of judgment. The surest way to shake their painted bulwarkes of experience is, by making plaine that neither princes always dye when comets blaze, nor comets ever (i. e. always) when princes dye.' In this work is a curious anecdote of Queen Elizabeth, then lying at Richmond, being dissuaded from looking on a comet; with a courage equal to the greatness of her state she caused the windowe to be sette open, and said, jacta est alea—the dice are thrown.' 6 When some of his friends did counsel 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.' -North's Plutarch. Lord Essex, in a letter to Lord Rutland, observes, 'That as he which dieth nobly doth live for ever, so he that doth live in fear doth die continually.'-And Marston, in his Insatiate Countess, 1613: 'Fear is my vassal; when I frown he flies: A hundred times in life a coward dies.' 7 Johnson remarks, That the ancients did not place courage in the heart.' Mr. Douce observes, that he had forgotten his classics strangely, as he has shown by several extracts from Virgil and Ovid. |