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to approve, he can prevent the perils of a speech by Caesar's friend. He does not even wait to hear it: but if he did, what could he effect against the sophistries and rhetorical tricks, the fervour and regret, the gesticulation and tears of Antony's headlong improvisation?

CHAPTER V

THE DISILLUSIONMENT OF BRUTUS.

PORTIA

BRUTUS had been doubly duped, by his own subtlety and his own simplicity in league with his conscientiousness; for in this way he was led to idealise his deed as enjoined both by the inward moral code and the demands of his country, and such self-deception avenges itself as surely as any intentional crime. He is soon disabused in regard to the wishes of Rome and its view of the alleged wrongs it has suffered from Caesar. His imagination had dwelt on the time when his ancestors drove out the Tarquin; now he himself must ride "like a madman" through the gates. It is not only the first of his reverses but a step towards his enlightenment, for it helps to show that he has been mistaken in the people. Still, the momentary mood of the populace may not always recognise its best interests and real needs, and may not coincide with the true volonté générale. There is harder than this in store for Brutus. By the time we meet him again at Sardis a worse punishment has overtaken him, and his education in disappointment has advanced, though he does his utmost to treat the punishment as fate and not to learn the lessons it enforces.

This scene has won the applause of the most dissimilar minds and generations. We have seen how Leonard Digges singles it out as the grand

attraction of the play, by which, above all others, it transcends the laboured excellences of Catiline or Sejanus. It excited the admiration and rivalry of the greatest genius of the Restoration period. Scott says of the dispute between Antony and Ventidius in All for Love: "Dryden when writing this scene had unquestionably in his recollection the quarrel between Brutus and Cassius, which was so justly a favourite in his time, and to which he had referred as inimitable in his prologue to Aureng-Zebe.

But spite of all his pride, a secret shame

Invades his breast at Shakespeare's sacred name:
Awed, when he hears his godlike Romans rage,
He in a just despair would quit the stage;
And to an age less polished, more unskilled,
Does with disdain the foremost honours yield."

In the eighteenth century Dr. Johnson, though he finds Julius Caesar as a whole "somewhat cold and unaffecting," perhaps because Shakespeare's "adherence to the real story and to Roman manners" has "impeded the natural vigour of his genius," excepts particular passages and cites "the contention and reconciliation of Brutus and Cassius" as universally celebrated. And Coleridge goes beyond himself in his praise: "I know no part of Shakespeare that more impresses on me the belief of his being superhuman, than this scene between Brutus and Cassius. In the Gnostic heresy it might have been credited with less absurdity than most of their dogmas, that the Supreme had employed him to create, previously to his function of representing characters. Yet it is not merely in the revelation of character that the scene is unique. More than any other single episode, more than all the rest together, it lays bare the significance of the story in its tragic pathos and its tragic irony. And the wonder of it is increased rather than lessened when we take

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note that it is a creation not out of nothing but out of chaos. For there is hardly a suggestion, hardly a detail, that Shakespeare did not find in Plutarch, but here in confused mixture, there in inert isolation, and nowhere with more than the possibilities of being organised. It is Shakespeare, who, to borrow from Milton's description of the beginning of his Universe, "founded and conglobed like things to like, and vital virtue infused and vital

warmth.

The nucleus of this passage is found just after the account of Brutus' exploits in Lycia.

About that tyme, Brutus sent to pray Cassius to come to the citye of Sardis, and so he did. Brutus understanding of his comming, went out to meete him with all his frendes. There both their armies being armed, they called them both Emperors. Nowe, as it commonly hapneth in great affayres betwene two persons, both of them having many friends, and so many Captaines under them; there ranne tales and complaints betwixt them. Therefore, before they fell in hand with any other matter, they went into a little chamber together, and bad every man avoyde, and did shut the dores to them. Then they beganne to powre out their complaints one to the other, and grew hot and lowde, earnestly accusing one another, and at length fell both a weeping. Their friends that were without the chamber hearing them lowde within, and angry betwene them selves, they were both amased and affrayd also lest it would grow to further matter: but yet they were commaunded that no man should come to them. Notwithstanding, one Marcus Phaonius, that had bene a friend and follower of Cato while he lived, and tooke upon him to counterfeate a Philosopher, not with wisedom and discretion, but with a certaine bedlem and frantick motion: he would needes come into the chamber, though the men offered to keepe him out. But it was no boote to let Phaonius, when a mad moode or toy tooke him in the head: for he was a hot hasty man, and sodaine in all his doings, and cared for never a Senator of them all. Now, though he used this bold manner of speeche after the profession of the Cynick Philosophers (as who would say, doggs), yet this boldnes did no hurt many times, bicause they did but laugh at him to see him so mad. Phaonius at that time, in despite of the doore keepers, came into the chamber, and with a certain scoffing and

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mocking gesture which he counterfeated of purpose, he rehearsed the verses which old Nestor sayd in Homer:

My lords, I pray you harken both to mee,

For I have seene moe yeares than suchye three.

Cassius fell a laughing at him: but Brutus thrust him out of the chamber, and called him dogge, and counterfeate Cynick. Howbeit his comming in brake their strife at that time, and so they left eche other.

Here there seems little enough to tempt the dramatist; the two generals quarrel, Phaonius bursts in, Cassius laughs at him, Brutus turns him out, but the interruption temporarily patches up a truce between them. And this petty incident is made the most pregnant in Shakespeare's whole play; and that by apparently such simple means. Το get the meaning out of it, or to read the meaning into it, he does little more, so far as the mechanical aspects of his treatment are concerned, than collect a few other notices scattered up and down the pages of his authority. He had found in an earlier digression Cassius described as

a hot cholerick and cruell man, that would often tymes be caried away from justice for gayne: it was certainly thought that he made warre, and put him selfe into sundry daungers, more to have absolute power and authoritie, than to defend the liberty of his contrie.

Again after describing Brutus' success with the Patareians, Plutarch proceeds:

Cassius, about the selfe same tyme, after he had compelled the Rhodians every man to deliver all the ready money they had in gold and silver in their houses, the which being brought together, amounted to the summe of eyght thousande talents: yet he condemned the citie besides, to paye the summe of five hundred talents more. When Brutus in contrary manner, after he had leavyed of all the contrye of Lycia but a hundred and fiftye talents onely: he departed thence into the contrye of Ionia, and did them no more hurt.

Previously with reference to the first meeting of the fugitives after they collected their armies

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