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She interrupts herself with the fancy that the revolt has begun. She plies the soothsayer with suspicious questions that culminate in the most indiscreet one on his wish to help Caesar :

Why, know'st thou any harm's intended towards him?

(II. iv. 31.)

Then she almost commits herself, and has to extemporise a subterfuge, before, unable to hold out any longer, she retires on the point of fainting, though even now her love gives her strength to send a cheering message to her lord.

For her as for Brutus the burden of a duty, which she assumes by her own choice, but which one of her nature must assume, is too heavy. And in the after consequences, for which she is not directly responsible, but which none the less flow from the deed that she has encouraged and approved, it is the same inability to bear suspense, along with her craving for her husband's presence and success, that drives her through madness to death.

CHAPTER VI

THE REMAINING CHARACTERS

FAR beneath this pair are the other conspirators who rise up against the supremacy of Caesar.

Among these lower natures, Cassius is undoubtedly the most imposing and most interesting.

The main lines of his character are given in Caesar's masterly delineation, which follows Plutarch in regard to his spareness, but in the other particulars freely elaborates the impression that Plutarch's whole narrative produces.

Yond Cassius has a lean and hungry look:
He thinks too much: such men are dangerous
He reads much;

He is a great observer, and he looks

Quite through the deeds of men; he loves no plays,
As thou dost, Antony; he hears no music;
Seldom he smiles, and smiles in such a sort
As if he mock'd himself and scorn'd his spirit
That could be moved to smile at anything.
Such men as he be never at heart's ease
Whiles they behold a greater than themselves,
And therefore are they very dangerous.

(1. ii. 194 and 201.)

Lean, gaunt, hungry, disinclined to sports and revelry, spending his time in reading, observation, and reflection-these are the first traits that we notice in him. He too, like Brutus, has learned the lessons of philosophy, and he finds in it the rule of

life. He chides his friend for seeming to fail in the practice of it:

Of your philosophy you make no use,
If you give place to accidental evils.

(IV. iii. 145.)

And even when he admits and admires Brutus' self-mastery, he attibutes it to nature, and claims as good a philosophic discipline for himself. There is, however, a difference between them even in this point. Brutus is a Platonist with a Stoic tinge; Cassius is an Epicurean. That strikes us at first as strange, that the theory which identified pleasure with virtue should be the creed of this splenetic solitary but it is quite in character. Epicureanism appealed to some of the noblest minds of Rome, not as a cult of enjoyment, but as a doctrine that freed them from the bonds of superstition and the degrading fear of death. This was the spirit of Lucretius, the poet of the sect:

Artis

Religionum animum nodis exsolvere pergo: and one grand motif of his poem is the thought that this death, the dread of which makes the meanness of life, is the end of all consciousness, a refuge rather than an evil: "What ails thee so, O mortal, to let thyself loose in too feeble grievings? Why weep and wail at death? ... Why not rather make an end of life and labour?" And these are the reasons that Cassius is an Epicurean. At the end, when his philosophy breaks down, he says:

You know that I held Epicurus strong
And his opinion: now I change my mind,
And partly credit things that do presage.

(v. i. 77.)

He has hitherto discredited them. And we seem to hear Lucretius in his noble utterance:

Nor stony tower, nor walls of beaten brass,
Nor airless dungeon, nor strong links of iron,
Can be retentive to the strength of spirit:

But life, being weary of these worldly bars,
Never lacks power to dismiss itself.

(1. iii. 93.)

Free from all superstitious scruples and all thought of superhuman interference in the affairs of men, he stands out bold and self-reliant, confiding in his own powers, his own will, his own management :

Men at some time are masters of their fates :

The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars
But in ourselves, that we are underlings.

(1. ii. 139.)

And the same attitude of mind implies that he is rid of all illusions. He is not deceived by shows. He looks quite through the deeds of men. He is not taken in by Casca's affectation of rudeness. He is not misled by Antony's apparent frivolity. He is not even dazzled by the glamour of Brutus' virtue, but notes its weak side and does not hesitate to play on it. Still less does Caesar's prestige subdue his criticism. On the contrary, with malicious contempt he recalls his want of endurance in swimming and the complaints of his sick-bed, and he keenly notes his superstitious lapses. He seldom smiles and when he does it is in scorn. We only once hear of his laughing. It is at the interposition of the poet, which rouses Brutus to indignation; but the presumptuous absurdity of it tickles Cassius' sardonic humour.

For there is no doubt that he takes pleasure in detecting the weaknesses of his fellows. He has obvious relish in the thought that if he were Brutus he would not be thus cajoled, and he finds food for satisfaction in Caesar's merely physical defects. Yet there is as little of self-complacency as of hero-worship in the man. He turns his remorseless scrutiny on his own nature and his own cause, and neither maintains that the one is noble or the other honourable, nor denies the personal alloy in his motives. This is the purport of that strange

soliloquy that at first sight seems to place Cassius in the ranks of Shakespeare's villains along with his lagos and Richards, rather than of the mixed characters, compact of good and evil, to whom nevertheless we feel that he is akin.

Well, Brutus, thou art noble: yet, I see,
Thy honourable metal may be wrought-
From that it is disposed: therefore it is meet
That noble minds keep ever with their likes:
For who so firm that cannot be seduced?
Caesar doth bear me hard: but he loves Brutus :
If I were Brutus now and he were Cassius,
He should not humour me.

(1. ii. 312.) It frequently happens that cynics view themselves as well as others in their meaner aspects. Probably Cassius is making the worst of his own case and is indulging that vein of self-mockery and scorn that Caesar observed in him. But at any rate the lurking sense of unworthiness in himself and his purpose will be apt to increase in such a man his natural impatience of alleged superiority in his fellows. He is jealous of excellence, seeks to minimise it and will not tolerate it. It is on this characteristic that Shakespeare lays stress. Plutarch reports the saying "that Brutus could evill away with the tyrannie and that Cassius hated the tyranne, making many complayntes for the injuries he had done him"; and instances Caesar's appropriation of some lions that Cassius had intended for the sports, as well as the affair of the city praetorship. But in the play these specific grievances are almost effaced in the vague statement, "Caesar doth bear me hard"; which implies little more than general illwill. It is now resentment of pre-eminence that makes Cassius a malcontent. Caesar finds him "very dangerous" just because of his grudge at

'This explanation is offered with great diffidence, but it is the only one I can suggest for what is perhaps the most perplexing passage in the play, not even excepting the soliloquy of Brutus.

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