Than what I fear; for always I am Cæsar.
Come on my right hand, for this ear is deaf,
And tell me truly what thou think'st of him.

[Sennet. Exeunt CÆSAR and his Train. CASCA stays behind.

Casca. You pulled me by the cloak; Would you speak with me? 69. Bru. Ay, Casca; tell us what hath chanced to-day, That Cæsar looks so sad.

Casca. Why, you were with him, were you not?
Bru. I should not then ask Casca what had chanced.

Casca. Why, there was a crown offered him: and, being offered him, he put it by with the back of his hand, thus; and then the people fell a-shouting.

Bru. What was the second noise for?
Casca. Why, for that too.
Cas. They shouted thrice; What was the last cry for?
Casca. Why, for that too.

Bru. Was the crown offered him thrice? 78. Casca. Ay, marry, was’t, and he put it by thrice, every time

gentler than other; and, at every putting by, mine honest neighbours shouted.

Cas. Who offered him the crown?
Casca. Why, Antony.

Bru. Tell us the manner of it, gentle Casca. 82. Casca. I can as well be hanged, as tell the manner of it: it was

mere foolery. I did not mark it. I saw Mark Antony offer him a crown;-yet 'twas not a crown neither, 'twas one of these coronets; --and, as I told you, he put it by once; but, for all that, to my thinking, he would fain have had it. Then he offered it to him again; then he put it by again; but, to my thinking, he was very loath to lay his fingers off it. And then he offered it the third time; he put it the third time by: and, still as he refused it, the rabblement shouted, and clapped their chopped hands, and threw up their sweaty night-caps, and uttered such a deal of stinking breath because Cæsar refused the crown, that it had almost choked Cæsar; for he swooned, and fell down at it. And, for my own part, I durst not laugh, for

fear of opening my lips, and receiving the bad air. 83. Cas. But, soft, I pray you: What? did Cæsar swoon?

Casca. He fell down in the market-place, and foamed at mouth, and was speechless. 85. Bru. 'Tis very like: he hath the falling sickness. 86. Cas. No, Cæsar hath it not; but you and I,

And honest Casca, we have the falling sickness. 87. Casca. I know not what you mean by that; but I am sure Cæsar

fell down. If the tag-rag people did not clap him, and hiss him, according as he pleased and displeased them, as they use to do the players in the theatre, I am no true man.

Bru. What said he, when he came unto himself? 89. Casca: Marry, before he fell down, when he perceived the com

mon herd was glad he refused the crown, he plucked me ope his
doublet, and offered them his throat to cut.-An I had been a man
of any occupation, if I would not have taken him at a word, I would
I might go to hell among the rogues. And so he fell. When he
came to himself again, he said, If he had done, or said, anything
amiss, he desired their worships to think it was his infirmity. Three
or four wenches, where I stood, cried Alas, good soul !—and forgave
him with all their hearts : But there's no heed to be taken of them;
if Cæsar had stabbed their mothers, they would have done no less.

Bru. And after that, he came, thus sad, away?
Casca. Ay.
Cas. Did Cicero say anything?
Casca. Ay, he spoke Greek.

Cas. To what effect! 95. Casca. Nay, an I tell you that, I'll ne'er look you i' the face

again: But those that understood him smiled at one another, and shook their heads; but, for my own part, it was Greek to me. I could tell you more news too: Marullus and Flavius, for pulling scarfs off Cæsar's images, are put to silence. Fare you well. There was more foolery yet, if I could remember it.

Cas. Will you sup with me to-night, Casca ? 97. Casca. No, I am promised forth.

Cas. Will you dine with me to-morrow!
Casca. Ay, if I be alive, and your mind hold, and your

dinner worth the eating.

Cas. Good: I will expect you.
Casca. Do so: Farewell, both.

[Exit CASCA. 102. Bru. What a blunt fellow is this grown to be!

He was quick mettle when he went to school. 103. Cas. So is he now, in execution

Of any bold or noble enterprise,
However he puts on this tardy form.
This rudeness is a sauce to his good wit,
Which gives men stomach to digest his words

With better appetite.
104. Bru. And so it is. For this time I will leave you:

To-morrow if you please to speak with me,
I will come home to you; or, if you will,

Come home to me, and I will wait for you. 105. Cas. I will do so :—till then, think of the world.

[Exit Brutus. 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 ? Cæsar doth bear me hard; but he loves Brutus : If I were Brutus now, and he were Cassius, He should not humour me. I will this night, In several hands, in at his windows throw, As if they came from several citizens, Writings all tending to the great opinion That Rome holds of his name; wherein obscurely Cæsar's ambition shall be glanced at: And, after this, let Cæsar seat him sure; For we will shake him, or worse days endure.

[Exit.

Scene II.—Theoriginal heading here is:-“Enter Cæsar, Antony for the Course, Calphurnia, Portia, Decius, Cicero, Brutus, Cassius, Caska, a Soothsayer : after them Murellus and Flavius." The three stage directions about the Music are all modern.

23. Stand you directly, etc. The sacerdotal runners wore only a cincture of goat-skins, the same material of which their thongs were made. The passage in Plutarch's Life of Julius Cæsar as translated by Sir Thomas North is as follows:

“At that time the feast Lupercalia was celebrated, the which in old time, men say, was the feast of Shepherds or Herdsmen, and is much like unto the feast of Lyceians (Avreia} in Arcadia. But, howsoever it is, that day there are divers noblemen’s sons, young men (and some of them magistrates themselves that govern them), which run naked through the city, striking in sport them they meet in their way with leather thongs. And many noble women and gentlewomen also go of purpose to stand in their way, and do put forth their hands to be stricken, persuading themselves that, being with child, they shall have good delivery, and also, being barren, that it will make them conceive with child. Cæsar sat to behold that sport upon the pulpit for ora

tions, in a chair of gold, apparelled in triumphant manner. Antonius, who was Consul at that time, was one of them that ronne this holy

course

Here, and in 25, as generally throughout the Play, Antonius is Antonio in the original text, and in all the editions down to that of Pope.

25. Their sterile curse.--Our English formations from Latin words terminating in -ilis are in an unsatisfactory state in respect both of spelling and pronunciation. Of the Latin words some have the il long, others short; and the former ought naturally to give in English -ile (sounded as in mile), the latter -il.. But, instead of this, the common usage is to spell them all indiscriminately with the e, and to pronounce them as if they were without it. Thus we have not only puerile, servile, subtile, juvenile, hostile (from puerilis, servilis, juvenilis, hostīlis), but also docile, sterile, versatile, agile, fragile (from docilis, sterilis, versatilis, agilis, fragilis). And, as for the pronunciation, while Walker, holding the general rule to be that the i is short, makes Exile, Senile, Edile, and Infantile (together with Reconcile, Chamomile, and Estipile,-which last, however, is not in his Dictionary, or in any other that I have consulted), to be the only exceptions, Smart (1849) gives no rule upon the subject (that I can find), leaves Senile unmarked, and (omitting both Estipile and Chamomile) seems to add Mercantile, and distinctly adds Gentile, to Exile and Edile, as having the i long, and in Infantile seems to give it short in the Dictionary, but distinctly marks it as long in the section of his“Principles ” to which a reference is made from the word. Further, as if the confusion were not bad enough without such mechanical carelessness and blundering, in the stereotyped Svo edition of Walker, 1819 (called the 21st edition), in a list given at page 36 (the same page in which the strange word Estipile occurs) the i is printed with the long instead of the short mark in Gentile, Tirile, Sub

tile, Coctile, Quintile, Hostile, Servile, and Sextile, in direct contradiction both to the Dictionary and to the very statement with which the list is headed and introduced. The present tendency of our pronunciation seems to be to extend the dominion of the long i both in these forms and even in the termination ite. In reading, at least, the-ile is now perhaps more usually pronounced long than short in Hostile, Servile, and some other similar instances ; and we sometimes hear even infinite pronounced with the ite long (as in finite), though such a pronunciation is still only that of the uneducated populace in Opposite or Favourite.

32. The Ides of March.-In the Roman Kalendar the Ides (Idus) fell on the 15th of March, May, July, and October, and on the 13th of the eight remaining months.

34. A soothsayer, bids.-That is, It is a soothsayer, who bids. It would not otherwise be an answer to Cæsar's question. The omission of the relative in such a construction is still common.

39. The old stage direction here is ;—“ Sennet. Exeunt. Manet Brut. et Cass.” The word Sennet is also variously written Sennit, Senet, Synnet, Cynet, Signet, and Signate. Nares explains it as "a word chiefly occurring in the stage directions of the old plays, and seeming to indicate a particular set of notes on the trumpet, or cornet, different from a flourish.” In Shakespeare it occurs again in the present Play at 67, in the heading to Antony and Cleopatra, i. 7, in King Henry VIII, ü. 4, and in Coriolanus, i. 1 and 2, where in the first scene we have “A Sennet. Trumpets sound.” In the heading of the second scene of the fifth act of Beaumont and Fletcher's Knight of Malta we have "Synnet, i. e. Flourish of Trumpets." But in Dekker's Satiromastix (1602) we have “ Trumpets sound a flourish, and then a sennet."

Steevens says; “I have been informed that sennet is derived from senneste, an antiquated French tune formerly used in the