Alexandrine, but only a common heroic verse with two supernumerary short syllables. 738. But hold thee. - Equivalent to our modern But hold, or but stop. 738. Brutus, come apace. - Apace is literally at, or rather on, pace; that is, by the exertion of all your power of pacing. See 65. 738. By your leave, gods. — See 357. The stage direction that follows this speech in the original edition is, Alarum. Enter Brutus, Messala, yong Cato, Strato, Volumnius, and Lucillius." 740. Titinius mourning it.-An unusual construction of the verb to mourn in this sense. We speak commonly enough of mourning the death of a person, or any other thing that may have happened; we might even perhaps speak of mourning the person who is dead or the thing that is lost; but we only mourn over the dead body. So with lament. We lament the death or the loss, the man or the thing, but not the body out of which the spirit is gone. 743. In our own proper entrails. That is, into, as we should now say. [See 12, 45, and 122.] 744. Look whe'r he have not. That is, "whether he have not." See 16. The word is here again printed "where" in the original edition. 745. The last of all the Romans. - This is the reading of all the Folios; and it is left untouched by Mr. Collier's MS. corrector. "Thou last" is the conjectural emendation of Rowe. [Dyce, Hudson, and White have “the.”] 745. I owe moe tears. - Moe (or mo) is the word as it stands in both the First and the Second Folio. See 158. 745. To Thassos send his body. Thassos is misprinted Tharsus in all the Folios, and the error was first corrected by Theobald. Thassos is the place mentioned by Plutarch (in his Life of Brutus) as that to which the body was sent to be interred, and the name is correctly given in North's translation, which Shakespeare had before him. [The Cambridge Edition gives Thasos, which is the more correct form of the name.] 745. His funerals. As we still say nuptials, so they formerly often said funerals. [Hudson has “funeral" here. Compare Titus Andronicus, i. 1 :— and wise Laertes' son Did graciously plead for his funerals.] So funérailles in French and funera in Latin. On the other hand, Shakespeare's word is always nuptial. Nuptials occurs only in one passage of the very corrupt text of Pericles: "We'll celebrate their nuptials" (v. 3), and in one other passage of Othello as it stands in the Quarto: "It is the celebration of his nuptials (ii. 2), where, however, all the other old copies have nuptial, as elsewhere. 745. Labeo and Flavius, etc. In the First Folio, "Labio and Flavio;" in the others, "Labio and Flavius." SCENE IV. All that we have in the Folios for the heading of this Scene is, "Alarum. Enter Brutus, Messala, Cato, Lucilius, and Flavius." And the only stage directions that we have throughout the Scene are "Enter Soldiers, and fight,” immediately before the speech of Brutus (746), and the "Exeunt" at the end. 747. What bastard doth not?. See 177. 751. There is so much, that thou wilt kill me straight. The evident meaning of these words has strangely escaped the acuteness of Warburton, whose interpretation (1747) is, "So much resistance still on foot, that thou wilt choose to rid me out of the way, that thou mayst go, without the embarras of prisoners, to the assistance of thy friends who still want it." The true explanation is very well given by Heath in replying to this (in his Revisal of Shakespeare's Text, 1765): "There is so much money for thee, on condition that thou wilt kill me straight." 752. We must not. A noble prisoner !-The original edition places the entry of Antony immediately after this speech. emendation of Theobald. 754. I'll tell the news. This is the conjectural All the Folios, and also both Rowe and Pope, have thee for the. Mr. Collier adopts the emendation. [So do Dyce, Hudson, and White.] 757. And see whe'r Brutus be alive or dead. See 16 and 744. It is "where" again in the original text. 757. How everything is chanced. See 69 and 373. SCENE V. The heading of Scene V., with the locality, is, as usual, modern. 760. Sit thee down. — In this common phrase, apparently, the neuter verb to sit has taken the place of the active to seat. Or perhaps we ought rather to say that both in Sit thee and in Hark thee, which we have in the next line and again in 764, thee has usurped the function of thou. We have a similar irregularity in Fare (that is, go) thee well. [Verbs of motion in Saxon are followed by the dative: sit thee is nothing more than a case of this dative, perhaps; or if a reflective verb, it is nothing strange.] — The marginal "Whispering" at this speech is modern; and so is the "Whispers him" at 764. So that, as in 15. 770. That it runs over. -- 773. Here in Philippi fields.-A common enough form of expression; as Chelsea Fields, Kensington Gardens. There is no need of an apostrophe to Philippi. [North's Plutarch has "Philippian fields."] 66 "Vo 775. Hold thou my sword hilts. - See 725. 777. There is no tarrying here. So in Macbeth, v. 5, "There is nor flying hence, nor tarrying here." The expression is from North's Plutarch: lumnius denied his request, and so did many others. And, amongst the rest, one of them said, there was no tarrying for them there, but that they must nee ls fly." 778. Farewell to you;· etc. Mr. Collier ap pends the stage direction, "Shaking hands severally." In all the 778. Farewell to thee too, Strato. Folios this stands, "Farewell to thee, to Strato." The correction is one of the many made by Theobald which have been universally acquiesced in. It appears to have escaped Mr. Collier's MS. annotator. 780. Hence; I will follow. - This is the reading of all the old copies. Pope adds thee, in order to make a complete line of the two hemistichs. The "Exeunt Clitus," etc., is modern. 780. Thou art a fellow of a good respect.— See 48. 780. Thy life hath had some smatch of honor in it.- Smatch is only another form of smack, meaning taste. Smack is the word which Shakespeare commonly uses, both as noun and verb. [White has" smack."] In the early editions, the stage direction after the last speech of Brutus (782) is, simply, "Dics;" and in the Entry that follows Antony is placed before Octavius, and "their Army" is "the Army." 787. I will entertain them.- Receive them into my service. 787. Wilt thou bestow thy time with me?· Here is another sense of bestow, in addition to that in 139, which is now lost. Bestow thy time with me means give up thy time to me. 788. If Messala will prefer me to you. "To prefer," Reed observes, "seems to have been the established phrase for recommending a servant." And he quotes from The Merchant of Venice, ii. 2, what Bassanio says to Launcelot, Shylock, thy master, spoke with me this day, But to prefer was more than merely to recommend. It was rather to transfer, or hand over; as might be inferred even from what Octavius here rejoins, "Do so, good Messala." That it had come usually to imply also something of promotion may be seen from what Bassanio goes on to say: if it be preferment To leave a rich Jew's service, to become The sense of the verb to prefer that we have in |