M. W. MacCallum, Shakespeare's Roman Plays and their Background

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Although Julius Caesar was first published in the Folio of 1623, seven years after Shakespeare's death, there is not much doubt about its approximate date of composition, which is now placed by almost all scholars near the beginning of the seventeenth century. Some of the evidence for this is partly external in character.

(I) In a miscellany of poems on the death of Elizabeth, printed in 1603, and entitled Sorrowes Joy, the lines occur:

They say a comet woonteth to appeare
When Princes baleful destinie is neare:
So Julius starre was seene with fiery crest,
Before his fall to blaze among the rest. It looks as though the suggestion for the idea and

many of the words had come from Calpurnia's remonstrance,

When beggars die there are no comets seen:
The heavens themselves blaze forth the death of princes.¹

(II. ii. 30.)

[p. 169]

Another apparent loan belongs to the same year. In 1603 Drayton rewrote his poem of Mortimeriados under the title of The Barons' Wars, altering and adding many passages. One of the insertions runs:

Such one he was, of him we boldely say,
In whose riche soule all soueraigne powres did sute,
In whose in peace th(e) elements all lay
So mixt as none could soueraignty impute;
As all did gouerne, yet all did obey.
His liuely temper was so absolute,
That ‘t seemde when heauen his modell first began,
In him it shewd perfection in a man.

Compare Antony's verdict on Brutus:

His life was gentle, and the elements
So mix'd in him, that Nature might stand up
And say to all the world, “This was a man”.

(v. v. 73.)

Some critics have endeavoured to minimise this coincidence on the ground that it was a common idea that man was compounded of the four elements. But that would not account for such close identity of phrase. There must be some connection; and that Drayton, not Shakespeare, was the copyist, is rendered probable by the circumstance that Drayton, in 1619, i.e. after Shakespeare's death, makes a still closer approach to Shakespeare's language.

He was a man, then, boldly dare to say,
In whose rich soul the virtues well did suit;
In whom, so mix'd the elements all lay,
That none to one could sovereignty impute;
As all did govern, yet all did obey:
He of a temper was so absolute
As that it seem'd, when Nature him began,
She meant to show all that might be in man.

Collier's Shakespeare.

(2) Apart, however, from these apparent adaptations in 1603, there is reason to conjecture that the play had been performed by May in the previous year. At that date, as we know from Henslowe's Diary, [p. 170] Drayton, Webster and others were engaged on a tragedy on the same subject called Caesar's Fall. Now it is a well ascertained fact that when a drama was a success at one theatre, something on a similar theme commonly followed at another. The entry therefore, that in the early summer of 1602 Henslowe had several playwrights working at this material, apparently in a hurry, since so many are sharing in the task, is in so far presumptive evidence that Shakespeare's Julius Caesar had been produced in the same year or shortly before.

(3) But these things are chiefly important as confirming the probability of another allusion, which would throw the date a little further back still. In Weever's Mirror of Martyrs there is the quatrain:

The many headed multitude were drawne
By Brutus speech, that Caesar was ambitious,
When eloquent Mark Antony had showne
His vertues, who but Brutus then was vicious.

Mr. Halliwell-Philips' discovery.

Now this has a much more specific reference to the famous scene in the Play than to anything in Plutarch, who, for instance, even in the Life of Brutus, which gives the fullest account of Brutus' dealings with the citizens, does not mention the substance of his argument and still less any insistence on Caesar's ambition, but only says that he “made an oration unto them to winne the favor of the people, and to justifie what they had done ”; and this passage, which contains the fullest notice of Brutus' speeches, like the corresponding one in the Life of Caesar, attributes only moderate success to his appeal in the market place, while it goes on to describe the popular disapproval as exploding before the intervention of Antony.² Thus it seems [p. 171] fairly certain that a knowledge of Shakespeare's play is presupposed by the Mirror of Martyrs, which was printed in 1601.

On the other hand, it cannot have been much earlier. The absence of such a typical “tragedy” from Meres' list in 1598 is nearly proof positive that it was not then in existence.

After that the data are less definite. A Warning for Fair Women, printed in 1598, contains the lines:

I have given him fifteen wounds,
Which will be fifteen mouths that do accuse me:
In every mouth there is a bloody tongue
Which will speak, although he holds his peace.

It is difficult not to bring these into connection with Antony's words:

Over thy wounds now do I prophesy-
Which like dumb mouths do ope their ruby lips
To beg the voice and utterance of my tongue.

(III. i. 259.)

And again:

I tell you that which you yourselves do know,
Show you sweet Caesar's wounds, poor, poor dumb mouths,
And bid them speak for me: but were I Brutus
And Brutus Antony, there were an Antony
Would ruffle up your spirits and put a tongue
In every wound.

(III. ii. 228.)

But in this Shakespeare may have been the debtor not the creditor: and other coincidences like the “Et tu, Brute,” in Acolastus his Afterwit ³（1600) may be due to the use of common or current authorities. [p. 172] One little detail has been used as an argument that the play was later than 1600. Cassius says:

There was a Brutus once that would have brook'd
The eternal devil to keep his state in Rome
As easily as a king.

(I. ii. 159.) Here obviously the word we should have expected is infernal not eternal. It has been conjectured⁴ that the milder expression was substituted in deference to the increasing disapproval of profane language on the stage; and since three plays published in 1600 use infernal, the inference is that Julius Caesar is subsequent to them. One fails to see, however, why Shakespeare should admit the substantive and be squeamish about the adjective: in point of fact, much uglier words than either find free entry into his later plays. And one has likewise to remember that the Julius Caesar we possess was published only in 1623, and that such a change might very well have been made in any of the intervening years, even though it were written before 1600. The most then that can be established by this set of inferences, is that it was produced after Meres' Palladis Tamia in 1598 and before Weever's Mirror of Martyrs in 1601.

The narrowness of the range is fairly satisfactory, and it may be further reduced. It has been surmised that perhaps Essex‘ treason turned Shakespeare's thoughts to the story of another conspiracy by another high-minded man, and that Caesar's reproach, “Et tu, Brute,” derived not from the Parallel Lives but from floating literary tradition, would suggest to an audience of those days the feeling of Elizabeth in regard to one whom Shakespeare had but recently celebrated as “the general of our gracious Empress.” At any rate the time seems suitable. Among Shakespeare's serious plays Julius Caesar most resembles in style Henry V., [p. 173] written between March and September 1599, as the above allusion to Essex‘ expedition shows,⁵ and Hamlet, entered at Stationers' Hall in 1602, as “latelie acted.” But the connection is a good deal closer with the latter than with the former, and extends to the parallelism and contrast between the chief persons, both of them philosophic students called upon to make a decision for which their temperament and powers do not fit them, and therefore the one of them deciding wrong and the other hardly deciding at all. Both pieces contain references to the story of Caesar, but those in Hamlet accord better with the tone of the tragedy. Thus the chorus says of Henry's triumph:

The mayor and all his brethren in best sort,
Like to the senators of the antique Rome,
With the plebeians swarming at their heels,
Go forth to fetch their conquering Caesar in.

(v. prologue 25.)

Would this passage have been penned if Shakespeare had already described how the acclamations of the plebs were interrupted by the tribunes, and how among the senators there were some eager to make away with the Victor?

But the two chief references in Hamlet merely abridge what is told more at large in the Play. Polonius says: “I did enact Julius Caesar: I was killed i‘ the Capitol. Brutus killed me” (III. ii. 108), which is only a bald summary of the central situation. Hamlet says:

In the most high and palmy state of Rome,
A little ere the mightiest Julius fell,
The graves stood tenantless, and the sheeted dead
Did squeak and gibber in the Roman streets:
As stars with trains of fire and dews of blood,
Disasters in the sun; and the moist star
Upon whose influence Neptune's empire stands
Was sick almost to doomsday with eclipse.

(I. i. 113.)

[p. 174]

This reads like a condensed anthology from the descriptions of Casca, Cassius and Calpurnia, eked out with a few hints from another passage in Plutarch that had not hitherto been utilised.⁶

Even the quatrain:

Imperious Caesar, dead and turn'd to clay,
Might stop a hole to keep the wind away:
O, that that earth which kept the world in awe,
Should patch a wall to expel the winter's flaw!

(v. i. 236.)

is in some sort the ironical development of Antony's thought:

O mighty Caesar! dost thou lie so low?
Are all thy conquests, glories, triumphs, spoils,
Shrunk to this little measure?

(III. i. 148.)

But yesterday the word of Caesar might
Have stood against the world: now lies he there,
And none so poor to do him reverence.

(III. ii. 123.)

Owing to Weever's reference we cannot put Julius Caesar after Hamlet, but it seems to have closer relations with Hamlet than with Henry V. It is not rash to place it between the two, in 1600 or 1601. This does not however mean that we necessarily have it quite in its original form. On the contrary, there are indications that it may have been revised some time after the date of composition.

Thus Ben Jonson in his Discoveries writes of Shakespeare: “His wit was in his own power: would the rule of it had been so too! Many times [p. 175] he fell into those things could not escape laughter, as when he said in the person of Caesar, one speaking to him, ‘Caesar, thou dost me wrong,’ he replied, ‘Caesar did never wrong but with just cause,’ and such like; which were ridiculous.” Most people would see in this a very ordinary example of the figure called Paradox, and some would explain wrong in such a way that even the paradox disappears: but the alleged bêtise tickled Ben's fancy, for he recurs to it to make a point in the Introduction to the Staple of News. One of the persons says: “I can do that too, if I have cause” ; to which the reply is made: “Cry you mercy; you never did wrong but with just cause.”

Now in the present play there is no such expression. The nearest analogue occurs in the conclusion of the speech, in which Caesar refuses the petition for Publius Cimber's recall,

Know, Caesar doth not wrong, nor without cause
Will he be satisfied.

(III. i. 47.)

It has been suggested⁷that Jonson simply misquoted the passage. But it is not likely that Ben would consciously or unconsciously pervert the authentic text by introducing an absurdity, still less by introducing an absurdity that few people find absurd. In his criticisms on Shakespeare he does not manu-facture the things to which he objects, but regards them from an unsympathetic point of view. It seems probable, therefore, that he has preserved an original reading, that was altered out of deference for strictures like his: and this in so far supports the theory that the play was corrected after its first appearance.

So, too, with the versification. The consideration of certain technicalities, such as the weak ending, would place Julius Caesar comparatively early, but [p. 176] there are others that yield a more ambiguous result. It may have been revived and revised about 1607 when the subject was again popular.

And perhaps it has survived only in an acting edition. It is unusually short: and, that Shakespeare's plays were probably abridged for the stage. we know from comparison of the Quarto with the Folio Hamlets. The same argument has been used in regard to Macbeth.

Still granting the plausibility up to a certain point of this conjecture, its importance must not be exaggerated. It does not affect the fact that Julius Caesar belongs essentially to the very beginning of the century, and that it is an organic whole as it stands. If abridged, it is still full, compact and unattenuated. If revised, its style, metre and treatment are still all characteristic of Shakespeare's early prime. The easy flow of the verse, the luminous and pregnant diction, the skilful presentation of the story in a few suggestive incidents, all point to a time when Shakespeare had attained complete mastery of his methods and material, and before he was driven by his daemon to tasks insuperable by another and almost insuperable by him,

Reaching that heaven might so replenish him
Above and through his art.

It is perhaps another aspect of the perfect and harmonious beauty, which fulfils the whole play and every part of it, that while there is none of the speeches “that is in the bad sense declamatory, none that does not gain by its context nor can be spared from it without some loss to the dramatic situation,” there are many “which are eminently adapted for declamation” ;⁸ that is, for delivery by themselves. In the later plays, on the other hand, [p. 177] it is far more difficult to extract any particular jewel from its setting.

It is pretty certain then that Julius Caesar is the first not only of the Roman Plays, but of the great series of Tragedies. The flame-tipped welter of Titus Andronicus, the poignant radiance of Romeo and Juliet belong to Shakespeare's pupilage and youth. Their place is apart from each other and the rest in the vestibule and forecourt of his art. The nearest approach to real Tragedy he had otherwise made was in the English History of Richard III. And now when that period of his career begins in which he is chiefly occupied with the treatment of tragic themes, it is again to historical material that he has recourse, and he chooses from it the episode which was probably of supreme interest to the Europe of his day. Since Muretus first showed the way, the fate of Caesar had again and again been dramatised in Latin and in the vernacular, in French and in English. It was a subject that to a genius of the second rank might have seemed hackneyed, but a genius of the highest rank knows that the common is not hackneyed but catholic, and contains richer possibilities than the recondite. Shakespeare had already been drawn to it himself. The frequent references in his earlier dramas show how he too was fascinated by the glamour of Caesar. In the plays adapted by him, he inserts or retains tributes to Caesar's greatness, to the irony or injustice of his fate. Bedford in his enthusiasm for the spirit of Henry V., as ordained to prosper the realm and thwart adverse planets, can prefer him to only one rival,

A far more glorious star thy soul will make
Than Julius Caesar.

(H. VI. A. I. i. 155.)

Suffolk, in his self-conceit and self-pity, seeks for examples of other celebrities who have perished by [p. 178] ignoble hands, and compared with his victim, even Brutus seems on the level of the meanest and most unscrupulous.

A Roman sworder and banditto slave
Murder'd sweet Tully: Brutus' bastard hand
Stabb'd Julius Caesar: savage islanders
Pompey the Great: and Suffolk dies by pirates.

（H. VI. B. iv. i. 134.)

Margaret, when her boy is slaughtered at Tewkesbury, thinks of Caesar's murder as the one deed which can be placed beside it, and which it even transcends in horror.

They that stabb'd Caesar shed no blood at all,
Did not offend, nor were not worthy blame,
If this foul deed were by to equal it.

(H. VI. C. v. v. 53.)

It is the same if we turn to Shakespeare's indisputably spontaneous utterances. He sees Caesar's double merit with pen and sword. Says the little Prince Edward:

That Julius Caesar was a famous man:
With what his valour did enrich his wit,
His wit set down to make his valour live.
Death makes no conquest of this conquerer:
For now he lives in fame, though not in life.

（R. III. iii. i. 84.)

Rosalind laughs at the self-consciousness of his prowess as she laughs at the extravagance of love in Troilus and Leander, but evidently Shakespeare, just as he was impressed by their stories in Chaucer and Marlowe, was impressed in Plutarch with what she calls the “thrasonical brag of ‘ I came, saw, and overcame.’ ” Don Armado is made to quote it in his role of invincible gallant (L.L.L. IV. i. 68); and Falstaff parodies it by applying to himself the boast of “the hooked-nosed fellow of Rome” when Sir John Coleville surrenders (H. IV. B. iv. iii. 45). For to Shakespeare there are no victories like [p. 179] Caesar's. The false announcement of Hotspur's success appeals to them for precedent:

O, such a day
So fought, so follow'd and so fairly won,
Came not till now to dignify the times
Since Caesar's fortunes.

（H. IV. B. i. i. 20.)

We have already noticed the references to his triumphs, his fate, the ironical contrast between the was and the is in Henry V. and Hamlet, the History and the Tragedy that respectively precede and succeed the play of which he is titular hero. But Shakespeare keeps recurring to the theme almost to the end. When in Measure for Measure the disreputable Pompey is conveyed to prison, it suggests a ridiculous parallel with that final triumph of Caesar's when the tribunes saw far other

tributaries follow him to Rome
To grace in captive bonds his chariot wheels.

“How now, noble Pompey,” says Lucio as the gobetween passes by behind Elbow and the officers, “what, at the wheels of Caesar? art thou led in triumph?” (III. ii. 46). In Antony and Cleopatra, of course the incumbent presence of “broad-fronted Caesar” is always felt. But in Cymbeline, too, it haunts us. Now his difficulties in the island, since there were difficulties even for him, are used as by Posthumus, to exalt the prowess of the Britons,

When Julius Caesar
Smiled at their lack of skill, but found their courage
Worthy his frowning at:

(II. iv. 21.)

or by the Queen:

A kind of conquest
Caesar made here; but made not here his brag
Of “came” and “saw” and “overcame.”

(III. i. 22.)

But the dominant note is rather of admiration for

Julius Caesar, whose remembrance yet
Lives in men's eyes, and will to ears and tongues
Be theme and hearing ever.

(III. i. 2.)

[p. 180] Or if the fault that Brutus enforced is brought to view, the very fault becomes a grandiose and superhuman thing:

Caesar's ambition,
Which swell'd so much, that it did almost stretch
The sides o‘ the world.

(III. i. 49.)

The subject then was one of wide-spread interest and had an abiding fascination for Shakespeare himself. After leaving national history in Henry V. he seems to have turned to the history of Rome for the first Tragedy of his prime in a spirit much like that in which he had gone to the English Chronicles. And he goes to it much in the same way. It has been said that in most of the earlier series “Holinshed is hardly ever out of the poet's hands.” ⁹ Substituting Plutarch for Holinshed the expression is true in this case too. An occasional phrase like the Et tu, Brute, he obtained elsewhere, most probably from familiar literary usage, but conceivably from the lost Latin play of Dr. Eedes or Geddes. Stray hints he may have derived from other authorities; for instance, though this is not certain, a suggestion or two from Appian's Civil Wars for Mark Antony's Oration.¹⁰ It is even possible that he may have been directed to the conception and treatment of a few longer passages by his general reading: thus, as we have seen, it has been maintained not without plausibility that the first conversation between Brutus and Cassius can be traced to the corresponding scene in the Cornélie.¹¹ But in Plutarch he found practically all the stuff and substance for his play, except what was contributed by his own genius; and any other ingredients are nearly imperceptible and altogether [p. 181] negligible. Plutarch, however, has given much. All the persons except Lucius come from him, and Shakespeare owes to him a number of their characteristics down to the minutest traits. Cassius' leanness and Antony's sleekness, Brutus' fondness for his books and cultivation of an artificial style, Caesar's liability to the falling sickness and vein of arrogance in his later years, are all touches that are taken over from the Biographer. So too with the events and circumstances, and in the main, the sequence in which they are presented. Plutarch tells of the disapproval with which the triumph over Pompey's sons was regarded; of the prophecy of danger on the Ides of March; of the offer of the crown on the Lupercal; of the punishment of the Tribunes; of Cassius' conference with Brutus; of the anonymous solicitations that are sent to the latter; of the respect in which he was held; of his relations with his wife. and her demand to share his confidence; of the enthusiasm of the conspirators their contempt for an oath, their rejection of Cicero as confederate, their exemption of Antony at Brutus' request; of Ligarius' disregard of his illness; of the prodigies and portents that preceded Caesar's death; of Calpurnia's dream, her efforts to stay her husband at home and the counter arguments of Decius Brutus; of Artemidorus' intervention, the second meeting with the sooth-sayer; of Portia's paroxysm of anxiety; of all the details of the assassination scene; of the speeches to the people by Brutus and Antony; of the effects of Caesar's funeral; of the murder of the poet Cinna; of the proscription of the Triumvirate; of the disagreement of Brutus and Cassius on other matters and with reference to Pella, and the interruption of the intruder; of the apparition of the spirit, and the death of Portia; of Brutus' discussion with Cassius on suicide; of his imprudence at Philippi; of the double issue and [p. 182] repetition of the battle; of the death of Cassius and Brutus on their own swords; of the surrender of Lucilius; of Antony's eulogy of Brutus. There is, thus hardly a link in the action that was not forged on Plutarch's anvil.

And even the words of North have in many cases been almost literally transcribed. Says Lucilius when brought before Antony:

I dare assure thee, that no enemie hath taken, nor shall take Marcus Brutus alive; and I beseech God keepe him from that fortune. For wheresoever he be found, alive or dead; he will be found like him selfe.

(Brutus.)

Compare:

I dare assure thee that no enemy
Shall ever take alive the noble Brutus:
The gods defend him from so great a shame!
When you do find him, or alive or dead,
He will be found like Brutus, like himself.

(V. iv. 21.)

Or take the passage-considering its length, the exactest reproduction of all--in which Portia claims full share in her husband's secrets. The sentiment is what we are accustomed to regard as modern; but Plutarch, who himself viewed marriage as a relation in which there was no Mine nor Thine,¹² has painted the situation with heart-felt sympathy. After describing the wound she gives herself to make trial of her firmness, he proceeds:

Then perceiving her husband was marvelously out of quiet, and that he coulde take no rest: even in her greatest payne of all, she spake in this sorte unto him: “I being, O Brutus (sayed she), the daughter of Cato, was maried unto thee, not to be thy bedde fellowe and companion at bedde and at borde onelie, like a harlot; but to be partaker also with thee, of thy good and evill fortune. Nowe for thy selfe, I can finde no cause of faulte in thee as touchinge our matche: but for my parte, howe may I showe my duetie towardes thee, and howe muche I woulde doe for thy sake, if [p. 183] I cannot constantlie beare a secret mischaunce or griefe with thee, which requireth secrecy and fidelity? I confesse, that a woman's wit commonly is too weake to keepe a secret safely: but yet, Brutus, good educacion, and the companies of vertuous men, have some power to reforme the defect of nature. And for my selfe, I have this benefit moreover: that I am the daughter of Cato, and wife of Brutus. This notwithstanding, I did not trust to any of these things before; untill that now I have found by experience, that no paine nor griefe whatsoever can overcome me.” With those wordes she shewed him her wounde on her thigh, and told him what she had done to prove her selfe. Brutus was amazed to heare what she sayd unto him, and lifting up his handes to heaven, he besought the goddes to give him grace he might bring his enterprise to so good passe, that he might be founde a husband, worthie of so noble a wife as Porcia. （Marcus Brutus.)

It is hardly necessary to point out how closely Shakespeare follows up the trail.

Portia.
Within the bond of marriage, tell me, Brutus,
Is it excepted I should know no secrets
That appertain to you? Am I yourself
But, as it were, in sort or limitation;
To keep with you at meals, comfort your bed,
And talk to you sometimes? Dwell I but in the suburbs
of your good pleasure? If it be no more,
Portia is Brutus' harlot, not his wife.

Brutus.
You are my true and honourable wife,
As dear to me as are the ruddy drops
That visit my sad heart.

Portia.
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;
I grant I am a woman; but, withal,
A woman well-reputed, Cato's daughter.
Think you I am no stronger than my sex,
Being so father'd and so husbanded?
Tell me your counsels, I will not disclose ‘em:
I have made strong proof of my constancy,
Giving myself a voluntary wound,
Here, in the thigh: can I bear that with patience,
And not my husband's secrets?

Brutus.
O ye gods,
Render me worthy of this noble wife.

(II. i. 280.)

[p. 184] Here we have “the marriage of true souls” ; and though the prelude to this nuptial hymn, a prelude that heralds and enhances its sweetness, is veriest Shakespeare, when the main theme begins and the climax is reached, he is content to resign himself to the ancient melody, and re-echo, even while he varies, the notes.

North's actual slips or blunders are received into the play. Thus the account of the assassination runs: “Caesar was driven . . . against the base whereupon Pompey's image stood, which ranne all of a goare blood.” The last clause, probably by accident, adds picturesqueness to Amyot's simple description, “qui en fust toute ensanglantee,” and is immortalised in Antony's bravura:

Even at the base of Pompey's statua
Which all the while ran blood.

(III. ii. 192.)

More noticeable is the instance of Brutus' reply to Cassius' question, what he will do if he lose the battle at Philippi. Amyot's translation is straightforward enough.

Brutus luy respondit: “Estant encore jeune et non assez experimenté es affaires de ce monde, je feis ne sçay comment un discours de philosophic, par lequel je reprenois et blasmois fort Caton d‘estre desfait soymesme” etc.

That is:

Brutus answered him: “When I was yet young and not much experienced in the affairs of this world, I composed, somehow or other, a philosophic discourse in which I greatly rebuked and censured Cato for having made away with himself!”

North did not notice where the quotation began; connected feis with fier in place of faire, probably taking it as present not as past; and interpreted discours as principle, which it never meant and never can mean, instead of dissertaton. So he translates:

Brutus answered him, being yet but a young man, and not over-greatly experienced in the world: I trust (I know not how) [p. 185] a certaine rule of Philosophie, by the which I did greatly blame and reprove Cato for killing of him selfe; as being no godly or lawful acte, touching the goddes; nor concerning men, valliant; not to give place and yeld to divine providence, and not constantly and paciently to take whatsoever it pleaseth him to send us, but to drawe backe, and flie: but being nowe in the middest of the daunger, I am of a contrary mind. For if it be not the will of God, that this battell fall out fortunate for us: I will looke no more for hope, neither seeke to make any new supply for warre againe, but will rid me of this miserable world, and content me with my fortune. For, I gave up my life for my country in the Ides of Marche, for the which I shall live in another more glorious worlde. (Marcus Brutus.)

It is possible that North used trust in the first sentence as a preterite equal to trusted, just as he uses lift for lifted. But Shakespeare at least took it for a present: so he was struck by the contradiction which the passage seems to contain. He got over it, and produced a new effect and one very true to human nature, by making Brutus' latter sentiment the sudden response of his heart, in defiance of his philosophy, to Cassius' anticipation of what they must expect if defeated.

Brutus.
Even by the rule of that philosophy
By which I did blame Cato for the death
Which he did give himself, I know not how,
But I do find it cowardly and vile,
For fear of what might fall, so to prevent
The time of life: arming myself with patience
To stay the providence of some higher powers
That govern us below.

Cassius.
Then if we lose this battle.
You are contented to be led in triumph
Thorough the streets of Rome?

Brutus.
No, Cassius, no: think not, thou noble Roman,
That ever Brutus will go bound to Rome;
He bears too great a mind. But this same day
Must end that work the ides of March begun;
And whether we shall meet again I know not.
Therefore our everlasting farewell take.

(v. i. 101.)

This last illustration may show us, however, that Shakespeare, even when he seems to copy most [p. 186] literally, always introduces something that comes from himself. Despite his wholesale appropriation of territory that does not in the first instance belong to him, the produce is emphatically his own. It is like the white man's occupation of America and Australasia, and can be justified only on similar grounds. The lands remain the same under their new as under their old masters, but they yield undreamed--of wealth to satisfy the needs of man. Never did any one borrow more, yet borrow less, than Shakespeare. He finds the clay ready to his hand, but he shapes it and breathes into it the breath of life, and it becomes a living soul. [p. 187]