Reveals before 'tis ripe, what thou dost know Hath newly pass'd between this youth and me. 161 Pries A contract of eternal bond of love, And all the ceremony of this compact I have travell'd but two hours. Duke. O thou dissembling cub! what wilt thou be When time hath sow'd a grizzle on thy case? 190 You drew your sword upon me without cause; But I bespake you fair, and hurt you not. Sir And. If a bloody coxcomb be a hurt, you have hurt me: I think you set nothing by a bloody coxcomb. Enter SIR TOBY and CLOWN. Here comes Sir Toby halting; you shall hear more but if he had not been in drink, he would have tickled you othergates than he did Duke. How now, gentleman! how is't with you ? 200 Sir To. That's all one has hurt me, and there's the end on't. Sot, didst see Dick surgeon, sot? Clo. O, he's drunk, Sir Toby, an hour agone; his eyes were set at eight i' the morning. Sir To. Then he's a rogue, fand a passy measures panyn: I hate a drunken rogue. Ol. Away with him! Who hath made this havoc with them? Sir And. I'll help you, Sir Toby, because we'll be dressed together. 211 I do perceive it hath offended you: A natural perspective, that is and is not! Ant. Sebastian are you? Seb. Fear'st thou that, Antonio ? Ant. How have you made division of your self? Seb. Do I stand there? I never had a brother; Nor can there be that deity in my nature, Of charity, what kin are you to me? Vio. Of Messaline: Sebastian was my father; Such a Sebastian was my brother too, So went he suited to his watery tomb : If spirits can assume both form and suit You come to fright us. 240 Seb. A spirit I am indeed; But am in that dimension grossly clad Which from the womb I did participate. Were you a woman, as the rest goes even, I should my tears let fall upon your cheek, And say 'Thrice-welcome, drowned Viola!' Vio. My father had a mole upon his brow b. And s had mine. 250 Where lie my maiden weeds; by whose gentle help I was preserved to serve this noble count. But nature to her bias drew in that. You would have been contracted to a maid ; Nor are you therein, by my life, deceived, 269 You are betroth'd both to a maid and man. Duke. Be not amazed; right noble is his blood. If this be so, as yet the glass seems true, I shall have share in this most happy wreck. [To Viola] Boy, thou hast said to me a thousand times Thou never shouldst love woman like to me. Vio. And all those sayings will I overswear; And all those swearings keep as true in soul Duke. Hath my maid's garments: he upon some action Is now in durance, at Malvolio's suit, A gentleman, and follower of my lady's. Oli. He shall enlarge him: fetch Malvolio hither: And yet, alas, now I remember me, Re-enter CLOWN with a letter, and FABIAN. 290 Clo. Truly, madam, he holds Belzebub at the staves's end as well as a man in his case may do has here writ a letter to you; I should have given 't you to-day morning, but as a madman's epistles are no gospels, so it skills not much when they are delivered. Ol. Open 't, and read it. Clo. Look then to be well edified when the fool delivers the madman. [Reads] 'By the Lord, madam,' Oh. How now! art thou mad? 300 Duke. This savors not much of distraction. Ol. See him deliver'd, Fabian; bring him hither. [Erit Fabian. My lord, so please you, these things further thought on, To think me as well a sister as a wife, One day shall crown the alliance on't, so please you, Here at my house and at my proper cost. Duke. Madam, I am most apt to embrace your offer. [To Viola] Your master quits you; and for your service done him, So much against the mettle of your sex, 330 Re-enter FABIAN, with MALVOLIO. To put on yellow stockings and to frown Ol. Alas, Malvolio, this is not my writing, And in such forms which here were presupposed Upon thee in the letter. Prithee, be content: This practice hath most shrewdly pass'd upon thee; 360 But when we know the grounds and authors of it, Thou shalt be both the plaintiff and the judge Of thine own cause. Fab. Good madam, hear me speak, And let no quarrel nor no brawl to come Taint the condition of this present hour, Which I have wonder'd at. In hope it shall not, Most freely I confess, myself and Toby Set this device against Malvolio here, Upon some stubborn and uncourteous parts We had conceived against him: Maria writ The letter at Sir Toby's great importance; 371 In recompense whereof he hath married her. How with a sportful malice it was follow'd, May rather pluck on laughter than revenge; If that the injuries be justly weigh'd That have on both sides pass'd. Oli. Alas, poor fool, how have they baffled thee ! 6 Clo. Why, some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrown upon them.' I was one, sir, in this interlude; one Sir Topas, sir; but that's all one. 'By the Lord, fool, I am not mad.' But do you remember? Madam, why laugh you at such a barren rascal? an you smile not, he's gagged:' and thus the whirligig of time brings in his revenges. Mal. I'll be revenged on the whole pack of you. [Exit. Oli. He hath been most notoriously abused. Duke Pursue him, and entreat him to a A great while ago the world begun, But that's all one, our play is done, JULIUS CESAR. (WRITTEN ABOUT 1601.) INTRODUCTION. This tragedy was produced as early as 1601; so we infer from a passage in Weaver's Mirror of Martyrs (1601) in which reference is made to the speeches of Brutus and Antony. The style of the versification, the diction, the characterization, all bear out the opinion that 1600 or 1601 is the date of Julius Cæsar. The historical materials of the play were found by the dramatist in the lives of Cæsar, of Brutus, and of Antony, as given in North's translation of Plutarch. Hints for the speeches of Brutus and Antony seem to have been obtained from Appian's Civil Wars (B. II., ch. 137-147) translated into English in 1578. Every thing is wrought out in the play with great care and completeness; it is well planned and well proportioned; there is no tempestuousness of passion, and no artistic mystery. The style is full, but not overburdened with thought or imagery; this is one of the most perfect of Shakespeare's plays; greater tragedies are less perfect, perhaps for the very reason that they try to grasp greater, more terrible, or more piteous themes. In King Henry V. Shakespeare had represented a great and heroic man of action. In the serious plays, which come next in chronological order, Julius Cæsar and Hamlet, the poet represents two men who were forced to act-to act in public affairs, and affairs of life and death-yet who were singularly disqualified for playing the part of men of action. Hamlet cannot act because his moral energy is sapped by a kind of skepticism and sterile despair about life, because his own ideas are more to him than deeds, because his will is diseased. Brutus does act, but he acts as an idealist and theorizer might, with no eye for the actual bearing of facts, and no sense of the true importance of persons. Intellectual loctrines and moral ideas rule the life of Brutus; and his life is most noble, high, and stainless but his public action is a series of practical mistakes. Yet even while he errs we admire him, for al. his errors are those of a pure and lofty spirit. In his wife-Cato's daughter, Portia-Brutus has found one who is equal to and worthy of himself. Shakespeare has shown her as perfectly a woman--sensitive, finely-tempered, tender-yet a woman who by her devotion to moral ideas might stand beside such a father and such a husband. And Brutus, with all his Stoicism, is gentle and tender: he can strike down Cæsar if Cæsar be a tyrant, but he cannot roughly rouse a sleeping boy (Act IV., Sc. iii., L. 270). Antony is a man of genius, with many splendid and some generous qualities, but self-indulgent, pleasure-loving, and a daring adventurer rather than a great leader of the State. The character of Cæsar is conceived in a curious and almost irritating manner. Shakespeare (as passages in other plays show) was certainly not ignorant of the greatness of one of the world's greatest men. But here it is his weaknesses that are insisted on. He is failing in body and mind, influenced by superstition, yields to flattery, thinks of himself as almost superhuman, has lost some of his insight into character, and his sureness and swiftness of action. Yet the play is rightly named Julius Cæsar. His bodily presence is weak, but his spirit rules throughout the play, and rises after his death in all its might, towering over the little band of conspirators, who at length fall before the spirit of Cæsar as it ranges for revenge. rhetoric. A Soothsayer. PINDARUS, servant to Cassius. CALPURNIA, wife to Cæsar. Senators, Citizens, Guards, Attendants, &c. SCENE: Rome: the neighborhood of Sardis the neighborhood of Philippi. ACT L SCENE I. Rome. A street. Enter FLAVIUS, MARULLUS, and certain Commoners. Flav. Hence home, you idle creatures get you home: Is this a holiday? what! know you not, First Com. Why, sir, a carpenter. Mar. Where is thy leather apron and thy rule? What dost thou with thy best apparel on? Sec. Com. Truly, sir, in respect of a fine workman, I am but, as you would say, a cobbler. 11 Sec. Com. Truly, sir, all that I live by is with the awl: I meddle with no tradesman's matters, nor women's matters, but with awl. I am, indeed, sir, a surgeon to old shoes; when they are in great danger, I recover them. proper men as ever trod upon neat's leather have gone upon my handiwork. As 30 Flav. But wherefore art not in thy shop today? Why dost thou lead these men about the streets? Sec. Com. Truly, sir, to wear out their shoes, to get myself into more work. But, indeed, sir, we make holiday, to see Cæsar and to rejoice in his triumph. Mar. Wherefore rejoice? What conquest brings he home? What tributaries follow him to Rome, 40 O you hard hearts, you cruel men of Rome, Knew you not Pompey? Many a time and oft Have you climb'd up to walls and battlements, To towers and windows, yea, to chimney-tops, Your infants in your arms, and there have sat The live-long day, with patient expectation, To see great Pompey pass the streets of Rome: And when you saw his chariot but appear, Have you not made an universal shout, That Tiber trembled underneath her banks, 50 And do you now put on your best attire ? Run to your houses, fall upon your knees, Assemble all the poor men of your sort; tears Into the channel, till the lowest stream [Exeunt all the Commoners. You know it is the feast of Lupercal. Flav. It is no matter; let no images Be hung with Cæsar's trophies. I'll about, And drive away the vulgar from the streets : So do you too, where you perceive them thick. These growing feathers pluck'd from Cæsar's wing Will make him fly an ordinary pitch, SCENE II. A public place. [Exeunt. Flourish. Enter CÆSAR; ANTONY, for the Peace, ho! Cæsar speaks. Cal. Here, my lord. Cæs. Forget not, in your speed, Antonius, To touch Calpurnia; for our elders say, The barren, touched in this holy chase, Shake off their sterile curse. Ant. I shall remember: When Cæsar says 'do this,' it is perform'd. 10 Cas. Set on; and leave no ceremony out. [Flourish. Sooth. Cæsar! Caes. Ha! who calls? Casca. Bid every noise be still peace yet again! Caes. Who is it in the press that calls on me? I hear a tongue, shriller than all the music, Cry Cæsar!' Speak; Cæsar is turn'd to hear. Sooth. Beware the ides of March. |