Enter LUCILIUS and TITINIUS. Bru. Lucilius and Titinius, bid the commanders Prepare to lodge their companies to-night. Cas. And come yourselves, and bring Messala with you, Immediately to us. Bru. [Exeunt LUCILIUS and TITINIUS. Lucius, a bowl of wine. Cas. I did not think you could have been so angry. 1 Cas. Of your philosophy you make no use, If you give place to accidental evils. Bru. No man bears sorrow better:-Portia is dead. Cas. Ha! Portia ? Bru. She is dead. Cas. How 'scaped I killing when I crossed you so?— O insupportable and touching loss! Upon what sickness ? 2 Bru. Impatient 3 of my absence; And grief that young Octavius with Mark Antony 4 Have made themselves so strong;-for with her death 5 And, her attendants absent, swallowed fire. Cas. And died so? Bru. Even so. Cas. O ye immortal gods! 1 Of your philosophy.] Coleridge calls Brutus 'the Stoico-Platonic tyrannicide.' 2 Upon what sickness.] In consequence of what sickness. 3 Impatient.] Grammatical precision would require impatience. 4 With Mark Antony.] This phrase is treated as if it were in words, what it is in significancy, and Mark Antony. 5 With her death.] That is, bringing came and her death came along with it. singular noun, as news now generally is. death to her; that news Tidings is here used as a Extr. from Plutarch, 71. Enter LUCIUS, with wine and tapers. Bru. Speak no more of her.-Give me a bowl of wine :-In this I bury all unkindness, Cassius. [Drinks. Cas. My heart is thirsty for that noble pledge :Fill, Lucius, till the wine o'erswell the cup; I cannot drink too much of Brutus' love. Re-enter TITINIUS, with MESSALA. [Drinks. Bru. Come in, Titinius :-Welcome, good Messala.— Now sit we close about this taper here, 1 And call in question 1 our necessities. Bru. No more I pray you.― Messala, I have here received letters, Mes. Myself have letters of the self-same tenor. Mes. That by proscription, and bills of outlawry, Have put to death an hundred senators. Bru. Therein our letters do not well agree; Mine speak of seventy senators that died By their proscriptions, Cicero being one. And by that order of proscription. Had you your letters from your wife, my lord? Bru. No, Messala. 1 Call in question.] Bring under inquiry; take into consideration. To call in question' now means to dispute a thing. * Expedition.] Directing their course with speed. Mes. Nor nothing in your letters writ of her? Mes. That, methinks, is strange. Bru. Why ask you? Hear you aught of her in yours? Mes. No, my lord. Bru. Now, as you are a Roman, tell me true. Mes. Then like a Roman bear the truth I tell : For certain 1 she is dead, and by strange manner. I have the patience to endure it now. Mes. Even so great men great losses should endure. But yet my nature could not bear it so. Bru. Well, to our work alive. Of marching to Philippi presently? What do you think Cas. I do not think it good. Bru. Your reason? This it is 5: Cas. "T is better that the enemy seek us: So shall he waste his means, weary his soldiers, Are full of rest, defence, and nimbleness. 1 Certain.] An adverb meaning in certain fact, or certainly. 2 Once.] Some time or other; one day. In art.] I have as much as you of this way of thinking, so far as formal reasoning or speculative opinion goes. 4 To our work alive.] The adjective alive here qualifies the pronoun us involved in our (=of us): now to the work which demands the attention of us alive, which we the living must attend to. There is a somewhat similar grammatical difficulty in such phraseology as 'his ability as a statesman. See the Editor's 'Text Book of Grammar,' p. 136, § 5. This it is.] The words it is would be better omitted, and probably have not the authority of the poet's intention. Bru. Good reasons must, of force 1, give place to better. By them shall make a fuller number up, If at Philippi we do face him there, These people at our back. Cas. Hear me, good brother. Bru. Under your pardon.—You must note beside, That we have tried the utmost of our friends, Our legions are brim-full, our cause is ripe : The enemy increaseth every day, We, at the height, are ready to decline.4 There is a tide in the affairs of men, Which, taken at the flood 5, leads on to fortune: Is bound in shallows and in miseries. 1 Good reasons must, of force.] These are good reasons, but they must of necessity give way to better ones. The adverbial phrase of force here means perforce, or necessarily; so Milton, P. L. i. 143, Our conqueror whom I now, of force, believe almighty.' 2 Along by them.] By the way of them; through their land. New-added.] Reinforced; increased by new troops, men unimpaired by toil or hardship. Another reading is new-hearted. We at the height.] We have attained the greatest fulness of resources we can possibly have, and our further alteration can only be in the way of decline, just as the tide must begin to ebb when it has reached its full. 5 At the flood.] Taken advantage of at the time of full flood. • Is bound.] Is impeded, obstructed, amidst shallows and hardships. And we must take the current when it serves, Or lose our ventures.1 Cas. Then, with your will, go on : We'll along ourselves, and meet them at Philippi. Which we will niggard 2 with a little rest. There is no more to say? Good night; Farewell, Early to morrow will we rise, and hence.3 Good night, Titinius: - Noble, noble Cassius, Cas. my dear brother! This was an ill beginning of the night: Never come such division 'tween our souls! Re-enter LUCIUS, with the gown. Give me the gown. Where is thy instrument ? 4 1 Our ventures.] What we hazard in this enterprise. 2 We will niggard.] We will provide parsimoniously. 3 And hence.] And go, or march, hence. This kind of ellipsis is very common in Shakspeare, but sounds rather awkwardly here in relation to the verb rise. 4 Thy instrument.] Musical instrument. |