Casca. Ay.

Cas. Did Cicero say any thing?

Casca. Ay, he spoke Greek.1

Cas. To what effect?

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 mine own part, it was Greek to me. I could tell you more news, too: Marullus and 290 Flavius, for pulling scarfs off Cæsar's images, are put to silence.2 Fare you well. There was more foolery yet, if I could remember it. Cas. Will you sup with me to-night, Casca? 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.3

Cas. Good; I will expect you.

Casca. Do so. Farewell, both.

Bru. What a blunt fellow is this grown to be!
He was quick metal when he went to school.

Cas. So is he now in execution

Of any bold or noble enterprise,

Exit.

301

However he puts on this tardy form.1
This rudeness is a sauce to his good wit,
Which gives men stomach to digest his words
With better appetite.

1 Another pun. The joke lies in the old phrase, "It's all Greek to me." See Casca's speech below.

2 This is the last we hear of the two tribunes. They have served their purpose in the play and are allowed to drop out.

3 Why do you think Brutus and Cassius admire Casca in spite of his rudeness?

4 ♦ Tardy is contrasted with quick in the phrase quick metal (line 301). It means pretended stupidity.

Bru. And so it is. For this time I will leave you.
To-morrow, if you please to speak with me, 310
I will come home to you, or if you will,
Come home to me and I will wait for you.
Cas. I will do so. Till then, think of the world."
Exit Brutus.

Well, Brutus, thou art noble; yet I see
Thy honorable metal° may be wrought°
From that it is dispos'd. Therefore, it is meet
That noble minds keep ever with their likes;
For who so firm that cannot be seduc'd?
Cæsar doth bear me hard; but he loves Brutus.
If I were Brutus now and he were Cassius, 320
He should not humor° 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 glancèd1 at.
And after this let Cæsar seat him 2 sure;

For we will shake him, or worse days endure.3

Exit.

1 That is, hinted at. How many syllables in the word glancèd in this line?

This

2 Him for himself. Why not the longer word? Notice the rhyme in the last two lines of the scene. rhyming "tag," spoken by the last actor to leave the stage, was very common in Elizabethan drama.

Why did the crown-choosing take place off-stage? Would it not have made an effective scene to present in action? What seems to be Casca's feeling toward Cæsar?

Has the plot been advanced by this scene? To what extent?

Make an outline of this and the preceding scene according to time, place, plot, and purpose. (See INTRODUCTION, pp. xv,xvi.)

[SCENE III]

[A Street.]

1

Thunder and Lightning. Enter, [from opposite sides], CASCA and CICERO.

Cic. Good even, Casca.2 Brought you Cæsar home?
Why are you breathless? and why stare you so?
Casca. Are not you mov'd, when all the sway of earth
Shakes like a thing unfirm? O Cicero,

I have seen tempests, when the scolding winds
Have riv'd the knotty oaks, and I have seen
The ambitious ocean swell and rage and foam,
To be exalted with the threatening clouds;
But never till to-night, never till now,
Did I go through a tempest dropping fire.
Either there is a civil strife in heaven,

Or else the world, too saucy with the gods,
Incenses them to send destruction.

IO

Cic. Why, saw you any thing more wonderful?
Casca. A common slave-you know him well by sight-
Held up his left hand, which did flame and burn

Like twenty torches join'd, and yet his hand
Not sensible of fire remain'd unscorch'd.4

1 Thunder was produced by the roll of drums. Lightning doubtless had to be imagined, as the plays were performed in mid-afternoon. Night was usually indicated to the audience by the bringing on of lighted torches.

2 What time of day? Is it still the first day of the play?

3 This may mean all the realm, or dominion of earth. A prolepsis is undoubtedly suggested in the word sway: When all the earth sways and shakes like a thing unfirm.

These portents are given in the following language in North's Translation of Plutarch's Life of Cæsar: "Certainly destiny may be easier foreseen than avoided, considering the strange and

Besides I ha' not since put up my sword-
Against the Capitol I met a lion,

Who glaz'd upon me and went surly by
Without annoying me. And there were drawn
Upon a heap a hundred ghastly women
Transformed with their fear, who swore they saw
Men all in fire walk up and down the streets.
And yesterday the bird of night° did sit
Even at noon-day upon the market-place,
Hooting and shrieking. When these prodigies°
Do so conjointly meet, let not men say
'These are their reasons: they are natural';
For, I believe, they are portentous things
Unto the climate that they point upon.1

Cic. Indeed, it is a strange-disposèd time.

20

30

But men may construe things after their fashion,
Clean from the purpose of the things themselves.2
Comes Cæsar to the Capitol to-morrow?

Casca. He doth; for he did bid Antonius

wonderful signs that were said to be seen before Cæsar's death. For, touching the fires in the element, and spirits running up and down in the night, and also the solitary birds to be seen at noondays sitting in the great market-place, are not all these signs perhaps worth the noting, in such a wonderful chance as happened? But Strabo the philosopher writeth, that divers men were seen going up and down in fire: and furthermore that there was a slave of the soldiers that did cast a marvellous burning flame out of his hand, insomuch as they that saw it thought he had been burnt; but when the fire was out, it was found he had no hurt. Cæsar self doing sacrifice unto the gods, found that one of the beasts which was sacrificed had no heart: and that was a strange thing in nature, how a beast could live without a heart." 1 The following is offered as an example of paraphrase: "Let not men try to explain these portents as ordinary manifestations of nature; for I believe they are signs from heaven (portentous things) indicating that some terrible calamity is about to befall the republic."

2

2 Paraphrase lines 33-35 in your note-book.

Send word to you he would be there to-morrow. Cic. Good night then, Casca. This disturbèd sky Is not to walk in.

Casca. Your ear is good. Cassius, what night is this!° Cas. A very pleasing night to honest men.

Casca. Who ever knew the heavens menace so?

Cas. Those that have known the earth so full of faults.
For my part, I have walk'd about the streets,
Submitting me unto the perilous night,
And thus unbracèd,° Casca, as you see,
Have bared my bosom to the thunder-stone;"
And when the cross blue lightning seem'd

to open

The breast of heaven, I did present myself

Even in the aim and very flash of it. Casca. But wherefore did you so much tempt the heavens?

It is the part of men to fear and tremble

When the most mighty gods by tokens send
Such dreadful heralds to astonish us.

Cas. You are dull, Casca, and those sparks of life°
That should be in a Roman you do want,

50

Or else you use not. You look pale and gaze
And put on fear and cast yourself in wonder, 60
To see the strange impatience of the heavens.
But if you would consider the true cause
Why all these fires, why all these gliding ghosts,