Messala, Titinius, } Friends to Brutus and Cassius. Artemidorus, a Soothsayer. A Soothsayer. Young Cato. 20 19. Messala] APPIAN (Bk IV, ch. vi, § 38) says of Messala: 'A young man of distinction [who] fled to Brutus. The triumvirs, fearing his high spirit, published the following edict: "Since the relatives of Messala have made it clear to us that he was not in the city when Gaius Cæsar was slain, let his name be removed from the list of the proscribed." He would not accept pardon, but, after Brutus and Cassius had fallen in Thrace, although there was a considerable army left, as well as ships and money, and strong hopes of success still existed, Messala would not accept the command when it was offered to him, but persuaded his associates to yield to overpowering fate and join forces with Antony. He became intimate with Antony and adhered to him until the latter became the slave of Cleopatra. Then he heaped reproaches upon him and joined himself to Octavius, who made him consul in place of Antony himself, when the latter was deposed and again voted a public enemy. After the battle of Actium, where he held a naval command against Antony, Octavius sent him as a general against the revolted Celts and awarded him a triumph for his victory over them.'-(Trans. WHITE, vol. ii, 318.) 21. Artemidorus] THEOBALD (Nichol's Lit. Illust., ii, 491): Who told our editors that Artemidorus was a soothsayer? They were thinking, I suppose, of his namesake, whose critique on Dreams we still have, but did not think that he did not live till the time of Antoninus. Our Poet's Artemidorus, who had been Cæsar's host in Cnidos, did not pretend to know anything of the conspiracy against Cæsar by prescience or prognostication: but he was the Cnidian sophist, who taught that science in Greek at Rome: by which means, being intimate with Brutus and those about him, he got so far into the secret as to be able to warn Cæsar of his danger. 39. Calphurnia] F. HORN (i, 129): We encounter in this tragedy two women, both alike in the absorbing love for their husbands, on which their characters are founded; and yet-what a difference do we notice in them! Calphurnia lives in Cæsar's life alone, and by night and day it is her joy; but her solicitude for him is, perhaps, at times obtrusive; she wishes to be his sole possessor, and, since he has already done too much, that he undertake nothing further; he must, in short, take care and reserve himself for her alone. She loves him not only as her husband, but almost as a mother loves her child, or as a tenderly domestic wife guards and nurses her helpmate, who, although intellectually greater than she, is still weak and sickly. By a number of portents she is deeply moved to solicitude for Cæsar's safety, and herein we wish to be more lenient than many English critics, who blame, almost harshly, the superstition of this well-meaning woman without remembering that she, poor creature, had not the advantages of their education.— ROLFE (Poet Lore, vi, 12): No critic or commentator, I believe, has thought Calpurnia worthy of notice, but the reader may be reminded to compare carefully the scene between her and Cæsar with that between Portia and Brutus. . . . The difference in the two women is not more remarkable than that in their husbands' bearing and tone towards them. Portia, with mingled pride and affection, takes her stand upon her rights as a wife-'a woman that Lord Brutus took to wife'-and he feels the force of the appeal as a man of his noble and tender nature must. Calpurnia is a poor creature in comparison with this true daughter of Cato, as her first words to Cæsar sufficiently prove: 'Think you to walk forth? You shall not stir out of your house today.' When a wife takes that tone, we know what the reply will be: 'Cæsar shall forth!' Later, of course, she comes down to entreaty. Cæsar, with contemptuous acquiescence in the suggestion, yields for the moment to her weak importunities. When Decius comes in and urges Cæsar to go, the story of her dream and its forebodings is told him with a sneer (could we imagine Brutus speaking of Portia in that manner?), and her husband, falling a victim to the shrewd flattery of Decius, departs to his death with a parting fling at her foolish fears, by which he is ashamed of having been moved. 40. Portia] Mrs JAMESON (p. 330): Portia, as Shakespeare has truly felt and represented the character, is but a softened reflection of that of her husband Brutus; in him we see an excess of natural sensibility, an almost womanish tenderness of heart, repressed by the tenets of his austere philosophy: a stoic by profession and in reality the reverse-acting deeds against his nature by the strong force ... [40. Portia] of principle and will. In Portia there is the same profound and passionate feeling, and all her sex's softness and timidity, held in check by that self-discipline, that stately dignity, which she thought became a woman 'so fathered and so husbanded.' The fact of her inflicting on herself a voluntary wound to try her own fortitude is perhaps the strongest proof of this disposition. Plutarch relates that on the day on which Cæsar was assassinated Portia was overcome with terror, and even swooned away, but did not in her emotion utter a word which could affect the conspirators. Shakespeare has rendered this circumstance literally [II, iv]. . . . There is another beautiful incident related by Plutarch which could not well be dramatised. When Brutus and Portia parted for the last time in the island of Nisida, she restrained all expression of grief that she might not shake his fortitude; but afterwards, in passing through a chamber in which there hung a picture of Hector and Andromache, she stopped, gazed upon it for a time with a settled sorrow, and at length burst into a passion of tears.-OECHELHAUSER (Einführungen, etc., i, 229): Portia herself mentions her 'once commended beauty'; therefore it would be quite proper to represent her in the present time as a handsome woman, about thirty years old. She is, although well built and intellectual, by no means a masculine woman; of tender nature (according to Plutarch she was sickly), her emotion in the scene with Lucius completely shattered her, and almost fainting she staggered home. In the fourth act we hear that she has killed herself; she could not bear the separation from her husband and the accounts of his illsuccess.-HUDSON (Life, Art, etc., ii, 238): The delineation of Portia is completed in a few, brief, masterly strokes. Once seen, the portrait ever after lives, an old and dear acquaintance of the reader's inner man. Like some women I have known, Portia has strength enough to do and to suffer for others, but very little for herself. As the daughter of Cato and wife of Brutus, she has set in her eye a pattern of how she ought to think and act, being 'so father'd and husbanded'; but still her head floats merged over the ears in her heart; and it is only when affection speaks that her spirit is hushed into the listening which she would fain yield only to the speech of reason. She has a clear idea of the stoical calmness and fortitude which appears so noble and so graceful in her Brutus; it all lies faithfully reproduced in her mind; she knows well how to honour and admire it; yet she cannot work it into the texture of her character; she can talk it like a book, but she tries in vain to live it. Portia gives herself that gash without flinching, and bears it without a murmur, as an exercise and proof of manly fortitude; and she translates her pains into smiles, all to comfort and support her husband. So long as this purpose lends her strength, she is fully equal to her thought, because here her heart keeps touch perfectly with her head. But, this motive gone, the weakness, if it be not rather the strength, of her woman's nature rushes full upon her; her feelings rise into an uncontrollable flutter, and run out at every joint and motion of her body; and nothing can arrest the inward mutiny till affection again whispers her into composure, lest she spill something that may hurt or endanger her Brutus. O noble Portia!-STAPFER (p. 370): Portia as she appears in Plutarch is, I think, an even finer and more interesting character to study than she is in Shakespeare. The poet has undoubtedly enriched the historian's account with the more vivid life of the drama, and has given more force to her words, more distinctness to her actions, but he could add no further feature of any importance to her character. History furnishes a complete and finished portrait of Portia, to which poetry may give a warmer SCENE, For the three first Acts, and beginning 41 44 41-44. and beginning...Philippi.] at Rome: afterwards, at an Isle near Mutina; at Sardis; and Philippi. Theob.+. glow and richer colouring, but which in its essential lines it can never improve. It is only fair that this should be openly and clearly stated, that Plutarch may have the full credit of his victories in a most unequal combat, in which it would seem that his highest success could only consist in not being entirely beaten. But not only does the poet's rendering not surpass his model, but it seems to me to fall a little short of it, and to leave out some of its beauties, which apparently belong peculiarly to the form of narrative and refuse to be transplanted into dramatic regions. It requires all the wooden inflexibility of a systematic admiration not to regret the absence in Shakespeare's tragedy of the beautiful scene in which Brutus and Portia take leave of each other at Elea. 510 THE TRAGEDIE OF IVLIVS CÆSAR. Actus Primus. Scana Prima. Enter Flauius, Murellus, and certaine Commoners ouer the Stage. Ence: home you idle Creatures, get you home: -Is this a Holiday? What, know you not 1. TRAGEDIE] TRAGEDY F3F4. 3. Actus Primus. Scœna Prima] Act I. Scene i. Rowe. SCENE. Rome. Rowe. a Street in Rome Theob. et seq. (subs.) 4, 5. Enter Flauius...the Stage] Ff, Cam.+. Enter a Rabble of Citizens: Flavius and Murellus driving them. Capell. Enter Flavius, Marullus, and a body of Citizens. Collier, 5 8 Hal. Enter Flavius, Marullus, and a rabble of Citizens. Malone et cet. 4. Murellus] Ff, Rowe, Pope, Cap. Marullus Theob. et cet. Murellus, and...] Marullus, a Carpenter, a Cobbler, and... Jennens. Commoners] Plebeians Han. 5. ouer...Stage] Om. Pope et seq. 8. Holiday] Holy-day F1, Rowe. 1. The Tragedie] GILDON (p. 377): This Play or History is call'd Julius Cæsar, tho' it ought rather to be call'd Marcus Brutus; Cæsar is the shortest and most inconsiderable part in it, and he is kill'd in the beginning of the Third Act. But Brutus is plainly the shining and darling character of the Poet; and is to the end of the Play the most considerable Person. If it had properly been call'd Julius Casar it ought to have ended at his Death, and then it had been much more regular, natural, and beautiful. But then the Moral must naturally have been the punishment or ill Success of Tyranny.-STEEVENS: It appears from Peck's Collection of divers curious historical Pieces (appended to his Memoirs, &c., of Oliver Cromwell), p. 14, that a Latin play on this subject had been written: Epilogus Cæsaris interfecti, quomodo in scenam prodiit ea res, acta, in Ecclesia Christi, Oxon. Qui Epilogus a Magistro Ricardo Eedes, et scriptus et in proscenio ibidem dictus fuit, A. D. 1582. Meres, whose Wit's Commonwealth was published in 1598, enumerates Dr Eedes among the best tragic writers of that time.-MALONE: From some words spoken by Polonius in Hamlet, I think it probable that there was an English play on this subject before Shakespeare commenced as a writer for the stage. Stephen Gosson, in his School of Abuse, 1579, mentions a play entitled The History of Casar and Pompey. William Alexander, afterwards Earl of Sterline, wrote a tragedy on the story and with the title of Julius Cæsar. It may be presumed that Shakespeare's play was posterior to his; for Lord Sterline, when he composed his Julius II |