CAS.

Re-enter TREBONIUS.

Where is Antony?

TRE. Fled to his house amaz'd:

Men, wives, and children stare, cry out, and run As it were doomsday.

BRU. Fates! we will know your pleasures :That we shall die, we know; 'tis but the time, And drawing days out, that men stand upon.

CAS. Why, he that cuts off twenty years of life Cuts off so many years of fearing death.

BRU. Grant that, and then is death a benefit:
So are we Cæsar's friends, that have abridg'd
His time of fearing death.-Stoop, Romans, stoop,
And let us bathe our hands in Cæsar's blood
Up to the elbows, and besmear our swords:
Then walk we forth, even to the market-place,
And, waving our red weapons o'er our heads,
Let's all cry, Peace, Freedom, and Liberty!
CAS. Stoop, then, and wash.-How many ages
hence

Shall this our lofty scene be acted over
In states unborn and accents yet unknown!
BRU. How many times shall Cæsar bleed in
sport,

That now on Pompey's basis lies † along,
No worthier than the dust!

CAS.
So oft as that shall be,
So often shall the knot of us be call'd
The men that their country liberty.
gave
DEC. What, shall we forth?
CAS.
Ay, every man away:
Brutus shall lead; and we will grace his heels
With the most boldest and best hearts of Rome.
BRU. Soft! who comes here?

May safely come to him, and be resolv'd
How Cæsar hath deserv'd to lie in death,
Mark Antony shall not love Cæsar dead
So well as Brutus living; but will follow
The fortunes and affairs of noble Brutus,
Thorough the hazards of this untrod state,
With all true faith. So says my master Antony.
BRU. Thy master is a wise and valiant Roman;
I never thought him worse.

Tell him, so please him come unto this place,
He shall be satisfied; and, by my honour,
Depart untouch'd.

SERV. I'll fetch him presently. [Exit.
BRU. I know that we shall have him well to

friend.d

CAS. I wish we may: but yet have I a mind That fears him much; and my misgiving still Falls shrewdly to the purpose.

BRU. But here comes Antony.

Re-enter ANTONY.

Welcome, Mark Antony.
ANT. O, mighty Cæsar! dost thou lie so low?
Are all thy conquests, glories, triumphs, spoils,
Shrunk to this little measure?-Fare thee well.—
I know not, gentlemen, what you intend,
Who else must be let blood, who else is rank :
If I myself, there is no hour so fit

As Cæsar's death's hour; nor no instrument
Of half that worth as those your swords, made rich
With the most noble blood of all this world.
I do beseech ye, if you bear me hard,
Now, whilst your purpled hands do reek and smoke,
Fulfil your pleasure. Live a thousand years,
I shall not find myself so apt to die;
No place will please me so, no mean of death,
As here by Cæsar, and by you cut off,
The choice and master spirits of this age.

BRU. O, Antony! beg not your death of us.
Though now we must appear bloody and cruel,
As, by our hands and this our present act,
You see we do; yet see you but our hands,
And this the bleeding business they have done :
Our hearts you see not, they are pitiful;
And pity to the general wrong of Rome
(As fire drives out fire, so pity, pity)
Hath done this deed on Cæsar. For your part,
To you our swords have leaden points, Mark
Antony:

435

FF 2

Our arms, in strength of malice," and our hearts
Of brothers' temper, do receive you in
With all kind love, good thoughts, and reverence.
CAS. Your voice shall be as strong as any
man's

In the disposing of new dignities.

BRU. Only be patient till we have appeas'd The multitude, beside themselves with fear, And then we will deliver you the cause, Why I, that did love Cæsar when I struck him, Have thus proceeded.

ANT. I doubt not of your wisdom. Let each man render me his bloody hand : First, Marcus Brutus, will I shake with you ;Next, Caius Cassius, do I take your hand ;— Now, Decius Brutus, yours; -now yours, Metellus ;

Yours, Cinna;-and, my valiant Casca, yours;Though last, not least in love, yours, good Trebonius.

Gentlemen all,-alas! what shall I say?
My credit now stands on such slippery ground,
That one of two bad ways you must conceit me,
Either a coward or a flatterer.-

That I did love thee, Cæsar, O, 'tis true:
If, then, thy spirit look upon us now,
Shall it not grieve thee dearer than thy death,
To see thy Antony making his peace,
Shaking the bloody fingers of thy foes,
Most noble in the presence of thy corse?
Had I as many eyes as thou hast wounds,
Weeping as fast as they stream forth thy blood,
It would become me better than to close
In terms of friendship with thine enemies.
Pardon me, Julius !-Here wast thou bay'd, brave

hart;

Here didst thou fall; and here thy hunters stand,
Sign'd in thy spoil, and crimson'd in thy lethe."-
O world! thou wast the forest to this hart;
And this, indeed, O, world! the heart of thee.-
How like a deer, strucken by many princes,
Dost thou here lie!

CAS. Mark Antony,-
ANT.
Pardon me, Caius Cassius:
The enemies of Cæsar shall say this;
Then, in a friend, it is cold modesty.

CAS. I blame you not for praising Cæsar so; But what compact mean you to have with us?

ain strength of malice,-] For "malice," an unquestionable corruption, Mr. Collier's annotator proposes, welcome, a word, as Mr. Dyce remarks, which no way resembles it in the ductus literarum. Mr. Singer, with far more likelihood, suggests, amily. b Sign'd in thy spoil, and crimson'd in thy lethe.-] The allusion is to the huntsmen's custom of tricking themselves out with the hide and antlers of the slaughtered deer and bathing their hands in its blood. Some difficulty, however, arises from the word "lethe," which, notwithstanding the assertion of Steevens that it was employed of old for death, has by many been pronounced a misprint. Theobald first proposed to read,

"crimson'd in thy death."

and this not improbably was what the poet wrote. Blood, it is

well known, often signified death and life; we still hear, have his blood," for I'll take his life, or be the death of him; and in Beaumont and Fletcher's "Custom of the Country," Act V. Sc. 5, there is a passage, strikingly illustrative of the one under consideration, where "life" is used as a synonym for blood:"When thine own bloody sword cried out against thee, Hatch'd in the life of him."

c Friends am I with you all,-] The inaccurate pluralism here. as Henley observes, "is still so prevalent, as that the omission of the anomalous would give some uncouthness to the sound of an otherwise familiar expression."

d in the order of his funeral.] That is, in the course of the ceremonial

That I am meek and gentle with these butchers!
Thou art the ruins of the noblest man
That ever lived in the tide of times.
Woe to the hand that shed this costly blood!
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,-
A curse shall light upon the limbs" of men;
Domestic fury and fierce civil strife
Shall cumber all the parts of Italy;
Blood and destruction shall be so in use,
And dreadful objects so familiar,

That mothers shall but smile when they behold
Their infants quarter'd with the hands of war;
All pity chok'd with custom of fell deeds:
And Cæsar's spirit, ranging for revenge,
With Até by his side come hot from hell,
Shall in these confines, with a monarch's voice,

a A eurse shall light upon the limbs of men ;] The expression "limbs of men," has been much disputed. Hanmer substituted "the kind of men;" Warburton, "the line of men;" Johnson proposed, "the lives of men;" and Mr. Collier's annotator, "the loins of men." The last has been pronounced by Mr. Craik to be "one of the most satisfactory and valuable emendations ever made," yet to us it appears far more probable that Shakespeare

wrote,

"A curse shall light upon the tombs of men;"

"Cursed be thy grave," is a common Oriental form of malediction, and in "The Merchant of Venice," Act II. Sc. 7, the old copies exhibit a misprint, "Gilded timber," for "Gilded tombs," which closely resembles that we presume to have occurred in the present instance.

b Cry Havoc, &c.] See note (b), p. 158.

c-for mine eyes,-] So the second folio; the first has,