tell you more news too: Marullus and Flavius, for
pulling scarfs off Cæsar's images, are put to
silence. 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 promis'd forth.13

Cas.

Will you dine with me to-morrow? Casca. Ay, if I be alive and your mind hold and your dinner worth the eating.

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,

However he puts on this tardy form.

This rudeness is a sauce to his good wit,

Which gives men stomach to digest his words
With better appetite.

290

[Exit.

Bru. And so it is. For this time I will leave

you:

To-morrow, if you please to speak with me,

I will come home to you; or, if you will,

Come home to me, and I will wait for you.

300

Cas. I will do so: till then, think of the world. [Exit Brutus.

Well, Brutus, thou art noble; yet, I see,

43 "I have an engagement elsewhere."

Thy honourable 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;45 but he loves Brutus:
If I were Brutus now and he were Cassius,
He should not humour me. 46 I will this night,

In several hands,47 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 glanced at:

And after this let Cæsar seat him sure;

For we will shake him, or worse days endure.48

e.,

310

320

[Exit.

44 "The finest metal is most easily wrought," i. open ingenuous mind is the easiest prey of the tempter. 45 "Cherish a grudge against me."

The

46 Influence me. What would this expression mean in modern English?

47 "In different styles of handwriting."

48 See Outline Study, B, II, e.

SCENE-SETTING.

ACT I.-SCENE III.—A STREET.

Note. In this scene (1) the terrors of the thunder storm are introduced as a manifestation of divine wrath; (2) the opposition to Cæsar becomes a murderous conspiracy.

(1). Setting of the Scene.

In the foreground is a paved street with curbed sidewalk of smaller paving stones. The background is formed by the wall of a private house showing a doorway with Corinthian pilasters on each side, closed by a heavy panelled oak door with a bronze knocker. The walls of the house are of stucco; no windows are on the lower floor; the second story is slightly overhanging and is pierced by small windows closed with wooden shutters.

The scene is at first dark; later it is lighted by lightning flashes, and, dimly, by the torch of Cicero's servant. (2). Actors.

Casca & Cassius. (1. 2.).

Cicero (escorted by a slave bearing a torch). Cinna, a nobleman and one of the conspirators. (3). Costumes.

Casca and Cicero wear the toga as in i. 1; the former carries a short, straight, two-edged sword.

Cinna wears a hooded frieze cloak without sleeves enveloping his whole body. The hood nearly covers his face. The slave wears a similar cloak of sheepskin without

the hood.

(4.) Time of Action. One month later than i. 2,—about midnight of the fourteenth of March.

SCENE III. The Same. A street.

Thunder and lightning. Enter, from opposite sides, CASCA, with his sword drawn, and CICERO.

Cic. Good even, Casca: brought you Cæsar home?

Why are you breathless? and why stare you so? Casca. Are not you mov'd, when all the sway1 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 threat'ning 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 saucy2 with the gods,
Incenses them to send destruction.

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.
Besides I ha' not since put up my sword-

1 Balance.

2 Presumptuous. Compare the modern word saucy.

10

20

Against the Capitol I met a lion,3

Who glar'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.

Cic. Indeed, it is a strange-disposed time:
But men may construe things after their fashion,
Clean from the purpose of the things themselves.
Comes Cæsar to the Capitol' to-morrow?

Casca. He doth; for he did bid Antonius

3 The Romans were passionately fond of contests of beasts with one another, or of men with beasts. Hence wild beasts must have been kept in Rome for this purpose.

4 "In a group."

5 The owl.

6 "I believe that they are signs and omens foretelling disaster to the region (climate) in which they appear (point upon).

7 As a matter of fact, Caesar did not go to the Capitol on the morrow, for the Roman Senate did not ordinarily hold its meetings in that place. Caesar was assassinated in "the Senate House built by Pompey" (Suetonius, Caesar 1xxx) a small building adjacent to Pompey's theater in the Campus Martius.

Suggestion. What superstitions have always been connected with the owl?