The New Hudson Shakespeare · William Shakespeare
SCENE III. _The same. A street_
_Thunder and lightning. Enter, from opposite sides_, CASCA, _with his sword drawn, and_ CICERO CICERO. Good even, Casca: brought you Cæsar home? Why are you breathless? and why stare you so? CASCA. Are you not mov'd, when all the sway of earth Shakes like a thing unfirm? O Cicero, I have seen tempests, when the scolding winds 5 Have riv'd the knotty oaks, and I have seen Th' 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. 10 Either there is a civil strife in heaven, Or else the world, too saucy with the gods, Incenses them to send destruction. [Note: SCENE III Capell | Scene VI Pope.] [Note: _Enter, from ..._ | Enter Caska, and Cicero Ff.] [Note 10: /tempest dropping fire/ Rowe | tempest-dropping-fire Ff.] [Note: SCENE III. Rowe added "with his sword drawn" to the Folio stage direction, basing the note on l. 19. A month has passed since the machinery of the conspiracy was set in motion. The action in the preceding scene took place on the day of the Lupercalia; the action in this is on the eve of the Ides of March.] [Note 1: /brought:/ accompanied. Cf. _Richard II_, I, iv, 2.] [Note 3-4: /sway of earth:/ established order. "The balanced swing of earth."--Craik. "The whole weight or momentum of this globe."--Johnson. In such a raging of the elements, it seems as if the whole world were going to pieces, or as if the earth's steadfastness were growing 'unfirm.' "'Unfirm' is not firm; while 'infirm' is weak."--Clar.]
CASSIUS. You are dull, Casca; and those sparks of life That should be in a Roman you do want, 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, Why birds and beasts from quality and kind, Why old men, fools, and children calculate; 65 Why all these things change from their ordinance, Their natures and preformed faculties, To monstrous quality, why, you shall find That heaven hath infus'd them with these spirits, To make them instruments of fear and warning 70 Unto some monstrous state. Now could I, Casca, name to thee a man Most like this dreadful night, That thunders, lightens, opens graves, and roars As doth the lion in the Capitol, 75 A man no mightier than thyself or me In personal action, yet prodigious grown, And fearful, as these strange eruptions are. [Note 57-60: Five lines in Ff.] [Note 65: /old men, fools, and/ | Old men, Fooles, and F1 F2 | Old men, Fools, and F3 F4 | old men fools, and Steevens | old men fool and White.] [Note 74: /roars/ | roares F1 | teares F2.] [Note 60: /cast yourself in:/ throw yourself into a state of. In previous editions of Hudson's Shakespeare Jervis's conjecture 'case' for 'cast' was adopted. The change is unnecessary. Cf. _Cymbeline_, III, ii, 38: "Though forfeiters you cast in prison."]
CASSIUS. Be you content. Good Cinna, take this paper, And look you lay it in the prætor's chair, Where Brutus may but find it; and throw this In at his window; set this up with wax 145 Upon old Brutus' statue: all this done, Repair to Pompey's porch, where you shall find us. Is Decius Brutus and Trebonius there? [Note 137: Two lines in Ff.] [Note 140: /O, Cassius/ | Ff print in line 139.] [Note 141: /the noble Brutus/ | Ff print in line 140.] [Note 143: /in the prætor's chair./ "But for Brutus, his friends and countrymen, both by divers procurements and sundry rumours of the city, and by many bills[A] also, did openly call and procure him to do that he did. For under the image of his ancestor Junius Brutus, (that drave the kings out of Rome) they wrote: 'O, that it pleased the gods thou wert now alive, Brutus!' and again, 'that thou wert here among us now!' His tribunal or chair, where he gave audience during the time he was Prætor, was full of such bills: 'Brutus, thou art asleep, and art not Brutus indeed.'"--Plutarch, _Marcus Brutus_.] [Note A: i.e. /scrolls/.] [Note 144: /Brutus may but find it:/ only Brutus may find it.]
Text from Project Gutenberg, public domain in the United States.