Chapter 25

“_Mar._ What meanest _thou_ by that? Mend me, thou saucy fellow!”

The speeches of Flavius and Marullus are in blank verse. Wherever regular metre can be rendered truly imitative of character, passion, or personal rank, Shakespeare seldom, if ever, neglects it. Hence this line should be read:—

“What mean’st by that? mend me, thou saucy fellow!”

I say regular metre: for even the prose has in the highest and lowest dramatic personage, a Cobbler or a Hamlet, a rhythm so felicitous and so severally appropriate, as to be a virtual metre.

_Ib._ sc. 2.—

“_Bru._ A soothsayer bids you beware the Ides of March.”

If my ear does not deceive me, the metre of this line was meant to express that sort of mild philosophic contempt, characterising Brutus even in his first casual speech. The line is a trimeter,—each _dipodia_ containing two accented and two unaccented syllables, but variously arranged, as thus:—

u - - u | - u u - | u - u - A soothsayer | bids you beware | the Ides of March.

_Ib._ Speech of Brutus:—

“Set honour in one eye, and death i’ the other, And I will look on _both_ indifferently.”

Warburton would read “death” for “both;” but I prefer the old text. There are here three things, the public good, the individual Brutus’ honour, and his death. The latter two so balanced each other, that he could decide for the first by equipoise; nay—the thought growing—that honour had more weight than death. That Cassius understood it as Warburton, is the beauty of Cassius as contrasted with Brutus.

_Ib._ Cæsar’s speech:—

... “He loves no plays As thou dost, Antony; he hears no music,” &c.

“This is not a trivial observation, nor does our poet mean barely by it, that Cassius was not a merry, sprightly man; but that he had not a due temperament of harmony in his disposition.”—Theobald’s note.

O Theobald! what a commentator wast thou, when thou would’st affect to understand Shakespeare, instead of contenting thyself with collating the text! The meaning here is too deep for a line ten-fold the length of thine to fathom.

_Ib._ sc. 3. Cæsar’s speech:—

“Be _factious_ for redress of all these griefs; And I will set this foot of mine as far, As who goes farthest.”

I understand it thus: “You have spoken as a conspirator; be so in _fact_, and I will join you. Act on your principles, and realize them in a fact.”