“_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.”