Which was a lie to start with.
The evil that men do lives after them,
The good is oft interred with their bones.
Which is not so true in these days of newspapers and magazines. And so
on. He says that Brutus and his friends are honourable men about nine
times in his short speech. Now, was Mark Antony an honourable man?
And then the flap-doodle about dead Caesar's wounds, and their poor dumb
mouths, and the people kissing them, and dipping their handkerchiefs in
his sacred blood. All worthy of our Purves trying to pump tears out of a
jury.
But it fetched the crowd; it always did, it always has done, it always
does, and it always will do. And the hint of Caesar's will, and the
open abuse of Brutus and Co. when he saw that he was safe, and the cheap
anti-climax of the reading of the will. Nothing in this line can be too
cheap for the crowd, as witness the melodramas of our own civilized and
enlightened times.
Antony was a noble Purves.
And the mob rushed off to burn houses, as it has always done, and will
always do when it gets a chance--it tried to burn mine more than once.
The quarrel scene between Brutus and Cassius is one of the best scenes
in Shakespeare. It is great from the sublime to the ridiculous--you must
read it for yourself. It seems that Brutus objected to Cassius's, or one
of his off-side friends' methods of raising the wind--he reckoned it
was one of the very things they killed Julius Caesar for; and Cassius,
loving Brutus more than a brother, is very much hurt about it. I can't
make out what the trouble really was about and I don't suppose either
Cassius or Brutus was clear as to what it was all about either. It's
generally the way when friends fall out. It seems also that Brutus
thinks that Cassius refused to lend him a few quid to pay his legions,
and, you know, it's an unpardonable crime for one mate to refuse another
a few quid when he's in a hole; but it seems that the messenger was but
a fool who brought Cassius's answer back. It is generally the messenger
who is to blame, when friends make it up after a quarrel that was all
their own fault. Messengers had an uncomfortable time in those days, as
witness the case of the base slave who had to bring Cleopatra the news
of Antony's marriage with Octavia.
But the quarrel scene is great for its deep knowledge of the hearts of
men in matters of man to man--of man friend to man friend--and it is as
humanly simple as a barney between two old bush mates that threatens to
end in a bloody fist-fight and separation for life, but chances to end
in a beer. This quarrel threatened to end in the death of either Brutus
or Cassius or a set-to between their two armies, just at the moment
when they all should have been knit together against the forces of Mark
Antony and Octavius Caesar; but it ended in a beer, or its equivalent, a
bowl of wine.
Earlier in the quarrel, where Brutus asks why, after striking down the
foremost man in all the world for supporting land agents and others,
should they do the same thing and contaminate their fingers with base
bribes?
I'd rather be a dog and bay the moon,
Than such a Roman.
Cassius says:
Brutus, bait not me
I'll not endure it: you forget yourself,
To hedge me in; I am a soldier, I,
Older in practice, abler than yourself
To make conditions.
Brutus: Go to, you are not, Cassius.
Cassius: I am.
Brutus: I say you are not.
And so they get to it again until:
Cassius: Is it come to this?
Brutus: You say you are a better soldier:
Let it appear so; make your vaunting true,
And it shall please me well: for mine own part,
I shall be glad to learn of noble men.
Cassius: You wrong me every way; you wrong me, Brutus;
I said, an elder soldier, not a better.
Did I say better?
(What big boys they were--and what big boys we all are!)
Brutus: If you did, I care not.
Cassius: When Caesar lived he durst not thus have moved me.
Brutus: Peace, peace! you durst not thus have tempted him.
Cassius: I durst not!
Brutus: No.
Cassius: What! Durst not tempt him!
Brutus: For your life you durst not.
Cassius: Do not presume too much upon my love;
I may do that I shall be sorry for.
Brutus: You have done that you should be sorry for.
And so on till he gets to the matter of the refused quids, which is
cleared up at the expense of the messenger.
Cassius: .... Brutus hath rived my heart
A friend should bear his friend's infirmities,
But Brutus makes mine greater than they are.
Brutus: I do not, till you practise them on me.
Cassius: You love me not.
Brutus: I do not like your faults.
Cassius: A friendly eye could never see such faults.
Brutus: A flatterer's would not, though they do appear
As huge as high Olympus.
Then Cassius lets himself go. He calls on Antony and young Octavius and
all the rest of 'em to come and be revenged on him alone, for he's tired
of the world (“Cassius is aweary of the world,” he says). He's hated
by one he loves (that's Brutus). He's braved by his “brother” (Brutus),
checked like a bondman, and Brutus keeps an eye on all his faults and
puts 'em down in a note-book, and learns 'em over and gets 'em off by
memory to cast in his teeth. He offers Brutus his dagger and bare breast
and wants Brutus to take out his heart, which, he says, is richer than
all the quids--or rather gold--which Brutus said he wouldn't lend him.
He wants Brutus to strike him as he did Caesar, for he reckons that when
Brutus hated Caesar worst he loved him far better than ever he loved
Cassius.
Remember these men were Southerners, like ourselves, not cold-blooded
Northerners--and, in spite of the seemingly effeminate Italian
temperament, as brave as our men were at Elands River. The reason of
Brutus's seeming coldness and hardness during the quarrel is set forth
in a startling manner later on, as only the greatest poet in this world
could do it.
Brutus tells him kindly to put up his pig-sticker (and button his shirt)
and he could be just as mad or good-tempered as he liked, and do what he
liked, Brutus wouldn't mind him:
.... Dishonour shall be humour.
O Cassius, you are yoked with a lamb
That carries anger as the flint bears fire,
Who, much enforced, shows a hasty spark
And straight is cold again.
Whereupon Cassius weeps because he thinks Brutus is laughing at him.
Hath Cassius lived
To be but mirth and laughter to his Brutus,
When grief and blood ill-temper'd vexeth him.
Brutus: When I spoke that, I was ill-temper'd too.
Cassius: Do you confess so much? Give me your hand.
Brutus: And my heart too.
Then Cassius explains that he got his temper from his mother (as I did
mine).
Cassius: O Brutus!