Chapter V: The Disillusionment of Brutus. Portia

Brutus had been doubly duped, by his own subtlety and his own simplicity in league with his conscientiousness; for in this way he was led to idealise his deed as enjoined both by the inward moral code and the demands of his country, and such self-deception avenges itself as surely as any intentional crime. He is soon disabused in regard to the wishes of Rome and its view of the alleged wrongs it has suffered from Caesar. His imagination had dwelt on the time when his ancestors drove out the Tarquin; now he himself must ride “like a madman” through the gates. It is not only the first of his reverses but a step towards his enlightenment, for it helps to show that he has been mistaken in the people. Still, the momentary mood of the populace may not always recognise its best interests and real needs, and may not coincide with the true _volonté générale_. There is harder than this in store for Brutus. By the time we meet him again at Sardis a worse punishment has overtaken him, and his education in disappointment has advanced, though he does his utmost to treat the punishment as fate and not to learn the lessons it enforces.

This scene has won the applause of the most dissimilar minds and generations. We have seen how Leonard Digges singles it out as the grand attraction of the play, by which, above all others, it transcends the laboured excellences of _Catiline_ or _Sejanus_. It excited the admiration and rivalry of the greatest genius of the Restoration period. Scott says of the dispute between Antony and Ventidius in _All for Love_: “Dryden when writing this scene had unquestionably in his recollection the quarrel between Brutus and Cassius, which was so justly a favourite in his time, and to which he had referred as inimitable in his prologue to _Aureng-Zebe_.

But spite of all his pride, a secret shame
Invades his breast at Shakespeare’s sacred name:
Awed, when he hears his godlike Romans rage,
He in a just despair would quit the stage;
And to an age less polished, more unskilled,
Does with disdain the foremost honours yield.”

In the eighteenth century Dr. Johnson, though he finds _Julius Caesar_ as a whole “somewhat cold and unaffecting,” perhaps because Shakespeare’s “adherence to the real story and to Roman manners” has “impeded the natural vigour of his genius,” excepts particular passages and cites “the contention and reconciliation of Brutus and Cassius” as universally celebrated. And Coleridge goes beyond himself in his praise: “I know no part of Shakespeare that more impresses on me the belief of his being superhuman, than this scene between Brutus and Cassius. In the Gnostic heresy it might have been credited with less absurdity than most of their dogmas, that the Supreme had employed him to create, previously to his function of representing characters.” Yet it is not merely in the revelation of character that the scene is unique. More than any other single episode, more than all the rest together, it lays bare the significance of the story in its tragic pathos and its tragic irony. And the wonder of it is increased rather than lessened when we take note that it is a creation not out of nothing but out of chaos. For there is hardly a suggestion, hardly a detail, that Shakespeare did not find in Plutarch, but here in confused mixture, there in inert isolation, and nowhere with more than the possibilities of being organised. It is Shakespeare, who, to borrow from Milton’s description of the beginning of his Universe, “founded and conglobed like things to like, and vital virtue infused and vital warmth.”

The nucleus of this passage is found just after the account of Brutus’ exploits in Lycia.

About that tyme, Brutus sent to pray Cassius to come to the
citye of Sardis, and so he did. Brutus understanding of
his comming, went out to meete him with all his frendes.
There both their armies being armed, they called them both
Emperors. Nowe, as it commonly hapneth in great affayres
betwene two persons, both of them having many friends,
and so many Captaines under them; there ranne tales and
complaints betwixt them. Therefore, before they fell in
hand with any other matter, they went into a little chamber
together, and bad every man avoyde, and did shut the dores
to them. Then they beganne to powre out their complaints one
to the other, and grew hot and lowde, earnestly accusing one
another, and at length fell both a weeping. Their friends
that were without the chamber hearing them lowde within, and
angry betwene them selves, they were both amased and affrayd
also lest it would grow to further matter: but yet they were
commaunded that no man should come to them. Notwithstanding,
one Marcus Phaonius, that had bene a friend and follower
of Cato while he lived, and tooke upon him to counterfeate
a Philosopher, not with wisedom and discretion, but with a
certaine bedlem and frantick motion: he would needes come
into the chamber, though the men offered to keepe him out.
But it was no boote to let Phaonius, when a mad moode or
toy tooke him in the head: for he was a hot hasty man, and
sodaine in all his doings, and cared for never a Senator of
them all. Now, though he used this bold manner of speeche
after the profession of the Cynick Philosophers (as who
would say, doggs), yet this boldnes did no hurt many times,
bicause they did but laugh at him to see him so mad. This
Phaonius at that time, in despite of the doore keepers, came
into the chamber, and with a certain scoffing and mocking
gesture which he counterfeated of purpose, he rehearsed the
verses which old Nestor sayd in Homer:

My lords, I pray you harken both to mee,
For I have seene moe yeares than suchye three.

Cassius fell a-laughing at him: but Brutus thrust him out of
the chamber, and called him dogge, and counterfeate Cynick.
Howbeit his comming in brake their strife at that time, and
so they left eche other.

Here there seems little enough to tempt the dramatist; the two generals quarrel, Phaonius bursts in, Cassius laughs at him, Brutus turns him out, but the interruption temporarily patches up a truce between them. And this petty incident is made the most pregnant in Shakespeare’s whole play; and that by apparently such simple means. To get the meaning out of it, or to read the meaning into it, he does little more, so far as the mechanical aspects of his treatment are concerned, than collect a few other notices scattered up and down the pages of his authority. He had found in an earlier digression Cassius described as

a hot cholerick and cruell man, that would often tymes be
caried away from justice for gayne: it was certainly thought
that he made warre, and put him selfe into sundry daungers,
more to have absolute power and authoritie, than to defend
the liberty of his contrie.

Again after describing Brutus’ success with the Patareians, Plutarch proceeds:

Cassius, about the selfe same tyme, after he had compelled
the Rhodians every man to deliver all the ready money they
had in gold and silver in their houses, the which being
brought together, amounted to the summe of eyght thousande
talents: yet he condemned the citie besides, to paye the
summe of five hundred talents more. When Brutus in contrary
manner, after he had leavyed of all the contrye of Lycia but
a hundred and fiftye talents onely: he departed thence into
the contrye of Ionia, and did them no more hurt.

Previously with reference to the first meeting of the fugitives after they collected their armies and before they came to Sardis at all, Plutarch narrates:

Whilst Brutus and Cassius were together in the citie of
Smyrna: Brutus prayed Cassius to let him have some part
of his money whereof he had great store, bicause all that
he could rappe and rend of his side, he had bestowed it
in making so great a number of shippes, that by meanes of
them they should keepe all the sea at their commaundement.
Cassius’ friendes hindered this request, and earnestly
disswaded him from it: perswading him, that it was no reason
that Brutus should have the money which Cassius had gotten
together by sparing, and leavied with great evil will of
the people their subjects, for him to bestowe liberally
uppon his souldiers, and by this meanes to winne their good
willes, by Cassius charge. This notwithstanding, Cassius
gave him the third part of his totall summe.

Then at Sardis, but not on occasion of the dispute interrupted by Phaonius, mention is made of the affair with Pella:

The next daye after, Brutus, upon complaynt of the Sardians
did condemne and noted Lucius Pella for a defamed person,
that had been a Praetor of the Romanes, and whome Brutus had
given charge unto: for that he was accused and convicted of
robberie, and pilferie in his office. This judgement much
misliked Cassius; bicause he him selfe had secretly (not
many dayes before) warned two of his friends, attainted
and convicted of the like offences, and openly had cleered
them: but yet he did not therefore leave to employ them in
any manner of service as he did before. And therefore he
greatly reproved Brutus, for that he would shew him selfe
so straight and seveare in such a tyme, as was meeter to
beare a little, then to take thinges at the worst. Brutus in
contrary manner aunswered, that he should remember the Ides
of Marche, at which tyme they slue Julius Caesar: who nether
pilled nor polled the contrye, but onely was a favorer and
suborner of all them that did robbe and spoyle, by his
countenaunce and authoritie. And if there were any occasion
whereby they might honestly sette aside justice and equitie:
they should have had more reason to have suffered Caesar’s
friendes, to have robbed and done what wronge and injurie
they had would, then to beare with their owne men. For then,
sayde he, they could but have sayde they had bene cowards:
“and now they may accuse us of injustice, beside the paynes
we take, and the daunger we put our selves into.”

Lastly at the end of the _Life of Brutus_, Shakespeare would find a short notice of the death of Portia. No indication is given of the date at which this took place, except that Plutarch seems on the whole to discredit the idea that she survived her husband.

And for Porcia, Brutus’ wife: Nicolaus the Philosopher, and
Valerius Maximus doe wryte, that she determining to kill
her selfe (her parents and frendes carefullie looking to
her to kepe her from it) tooke hot burning coles, and cast
them into her mouth, and kept her mouth so close, that she
choked her selfe. There was a letter of Brutus found wrytten
to his frendes, complayning of their negligence, that his
wife being sicke, they would not helpe her, but suffered her
to kill her selfe, choosing to dye rather than to languish
in paine. Thus it appeareth, that Nicolaus knewe not well
that time, sith the letter (at the least if it were Brutus
letter) doth plainly declare the disease and love of this
Lady, as also the maner of her death.

Now in Shakespeare’s scene all these detached jottings find their predestined place, and together have an accumulated import of which Plutarch has only the remotest guess. They are so combined as to bring out at once the ideal aspect of Brutus’ deed, and its folly and disastrousness in view of the facts. He maintains his manhood under the most terrible ordeal, which is well; he clings to his illusion in the face of the clearest proof, which is not so well. He is gathering evil fruit where he looked for good, but he refuses to admit that the tree was corrupt; and of the prestige that his clear conscience confers, he still makes baneful use. He is raised to the heroic by his persistence in regarding the murder as an act of pure and disinterested justice, but for that very reason he makes his blunders, and puts himself and others in the wrong.

Perhaps indeed his loss of temper is to be ascribed to another cause. He is in a tense, over-wrought state, when the slightest thing will provoke an outbreak. In Cassius’ view his private and personal sorrow, the only one Cassius could understand, might quite well, apart from all the rest, have driven him to greater violence:

How ’scaped I killing when I cross’d you so?
(IV. iii. 150.)

No wonder he uses stinging words to his friend, taxes him most unfairly with the boast of being a better soldier, and flings aside Cassius’ temperate correction of “elder,” with the contemptuous, “If you did, I care not.” No wonder he drives out the poet, while Cassius merely laughs at him. Yet even here, though he is undoubtedly the angrier and more unreasonable in the quarrel, his moral dignity just before has saved him from an indiscretion into which Cassius falls. When the other begins to complain before the soldiers, Brutus checks him:

Cassius, be content;
Speak your griefs softly; I do know you well.
Before the eyes of both our armies here,
Which should perceive nothing but love from us,
Let us not wrangle: Bid them move away;
Then in my tent, Cassius, enlarge your griefs,
And I will give you audience.
(IV. ii. 41.)

In the onset of misfortune Brutus does not forget his weightier responsibilities, though the strain of resisting it may impair his suavity. The fine balance of his nature that was overthrown by suspense, may well be shaken by his afflictions. For they are more numerous than Cassius knew and more poignant than he could understand.

Portia’s suicide with all its terrible accessories Brutus brings into relation with himself. It is absence from him, and, as his love tells him, distress at the growing power of his enemies that caused her madness. The ruin of that home life which was his native element, the agony and death of the wife he worshipped, are the direct consequences of his own act.

And with this private there has come also the public news. The proscription has already swept away seventy senators; Cicero, despite his “silver hairs,” his “judgment,” and his “gravity” being one; and the number given, according to Messala, is an understatement. Brutus had talked of each man’s dropping by lottery under Caesar’s rule, but however much Caesar had degenerated, would he have decreed a more wholesale and indiscriminate slaughter than this? Was there anything in his career as described by Brutus himself, that foreshadowed a callousness like that of the Triumvirs in pricking down and damning their victims, among them the most illustrious members of Brutus’ own class? And the perpetrators, far from injuring their cause by these atrocities, are in a position to take the field with a “mighty power.” So the civil war with all its horrors and miseries will run its full course.

But even that is not the worst. Brutus has to realise that his associates were not the men he supposed them. Their hands are not clean, their hearts are not pure, even his brother Cassius connives at corruption and has “an itching palm” himself. Even when the _soi disant_ deliverers wield the power, what are things better than they would have been under Caesar who was at least personally free from such reproach and whose greatness entitled him to his place in front? Surely there are few more pathetic passages even in Shakespeare than the confession of disillusionment wrung from Brutus by the force of events, a confession none the less significant that he admits disillusion only as to the results and still clings to his estimate of the deed itself.

Remember March, the ides of March remember:
Did not great Julius bleed for justice’ sake?
What villain touch’d his body, that did stab,
And not for justice? What, shall one of us,
That struck the foremost man of all this world
But for supporting robbers, shall we now
Contaminate our fingers with base bribes,
And sell the mighty space of our large honours
For so much trash as may be grasped thus?
I had rather be a dog, and bay the moon,
Than such a Roman.
(IV. iii. 18.)

It has come to this. In anticipating the effects of Caesar’s rule, he had said he “had rather be a villager than to repute himself a son of Rome” in the probable conditions. But his attempt at remedy has resulted in a situation even more intolerable. He would rather be a dog than such Romans as the confederates whom he sought to put in Caesar’s place are disclosing themselves to be.

It says much for his intrinsic force, that when all these things rise up in judgment against him, he can still maintain to himself and others the essential nobility of the deed that has brought about all the woe and wrong; and without any faint-hearted penitence, continue to insist that their doings must conform to his conception of what has been done: that if that conception conflicts with the facts, it is the facts that must give way. Yet on that very account he is quite impracticable and perverse, as every enthusiast for abstract justice must be, who lets himself be seduced into crime on the plea of duty, and yet shapes his course as though he were not a criminal.

Brutus has brought about an upturn of society by assassinating the one man who could organize that society. His own motives were honourable, though not so unimpeachable as he assumed, but they could not change wrong into right and they could not be taken for granted in others than himself. Now in the confusions that ensue he finds, to his horror, that revolutions are not made with rose water, that even champions of virtue have to reckon with base and dirty tools. So he condemns Pella for bribery. Cassius judges the case better. He sees that Pella is an efficient and useful officer of whose services he does not wish to be deprived. He sees that in domestic broils the leaders must not be too particular about their instruments, that, according to the old proverb, you must go into the water to catch fish. But Brutus will not go into the water. He thinks that an assassin should only have Galahads in his troops. And sometimes his offended virtue becomes even a little absurd. He is angry with Cassius for not giving him money, but listen to his speech:

I did send to you
For certain sums of gold, which you denied me:
For I can raise no money by vile means:
By heaven, I had rather coin my heart,
And drop my blood for drachmas, than to wring
From the hard hands of peasants their vile trash
By any indirection: I did send
To you for gold to pay my legions,
Which you denied me: was that done like Cassius?
Should I have answer’d Caius Cassius so?
When Marcus Brutus grows so covetous
To lock such rascal counters from his friends,
Be ready, gods, with all your thunderbolts;
Dash him to pieces!
(IV. iii. 69.)

What does all this come to? That the superfine Brutus will not be guilty of extortion, but that Cassius may: and then Brutus will demand to share in the proceeds. All this distress and oppression are his doing, or at least the consequences of his deed, and he would wash his hands of these inevitable accompaniments. He would do this by using Cassius as his _âme damnée_ while yet interfering in Cassius’ necessary measures with his moral rebukes.[179]

[179] It will be noticed that in this episode Shakespeare has altered Plutarch’s narrative in two respects. In the first place Cassius did give money to the amount of “the thirde part of his totall summe.” This is not very important, as in the play he disclaims having ever refused it. But in the second place Brutus was neither so scrupulous nor so unsuccessful in raising supplies, but had used them in a quite practical way, that Captain Mahan would thoroughly approve, in developing his sea power: “all that he could rappe and rend ... he had bestowed it in making so great a number of shippes that by meanes of them they should keepe all the sea at their commaundement.”

This of course is between Cassius and himself, and if Cassius chooses to submit, it is his own concern. But Brutus plays the Infallible to such purpose, that, what with his loftiness of view, his earnestness, and his marvellous fortitude, he obtains an authority over Cassius’ mind that has disastrous results. Though Cassius is both the better and the elder soldier, he must needs intermeddle with Cassius’ plan of campaign. Here, as so often, Shakespeare has no warrant for his most significant touch. Plutarch had said that Cassius, against his will, was overruled by Brutus to hazard their fortunes in a single battle. But that was afterwards, at Philippi. There is no hint that Cassius was opposed to the movement from Sardis to Philippi, and it is on this invented circumstance that Shakespeare lays most stress. In the play Brutus, in the teeth of his fellow generals’ disapproval, insists on their leaving their vantage ground on the hills, chiefly as it appears because he dislikes the impositions they are compelled to lay on the people round about:

They have grudged us contribution;
(IV. iii. 206.)

and because he has a vague belief that this is the nick of time;

There is a tide in the affairs of men,
Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune;
Omitted, all the voyage of their lives
Is bound in shallows and in miseries.
(IV. ii. 218.)

These are the arguments which he opposes to Cassius’ skilled strategy. He will not even listen to Cassius’ rejoinder:

_Cassius._ Hear me, good brother—
_Brutus._ Under your pardon:
(IV. iii. 212.)

and he runs on. The spiritual dictator carries his point, as he always does, and as here especially he is bound to do, when their recent trial of strength has ratified his powers afresh. Cassius is hypnotised into compliance, “Then, with your will, go on.” But Brutus is wrong. He is doing the very thing that the Triumvirs would have him do and dare not hope he will do. Octavius, when he hears of the movement, exclaims:

Now, Antony, our hopes are answered:
You said the enemy would not come down,
But keep the hills and upper regions:
It proves not so.
(V. i. 1.)

The adoption of Brutus’ plan, which he secured in part through the advantage he had gained in the quarrel, leads directly to the final catastrophe.

Here then we have the gist of the whole story. The tribulations of Brutus that ensue on his grand mistake, the wreck of his dearest affections, the butchery at Rome, the oppression of the provinces, the appalling discovery that his party is animated by selfish greed and not by righteous zeal, and that Caesar bore away the palm in character as well as ability; the dauntless resolution with which despite his vibrant sensibility he bears up against the rudest blows; the sustaining consciousness that he himself acted for the best, and the pathetic imagination even now that the rest must live up to his standard; the warrant this gives him to complete the outward ruin of the cause that already is rotten within—all this is brought home to us in a passage of little more than two hundred lines. It is not merely a masterpiece in characterisation; it at once garners the harvest of the past and sows the seeds of the future. Nor is the execution inferior to the conception; the passion of the verse, the fluctuation of the dialogue, provide the fit medium for the pregnancy and wealth of the matter.[180]

[180] Two objections have been made to this scene, or, rather to the whole act. The first, in Mr. Bradley’s words that it has a “tendency to drag” (_Shakespearian Tragedy_), is put more uncompromisingly by Mr. Baker (_Development of Shakespeare as a Dramatist_); “[Shakespeare] produced in _Julius Caesar_ a fourth act probably not entirely successful even in his own day”; and afterwards he refers to it as “ineffective to-day.” In view of Digges’ testimony, it is difficult to see how Mr. Baker can say that it was not entirely successful in Shakespeare’s day. As to the impression it makes now, one must largely depend on one’s own feeling and experience. Certainly I myself have never been conscious that it dragged or was ineffective, nor have I noted that it failed to stir the audience. I have never been present at a first-rate performance, but I have seen it creditably presented in Germany, England and Australia; and on every occasion it seemed to me that the quarrel scene was the most popularly successful in the play. This statement is, I believe, strictly accurate, for having Digges’ lines in my mind I was on the watch to see whether the taste of the Elizabethan coincided with the taste of a later generation.

The second criticism is that in the economy of the piece it leads to nothing, “unless,” as Mr. Bradley says, “we may hold that but for the quarrel and reconciliation, Cassius would not have allowed Brutus to overcome his objection to the fatal policy of offering battle at Philippi.” This is quite true, though the proviso is a most important one. But it does very manifestly connect with what has gone before, and gives the essence and net result of the story. We could sooner dispense with the Fifth Act than the Fourth, for the Fifth may with less injustice be described as an appendix than the Fourth as an episode. Not only is it less unique in kind, but for the most part it works out issues that can easily be foreseen and that to some extent are clearly indicated here. Of course this is not to say that it could be rejected without mutilating the play, for it works them out far more impressively than we could do in our own imaginations, even with Plutarch to help us.

But the scene is not yet at an end. Even now we are not for a moment allowed to forget Brutus, the considerate gentleman and cultured student, in Brutus, the political pedant and the incompetent commander. We have a momentary glimpse of him with Lucius, unassuming and gentle, claiming the indulgence, consulting the comfort, tending the needs of his slave. This moving little passage is, as we have seen, entirely due to Shakespeare, and it seems to be introduced for the sake partly of the dramatic contrast with the prevailing trouble and gloom, partly of the indication it gives that Brutus is still unchanged at heart. In the stress of his suffering he may be irritable and overbearing with Cassius, but he has more than a woman’s tenderness for the boy.

His habit of reading at night is mentioned by Plutarch, but when we consider the circumstances, has it not a deeper meaning here? His love for Portia we know, but after his brief references to her death, he seems to banish her from his mind, and never, not even in his dying words, does her name cross his lips again. Is this an inadvertence on Shakespeare’s part, or an omission due to the kinship of _Julius Caesar_ with the Chronicle History? Is it not rather that he conceives Brutus as one of those who are so bound up in their affections that they fear to face a thought of their bereavement lest they should utterly collapse? Is it fanciful to interpret that search for his book with the leaf turned down, in the light of Macaulay’s confession on the death of his sister: “Literature has saved my life and my reason; even now I dare not in the intervals of business remain alone a minute without a book”?

But this little interlude, which sets Brutus before us with all his winsome and pathetic charm, leads back to the leading _motif_, the destruction he has brought on himself by his own error, though he may face it like a man and keep the beauty of his soul unsoiled. Here, too, Plutarch points the way, but Shakespeare advances further in it. What he found was the following bit of hearsay:

One night very late (when all the campe tooke quiet rest) as
he was in his tent with a little light, thinking of waighty
matters, he thought he heard one come in to him, and casting
his eye towards the doore of his tent, that he saw a
wonderfull straunge and monstruous shape of a body comming
towards him, and sayd never a word. So Brutus boldly asked
what he was, a god, or a man, and what cause brought him
thither. The spirit aunswered him, “I am thy evill spirit,
Brutus, and thou shalt see me by the citie of Philippes.”
Brutus beeing no otherwise affrayd, replyed again unto it:
“Well, then, I shall see thee agayne.” The spirit presently
vanished away: and Brutus called his men unto him, who tolde
him that they heard no noyse, nor sawe any thinge at all.

Shakespeare’s Brutus is not at the outset so unconcerned as Plutarch’s. Instead of “being no otherwise affrayd,” his blood runs cold and his hair “stares.” On the other hand, he is free from the perturbation that seizes Plutarch’s Brutus when he reflects, and that drives him to tell his experience to Cassius, who “did somewhat comfort and quiet him.” The Brutus of the play breathes no word of the visitation, though it is repeated at Philippi, till a few minutes before his death, and then in all composure as a proof that the end is near, not as a horror from which he seeks deliverance. He needs not the support of another, and even in the moment of physical panic he has moral courage enough: he summons up his resolution, and when he has “taken heart” the spectre vanishes. This means, too, that it has a closer connection with his nerves, with his subjective fears and misgivings, than the “monstruous shape” in Plutarch, and similarly, though he alleges that Lucius and his attendants have cried out in their sleep, they are unaware of any feeling or cause of fright. And the significance of this is marked by the greatest change of all. Shakespeare gives a personality to Plutarch’s nameless phantom: it is individualised as the ghost of Caesar, and thus Caesar’s spirit has become Brutus’ evil genius, as Brutus had been Caesar’s angel. The symbolism explains itself, but is saved from the tameness of allegory by the superstitious dread with which it is enwrapped. The regrets and forebodings of Brutus appear before him in outward form. All day the mischievousness of his intervention has been present to his mind: now his accusing thoughts take shape in the vision of his murdered friend, and his vague presentiments of retribution at Philippi leap to consciousness in its prophetic words. But all this does not abash his soul or shake his purpose. He only hastens the morning march.

Thus he moves to his doom, and never was he so great. He is stripped of all adventitious aids. His private affections are wrecked, and the thought of his wife has become a torture. Facts have given the lie to his belief that his country has chosen him as her champion. He can no longer cherish the dream that his course has been of benefit to the Roman world. He even seems at last to recognise his own guilt, for not only does he admit the might of Caesar’s spirit in the suicide of Cassius, but when his own turn comes, his dying words sound like a proffer of expiation:

Caesar, now be still;
I kill’d not thee with half so good a will.
(V. v. 50.)

The philosophic harness in which he felt so secure, he has already found useless in the hour of need, and fit only to be cast aside. So he stands naked to the blows of fate, bereft of his love, his illusions, his self-confidence, his creed. He has to rely solely on himself, on his own nature and his own character. Moreover his nature, in so far as it means temperament, is too delicate and fine for the rough practical demands on it. Suspense is intolerable to his sensitive and eager soul. Ere the battle begins, he can hardly endure the uncertainty:

O that a man might know
The end of this day’s business ere it come!
But it sufficeth that the day will end,
And then the end is known.
(V. i. 123.)

The patience in which he tries to school himself cannot protect him from a last blunder. He gives the word too soon and his impetuosity ruins all. No doubt he is not so unsuccessful as Titinius thinks, but he has committed the unpardonable fault of fighting for his own hand without considering his partner. Thus his imprudence gives the final blow to the cause that all through he has thwarted and ennobled.

But in inward and essential matters his character victoriously stands the test, and meets all the calls that are made upon it. Even when his life-failure stares him in the face, he does not allow it a wider scope than its due, or let it disturb his faith in the purity of his motives.

I am Brutus, Marcus Brutus, I:
Brutus, my country’s friend.
(V. iv. 7.)

Even now he can see himself aright, and be sure of the truth of his patriotism. Even now he can prefer the glory of this “losing day” to the “vile conquest” of such men as the authors of the proscription. And he is not without more personal consolations. When none of his friends will consent to kill him, their very refusal, since it springs from love, fills his soul with triumph. It is characteristic that this satisfaction to his private affections ranks with him as supreme at the end of all.

Countrymen,
My heart doth joy that yet in all my life
I found no man but he was true to me.
(V. v. 33.)

We need not bemoan his fate: he is happy in it: indeed there is nothing that he could live for in the world of the Triumvirs, and this is what he himself desires:

My bones would rest,
That have but labour’d to attain this hour.
(V. v. 41.)

At the side of this rare and lofty nature, we see the kindred figure of his wife, similar in her noble traits, similar in her experiences, the true mate of his soul. Their relations are sketched in the merest outline, or, to be more correct, are implied rather than sketched. Only in some eighty lines of one scene do we see them together and hear them exchange words. In only one other scene does Portia appear, when we witness her tremors on the morning of the assassination. And in a third we hear of her death in detached notices, which, with the comments they call forth, barely amount to twenty lines. Yet the impression made is indelible and overpowering, not only of the lady’s own character, but of the perfect union in which she and Brutus lived. There is no obtrusion of their love: it does not exhale in direct professions. On her part, the claim to share his troubles, the solicitude for his success, the distraction because of his absence and danger; on his, the acceptance of her claim, two brief outbursts of adoration—and his reticence at her death. For he is not the man to wear his heart on his sleeve; and the more his feelings are stirred the less inclined is he to prate of them. Just as after slaying Caesar though “he loved him well,” he never alludes to the anguish he must have endured, so after his “Farewell, Portia,” he turns to the claims of life (“Well, to our work alive!”), and never even in soliloquy refers to her again. Even in the first pang of bereavement, the one hint of grief it can extort from him is the curt retort, “No man bears sorrow better.” We might fail to recognise all that it meant for him if we did not see his misery reflected in the sympathy and consternation of other men; in the hesitating reluctance of Messala, to break, as he thinks, the news; in the dismay of Cassius and his wonder at Brutus’ self-control. Cassius indeed cannot but recur to it despite the prohibition, “Speak no more of her.” When they have sat down to business his thoughts hark back to the great loss: “Portia, art thou gone?” “No more, I pray you,” repeats Brutus, who cannot brook the mention of her, and he plunges into the business of the hour.

And this woman, of whom Brutus felt that he was unworthy, and prayed to be made worthy, noble and devoted as himself, is involved too in his misfortunes. On her also a greater load is laid than she can bear. He is drawn by his political, and she by her domestic ideal into a position that overstrains the strength of each. She demands, as in Plutarch, though perhaps with father less of the dignity of the Roman matron and rather more of the yearning of the affectionate wife, to share in her husband’s secrets. She does this from no curiosity, intrusiveness or jealousy, but from her unbounded love and her exalted conception of the marriage tie. And she is confident that she can bear her part in her husband’s cares.

She has a great spirit, but it is lodged in a fragile and nervous frame. Does she make her words good? She gains her point, but her success is almost too much for her. She can endure pain but not suspense: like Brutus she is martyr to her sense of what is right. We presently find her all but ruining the conspiracy by her uncontrollable agitation. The scene where she waits in the street serves the function in the main story of heightening our excitement by means of hers, in expectation of what will presently be enacted at the Capitol; but it is even more important for the light it throws on her character. She may well confess: “I have a man’s heart, but a woman’s might.” Her feverish anxiety quite overmasters her throughout, and makes her do and say things which do not disclose the plot only because the bystanders are faithful or unobservant. She sends the boy to the senate house without telling him his errand. She meaningly bids him

take good note
What Caesar doth, what suitors press about him.
(II. iv. 15.)

She interrupts herself with the fancy that the revolt has begun. She plies the soothsayer with suspicious questions that culminate in the most indiscreet one on his wish to help Caesar:

Why, know’st thou any harm’s intended towards him?
(II. iv. 31.)

Then she almost commits herself, and has to extemporise a subterfuge, before, unable to hold out any longer, she retires on the point of fainting, though even now her love gives her strength to send a cheering message to her lord.

For her as for Brutus the burden of a duty, which she assumes by her own choice, but which one of her nature must assume, is too heavy. And in the after consequences, for which she is not directly responsible, but which none the less flow from the deed that she has encouraged and approved, it is the same inability to bear suspense, along with her craving for her husband’s presence and success, that drives her through madness to death.