SCENE III.

The same. A Street.

Thunder and Lightning. Enter, from opposite sides, CASCA, with his Sword drawn, and CICERO.

CIC. Good even, Casca: Brought you Cæsar home?9

Why are you breathless? and why stare you so? CASCA. Are not you mov'd, when all the sway of earth1

Shakes, like a thing unfirm? O Cicero,

I have seen tempests, when the scolding winds
Have riv'd the knotty oaks; and I have seen
The ambitious ocean swell, and rage, and foam,
To be exalted with the threat'ning clouds:
But never till to-night, never till now,
Did I go through a tempest dropping fire.
Either there is a civil strife in heaven;
Or else the world, too saucy with the gods,
Incenses them to send destruction.

CIC. Why, saw you any thing more wonderful? CASCA. A common slave2 (you know him well by sight,)

home?

1

Brought you Cæsar home?] Did you attend Cæsar
JOHNSON.

So, in Measure for Measure:

"That we may bring you something on the way."

See Vol. VI. p. 196, n. 1.

MALONE.

sway of earth-] The whole weight or momentum of this globe. JOHNSON.

66

A common slave &c.] So, in the old translation of Plutarch:

—a slave of the souldiers that did cast a marvelous burning

Held up his left hand, which did flame, and burn
Like twenty torches join'd; and yet his hand,
Not sensible of fire, remain'd unscorch'd.
Besides, (I have not since put up my sword,)
Against the Capitol I met a lion,

Who glar'd upon me, and went surly by,

flame out of his hande, insomuch as they that saw it, thought he had bene burnt; but when the fire was out, it was found he had no hurt." STEEVENS.

3 Who glar'd upon me,] The first [and second] edition reads: Who glaz'd upon me,

Perhaps, Who gaz'd upon me. JOHNSON.

Glar'd is certainly right. So, in King Lear:

"Look where he stands, and glares !"

Again, in Hamlet:

"Look you, how pale he glares !"

Again, Skelton in his Crowne of Lawrell, describing “a lybbard:"

"As gastly that glaris, as grimly that grones." Again, in the Ashridge MS, of Milton's Comus, as published by the ingenious and learned Mr. Todd, verse 416:

"And yawning denns, where glaringe monsters house." Το gaze is only to look stedfastly, or with admiration. Glar'd has a singular propriety, as it expresses the furious scintillation of a lion's eye: and, that a lion should appear full of fury, and yet attempt no violence, augments the prodigy. STEEvens.

The old copy reads-glaz'd, for which Mr. Pope substituted glar'd, and this reading has been adopted by all the subsequent editors. Glar'd certainly is to our ears a more forcible expression; I have however adopted a reading proposed by Dr. Johnson, gaz'd; induced by the following passage in Stowe's Chronicle, 1615, from which the word gaze seems in our author's time to have been peculiarly applied to the fierce aspect of a lion, and therefore may be presumed to have been the word here intended. The writer is describing a trial of valour (as he calls it,) between a lion, a bear, a stone-horse, and a mastiff; which was exhibited in the Tower, in the year 1609, before the king and all the royal family, diverse great lords, and many others: "Then was the great lyon put forth, who gazed awhile, but never offered to assault or approach the bear." Again: "—the above mentioned young lusty lyon and lyoness were put together, to see

Without annoying me: And there were drawn
Upon a heap a hundred ghastly women,
Transformed with their fear; who swore, they saw
Men, all in fire, walk up and down the streets.
And, yesterday, the bird of night did sit,
Even at noon-day, upon the market-place,
Hooting, and shrieking. When these prodigies
Do so conjointly meet, let not men say,
These are their reasons,-They are natural;
For, I believe, they are portentous things
Unto the climate that they point upon.

CIC. Indeed, it is a strange-disposed time:
But men may construe things after their fashion,
Clean from the purpose of the things themselves.
Comes Cæsar to the Capitol to-morrow?

if they would rescue the third, but they would not, but fearfully [that is, dreadfully] gazed upon the dogs." Again: "The lyon having fought long, and his tongue being torne, lay staring and panting a pretty while, so as all the beholders thought he had been utterly spoyled and spent; and upon a sodaine gazed upon that dog which remained, and so soon as he had spoyled and worried, almost destroyed him."

In this last instance gaz'd seems to be used as exactly synonymous to the modern word glar'd, for the lion immediately afterwards proceeds to worry and destroy the dog. MALONE.

That glar'd is no modern word, is sufficiently ascertained by the following passage in Macbeth, and two others already quoted from King Lear and Hamlet

"Thou hast no speculation in those eyes

"That thou dost glare with."

I therefore continue to repair the poet with his own animated phraseology, rather than with the cold expression suggested by the narrative of Stowe; who, having been a tailor, was undoubtedly equal to the task of mending Shakspeare's hose; but, on poetical emergencies, must not be allowed to patch his dialogue. STEEVENS.

* Clean from the purpose-] Clean is altogether, entirely. See Vol. XI. p. 84, n. 9. MALOne.

CASCA. He doth; for he did bid Antonius

Send word to you, he would be there to-morrow. CIC. Good night then, Casca: this disturbed sky Is not to walk in.

CASCA. Your ear is good. Cassius, what night is

this?

CAS. A very pleasing night to honest men.
CASCA. Who ever knew the heavens menace so?
CAS. Those, that have known the earth so full
of faults.

For my part, I have walk'd about the streets,
Submitting me unto the perilous night;
And, thus unbraced, Casca, as you see,
Have bar'd my bosom to the thunder-stone: 5
And, when the cross blue lightning seem'd to open
The breast of heaven, I did present myself
Even in the aim and very flash of it.

CASCA. But wherefore did you so much tempt the heavens?

It is the part of men to fear and tremble,
When the most mighty gods, by tokens, send
Such dreadful heralds to astonish us.

5

thunder-stone:] A stone fabulously supposed to be dis

charged by thunder. So, in Cymbeline:

"Fear no more the lightning-flash,

"Nor the all-dreaded thunder-stone." STEEVENS.

CAS. 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,
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;"
Why all these things change, from their ordinance,
Their natures, and pre-formed faculties,

To monstrous quality; why, you shall find,
That heaven hath infus'd them with these spirits,

6

Why birds, and beasts, from quality and kind; &c.] That is, Why they deviate from quality and nature. This line might perhaps be more properly placed after the next line:

7

Why birds, and beasts, from quality and kind,
Why all these things change from their ordinance.

JOHNSON.

and children calculate;] Calculate here signifies to foretel or prophesy: for the custom of foretelling fortunes by judicial astrology (which was at that time much in vogue) being performed by a long tedious calculation, Shakspeare, with his usual liberty, employs the species [calculate] for the genus [foretel]. Warburton.

Shakspeare found the liberty established. To calculate the nativity, is the technical term. JOHNSON.

So, in The Paradise of Daintie Deuises, edit. 1576, Art. 54, signed, M. Bew:

"Thei calculate, thei chaunt, thei charme,

"To conquere us that meane no harme." This author is speaking of women. STEEVENS.

There is certainly no prodigy in old men's calculating from their past experience. The wonder is, that old men should not, and that children should. I would therefore [instead of old men, fools, and children, &c.] point thus:

Why old men fools, and children calculate.

BLACKSTONE.