ucius!

_Enter_ LUCIUS

LUCIUS. Call'd you, my lord?

BRUTUS. Get me a taper in my study, Lucius:
When it is lighted, come and call me here.

LUCIUS. I will, my lord. [_Exit_]

[Note: _Rome ... Enter_ BRUTUS Malone | Enter Brutus in his
Orchard Ff.]

[Note 5: /when?/ Ff | when! Delius.--/what, Lucius!/ | what
Lucius? Ff.]

[Note: _orchard._ Shakespeare generally uses 'orchard' in its
original sense of 'garden' (literally 'herb-garden,'
Anglo-Saxon _ort-geard_).]

[Note 1: /What./ A common exclamation frequent in Shakespeare.
So in V, iii, 72. The 'when' of l. 5 shows increasing
impatience.]

[Page 43]

BRUTUS. It must be by his death: and, for my part, 10
I know no personal cause to spurn at him,
But for the general. He would be crown'd:
How that might change his nature, there's the question.
It is the bright day that brings forth the adder,
And that craves wary walking. Crown him?--that;-- 15
And then, I grant, we put a sting in him,
That at his will he may do danger with.
Th' abuse of greatness is when it disjoins
Remorse from power; and, to speak truth of Caesar,
I have not known when his affections sway'd 20
More than his reason. But 'tis a common proof,
That lowliness is young ambition's ladder,
Whereto the climber upward turns his face;
But when he once attains the upmost round,
He then unto the ladder turns his back, 25
Looks in the clouds, scorning the base degrees
By which he did ascend. So Caesar may;
Then, lest he may, prevent. And, since the quarrel
Will bear no colour for the thing he is,
Fashion it thus; that what he is, augmented, 30
Would run to these and these extremities;
And therefore think him as a serpent's egg
Which, hatch'd, would, as his kind, grow mischievous,
And kill him in the shell.

[Note 15: /him?--that;/--Camb Globe | him that, Ff |
him--that--Rowe.]

[Note 23: /climber upward/ Ff | climber-upward Warburton.]

[Note 28: /lest/ F2 F3 F4 | least F1.]

[Note 10: Brutus has been casting about on all sides to find
some means to prevent Caesar's being king, and here admits
that it can be done only by killing him. Thus the soliloquy
opens in just the right way to throw us back upon his
antecedent meditations. In expression and in feeling it
anticipates _Hamlet_, III, i, 56-88. From now