35
Searching the window for a flint, I found
This paper, thus seal'd up; and I am sure
It did not lie there when I went to bed.

[_Gives him the letter_]

BRUTUS. Get you to bed again; it is not day.
Is not to-morrow, boy, the first of March? 40

LUCIUS. I know not, sir.

BRUTUS. Look in the calendar, and bring me word.

LUCIUS. I will, sir. [_Exit_]

BRUTUS. The exhalations whizzing in the air
Give so much light that I may read by them. 45

[_Opens the letter and reads_]

Brutus, thou sleep'st: awake, and see thyself.
Shall Rome, etc. Speak, strike, redress!
Brutus, thou sleep'st: awake!

Such instigations have been often dropp'd
Where I have took them up. 50
'Shall Rome, etc.' Thus must I piece it out:
Shall Rome stand under one man's awe? What, Rome?
My ancestors did from the streets of Rome
The Tarquin drive, when he was call'd a king.
'Speak, strike, redress!' Am I entreated 55
To speak and strike? O Rome, I make thee promise,
If the redress will follow, thou receivest
Thy full petition at the hand of Brutus!

[Note 35, 59, 70: _Re-enter_ | Enter Ff.]

[Note 40: /first/ Ff | Ides Theobald.]

[Note 49: /dropp'd/ | dropt, F1 F2.]

[Note 52: /What, Rome?/ Rowe | What Rome Ff.]

[Note 53: /ancestors/ Ff | ancestor Dyce.]

[Note 56: /thee/ F1 F4 | the F2 F3.]

[Note 40: The Folio reading 'first of March' cannot be right
chronologically, though it is undoubtedly what Shakespeare
wrote, for in Plutarch, _Marcus Brutus_, he read: "Cassius
asked him if he were determined to be in the Senate-house the
first day of the month of March, because he heard say that
Caesar's friends should move the Council that day that Caesar
should be called king by the Senate." This inconsistency is
not without parallels in Shakespeare. Cf. the "four strangers"
in _The Merchant of Venice_, I, ii, 135, when six have been
mentioned. In Scott, too, are many such inconsistencies.]

[Note 44: /exhalations/: meteors. In Plutarch's _Opinions of
Philosophers_, Holland's translation, is this passage
(spelling modernized): "Aristotle supposeth that all these
meteors come of a dry exhalation, which, being gotten enclosed
within a moist cloud, seeketh means, and striveth forcibly to
get forth."