Render me worthy of this noble wife.”
Near the end of the third scene in which Portia figures, and wherein she and her husband overhear Calpurnia’s determination to prevent her husband from attending the session of the Senate, Brutus advises her to go home while he goes to join the conspirators. The scene concludes as she speeds him with her blessing.
Throughout these scenes Pescetti utilizes many of the motifs derived from Plutarch, which Shakespeare afterwards included in his treatment. But the emphasis upon several of them has been shifted; the similarity in parts between the two authors is due mainly to this common source. There are but two points of importance wherein distinctly individual resemblance is noticeable. Both in Pescetti and in Shakespeare, as has previously been pointed out, Portia enters the scene under practically the same attendant circumstances. In both dramas she appears immediately after the completion of the details of the assassination. Brutus says to Cassius:
“Ma giamo ad informar del tutto gli altri,
Acciò gli spirti destino, e le forze,
Et apparecchin l’arme all’ alta impresa. Cas.— Aspetta, ch’esce fuor di casa Porzia.”—P. 28.
Hereupon Portia enters.
Shakespeare has:
Cas.— The morning comes upon’s. We’ll leave you Brutus,
And, friends, disperse yourselves; but all remember
What you have said and show yourselves true Romans. Bru.— And, gentlemen, look fresh and merrily;
Let not our looks put on our purposes;
But bear it as our Roman actors do,
With untired spirits and formal constancy;
And so, good-morrow to you every one. Exeunt. Brutus remains. Act II., 1.
Immediately after the few lines to Lucius, Portia enters. While it may be simply a coincidence, it is worth remarking that in both dramas Portia arises in the early morning to seek her husband. There is no warrant for this in Plutarch. That Pescetti should have the conspirators perfecting their plans in the early morning may be regarded as a necessity of his dramatic form. Plutarch does not suggest this touch. Possibly Shakespeare considered it a gain in dramatic effectiveness to have the conspiracy confirmed during the tempestuous night. Perhaps Pescetti’s treatment influenced him. In both dramas the interrogator comments upon Portia’s early rising.
Cassius— Molto per tempo esci di casa, ò Porzia.—Ces., p. 29. Brutus— Portia, what mean you? Wherefore rise you now?
It is not for your health thus to commit
Your weak condition to the raw, cold morning.
Portia in soliloquy says: