It has been suggested that the above does not show Shakespeare's own intellectual attitude toward the beyond, for he is only reporting the sentiments which such a character as Brutus entertained. In other words, it is one of Shakespeare's characters, not Shakespeare himself, who is philosophising. But it is curious that in Plutarch's history, from which our poet borrowed freely for this play, Brutus acknowledged a future state, and is positive of his future reward. "I gave up my life for my country in the Ides of March, for the which I shall live in another more glorious world," Plutarch reports Brutus to have said. Shakespeare's changing this dogmatic assurance concerning a future life to the philosophic attitude of unconcern shows conclusively which way his own sympathies inclined.
To further clinch the point, that Shakespeare is here speaking his own thought and not merely inventing thoughts suitable to his pagan characters, let us quote a stanza from his Sonnets which, it is admitted, embody the poet's own philosophy. It will be seen that he is thoroughly imbued with the Lucretian, or the scientific thought, of man and nature:
When I consider every thing that grows
Holds in perfection but a little moment;
That this huge state presenteth nought but show
Whereon the stars in secret influence comment.
And what is true of nature is true also of man, notwithstanding his self-exaltation:
When I perceive that men as plants, increase,
Cheered and checked even by selfsame sky,
Vaunt in their youthful sap, at height decrease,