A soothsayer | bids you beware | the Ides of March.
Ib. Speech of Brutus:—
“Set honour in one eye, and death i' the other,
And I will look on both indifferently.”
Warburton would read “death” for “both;” but I prefer the old text. There are here three things, [pg 132] the public good, the individual Brutus' honour, and his death. The latter two so balanced each other, that he could decide for the first by equipoise; nay—the thought growing—that honour had more weight than death. That Cassius understood it as Warburton, is the beauty of Cassius as contrasted with Brutus.
Ib. Cæsar's speech:—
... “He loves no plays
As thou dost, Antony; he hears no music,” &c.
“This is not a trivial observation, nor does our poet mean barely by it, that Cassius was not a merry, sprightly man; but that he had not a due temperament of harmony in his disposition.”—Theobald's note.
O Theobald! what a commentator wast thou, when thou would'st affect to understand Shakespeare, instead of contenting thyself with collating the text! The meaning here is too deep for a line ten-fold the length of thine to fathom.