Than Julius Caesar.
(H. VI. A. I. i. 155.)
Suffolk, in his self-conceit and self-pity, seeks for examples of other celebrities who have perished by ignoble hands, and compared with his victim, even Brutus seems on the level of the meanest and most unscrupulous.
A Roman sworder and banditto slave
Murder’d sweet Tully: Brutus’ bastard hand
Stabb’d Julius Caesar: savage islanders
Pompey the Great: and Suffolk dies by pirates.
(H. VI. B. IV. i. 134.)
Margaret, when her boy is slaughtered at Tewkesbury, thinks of Caesar’s murder as the one deed which can be placed beside it, and which it even transcends in horror.
They that stabb’d Caesar shed no blood at all,