(IV. i. 40.)
This too covers a gap in the history and hurries on the connection. The suggestion is that they are beginning operations at last, and that hitherto they have been inactive. Their various intermediate adventures and wanderings are passed over. We are carried forward to their grand effort, and are reintroduced to them only when they meet again at Sardis in the beginning of 42 b.c., just before the final movement to Philippi, where the battle was fought in October of the same year.
And this scene also is “compounded of many simples.” The dispute which the poet[156] interrupts, the difference of opinion about Pella, the appearance of the Spirit, are all located at Sardis by Plutarch, but he separates them from each other; the news of Portia’s death is undated, the quarrel about money matters took place at Smyrna, and other traits are derived from various quarters. Here they are all made
To join like likes, and kiss like native things.
Then at Philippi itself, not only are some of the speeches transferred from the eve to the day of the engagement; but a whole series of operations, and two pitched battles, twenty days apart, after the first of which Cassius, and after the second of which Brutus, committed suicide, are pressed into a few hours.
It will thus be seen that though the action is spread over a period of three years, from the triumphal entry of Caesar in October, 45 b.c., till the victory of his avengers in October, 42 b.c., Shakespeare concentrates it into the story of five eventful days, which however do not correspond to the five separate acts, but by “overlapping” and other contrivances produce the effect of close sequence, while in point of fact, historically, they are not consecutive at all.
In the first day there is the exposition, enforcing the predominance of Caesar and the revulsion against it (Act i. i. and ii.); assigned to the 15th February, 44 b.c.
In the second day there is the assassination with its immediate preliminaries and sequels (Act i. iii., Act ii., Act iii.) all compressed within the twenty-four hours allowed to a French tragedy, viz. within the interval between the night before the Ides of March and the next afternoon or evening.[157]
In the third day there is the account of the Proscription in November, 43 b.c. (Act iv. i.). In the fourth day the meeting of Brutus and Cassius, which took place early in 42 b.c., and the apparition of the boding spirit, are described (Act iv. ii. and iii.). Both these days are included in one act.
The fifth day is devoted to the final battle and its accessories, and must be placed in October, 42 b.c. (Act v.).