But it is not the purple patches alone of which this is true. The more carefully one examines the finished fabric, the more clearly one sees that the dramatist has not merely woven and fashioned and embroidered it, but has provided most of the stuff.
Sometimes the new matter is a possible or plausible inference from the premises he found in his author.
Thus Plutarch represents the populace as on the whole favourable to Caesar, but the tribunes as antagonistic. He also records, concerning the celebration of Caesar’s victory over Pompey’s sons in Spain:
The triumph he made into Rome for the same did as much offend the Romanes, and more, then anything he had ever done before; bicause he had not overcome Captaines that were straungers, nor barbarous kinges, but had destroyed the sonnes of the noblest man in Rome, whom fortune had overthrowen. And bicause he had plucked up his race by the rootes men did not thinke it meete for him to triumphe so for the calamaties of his contrie.
(Julius Caesar.)
This is all, but it is enough to give the foundation for the opening scene, which otherwise, both in dialogue and declamation, is an entirely free creation.
Sometimes again Shakespeare has realised the situation so vividly that he puts in some trait from the occurrences as in spirit he has witnessed them, something of the kind that may very well have happened, though there is no trace of it in the records. Thus he well knows what an unreasonable monster a street mob can be, how cruel in its gambols, how savage in its fun. So in the account of the poet Cinna’s end, though the gist of the incident, the mistake in identity, the disregard of the explanation, are all given in Plutarch, Shakespeare’s rioters wrest their victim’s innocent avowal of celibacy to a flout at marriage, and meet his unanswerable defence, “I am Cinna the poet,” with the equally unanswerable retort, “Tear him for his bad verses.” (iii. iii. 23.)
Some of these new touches do more than lend reality to the scene. Though not incompatible with Plutarch’s account, they give it a turn that he might disclaim and certainly does not warrant, but that belongs to Shakespeare’s conception of the case. Thus after describing the “holy course” of the Lupercal, and the superstition connected with it, Plutarch mentions that Caesar sat in state to witness the sport, and that Antony was one of the runners. There is nothing more; and Calpurnia is not even named. Shakespeare’s introduction of her is therefore very curious. Whatever else it means, it shows that he imagined Caesar as desirous, certainly, of having an heir, and, inferentially, of founding a dynasty.[159]
Occasionally, however, the dramatist’s insertions directly contradict the text of the Lives, if a more striking or more significant effect is to be attained, and if no essential fact is falsified. Thus Plutarch tells of Ligarius:
[Brutus] went to see him being sicke in his bedde, and sayed unto him: “O Ligarius, in what a time art thou sicke!” Ligarius risinge uppe in his bedde and taking him by the right hande, sayed unto him: “Brutus,” sayed he, “if thou hast any great enterprise in hande worthie of thy selfe, I am whole.”