I have the patience to endure it now.
(IV. iii. 190.)
He is essentially a thinker, a reader, a student. Plutarch had told how on the eve of Pharsalia, when his companions were resting, or forecasting the morrow, Brutus “fell to his booke and wrote all day long till night, wryting a breviarie of Polybius.” And in his last campaign:
His heade ever busily occupied to thinke of his affayres, ... after he had slumbered a little after supper, he spent all the rest of the night in dispatching of his waightiest causes, and after he had taken order for them, if he had any leysure left him, he would read some booke till the third watch of the night, at what tyme the Captaines, pety Captaines and Colonells, did use to come unto him.
Shakespeare only visualises this description when he makes him find the book, that in his troubles and griefs he has been “seeking for so,” in the pocket of his gown, with the leaf turned down where he stopped reading.
Does then Shakespeare take over Plutarch’s favourite, merely removing the single stain and accenting all the attractions, to confront him as the embodiment of republican virtue, with Caesar, against whom too no evil is remembered, as the embodiment of imperial majesty? Will he show the inevitable collision between two political principles each worthily represented in its respective champion?
This has been said, and there are not wanting arguments to support it. It is clear that the contrast is not perplexed by side issues. Brutus has no quarrel with Caesar as a man, and no justification is given for the conspiracy in what Caesar has done. On the contrary, his murderer stands sponsor for his character, acknowledges his supreme greatness, and loves him as a dear friend. But neither on the other hand is anything introduced that might divert our sympathies from Brutus by representing him as bound by other than the voluntary ties of affection and respect. And this is the more remarkable that in Plutarch there are two particulars full of personal pathos which Shakespeare cannot have failed to note, and which lend themselves to dramatic purposes, as other dramatists have proved. One of them, employed by Voltaire, would darken the assassination to parricide. In explanation of the indulgence with which Caesar treated Brutus, Plutarch says:
When he was a young man, he had been acquainted with Servilia, who was extreamelie in love with him. And bicause Brutus was borne in that time when their love was hottest, he perswaded him selfe that he begat him.[176]
And then follows what can be alleged in proof. “What of anguish,” says Mr. Wyndham, “does this not add to the sweep of the gesture wherewith the hero covered his face from the pedant’s sword!”
This is a mere casual hint; but the other point finds repeated mention in the Life, and is dwelt upon though explained away in the Comparison. It is the circumstance that Brutus had fought on Pompey’s side, and that thereafter Caesar had spared him, amnestied his friends, and loaded him with favours.