That Antony speak in his funeral:
Know you how much the people may be moved
By that which he will utter?
(III. i. 232.)
But Brutus waves his remonstrance aside. He is now so besotted by his own sophisms that he will listen to no warning. He thinks all risk will be averted by his going into the pulpit first to show the “reason” of Caesar’s death. He has quite forgotten that the one reason that he could allege to himself was merely a hazardous conclusion from doubtful premises; and this forsooth is to satisfy the citizens of Rome. But meanwhile since their deed is so irreproachable and disinterested, the conspirators must act in accordance, and show their freedom from any personal motive by giving Caesar all due rites:
It shall advantage more than do us wrong.
The infatuation is almost incredible, and it springs not only from generosity to Antony and Caesar, but from the fatal assumption of the justice of his cause, and the Quixotic exaltation the assumption brings with it.
For were it ever so just, could this be brought home to the Roman populace? Brutus, who is never an expert in facts, has been misled by the inventions of Cassius, which he mistakes for the general voice of Rome. Here, too, Shakespeare departs from his authority to make the duping of his hero more conspicuous. For in Plutarch these communications are the quite spontaneous incitements of the public, not the contrivances of one dissatisfied aristocrat.
But for Brutus, his frendes and contrie men, both by divers procurementes, and sundrie rumors of the citie, and by many bills also, did openlie call and procure him to doe that he did. For, under the image of his auncestor Junius Brutus, that drave the kinges out of Rome, they wrote: “O, that it had pleased the goddes that thou wert now alive, Brutus: and againe that thou wert with us nowe.” His tribunall (or chaire) where he gave audience during the time he was praetor, was full of such billes: “Brutus, thou art a sleepe, and art not Brutus in deede.”
All these in Plutarch are worth their face value, but in Shakespeare they are not: and it is one of the ironies of Brutus’ career that he takes them as appeals from the people when they are only the juggleries of Cassius. So far from objecting to Imperialism, the citizens when most favourable to Brutus call out, “Let him be Caesar!” “Caesar’s better parts shall be crowned in Brutus” (iii. ii. 56). This is the acme of his success and the prologue to his disillusionment.