His habit of reading at night is mentioned by Plutarch, but when we consider the circumstances, has it not a deeper meaning here? His love for Portia we know, but after his brief references to her death, he seems to banish her from his mind, and never, not even in his dying words, does her name cross his lips again. Is this an inadvertence on Shakespeare’s part, or an omission due to the kinship of Julius Caesar with the Chronicle History? Is it not rather that he conceives Brutus as one of those who are so bound up in their affections that they fear to face a thought of their bereavement lest they should utterly collapse? Is it fanciful to interpret that search for his book with the leaf turned down, in the light of Macaulay’s confession on the death of his sister: “Literature has saved my life and my reason; even now I dare not in the intervals of business remain alone a minute without a book”?
But this little interlude, which sets Brutus before us with all his winsome and pathetic charm, leads back to the leading motif, the destruction he has brought on himself by his own error, though he may face it like a man and keep the beauty of his soul unsoiled. Here, too, Plutarch points the way, but Shakespeare advances further in it. What he found was the following bit of hearsay:
One night very late (when all the campe tooke quiet rest) as he was in his tent with a little light, thinking of waighty matters, he thought he heard one come in to him, and casting his eye towards the doore of his tent, that he saw a wonderfull straunge and monstruous shape of a body comming towards him, and sayd never a word. So Brutus boldly asked what he was, a god, or a man, and what cause brought him thither. The spirit aunswered him, “I am thy evill spirit, Brutus, and thou shalt see me by the citie of Philippes.” Brutus beeing no otherwise affrayd, replyed again unto it: “Well, then, I shall see thee agayne.” The spirit presently vanished away: and Brutus called his men unto him, who tolde him that they heard no noyse, nor sawe any thinge at all.
Shakespeare’s Brutus is not at the outset so unconcerned as Plutarch’s. Instead of “being no otherwise affrayd,” his blood runs cold and his hair “stares.” On the other hand, he is free from the perturbation that seizes Plutarch’s Brutus when he reflects, and that drives him to tell his experience to Cassius, who “did somewhat comfort and quiet him.” The Brutus of the play breathes no word of the visitation, though it is repeated at Philippi, till a few minutes before his death, and then in all composure as a proof that the end is near, not as a horror from which he seeks deliverance. He needs not the support of another, and even in the moment of physical panic he has moral courage enough: he summons up his resolution, and when he has “taken heart” the spectre vanishes. This means, too, that it has a closer connection with his nerves, with his subjective fears and misgivings, than the “monstruous shape” in Plutarch, and similarly, though he alleges that Lucius and his attendants have cried out in their sleep, they are unaware of any feeling or cause of fright. And the significance of this is marked by the greatest change of all. Shakespeare gives a personality to Plutarch’s nameless phantom: it is individualised as the ghost of Caesar, and thus Caesar’s spirit has become Brutus’ evil genius, as Brutus had been Caesar’s angel. The symbolism explains itself, but is saved from the tameness of allegory by the superstitious dread with which it is enwrapped. The regrets and forebodings of Brutus appear before him in outward form. All day the mischievousness of his intervention has been present to his mind: now his accusing thoughts take shape in the vision of his murdered friend, and his vague presentiments of retribution at Philippi leap to consciousness in its prophetic words. But all this does not abash his soul or shake his purpose. He only hastens the morning march.
Thus he moves to his doom, and never was he so great. He is stripped of all adventitious aids. His private affections are wrecked, and the thought of his wife has become a torture. Facts have given the lie to his belief that his country has chosen him as her champion. He can no longer cherish the dream that his course has been of benefit to the Roman world. He even seems at last to recognise his own guilt, for not only does he admit the might of Caesar’s spirit in the suicide of Cassius, but when his own turn comes, his dying words sound like a proffer of expiation:
Caesar, now be still;
I kill’d not thee with half so good a will.
(V. v. 50.)
The philosophic harness in which he felt so secure, he has already found useless in the hour of need, and fit only to be cast aside. So he stands naked to the blows of fate, bereft of his love, his illusions, his self-confidence, his creed. He has to rely solely on himself, on his own nature and his own character. Moreover his nature, in so far as it means temperament, is too delicate and fine for the rough practical demands on it. Suspense is intolerable to his sensitive and eager soul. Ere the battle begins, he can hardly endure the uncertainty:
O that a man might know