She has a great spirit, but it is lodged in a fragile and nervous frame. Does she make her words good? She gains her point, but her success is almost too much for her. She can endure pain but not suspense: like Brutus she is martyr to her sense of what is right. We presently find her all but ruining the conspiracy by her uncontrollable agitation. The scene where she waits in the street serves the function in the main story of heightening our excitement by means of hers, in expectation of what will presently be enacted at the Capitol; but it is even more important for the light it throws on her character. She may well confess: “I have a man’s heart, but a woman’s might.” Her feverish anxiety quite overmasters her throughout, and makes her do and say things which do not disclose the plot only because the bystanders are faithful or unobservant. She sends the boy to the senate house without telling him his errand. She meaningly bids him
take good note
What Caesar doth, what suitors press about him.
(II. iv. 15.)
She interrupts herself with the fancy that the revolt has begun. She plies the soothsayer with suspicious questions that culminate in the most indiscreet one on his wish to help Caesar:
Why, know’st thou any harm’s intended towards him?
(II. iv. 31.)
Then she almost commits herself, and has to extemporise a subterfuge, before, unable to hold out any longer, she retires on the point of fainting, though even now her love gives her strength to send a cheering message to her lord.
For her as for Brutus the burden of a duty, which she assumes by her own choice, but which one of her nature must assume, is too heavy. And in the after consequences, for which she is not directly responsible, but which none the less flow from the deed that she has encouraged and approved, it is the same inability to bear suspense, along with her craving for her husband’s presence and success, that drives her through madness to death.