Qui aura d’un seul coup gaigné la liberté.
Quand on dira, Cesar fut maistre de l’empire,
Qu’on die quant-et-quant, Brute le sceut occire.
Quand on dira, Cesar fut premier Empereur,
Qu’on die quant-et-quant, Brute en fut le vangeur.
Ainsi puisse a jamais sa gloire estre suyvie
De celle qui sera sa mortelle ennemie.
Grévin’s tragedy had great vogue, was preferred even to those of Jodelle, and was praised by Ronsard, though Ronsard afterwards retracted his praises when Grévin broke with him on religious grounds. His protestantism, however, would be a recommendation rather than otherwise in England, and one would like to know whether some of the lost English pieces on the same subject owed anything to the French drama. The suggestion has even been made that Shakespeare was acquainted with it. There are some vague resemblances in particular thoughts and phrases,[54] the closest of which occurs in Caesar’s pronouncement on death:
Il vault bien mieux mourir
Asseuré de tout poinct, qu’incessament perir