[I.190] Scene III. Rowe added "with his sword drawn" to the Folio stage direction, basing the note on l. 19.
A month has passed since the machinery of the conspiracy was set in motion. The action in the preceding scene took place on the day of the Lupercalia; the action in this is on the eve of the Ides of March.
[I.191] Enter, from ... | Enter Caska, and Cicero Ff.
[I.192] brought: accompanied. Cf. Richard II, I, iv, 2.
[I.193] sway of earth: established order. "The balanced swing of earth."—Craik. "The whole weight or momentum of this globe."—Johnson. In such a raging of the elements, it seems as if the whole world were going to pieces, or as if the earth's steadfastness were growing 'unfirm.' "'Unfirm' is not firm; while 'infirm' is weak."—Clar.
[I.194] tempest dropping fire Rowe | tempest-dropping-fire Ff.
[I.195] destruction. Must be pronounced as a quadrisyllable.
[I.196] Either the gods are fighting among themselves, or else they are making war on the world for being overbearing in its attitude towards them. For Shakespeare's use of 'saucy,' see Century.
[I.197] any thing more wonderful. This may be interpreted as 'anything that was more wonderful,' or 'anything more that was wonderful.' The former seems the true interpretation. For the 'wonderful' things that Casca describes, Shakespeare was indebted to the following passage from Plutarch's Julius Cæsar, which North in the margin entitles "Predictions and foreshews of Cæsar's death": "Certainly destiny may easier be foreseen than avoided, considering the strange and wonderful signs that were said to be seen before Cæsar's death. For, touching the fires in the element, and spirits running up and down in the night, and also the solitary birds to be seen at noondays sitting in the great market-place, are not all these signs perhaps worth the noting, in such a wonderful chance as happened? But Strabo the philosopher writeth, that divers men were seen going up and down in fire, and furthermore, that there was a slave of the soldiers that did cast a marvellous burning flame out of his hand, insomuch as they that saw it thought he had been burnt; but when the fire was out, it was found he had no hurt. Cæsar self also, doing sacrifice unto the gods, found that one of the beasts which was sacrificed had no heart: and that was a strange thing in nature, how a beast could live without a heart." This passage is worth special attention, as Shakespeare uses many of the details again in [II, ii, 17-24], 39-40. Cf. Hamlet, I, i, 113-125.
[I.198] you know. Dyce suggested 'you'd know'; Craik, 'you knew.' But the text as it stands is dramatically vivid and realistic.