[II.99] Let not our looks betray our purposes by wearing, or being attired with, any indication of them. Cf. Macbeth, I, vii, 81.
[II.100] [Exeunt ...] | Exeunt. Manet Brutus Ff.
[II.101] honey-heavy dew | hony-heavy-Dew Ff | honey heavy dew Johnson | heavy honey-dew Collier.
[II.102] The compound epithet, 'honey-heavy,' is very expressive and apt. The 'dew of slumber' is called 'heavy' because it makes the subject feel heavy, and 'honey-heavy,' because the heaviness it induces is sweet. But there may be a reference to the old belief that the bee gathered its honey from falling dew. So in Vergil's Georgics, IV, i, we have "the heavenly gifts of honey born in air." Brutus is naturally led to contrast the free and easy state of the boy's mind with that of his own, which the excitement of his present undertaking is drawing full of visions and images of trouble.
[II.103] Scene III Pope.
[II.104] Similarities and differences between this scene with Brutus and Portia and that between Hotspur and his wife in 1 King Henry IV, II, iii, will prove a suggestive study. The description of the development of Portia's suspicion here is taken directly from Plutarch. "Out of his house he (Brutus) did so frame and fashion his countenance and looks that no man could discern he had anything to trouble his mind. But when night came that he was in his own house, then he was clean changed: for either care did wake him against his will when he would have slept, or else oftentimes of himself he fell into such deep thoughts of this enterprise, casting in his mind all the dangers that might happen: that his wife, lying by him, found that there was some marvellous great matter that troubled his mind, not being wont to be in that taking, and that he could not well determine with himself."—Plutarch, Marcus Brutus.
[II.105] Double negatives abound in Shakespeare. See Abbott, § 406.
[II.106] You've Rowe | Y' have Ff.
[II.107] suddenly | sodainly Ff.
[II.108] wafture Rowe | wafter Ff.