[II.135] Scene II Rowe | Scene IV Pope.
[II.136] This scene, taken with the preceding, affords an interesting study in contrasts: Cæsar and Brutus; Calpurnia the yielding wife, and Portia the heroic.
[II.137] Cæsar's house | Ff omit.
[II.138] Enter Cæsar ... | Enter Julius Cæsar ... Ff.—in his night-gown Pope omits.
[II.139] Enter Cæsar in his night-gown.' Night-gown' here, as in Macbeth, II, ii, 70, V, 1, 5, means 'dressing-robe' or 'dressing-gown.' This is the usual meaning of the word in English from the fifteenth century to the eighteenth. So Addison and Steele use it in The Spectator.
[II.140] l. 1 Two lines in Ff.
[II.141] In Plutarch the scene is thus graphically described: "Then going to bed the same night, as his manner was, and lying with his wife Calpurnia, all the windows and doors of his chamber flying open, the noise awoke him, and made him afraid when he saw such light; but more, when he heard his wife Calpurnia, being fast asleep, weep and sigh, and put forth many fumbling lamentable speeches: for she dreamed that Cæsar was slain.... Cæsar rising in the morning, she prayed him, if it were possible, not to go out of the doors that day, but to adjourn the session of the Senate until another day. And if that he made no reckoning of her dream, yet that he would search further of the soothsayers by their sacrifices, to know what should happen him that day. Thereby it seemed that Cæsar did likewise fear or suspect somewhat, because his wife Calpurnia until that time was never given to any fear and superstition; and that then he saw her so troubled in mind with this dream she had. But much more afterwards, when the soothsayers having sacrificed many beasts one after another, told him that none did like[1] them: then he determined to send Antonius to adjourn the session of the Senate."—Julius Cæsar.
[II.141[1] i.e. satisfy.
[II.142] success: the result. The root notion of the word. See [note, p. 65, l. 324]. But in [V, iii, 65], the word is used in its modern sense.
[II.143] 'Ceremonies' is here put for the ceremonial or sacerdotal interpretation of prodigies and omens, as in [II, i, 197].