If ever there was such a line written by Shakespeare, I should fancy it might have its place here, and very humorously in the character of a Plebeian." Craik inserted 'not' after 'Has he.'
[III.133] Has he, | Ha's hee F1.
[III.134] abide it: suffer for it, pay for it. See [note, p. 87, l. 95].
[III.135] And there are none so humble but that the great Cæsar is now beneath their reverence, or too low for their regard.
[III.136] napkins: handkerchiefs. In the third scene of the third act of Othello the two words are used interchangeably.
[III.137] o'ershot myself to tell: gone too far in telling. Another example of the infinitive used as a gerund. Cf. [l. 103] and [II, i, 135].
[III.138] Antony now sees that he has the people wholly with him, so that he is perfectly safe in stabbing the stabbers with these words.
[III.139] [Antony comes ...] Ff omit.
[III.140] far: farther. The old comparative of 'far' is 'farrer' (sometimes 'ferrar') still heard in dialect, and the final -er will naturally tend to be slurred. So The Winter's Tale, IV, iv, 441, "Far than Deucalion off." So 'near' for 'nearer' in Richard II, III, ii, 64.
[III.141] This is the artfullest and most telling stroke in Antony's speech. The Romans prided themselves most of all upon their military virtue and renown: Cæsar was their greatest military hero; and his victory over the Nervii was his most noted military exploit. It occurred during his second campaign in Gaul, in the summer of the year b.c. 57, and is narrated with surpassing vividness in the second book of his Gallic War. Plutarch, in his Julius Cæsar, gives graphic details of this famous victory and the effect upon the Roman people of the news of Cæsar's personal prowess, when "flying in amongst the barbarous people," he "made a lane through them that fought before him." Of course the matter about the 'mantle' is purely fictitious: Cæsar had on the civic gown, not the military cloak, when killed; and it was, in fact, the mangled toga that Antony displayed on this occasion; but the fiction has the effect of making the allusion to the victory seem perfectly artless and incidental.