Cassius says:
And so they get to it again until:
(What big boys they were—and what big boys we all are!)
And so on till he gets to the matter of the refused quids, which is cleared up at the expense of the messenger.
Then Cassius lets himself go. He calls on Antony and young Octavius and all the rest of ‘em to come and be revenged on him alone, for he’s tired of the world (“Cassius is aweary of the world,” he says). He’s hated by one he loves (that’s Brutus). He’s braved by his “brother” (Brutus), checked like a bondman, and Brutus keeps an eye on all his faults and puts ‘em down in a note-book, and learns ‘em over and gets ‘em off by memory to cast in his teeth. He offers Brutus his dagger and bare breast and wants Brutus to take out his heart, which, he says, is richer than all the quids—or rather gold—which Brutus said he wouldn’t lend him. He wants Brutus to strike him as he did Caesar, for he reckons that when Brutus hated Caesar worst he loved him far better than ever he loved Cassius.
Remember these men were Southerners, like ourselves, not cold-blooded Northerners—and, in spite of the seemingly effeminate Italian temperament, as brave as our men were at Elands River. The reason of Brutus’s seeming coldness and hardness during the quarrel is set forth in a startling manner later on, as only the greatest poet in this world could do it.
Brutus tells him kindly to put up his pig-sticker (and button his shirt) and he could be just as mad or good-tempered as he liked, and do what he liked, Brutus wouldn’t mind him:
Whereupon Cassius weeps because he thinks Brutus is laughing at him.
Then Cassius explains that he got his temper from his mother (as I did mine).
And all this on the brink of disaster and death.
But here comes a rare touch, and we might as well quote it in full.
Mind you, I am following Shakespeare, and not history, which is mostly lies.
A great poet’s instinct might be nearer the truth; after all. Of course scholars know that Macbeth (or Macbethad) reigned for upwards of twenty years in Scotland a wise and a generous king—so much so that he was called “Macbathad the Liberal,” and it was Duncan who found his way to the throne by way of murder; but it didn’t fit in with Shakespeare’s plans, and—anyway that’s only a little matter between the ghosts of Bill and Mac which was doubtless fixed up long ago. More likely they thought it such a one-millionth part of a trifle that they never dreamed of thinking of mentioning it.
(“Within” in this case is, of course, without—outside the tent where Lucilius and Titinius are on guard.)
Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall inherit a black eye (Lawson). Shakespeare was ever rough on poets—but stay! Consider that this great world of Rome and all the men and women in it were created by a “jingling fool” and a master of bad—not to say execrable—rhymes, and his name was William Shakespeare. You need to sit down and think awhile after that.
Brutus sends Lucilius and Titinius to bid the commanders lodge their companies for the night, and then all come to him. Then he gives Cassius a shock and strikes him to the heart for his share in the quarrel. It is almost directly after the row, when they have kicked out the “jingling fool” of a poet. Cassius does not know that Brutus has to-day received news of the death, in Rome, of his good and true wife Portia, who, during a fit of insanity, brought on by her grief and anxiety for Brutus, and in the absence of her attendant, has poisoned herself—or “swallowed fire,” as Shakespeare has it.
(Enter Lucius, with a jar of wine, a goblet, and a taper.)
You ought to read that scene carefully. It will do no one any harm. It did me a lot of good one time, when I was about to quarrel with a friend whose heart was sick with many griefs that I knew nothing of at the time. You never know what’s behind.
Titinius and Messala come in, and proceed to discuss the situation.
Messala has also letters to the same purpose, and they have likewise news of the murder, or execution, of upwards of a hundred senators in Rome.
Poor Brutus! His heart had cause to be sick of many griefs that day. Messala thinks he has news to break, and Brutus draws him out. How many and many a man and woman, with a lump in the throat, have broken sad and bad news since that day, and started out to do it in the same old gentle way:
Maybe it strikes Messala like a flash that Brutus is in no need of any more bad news just now, and it had better be postponed till after the battle:
Poor Messala comes to the scratch again rather lamely with a little weak flattery: “Even so great men great losses should endure;” and Cassius says, rather mixedly—it might have been the wine—that he has as much strength in bearing trouble as Brutus has, and yet he couldn’t bear it so.
Brutus was a strong man. Portia’s spirit must bide a while. They discuss a plan of campaign. Cassius is for waiting for the enemy to seek them and so get through his tucker and knock his men up, while they rest in a good position; but Brutus argues that the enemy will gather up the country people between Philippi and their camp and come on refreshed with added numbers and courage, and it would be better for them to meet him at Philippi with these people at their back. The politics or inclination of the said country people didn’t matter in those days. “There is a tide in the affairs of men”—and so they decide to take it at the flood and float high on to the rocks at Philippi. Ah well, it led on to immortality, if it didn’t to fortune.
Well, there’s no more to say. Brutus thinks that the main thing now is a little rest—in which you’ll agree with him; and he sends for his night-shirt.
That old fool of a Cassius—remorseful old smooth-bore—is still a bit maudlin—maybe he had another swig at the wine when Shakespeare wasn’t looking.
Titinius and Messala: Good night, Lord Brutus.
And Cassius is the man whom Caesar denounced as having a lean and hungry look: “Let me have men about me that are fat... such men are dangerous.” (Mr Archibald held with that—and he had a lean, if not a hungry, look too.) When Antony put in a word for Cassius, Caesar said that he wished he was fatter anyhow. “He thinks too much,” Caesar said to Antony. He read a lot; he could look through men; he never went to the theatre, and heard no music; he never smiled except as if grinning sarcastically at himself for “being moved to smile at anything.” Caesar said that such men were never at heart’s ease while they could see a bigger man than themselves, and therefore such men were dangerous. “Come on my right hand, for this ear is deaf, and tell me truly what thou think’st of him.” (That’s a touch, for deafness in people affected that way is usually greater in the left ear.)
When Lucilius returned from taking a message from Brutus to Cassius re the loan of the fivers aforementioned and other matters—and before the arrival of Cassius with his horse and foot, and the quarrel—Brutus asked Lucilius what sort of a reception he had, and being told “With courtesy and respect enough,” he remarked, “Thou hast described a hot friend cooling,” and so on. But Cassius will cool no more until death cools him to-morrow at Philippi.
The rare gentleness of Brutus’s character—and of the characters of thousands of other bosses in trouble—is splendidly, and ah! so softly, pictured in the tent with his servants after the departure of the others. It is a purely domestic scene without a hint of home, women, or children—save that they themselves are big children. The scene now has the atmosphere of a soft, sad nightfall, after a long, long, hot and weary day full of toil and struggle and trouble—though it is really well on towards morning.
Lucius comes in with the gown. Brutus says, “Give me the gown,” and asks where his (Lucius’s) musical instrument is, and Lucius replies that it’s here in the tent. Brutus notices that he speaks drowsily. “Poor knave, I blame thee not, thou are o’er-watched.” He tells him to call Claudius and some other of his men: “I’d have them sleep on cushions in my tent.” They come. He tells them he might have to send them on business by and by to his “brother” Cassius, and bids them lie down and sleep, calling them sirs. They say they’ll stand and watch his pleasure. “I will not have it so; lie down, good sirs.” He finds, in the pocket of his gown, a book he’d been hunting high and low for—and had evidently given Lucius a warm time about—and he draws Lucius’s attention to the fact:
He asks Lucius if he can hold up his heavy eyes and touch his instrument a strain or two. But better give it all—it’s not long:
A man for all time! How natural it all reads! You must remember that he is a tired man after a long, strenuous day such as none of us ever know. The fate of Rome and his—a much smaller matter—are hanging on the balance, and tomorrow will decide; but he is so mind-dulled and shoulder-weary under the tremendous burden of great things and of many griefs that he is almost apathetic; and over all is the cloud of a loss that he has not yet had time to realize. He is self-hypnotized, so to speak, and his mind mercifully dulled for the moment on the Sea of Fatalism.
His very “scare,” or rather his cold blood and staring hair are as things apart, to be analysed and explained quickly and put aside.
That was frank enough, anyway.
That was very satisfactory, so far. But Brutus, having taken heart, as he says, would hold more talk with the “ill spirit.” A ghost always needs to be taken quietly—it’s no use getting excited and threshing round. But Caesar’s, being a new-chum ghost and bashful, was doubtless embarrassed by his cool, matter-of-fact reception, and left. It didn’t matter much. They were to meet soon, above Philippi, on more level terms.
But I cannot get away from the idea that Caesar’s ghost’s visit was made in a friendly spirit. Who knows? Perhaps Portia’s spirit had sent it to comfort Brutus: her own being prevented from going for some reason only known to the immortal gods.
Then Brutus wakes them all.
And after questioning them as to whether they cried out in their sleep, or saw anything, he bids the boy sleep again (it is easy for tired boys to sleep at will in camp) and sends two of the others to Cassius to bid him get his forces on the way early and he would follow.
For, being a wise soldier, as well as a brave and gentle one, he reckoned, no doubt, that it would be best to have a strong man in the rear until the field was actually reached, for the benefit of would-be deserters, and unconsidered trifles of country people-and maybe for another reason not totally disconnected with his erratic friend Cassius.
Just one more scene, and a very different one, before we hurry on to the end, as they have done to Philippi. It’s the only scene in which those two unlucky Romans, Cassius and Brutus, seem to score.
It is during the barney, or as Shakespeare calls it, the “parley” before the battle. Those parleys never seemed to do any good—except to make matters worse, if I might put it like that: it’s the same, under similar circumstances, right up to to-day. Enter on one side Octavius Caesar, Mark Antony, and their pals and army; and, on the other, Brutus and Cassius and the friends and followers of their falling fortunes.
You see, Octavius starts it.
Brutus lays himself open:
This is one for Brutus, though it contains a lie. But Cassius comes to the rescue:
That was one for Antony, and he gets mad. “Villains!” he yells, and he abuses them about their vile daggers hacking one another in the sides of Caesar (a little matter that ought to be worn threadbare by now), and calls them apes and hounds and bondmen and curs, and O, flatterers (which seems to be worst of all in his opinion—for he isn’t one, you know), and damns ‘em generally.
Old Cassius remarks, “Flatterers!”
Then Octavius breaks loose, and draws his Roman chopper and waves it round, and spreads himself out over Caesar’s three-and-thirty wounds—which ought to be given a rest by this time, but only seem to be growing in number—and swears that he won’t put up said chopper till said wounds are avenged,
Brutus says quietly that he cannot die by traitors unless he brings ‘em with him. (He sent one to Egypt later on.) Octavius says he hopes he wasn’t born to die on Brutus’s sword; and Brutus says, in effect, that even if he was any good he couldn’t die more honourably.
Octavius calls off his dogs, and tells them to come on to-day if they dare, or if not, when they have stomachs.
Yes, I reckon old Cassius (“old” in an affectionate sense) and Brutus came out top dogs from that scrap anyway. And, yes, Antony was good at orating. He was great at orating over dead men—especially dead “friends” (as he called his rivals) and dead enemies. Brutus was “the noblest Roman of them all” when Antony came across him stiff later on. Now when I die—
Octavius, by the way, orated over Antony and his dusky hussy later on in Egypt, and they were the most “famous pair” in the world. I wonder whether the grim humour of it struck Octavius then: but then that young man seemed to have but little brains and less humour.
But now they go to see about settling the matter with ironmongery. You can imagine the fight; the heat and the dust, for it was spring in a climate like ours. The bullocking, sweating, grunting, slaughter, the crack and clash and rattle as of fire-irons in a fender. The bad Latin language; the running away and chasing en masse and by individuals. The mutual pauses, the truces or spells—“smoke-ho’s” we’d call ‘em—between masses and individuals. The battered-in, lost, discarded or stolen helmets; the blood-stained, dinted, and loosened armour with bits missing, and the bloody and grotesque bandages. The confusion amongst the soldiers, as it is to-day—the ignorance of one wing as to the fate of the other, of one party as to the fate of the other, of one individual as to the fate of another:
Poor Cassius, routed and in danger of being surrounded, and thinking Brutus is in the same plight, or a prisoner or dead—and that Titinius is taken or killed—gets his bondman, whose life he once saved, to kill him in return for his freedom.
Good-bye, Cassius, old chap!
Titinius and Messala, coming too late, find Cassius dead; and Titinius, being left alone while Messala takes the news to Brutus, kills himself with Cassius’s sword. Titinius, farewell!
Come Brutus and those that are left.
Grim mates in a grim day in a grim hour. Then the cry of Brutus:
But if he were, perhaps he only gathered old Cassius and Titinius to be sure of their company with him and Brutus amongst the gods a little later.
And, after making arrangements for the removal of Cassius’s body, they go to try their fortunes in a second fight. Young Cato is killed and good Lucilius taken. Comes Brutus beaten, with Dardanius his last friend, and his three servants, Clitus, Strato, and Volumnius.
Strato, exhausted, goes to sleep, as man can sleep during a battle; and Brutus whispers the others, one after another, to kill him; but they are shocked and refuse: “I’ll rather kill myself,” “I do such a deed?” etc. He begs Volumnius, his old schoolmate, to hold his sword-hilt while he runs on it, for their love of old.
There are alarums, and they urge him to fly, for it’s no use stopping there.
Ye gods! but it’s grand. I wish to our God that I could say as much—or that man or woman [n]ever found me untrue. Could Antony say as much, afterwards, in Egypt—or Octavius! with Antony then on his mind? Even Antony’s last man and servant failed him in the end, killing himself rather than kill his master. But Strato—
There are more alarums and voices calling to them to run. They urge Brutus again, and he tells them to go and he’ll follow. They all run except Strato, who hesitates.
Brutus, good night!
I like Shakespeare’s servants. They seem to show that he sprang from servants or common people rather than from lords and masters, for he deals with them very gently. It must be understood that servants, bond and free, were born unto the same house and served it for generations; and so down to modern England, where the old nurse and the tottering old gardener often nursed and played with “Master Will,” when his father, the dead and gone old squire, was a young man.
See where Timon’s servants stand in the only patch of sunlight in that black and bitter story:
some checking in the dictionaries. Not all of these are peculiar to Australian slang, but are important in Lawson’s stories, and carry overtones.
GJC