Who buried it with royal pomp and splendor.
Thus died at fifty-six Marc Antony,
And Cleopatra followed him with poison,
The asp or hollow bodkin, having lived
To thirty-nine, and reigned with Antony
As partner in the empire fourteen years …
Who in a time to come will gorge and drink,
Filch treasure that it may be spent for wine,
Kill as Marc Antony did, war as he did,
Because Marc Antony did so, taking him
As warrant and exemplar? Why, never a soul!
These things are done by souls who do not think,
But act from feeling. But those mad for stars
Glimpsed in wild waters or through mountain mists
Seen ruddy and portentous will take Brutus
As inspiration, since for Virtue’s sake
And for the good of Rome he killed his friend;
And in the act made Liberty as far
From things of self, as murder is apart
From friendship and its ways. Yes, Brutus lives
To fire the mad-men of the centuries
As Cæsar lives to guide new tyrants. Yet
Tyrannicide but snips the serpent’s head.
The body of a rotten state still writhes
And wriggles though the head is gone, or worse,
Festers and stinks against the setting sun. …
Marc Antony lived happier than Brutus
And left the old world happier for his life
Than Brutus left it.
AT THE MERMAID TAVERN
(April 10th, 1613)
(Lionard Digges is speaking)
Yes, so I said: ’twas labored “Cataline”
Insufferable for learning, tedious.
And so I said: the audience was kept
There at the Globe twelve years ago to hear:
“It is no matter; let no images
Be hung with Cæsar’s trophies.”
And to-day
They played his Julius Cæsar at the Court.
I saw it at the Globe twelve years ago,
A gala day! The flag over the Theatre
Fluttered the April breeze and I was thrilled.
And look what wherries crossed the Thames with freight
Of hearts expectant for the theatre.
For all the town was posted with the news
Of Shakespeare’s “Julius Cæsar.” So we paid
Our six-pence, entered, all the house was full.
And dignitaries, favored ones had seats
Behind the curtain on the stage. At last
The trumpet blares, the curtains part, Marullus
And Flavius enter, scold the idiot mob
And we sat ravished, listening to the close.
We knew he pondered manuscripts, forever
Was busy with his work, no rest, no pause.
Often I saw him leave the theatre
And cross the Thames where in a little room
He opened up his Plutarch. What was that?
A fertilizing sun, a morning light
Of bursting April! What was he? The earth
That under such a sun put forth and grew,
Showed all his valleys, mountain peaks and fields,
Brought forth the forests of his cosmic soul,
The coppice, jungle, blossoms good and bad.
A world of growth, creation! This the work,
Precedent force of Thomas North, his work
In causal link the Bishop of Auxerre,
And so it goes.
But others tried their hand
At Julius Cæsar, witness “Cæsar’s Fall”
Which Drayton, Webster, others wrote. And look
At Jonson’s “Cataline,” that labored thing,
Dug out of Plutarch, Cicero. Go read,
Then read this play of Shakespeare’s.
I recall
What came to me to see this, scene by scene,
Unroll beneath my eyes. ’Twas like a scroll
Lettered in gold and purple where one theme
In firmest sequence, precious artistry
Is charactered, and all the sound and sense,
And every clause and strophe ministers
To one perfection. So it was we sat
Until the scroll lay open at our feet:
“According to his virtue, let us use him
With all respect and rites of burial,”
Then gasped for breath! The play’s a miracle!
This world has had one Cæsar and one Shakespeare,
And with their birth is shrunk, can only bear
Less vital spirits.
For what did he do
There in that room with Plutarch? First his mind
Was ready with the very moulds of nature.
And then his spirit blazing like the sun
Smelted the gold from Plutarch, till it flowed
Molten and dazzling in these moulds of his.
And lo! he sets up figures for our view
That blind the understanding till you close
Eyes to reflect, and by their closing see
What has been done. O, well I could go on
And show how Jonson makes homonculus,
And Shakespeare gets with child, conceives and bears
Beauty of flesh and blood. Or I could say
Jonson lays scholar’s hands upon a trait,
Ambition, let us say, as if a man
Were peak and nothing else thrust to the sky
By blasting fires of earth, just peak alone,
No slopes, no valleys, pines, or sunny brooks,
No rivers winding at the base, no fields,
No songsters, foxes, nothing but the peak.
But Shakespeare shows the field-mice and the cricket,
The louse upon the leaf, all things that live
In every mountain which his soaring light
Takes cognizance; by which I mean to say
Shows not ambition only, that’s