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But Cæsar left the body with the queen

       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)

       Table of Contents

      (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

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