Search -
The Works of Shakespeare: Julius Caesar | edited by M. Macmillan. 1902
The Works of Shakespeare Julius Caesar edited by M Macmillan 1902 Author:William Shakespeare Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: APPENDIX I. iii. 65. The use of " calculate " intransitively in the sense of " prophesy" is so strange and gives such unsatisfactory sense, that I am tempted ... more »to conjecture that " why " in line 65 is an emphatic interjectional expletive as it is in line 68. The meaning will then be, " If you would consider why the fires, ghosts, birds, and beasts act in such an extraordinary manner, I may tell you that the significance of these prodigies is so obvious that not only old men, but even fools and children can form an estimate of the reason why these things act contrary to their nature. You will assuredly find that the reason is that they are intended by heaven to point to an unnatural state of affairs, namely, the state of Rome under the dominion of one man grown portentously great." In support of this interpretation, it may be urged that the two preceding lines refer to prodigies already recorded, whereas the folly of old men and the prophesying of fools and children is not among the prodigies related either by Shakespeare or Plutarch, nor are they such prodigies as Shakespeare would be likely to invent and suddenly add to lines referring to prodigies recorded before. Exception may be taken to the use of "why" in a sense different from that in which it is used in the lines immediately preceding and following, but this objection would prove too much, as it would condemn the undoubtedly expletive use of " why " in line 68, where also as in line 65 " why " is not followed by a comma in the Folio. II. i. 177 : seem to chide. Mr. Marshall in Irving's edition of Shakespeare says that here Brutus " is advising a course of deliberate hypocrisy; the conspirators are to try and entrap the sympathies of the people by commit- ting the murder with all due delicacy and decorum, and then pr...« less