Isaac Asimov - Asimov’s Guide To Shakespear. Volume 1

In 133 b.c. it became Roman and continued to remain a great city for over a thousand years more. It was finally destroyed in 1402 by the hosts of Tamerlane, the Mongol conqueror, and has lain in ruins ever since.

Once Brutus and Cassius meet in the former's tent, they have at each other, for both have accumulated grievances. Brutus scorns Cassius for his avarice:

—Act IV, scene iii, lines 9-12

The difficulty with the conspirators, as much as with the Triumvirate, is money. Soldiers must be paid or they will desert, and the money must be obtained. Cassius therefore sold appointments to high positions for ready cash, and it is this Brutus scorns.

Another source of money was from the surrounding population. The helpless civilians had no way of resisting the armies, and during the early part of 42 b.c., for instance, Cassius stripped the island of Rhodes of all its precious metals. Asia Minor felt the squeeze too. Wherever Cassius' army passed, the natives were stripped bare and, in some cases, killed when they had given the last drachma. Brutus scorns this too, for he says:

—Act IV, scene iii, lines 71-75

This sounds good, but in the course of the Pompeian war, Brutus, as an actual historical character, had spent some time on the island of Cyprus. There he had oppressed the provincials heartlessly, squeezing money out of them without pity, and writing complaining letters that he was prevented from squeezing still more out of them by other officials.

Then too, while Cassius was draining Rhodes, Brutus demanded money of the city of Xanthus in Asia Minor, and when the city would not (or could not) pay, he destroyed it. He is supposed to have felt remorse after the destruction of Xanthus and to have ceased trying to collect money in this fashion.

And yet he lists one of his grievances against Cassius as:

—Act IV, scene iii, lines 69-70

It is immediately after that that he says unctuously that he "can raise no money by vile means." In other words, he cannot steal but he is willing to have Cassius steal, share in the proceeds, and then scorn Cassius as a robber. Neither Brutus' intelligence nor his honesty ever seem to survive the words Shakespeare carefully put into his mouth.

In the quarrel, it is Cassius who backs away, and the scene ends in a reconciliation. Characteristically, Brutus praises himself unstintingly as one who is slow to anger and quick to forgive. He says:

—Act IV, scene iii, lines 109-12

Brutus further explains his momentary anger by telling Cassius that his wife, Portia, is dead:

—Act IV, scene iii, lines 151-55

According to Plutarch, she choked herself by putting hot embers into her mouth. This seems so strange a way of committing suicide as to be almost unbelievable. Is it possible that this is a distortion of a much more likely death-that she allowed a charcoal fire to burn in a poorly ventilated room and died of carbon monoxide poisoning?

And now an odd thing happens. An officer, Marcus Valerius Messala, comes in with news from Rome. Brutus maneuvers nun (with considerable effort) into revealing the fact that Portia is dead. Without saying he already knows the fact, Brutus says calmly:

—Act IV, scene iii, lines 189-91

Brutus adhered to that school of philosophy called Stoicism. It had been founded, some three centuries earlier, by a Greek philosopher, Zeno of Citium (who possibly had Phoenician ancestry as well). He lectured at a Stoa Poikile (a "painted porch"; that is, a corridor lined with frescoes) in Athens. From this porch the philosophy took its name.

Stoicism saw the necessity of avoiding pain, but did not feel that choosing pleasure was the best way to do so. The only safe way of living the good life, Stoics felt, was to put oneself beyond both pleasure and pain: to train oneself not to be the slave of either passion or fear, to treat both happiness and woe with indifference. If you desire nothing, you need fear the loss of nothing.

Brutus, with his "Why, farewell, Portia," was greeting the death of a loved one with the proper Stoic response.

But why didn't he tell Messala that he already knew of the death in detail and had just been discussing it with Cassius? One theory is that, having written the proper Stoic scene with its "farewell, Portia," Shakespeare felt it presented Brutus in an unsympathetic light. He felt, perhaps, that an English audience could scarcely feel the proper sympathy for so extreme a Roman attitude; they would feel it repellently heartless. He therefore wrote the earlier scene in which Brutus is still Stoical but shows enough feeling to grow angry with Cassius. Then, the theory goes on, both versions appeared, through carelessness, in the final printed copy of the play.

Yet it seems to me that this cannot be so. Shortly after Messala enters, Cassius, still brooding over the news, says to himself:

—Act IV, scene iii, line 165a

To this Brutus makes a hasty response:

—Act IV, scene iii, line 165b

It is as though he does more than merely neglect to tell Messala of his knowledge. He takes special pains to keep Cassius from telling him.

Why? Perhaps precisely so he can strike the proper Stoic note. Since he already knows and the shock is over, he can greet the news with marvelous calm, and strike a noble pose.

We might find an excuse for him and say that he was seizing the opportunity to be ostentatiously strong and Stoical in order to hearten his officers and his army with a good example. On the other hand, he might have done it out of a vain desire for praise. After all, as soon as Brutus makes his Stoic response, Messala says, worshipingly:

—Act IV, scene iii, line 192

If this is so, and certainly it is a reasonable supposition, what a monster of vanity Shakespeare makes out Brutus to be.

Before Messala has the news of Portia's death forced out of him, he delivers the news of the proscriptions of the Second Triumvirate. Dozens of men of senatorial rank have been executed. What's more, says Messala:

—Act IV, scene iii, lines 178-79

As soon as the Second Triumvirate was formed, Cicero, knowing that any accommodation between Octavius and Antony would have to be at his own expense, tried to escape from Italy. Contrary winds drove his ship back to shore, however, and before he could try again, the soldiers sent to kill him had arrived.