25. His compass, its circular course. 29. Make to him, etc., that are hastening to him. 38. Swore thee, made thee swear. Saving of thy life = in saving thy life. Saving is here the verbal noun, which originally ended in ung. It was then written with ing, and thus frequently confused with the present participle. Prefixed to this was the old preposition an (on), which was pared down to a (While the ark was a preparing'), and then vanished altogether. 41. Be a freeman = earn your freedom by putting me to death. 42. Search, pierce. 51. Change, the ups and downs of fortune. 68. Apt, impressionable. 84. Miscónstrued = misinterpreted. 88. Regarded, respected. 89. This, the act of suicide, is the part (= duty) of a Roman. 96. In into. = Own proper· —a tautology. Shakespeare uses proper for own, as in Tempest (III. iii. 60): 'Men hang and drown their proper selves.' There are four instances of the double phrase own proper. 101. Breed thy fellow, produce another like thee. 104. Thassos, an island now called Thaso, in the Ægean Sea, off the Thracian coast. -The latter touching portion of this grand and truly Roman panegyric is wholly Shakespeare's. The first part is from North: 'So when he was come thither, after he had lamented the death of Cassius, calling him the last of the Romans, being impossible that Rome should ever breed again so noble and valiant a man as he, he caused his body to be buried.' 105. Funerals. Shakespeare uses this word only twice in the plural. 106. It refers to funerals. 109, 110. Ere night . . . a second fight. As a matter ... of fact, the second battle of Philippi was fought twenty days after the first. SCENE 4 2. What bastard doth not? Who is so base-born as will not? 8. Know me for Brutus. For this use of for cf. Hamlet (IV. vii. 2): 'You must put me in your heart for friend': and V. i. 196, where Hamlet talks of Yorick: A pestilence on him for a mad rogue!' 12. Only I yield to die, I yield only to die. Cf. this position of only with that of but in V. i. 88. 32. Is chanced, has happened or fallen out. SCENE 5 13. That noble vessel. Cf. Winter's Tale (III. iii.):~ 'I never saw a vessel of like sorrow So filled and so becoming.' And in several passages woman is spoken of as 'the weaker vessel.' 42. But labored to attain = labored but to attain. 46. Smatch, tincture. This is the only instance of this word in Shakespeare. The word is probably a form of smack. Cf. bake, batch; make, match; wake, watch. 6 59. Lucilius' saying true. Lucilius had said (V. iv. 21, 22) that no enemy shall ever take alive the noble Brutus.' 60. Entertain them, take them into my service. 61. Bestow = invest, put to use. 62. Prefer = recommend. Cf. Cymbeline (IV. ii.): The emperor's letters should not sooner than thine own worth prefer thee.' 68. He. Dr. Schmidt says that Shakespeare never uses save as a preposition governing the objective, but only as an adverb. 1. Common good to all. It was said that Antonius spake it openly divers times, that he thought that of all of them that had slain Cæsar, there was none but Brutus only that was moved to do it as thinking the act commendable of itself; but that all the other conspirators did conspire his death for some private malice or envy that they otherwise did bear unto him.'-NORTH'S Plutarch. 77. His bones, his corpse. Shakespeare frequently uses bones in this sense. 79. The field, the army in the field. EXAMINATION QUESTIONS BY CORNELIA BEARE INSTRUCTOR IN ENGLISH, HIGH SCHOOL, WHITE PLAINS, NEW YORK REFERENCES Dowden. Shakespeare Primer. Painter. Study of his Life and Time. Historical setting. Green's Short History of English People. Snider's Historical Commentaries, pp. 144-228. (Drama.) Dowden. Shakespeare's Mind and Art, 255–258. Hazlitt. Characters of Shakespeare's Plays, pp. 23-30. TOPICS FOR PRELIMINARY STUDY 1. Figures of speech. 2. Versification. 3. Structure of drama. 4. Special study of plays of Shakespeare as early, middle, late. (1) Classified by external evidence. (a) Registration. (b) Alluded to in other works. (2) Partly internal. (a) Reference to other work. (b) Reference to historical facts, etc. (3) Wholly internal. (a) Rhyme of blank verse. (b) Feminine endings. (c) Light or weak endings. (d) Nature of plot. 5. History of drama before Shakespeare's time. Dow 3. den's Shakespeare Primer. Theatre of Shakespeare's day. 7. Study of that life. (a) Judith Shakespeare by Black. TOPICS FOR THEMES ON PRELIMINARY WORK A. Outlines only. 1. Nature and structure of the drama. 2. Classification of Shakespeare's plays. B. Outline and theme. 1. The theatre of Shakespeare's day. 2. Stratford (vide Shakespeare's Country and Irving's Stratford). 3. A scene from Shakespeare's life. (Imaginary largely. The deer-stealing episode. The first days in London. The first appearance on the stage. The first production of Julius Cæsar. The return to Stratford. A night at the Mermaid.) (Aim to reflect the spirit of the time and the nature of the man.) Special Study for Julius Cæsar. I. History of the times. II. Plutarch's Lives: Brutus, Cassius, Cæsar, Antony. |