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Cassius: Do you confess so much? Give me your hand.

Brutus: And my heart too.

Then Cassius explains that he got his temper from his mother (as I did mine).

Cassius: O Brutus!

Brutus: What’s the matter? [Shakespeare should have added ‘now.’]

Cassius: Have not you love enough to bear with me,
When that rash humour which my mother gave me
Makes me forgetful?

Brutus: Yes, Cassius, and from henceforth,
When you are over-earnest with your Brutus,
He’ll think your mother chides, and leave you so.

And all this on the brink of disaster and death.

But here comes a rare touch, and we might as well quote it in full.

Mind you, I am following Shakespeare, and not history, which is mostly lies.

A great poet’s instinct might be nearer the truth; after all. Of course scholars know that Macbeth (or Macbethad) reigned for upwards of twenty years in Scotland a wise and a generous king–so much so that he was called “Macbathad the Liberal,” and it was Duncan who found his way to the throne by way of murder; but it didn’t fit in with Shakespeare’s plans, and–anyway that’s only a little matter between the ghosts of Bill and Mac which was doubtless fixed up long ago. More likely they thought it such a one-millionth part of a trifle that they never dreamed of thinking of mentioning it.

(Noise within.)

Poet (within): Let me go in to see the generals; There is some
grudge between ’em–’tis not meet
They be alone.

Lucilius (within): You shall not come to them.

Poet (within): Nothing but death shall stay me.

(“Within” in this case is, of course, without–outside the tent
where Lucilius and Titinius are on guard.)

Enter POET.

Cassius: How now! What’s the matter?

Poet: For shame, you generals! What do you mean?
Love, and be friends, as two such men should be:
For I have seen more years, I’m sure, than ye.

Cassius: Ha, ha! how vilely doth this cynic rhyme!

Brutus: Get you hence, sirrah; saucy fellow, hence!

Cassius: Bear with him, Brutus; ’tis his fashion.

Brutus: I’ll know his humour when he knows his time:
What should the wars do with these jingling fools?
Companion, hence!

Cassius: Away, away, be gone!

(Exit POET.)

Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall inherit a black eye (Lawson). Shakespeare was ever rough on poets–but stay! Consider that this great world of Rome and all the men and women in it were created by a “jingling fool” and a master of bad–not to say execrable–rhymes, and his name was William Shakespeare. You need to sit down and think awhile after that.

Brutus sends Lucilius and Titinius to bid the commanders lodge their companies for the night, and then all come to him. Then he gives Cassius a shock and strikes him to the heart for his share in the quarrel. It is almost directly after the row, when they have kicked out the “jingling fool” of a poet. Cassius does not know that Brutus has to-day received news of the death, in Rome, of his good and true wife Portia, who, during a fit of insanity, brought on by her grief and anxiety for Brutus, and in the absence of her attendant, has poisoned herself–or “swallowed fire,” as Shakespeare has it.

Brutus (to Lucius, his servant): Lucius, a bowl of wine!
Cassius: I did not think you could have been so angry.
Brutus: O Cassius, I am sick of many griefs.

Cassius: Of your philosophy you make no use,
If you give place to accidental evils.

Brutus: No man bears sorrow better:–Portia is dead.

Cassius: Ha! Portia!

Brutus: She is dead.

Cassius: How ‘scaped I killing when I cross’d you so!
O insupportable and touching loss!
Upon what sickness?

Brutus: Impatient of my absence,
And grief that young Octavius with Mark Antony
Have made themselves so strong: for with her death
That tidings came; with this she fell distract,
And, her attendants absent, swallowed fire.