Plutarch reports very briefly how on their first
meeting 'they went into a little chamber together
and bade every man avoid, and did shut the doors to
them. Then they began to pour out their complaints
one to the other, and grew hot and loud, earnestly
accusing one another, and at length fell both a
weeping.' In the height of their strife they are
interrupted by the 'counterfeit Cynic,* Fhaonius
(the Poet of the play). On the followii^ day they
again meet and exchange grave reproaches: Brutus
has condemned and noted Lucius Pelia; Cassius
remonstrates; Brutus bids him remember the Ides f
of March ; but neither now passes the timits of
debate. Finally, on the closing page of the life^
Plutarch records the death of Portia. All these
four strands are interwoven in Shakespeare's won-
derful scene. The 'hot and loud complaints'
and ' weepii^ ' of their first meeting are made



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Julius Cxsar

articulate with the arguments of their second. The
intrusion of the Cynic, instead of 'breaking off their
strife for that time,' throws a gleam of relieving
burlesque upon their restored harmony; and the
tidings of Portia's death, undermining the sources of
Brutus' Stoic self-control, give the clue to the uncon-
trolled outburst, as anger, of the passion so sternly
suppressed as grief. *I did not think you could
have been so angry,' says Cassius, and his anger is
as amazing to the reader as it is to Cas^us, until
this subtle trait renders it natural and pathetic.
Plutarch's character- drawing, like bis narrative,
suffers from his twofold rflle of historian and moralist
His Brutus is a compromise between the humane
idealist whom he wished to portray and the grasping
dodrinmre whom he was too honest wholly to efface.
