Page:Julius Caesar (1919) Yale.djvu/112

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100
The Tragedy of

mand a masculine pronoun, and Rowe accordingly, followed by several other editors, changed 'her' to 'his' in this line and line 51; but Elizabethan usage was less strict than classical, and Shakespeare's laxity was not a special peculiarity of his own.

I. i. 71. Lupercal. Ancient Roman festival of purification and expiation, celebrated February 15, and believed to give new life and fruitfulness to fields, flocks, and human beings. After due sacrifices had been offered, the chosen young men, called 'Luperci,' ran around the Palatine hill and struck with their thongs of goatskin those who stood in their way, thus warding off barrenness. These thongs were called 'februa,' from 'februare, to purify'; the day, 'dies februatus' ; and the whole month, 'februarius.'

I. ii. 154. walks. The famous and spacious paved Roman Ways, such as the 'Via Appia,' 'Via Sacra,' 'Via Flaminia,' etc., are here put for the city itself, by synecdoche. Or, another sound explanation is based on III. ii. 252; 'walks' thus would signify the parks and promenades forming the outlying suburbs of the city. Rowe's emendation, 'walls,' though widely accepted, is unnecessary and prosaic.

I. ii. 165. The punctuation in this line is that of Pope's second edition, and has been generally adopted; but the Folio gives a perfectly plausible reading without emendation: 'I would not so (with love I might entreat you) Be any further moved.'

I. ii. 198. my name. A Latin idiom, meaning 'I myself, Cæsar.' For parallels from Virgil, Milton, and the Bible, cf. R. C. Browne's note on Paradise Lost, II, 964, in the Clarendon Press edition of English Poems by John Milton, 1906.

I. ii. 203. he hears no music. Cf. Merchant of Venice, V. i. 83-88.

I. ii. 320. He should not humour me. 'He,' as is shown by the 'he' in the preceding line and the 'his'