Page:Psychology of the Unconscious (1916).djvu/382

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page needs to be proofread.

Brutus: Sheathe your dagger:
        Be angry when you will, it shall have scope:
        Do what you will, dishonor shall be humor.
        O Cassius, you are yoked with a lamb
        That carries anger as the flint bears fire:
        Who, much enforced, shows a hasty spark,
        And straight is cold again.

Cassius: Hath Cassius liv'd
        To be but mirth and laughter to his Brutus
        When grief and blood ill-tempered vexeth him?

Brutus: When I spoke that, I was ill-tempered too.

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

Brutus: And my heart too.

Cassius: O Brutus!

Brutus: What's the matter?

Cassius: Have not you love enough to bear with me
         When that rash humor 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.

The analytic interpretation of Cassius's irritability plainly reveals that at these moments he identifies himself with the mother, and his conduct, therefore, is truly feminine, as his speech demonstrates most excellently. For his womanish love-seeking and desperate subjection under the proud masculine will of Brutus calls forth the friendly remark of the latter, that Cassius is yoked with a lamb, that is to say, has something very weak in his character,