ABSTRACT
44 Julius Cesar expect some striking outcome. In Plutarch Brutus first made a speech in the Capitol 'to win the favour of the people and to justify that they had done.' He afterwards spoke in the marketplace on the day after the murder. The Life ofCresar asserts that the people gave them 'such audience that it seemed they neither greatly reproved nor allowed the fact: for by their silence they shewed that they were sorry for Cresar's death, and also that they did reverence Brutus.' According to the Life of Brutus, Brutus was heard quietly, 'howbeit, immediately after, they shewed that they were not all contented with the murther ... Insomuch that the conspirators returned again into the Capitol.' (Brutus, inf. 103). Cresar's funeral was discussed in the Senate two days after the murder, and there Antony proposed, and Brutus supported, public obsequies and the reading of Cresar's will. By omitting the Senate's part in the business Shakespeare has focused attention on the main antagonists and by shifting Brutus' speech to the funeral has made the contrast between them and the weakness of Brutus' judgement he more apparent. Plutarch observed that his major errors were two, to oppose the killing of Antony, and then to let him have his way over the funeral arrangements. Shakespeare adds two other proofs of Brutus' lack of realism-his belief that Antony would be their friend (III. r. 143) and his confidence that by speaking first he could prevent Antony from moving the people against them (ibid., 231-52). 'The infatuation is almost incredible', wrote MacCallum, commenting on Brutus' 'Quixotic exaltation'. Indeed, his is the hubris of the moral fanatic, and the audience foresees the end when Antony makes his exultant soliloquy (254-75), which is framed however in terms more suited to the Civil Wars of Pompey and Cresar than to what actually happened after Cresar's death. Shakespeare probably had C(lJsar's Revenge or Marlowe's Lucan in mind when he wrote
