Suffering, instead of steeling his
heart and drying up his sympathies, as it does with most men, softened
him, induced him to give himself wholly to that "angel, Pity." He will
not believe that his bitter experience is universal; in spite of
Herbert's betrayal, he still has the courage to declare his belief in
the existence of the ideal. At the very last his defeated Brutus cries:
"My heart doth joy that yet in all my life
I found no man but he was true to me."
The pathos of this attempt still to believe in man and man's truth is
over the whole play. But the belief was fated to disappear. No man who
lives in the world can boast of loyalty as Brutus did; even Jesus had a
Judas among the Twelve. But when Shakespeare wrote "Julius Caesar" he
still tried to believe, and this gives the play an important place in
his life's story.
Before I begin to consider the character of Brutus I should like to draw
attention to three passages which place Brutus between the melancholy
Jaques of "As You Like It," whose melancholy is merely temperamental,
and the almost despairing Hamlet.
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