A School Comment on Shake-Speare's Julius Cæsar

The following remarkable appreciation of Julius Cæsar has been put together without change of phrase or spelling from several examination papers lately presented at an academy in Pennsylvania.

Cæsar is a tradegy of blood. The piece about Shylock was almost bloody but the knife did n’t reach the breast of him. Cæsar wanted to be a tyrant but he did not want any crowns on his head so he refused them in broad daylight. He grew so big that he could straddle the world which scared indeed his men who were his enemies.

They came together one night when lions were rained down without chains in the streets of Italy, and when red lightenings were running this way and that. They were all there but Brutus who was the honorablest of all the men when Cæsar lived those days. Cassium and Cascada were much in the things. Then they threw through the windows of Brutuses’ orchard handing characters which made the heart of Brutus burn fierce over the dark state of the peoples’ rights among the citizens of Rome.

I pitied Brutus then as he read with tears falling about how he was noble and about how Cæsar was hard on the poor. Then he called his wife and sharpened up his blade and told her not to eat any fire that day as he could not fail to win the fight. But she ate the fire after jagging herself.

Cæsar thought maybe on going down street he might be stabbed but he told his wife that he never stood on draperies when it comes to scares. So out he went.

Then Cæsar reached the Senate safe, but Cascada stabbed him deep and Brutus gave him the most kindest cutting, which made the tyran yell, Eat, too, Brutus?

Then there was a fuss, now I tell you, but Cassium says to Brutus don’t give that Mark Anthony anything to say. Brutus got up and said a formality speech with all sentences weighed in balances to his friends, his Romans and their countrymen and they said that he could live long. Then he was nice enough to Anthony to hear him tell them how he had butchered a bleeding piece of earth and that it was better to bury Cæsar right off than to praise him. He had a will which he tried his best not to read. Then they pushed and yelled until he read it though.

The army came in and Brutus and Cassium put up tents. It was here that these two young men almost licked each other, had it not have been for the great honorability of Brutus which scared Cassium to stick his head back again into his tent. Brutus scared him most when he prayed God to dash at him with thunderbolts. Then afterwards they were as good as pie before long.

Brutus did n’t worry after he heard that his wife took a few hot coals. He called a servant and ran straight into his sword starting at the sharp end.

This play shows us Shakspear’s great knowledge of stabbing in various styles, and shows how familiar he is with army life before the beginning of England. The women he made up in it are very bashful, with dear love for their husbands. The style of writing is good excepting that North’s Plutarch helped too much.