You need to
sit down and think awhile after that.
Brutus sends Lucilius and Titinius to bid the commanders lodge their
companies for the night, and then all come to him. Then he gives
Cassius a shock and strikes him to the heart for his share in the
quarrel. It is almost directly after the row, when they have kicked
out the "jingling fool" of a poet. Cassius does not know that
Brutus has to-day received news of the death, in Rome, of his good and
true wife Portia, who, during a fit of insanity, brought on by her
grief and anxiety for Brutus, and in the absence of her attendant, has
poisoned herself--or "swallowed fire," as Shakespeare has it.
Brutus (to Lucius, his servant): Lucius, a bowl of wine!
Cassius: I did not think you could have been so angry.
Brutus: O Cassius, I am sick of many griefs.
Cassius: Of your philosophy you make no use,
If you give place to accidental evils.
Brutus: No man bears sorrow better:--Portia is dead.
Cassius: Ha! Portia!
Brutus: She is dead.
Cassius: How 'scaped I killing when I cross'd you so!
O insupportable and touching loss!
Upon what sickness?
Brutus: Impatient of my absence,
And grief that young Octavius with Mark Antony
Have made themselves so strong: for with her death
That tidings came; with this she fell distract,
And, her attendants absent, swallowed fire.
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