Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 5.djvu/157

 10*" s. v. FEB. 17, 1906.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

125

depingenti nomina, hseresium in spectaculo (in aula) quod choristarum moderator (Ric. Baull) ordin- avit."

A. R. BAYLEY.

St. Margaret's, Malvern.

(To be continued.)

" ET TU, BRUTE ! "

A FRIEND, who had been reading Ben Jonaon's comedy * Every Man out of his Humour,' asked me recently if there was ancient authority for this saying, which occurs in Act V. sc. iv. I told him that I had always believed it to be of classic origin, and that it would probably be found either in Plutarch or Suetonius. Shortly after- wards he showed me the "Mermaid" edition of the play, and pointed out a foot-note which stated that the origin of the phrase was unknown.

Jonson's comedy was acted in 1599, and was presented before Queen Elizabeth, in whose honour the epilogue was composed. The phrase may be said to be employed in a jocular sense in this play ; but if we turn to Shakespeare's * Julius Caesar,' III. i., we shall tind it used in all its tragic force. This work was first printed in the Folio of 1623, but there is evidence to show that it was produced before 1601 (S. Lee's 'Life of Wm. Shakespeare,' third ed., p. 211). Whether or not Jonson thought that his great rival was poaching in what he con- sidered his own preserves, it seems certain that the former had a dislike to this play, for both in his * Discoveries ' and in his III. i., which must have originally run : Know, Cresar doth not wrong but with just cause. As the above-mentioned comedy was pro- duced in 1625, it is clear that Jonson's strictures were not founded on the amended version as it appears in the Folio of 1623. But that is by the way.
 * Staple of News' he ridicules the line in

On the expression at the head of this note G. L. Craik, in his admirable book 'The English of Shakespeare, illustrated in a Philological Commentary on his "Julius Caesar'" (fourth ed, p. 224, London, 1869), writes as follows :

" There is no ancient Latin authority, I believe, for this famous exclamation, although in Suetonius, J., 82, Cicsar is made to address Brutus KOL <rv, TCKVOV; (and thou too, my son ?). It may have occurred as it stands here in the Latin play on the same subject which is recorded to have been acted at Oxford in 1582 ; and it is found in ' The True Tragedy of Richard, Duke of York,' first printed in 1595, on which the ' Third Part of King Henry the Sixth' is founded, as also in a poem by S. Nicholson, entitled 4 Acolastus His Afterwit,' printed in 1GOO, in both of which contemporary productions we have the

same line : 'Et tu, Brute ? Wilt thou stab Csesar too ? ' "

From this account one would gather that the phrase, employed first by Jonson and then by Shakespeare, so far as they are con- cerned, might have been taken from 'The- True Tragedy of Richard ' ; but the name 'Acolastus,' given to his poem by Nicholson,, suggests something else. This writer is said to be " notable for his plagiarisms from Shake- speare's 'Venus and Adonis' and 'Rape of Lucrece'" (Davenport's 'Diet, of English Literature'), and, as he mentions the expres- sion given at the head of this note, may he not have found it in "The Comedy of Acolastus, translated into our English Tongue, after such a manner as Children are taught in the Grammar School, &c, by John Pals- grave. Lond., 1540'"? The original author is said to be "Fullonius, William" (Lowndes, p. 757), about whom I know nothing.

It seems to me that the exclamation <! Eb tu, Brute ! " is very little different from that recorded by the historian of the first twelve Caesars in the eighty-second chapter of his life of Julius, where the assassination is described as follows :

" Finding himself now attacked on all hands with drawn swords, he wrapped up his head in his toga, and at the same time drew the lap of it over his legs, that he might fall the more decently, with the lower part of his body covered. He was stabbed with three-and-twenty wounds, fetching a groan only upon the first wound; though some authors relate that when M. Brutus came upon him, he said, ' What ! art thou one of them too, thou, my son ? ' "

Thomson, whose translation I have bor- rowed, subjoins the following note :

of the editions of Suetonius : but these words are not in the Salmasian copy, and I am strongly in- clined to reject their authority. It is extremely improbable that Cresar, who had never before avowed Brutus to be his son, should make so un- necessary an acknowledgment to that purpose, at the moment of his death. Exclusive of this objec- tion, the apostrophe seems too verbose, both for the suddenness and celerity of the occasion. But this is not all. Can we suppose that Csar, though a perfect master of the Greek, would at such a time have expressed himself in that language rather than the Latin, his familiar tongue, and in which he spoke with peculiar elegance? Upon the whole, the probability is that the words uttered by Cresar were ' Et tu, Brute!' which, while equally expressive of astonishment with the other, and even of tenderness, are both more natural and more emphatic." Pp. 65-6, London, 1796.
 * ' This passage is translated as it stands in most

Thomson seems to have been unaware that TCKVOV is frequently used as a term of endear- ment. But with his conclusion one does not feel disposed to quarrel.

JOHN T. CURRY.