Chapter Brunenburg to Brutus and Cicero of B by Brewer's Readers Handbook

John P. Kemble seems to me always to play best those characters in which there is a predominating tinge of some over-mastering passion…The patrician pride of “Coriolanus,” the stoicism of “Brutus,” the vehemence of “Hotspur,” mark the class of characters I mean.—Sir W. Scott.

In the life of C. M. Young, we are told that Edmund Kean in “Hamlet,” “Coriolanus,” “Brutus”…never approached within any measurable distance of the learned and majestic Kemble.

Brutus. Et tu, Brute! Shakespeare, on the authority of Suetonius, puts these words into the mouth of Cæsar when Brutus stabbed him. Shakespeare’s drama was written in 1607, and probably he had seen The True Tragedy of Richard duke of York (1600), where these words occur; but even before that date H. Stephens had said—

Jule Cesar, quand il vit que Brutus aussi estoit de ceux qui luy tirient des coups d’espee, luy dit, Kai sy tecnon? c’est à dire…Et toy mon fils, en es tu aussi.—Deux Dial. du Noveau Lang. Franc (1583).

Brutus and Cicero. Cicero says, “Cæsare interfecto, statim, cruentum alte extollens M. Brutus pugionem Ciceronem nominatim exclamavit, atque ei recuperatam libertatem est gratulatus.”—Philippics, ii. 12.

When Brutus rose,
Refulgent from the stroke of Cæsar’s fate,
…[he] called aloud
On Tully’s name, and shook his crimson steel,
And bade the “father of his country” hail.
   —Akenside: Pleasures of Imagination, i.