Note 161 — Chapter II · SHAKESPEARE’S TRANSMUTATION OF HIS MATERIAL
Reading edition
Coleridge’s exact words, in continuation of the passage already discussed may be quoted. “How too could Brutus say that he found no personal cause, none in Caesar’s past conduct as a man? Had he not passed the Rubicon? Had he not entered Rome as a conqueror? Had he not placed his Gauls in the Senate?—Shakespeare, it may be said, has not brought these things forward.—True;—and this is just the cause of my perplexity. What character did Shakespeare mean his Brutus to be?”
The verbal answer to this is of course that personal cause refers not to Caesar but to Brutus, and means that Brutus has no private grievance; but the substance of Coleridge’s objection remains unaffected, for Brutus proceeds to take Caesar’s character up to the present time under his protection.
It may be noted, however, that Plutarch says nothing about the Gauls. If Shakespeare had known of it, it would probably have seemed to him no worse than the presence of the Bretons, “those overweening rags of France,” as Richard III. calls them, in the army of the patriotic and virtuous Richmond.