Note 180 — Chapter V · THE DISILLUSIONMENT OF BRUTUS. PORTIA

Two objections have been made to this scene, or, rather to the whole act. The first, in Mr. Bradley’s words that it has a “tendency to drag” (Shakespearian Tragedy), is put more uncompromisingly by Mr. Baker (Development of Shakespeare as a Dramatist); “[Shakespeare] produced in Julius Caesar a fourth act probably not entirely successful even in his own day”; and afterwards he refers to it as “ineffective to-day.” In view of Digges’ testimony, it is difficult to see how Mr. Baker can say that it was not entirely successful in Shakespeare’s day. As to the impression it makes now, one must largely depend on one’s own feeling and experience. Certainly I myself have never been conscious that it dragged or was ineffective, nor have I noted that it failed to stir the audience. I have never been present at a first-rate performance, but I have seen it creditably presented in Germany, England and Australia; and on every occasion it seemed to me that the quarrel scene was the most popularly successful in the play. This statement is, I believe, strictly accurate, for having Digges’ lines in my mind I was on the watch to see whether the taste of the Elizabethan coincided with the taste of a later generation.