271: "Nor the all-dreaded
thunder-stone."]

[Note 50: /cross:/ zigzag. So in _King Lear_, IV, vii, 33-35:

To stand against the deep, dread-bolted thunder?
In the most terrible and nimble stroke
Of quick, cross lightning?]

[Page 35]

CASSIUS. You are dull, Casca; and those sparks of life
That should be in a Roman you do want,
Or else you use not. You look pale and gaze
And put on fear and cast yourself in wonder, 60
To see the strange impatience of the heavens:
But if you would consider the true cause
Why all these fires, why all these gliding ghosts,
Why birds and beasts from quality and kind,
Why old men, fools, and children calculate; 65
Why all these things change from their ordinance,
Their natures and preformed faculties,
To monstrous quality, why, you shall find
That heaven hath infus'd them with these spirits,
To make them instruments of fear and warning 70
Unto some monstrous state.
Now could I, Casca, name to thee a man
Most like this dreadful night,
That thunders, lightens, opens graves, and roars
As doth the lion in the Capitol, 75
A man no mightier than thyself or me
In personal action, yet prodigious grown,
And fearful, as these strange eruptions are.

[Note 57-60: Five lines in Ff.]

[Note 65: /old men, fools, and/ | Old men, Fooles, and F1 F2 |
Old men, Fools, and F3 F4 | old men fools, and Steevens | old
men fool and White.]

[Note 74: /roars/ | roares F1 | teares F2.]

[Note 60: /cast yourself in:/ throw yourself into a state of.
In previous editions of Hudson's Shakespeare Jervis's
conjecture 'case' for 'cast' was adopted. The change is
unnecessary. Cf. _Cymbeline_, III, ii, 38: "Though forfeiters
you cast in prison."]

[Note 63-68: The construction here is involved, and the
grammar confused, but the meaning is clear enough. The general
idea is that of elements and animals, and even human beings,
acting in a manner out of or against their nature, or changing
their natures and original faculties from the course in which
they were ordained to move, to monstrous or unnatural modes of
action.]

[Note 64: /from quality and kind:/ turn from their disposition
and nature. Emerson and Browning use 'quality' (cf. l. 68) in
this old sense of 'disposition.' 'Kind,' meaning 'nature,' is
common in Shakespeare.]

[Note 65: There seems no necessity for cha