Shakespeare uses 'meteor' repeatedly in the same
way. So in _Romeo and Juliet_, III, v, 13.]

[Note 48: The Folios give this line as it is here. Some
editors arrange it as the beginning of the letter repeated
ponderingly by Brutus.]

[Note 49-50: See quotation from Plutarch in note, p. 40, l.
143.]

[Page 46-47]

_Re-enter_ LUCIUS

LUCIUS. Sir, March is wasted fifteen days.

[_Knocking within_]

BRUTUS. 'T is good. Go to the gate; somebody knocks.

[_Exit_ LUCIUS]

Since Cassius first did whet me against Caesar, 61
I have not slept.
Between the acting of a dreadful thing
And the first motion, all the interim is
Like a phantasma or a hideous dream: 65
The Genius and the mortal instruments
Are then in council; and the state of a man,
Like to a little kingdom, suffers then
The nature of an insurrection.

[Note 59: /fifteen/ Ff | fourteen Theobald.]

[Note 60, 76: [_Exit_ LUCIUS] Ff omit.]

[Note 67: /a man/ F1 | man F2 F3 F4.]

[Note 59: /fifteen./ This, the Folio reading, is undoubtedly
correct. Lines 103-104 and 192-193 show that it is past
midnight, and Lucius is including in his computation the dawn
of the fifteenth day, a natural thing for any one to do,
especially a Roman.]

[Note 64: /motion/: prompting of impulse. Cf. _King John_, IV,
ii, 255.]

[Note 65: /phantasma/: a vision of things that are not.
"Shakespeare seems to use it ('phantasma') in this passage in
the sense of nightmare, which it bears in Italian."--Clar.
What Brutus says here is in the very spirit of Hamlet's
speeches. Cf. also the King's speech to Laertes, _Hamlet_, IV,
vii, 115-124, and _Macbeth_, I, vii, 1-28.]

[Note 66: Commentators differ about 'Genius' here; some taking
it for the 'conscience,' others for the 'anti-conscience.'
Shakespeare uses 'genius,' 'spirit,' and 'demon,' as
synonymous, and all three, apparently, both in a good sense
and in a bad, as every man was supposed to have a good and a
bad angel. So, in this play, IV, iii, 282, we have "thy evil
spirit"; in _The Tempest_, IV, i, 27, "our worser genius"; in
_Troilus and Cressida_, IV, iv, 52, "some say the Genius so
Cries 'come' to him that instantly must die"; in _Antony and
Cleopatra_, II, iii, 19, "Thy demon, that's thy spirit which
keeps thee"; where, as often, 'keeps' is 'guards.' I