n Hotspur and his wife
in _1 King Henry IV_, II, iii, will prove a suggestive study.
The description of the development of Portia's suspicion here
is taken directly from Plutarch. "Out of his house he (Brutus)
did so frame and fashion his countenance and looks that no man
could discern he had anything to trouble his mind. But when
night came that he was in his own house, then he was clean
changed: for either care did wake him against his will when he
would have slept, or else oftentimes of himself he fell into
such deep thoughts of this enterprise, casting in his mind all
the dangers that might happen: that his wife, lying by him,
found that there was some marvellous great matter that
troubled his mind, not being wont to be in that taking, and
that he could not well determine with himself."--Plutarch,
_Marcus Brutus_.]

[Note 237: Double negatives abound in Shakespeare. See Abbott,
Sect. 406.]

[Note 250: /humour:/ moody caprice. The word comes to have
this meaning from the theory of the old physiologists that
four cardinal humors--blood, choler or yellow bile, phlegm,
and melancholy or black bile--determine, by their conditions
and proportions, a person's physical and mental qualities. The
influence of this theory survives in the application of the
terms 'sanguine,' 'choleric,' 'phlegmatic,' and 'melancholy'
to disposition and temperament.]

[Note 254: /condition:/ disposition, temper. So in _The
Merchant of Venice_, I, ii, 143: "If he have the condition of
a saint and the complexion of a devil, I had rather he should
shrive me than wive me." Cf. the term 'ill-conditioned,' still
in use to describe an irascible or quarrelsome disposition. In
l. 236 'condition' refers to bodily health.]

[Note 255: /Dear my lord./ This transposition, common in
earnest address, is due to close association of possessive
adjective and noun.]

[Page 60]

BRUTUS. I am not well in health, and that is all.

PORTIA. Brutus is wise, and, were he not in health,
He would embrace the means to come by it.

BRUTUS. Why, so I do. Good Portia, go to bed. 260

[Page 61]

PORTIA. Is Brutus sick? and is it physical
To walk unbraced and suck up the humours
Of the dank morning? What, is Brutus sick,
And will he steal out of his wholesome bed,
To dare the vile contagion of the night, 265
And tempt the rheumy and unpurged air
To add unto his sickness? No, my Brutus;
You have so