[In the essay, Smith maintains that Brutus's most distinguishing trait is his willfulness, which is strengthened and guided by his self-righteous belief in his own virtue.]

For the last century and a half the most frequent critical comments upon Shakespeare's portrait of Brutus have been that he is imperfectly realized, that Shakespeare himself did not understand him, or that he is too virtuous a person ever to have been alive. Coleridge asked, "What character did Shakespeare mean his Brutus to be?" E. E. Stoll wrote that the chief thing in Brutus is "the neglect of analysis or motivation.… He is acting from some lofty and solemn sense of duty—he is a reformer, though without a cause or motive—we can see no more.… His conduct … is, as conceived by Shakespeare, unjustified." Granville-Barker repeatedly laid his burden at Shakespeare's door by writing, "Shakespeare himself is still fumbling … and why should his Brutus not be fumbling too?" And further on, "The plain fact is, one fears, that Shakespeare, even if he can say he understands Brutus, can in this last analysis make nothing of him.… Shakespeare … is not sufficiently attuned to this tragedy of intellectual integrity, of principles too firmly held". So also Margaret Webster, Donald Stauffer, and most recently, J. C. Maxwell: "Brutus is a puzzle." M. W. MacCallum, Brander Matthews, Hardin Craig, Harold C. Goddard, and many others have considered Brutus' nature too delicate and fine for the harsh world he lives in.

The first of the two chief theses of the present interpretation is that the central quality of Brutus is not his virtue. It is his will. His virtue is the splendid muffling that clothes his will, that hides it from all cynical, envious eyes, that garbs a thoroughly egotistical willfulness in the white radiance of incorruptible principle. His virtue is his preoccupation, whence his unworldliness, and his virtue is his self-justification, whence his invariable insistence upon his own way. With his virtue he fools everyone, even himself. A close inspection of his lines shows that his will is the chief constant of his behavior, and that that will is impregnably fortified with his rock-solid belief in his own virtue. His strength is as the strength of ten because he thinks his heart is pure. This pattern was further enhanced by the fact that both friends (I. iii. 157-160; II. i.90-93) and enemies (V. v. 68-77) took him at his own face value, reinforcing by look, gesture, and voice his own opinion of himself.

The second main thesis here is that Brutus' character is not a mystery, not something beyond anyone's—including Shakespeare's—comprehension, but instead is a presentation of the surface of a recurrent personality type that certainly embodies conflicts but that is certainly not inexplicable. The demonstration of this second thesis is dependent upon a demonstration of the first.

The conspicuous virtue for which Brutus had a reputation was recognized by the conspirators and they planned to make use of it (I.iii.161-164). What they apparently had not counted on was his assuming full control immediately. This assumption of control appears in everything, from major questions of policy to the most trivial matters. Although it does not appear until immediately after Brutus joins the conspirators, it is foreshadowed in the first scene. Cassius says to him: "You bear too stubborn and too strange a hand / Over your friend that loves you" (I.ii.35-36). In context this means that Brutus has been less friendly to Cassius than was usual, but on a more general level it describes perfectly the behavior that Brutus will display. The play contains at least fourteen ocasions in which Brutus proceeds to dominate or to domineer over his fellows. These occasions are the following:

1. When Cassius brings the conspirators to Brutus' house (H.i.86), he and Brutus whisper together while the rest make polite small-talk about the sunrise (II.i. 101-111). Their subject, where the sun will come up, has symbolic irony, since they are met to bring about a sunrise of "Peace, freedom, and liberty" (III.i.110), which they will never see. When Brutus and Cassius return to the group, Brutus speaks first: "Give me your hands all over, one by one" (II.i. 112). Cassius suggests they swear, but Brutus at once over-rules him:

No, not an oath! If not the face of men,
The sufferance of our souls, the time's
 abuse,—
If these be motives weak, break off betimes,
And every man hence to his idle bed.
                                (II.i.114-117)

There follows a long lecture of high moral tone.

• When the lecture ends, Cassius, Casca, Cinna, and Metellus concur in the opinion that Cicero should be included, but Brutus overrules them:

O, name him not; let us not break with him,
For he will never follow anything
That other men begin.
                                (II.i.150-152)

Virtuous Brutus is not like that. Has he not joined the conspirators late? almost last? The suggestion that Cicero be included is dropped.

• Decius then asks if anyone else should be "touch'd", and Cassius says Antony is too close to Caesar and too dangerous to be spared (II.i. 154-161). Brutus at once overrules him:

Our course will seem too bloody, Caius
   Cassius,
To cut the head off and then hack the limbs,
Like wrath in death and envy afterwards;
For Antony is but a limb of Caesar.
Let's be sacrificers, but not butchers, Caius.
                                           (II.i.162-166)

That last line of seemingly gentle moral admonition is patronizing in its assumption of the moral superiority of the speaker over the admonished and allows no room for the dissent of anyone but a butcher. Uncontradicted, Brutus soars up to the perfectly fatuous:

Caesar must bleed for it! And, gentle friends,
Let's kill him boldly, but not wrathfiilly;
Let's carve him as a dish fit for the gods,
Not hew him as a carcass fit for hounds;
We shall be call'd purgers, not murderers.
                                         (II.i.171-180)

But murder is murder though it be called a rose, and Brutus' choice of euphemism certainly anticipated a comparable usage of the twentieth century.

• Cassius objects again: "Yet I fear him; / For in the ingrafted love he bears to Caesar—" (II.i. 183-184). Brutus interrupts and overrules again:

Alas, good Cassius, do not think of him.
If he love Caesar, all that he can do
Is to himself—take thought and die for
 Caesar.
                                    (II.i.185-187)

Brutus has not even listened to Cassius' reasons. Instead, he offers his own: " … he is given / To sports, to wildness, and much company" (II.i. 188-189). Brutus is so infatuated with his own seriousness and what he thinks is his own superiority that he thinks anyone so frivolous as Antony must be a weak and shallow thing. What he doesn't realize is that the lack of inhibition in such a person as Antony may be the very thing that releases such enormous energies. However, Brutus' opinion wins:

Treb. There is no fear in him; let him not die;
For he will live, and laugh at this hereafter.
                                    (II.i.190-191)

• These lines of Trebonius have a jolly, indulgent ring, and we can imagine all the conspirators but Cassius agreeing here, with sage nods and smiles and much head-bobbing, as with the consideration of Cicero, whereupon Brutus again asserts control: "Peace! count the clock" (II.i. 192). At his exclamation, the whole group falls silent and for a few moments remains so. Following the preceding incidents, this famous anachronism—so insignificant by itself—becomes a superb demonstration of Brutus' psychological necessity to exercise control. The incident makes clear that Brutus demands control for its own sake, and that the most trivial pretext imaginable will suffice.
• Metellus presently inquires why Caius Ligarius has not been asked, and Brutus, who has just joined the conspiracy, not Cassius, who organized it, answers:

Now, good Metellus, go along by him.
He loves me well, and I have given him
 reasons;
Send him but hither, and I'll fashion him.
                                         (II.i.218-220)

Brutus is in charge, and the word "fashion" implies that he will work his will.

• When Ligarius appears, Brutus does not say, "Come with me"; he says, "Follow me" (II.i.334).
• The next morning at Caesar's house, Caesar dominates the scene, but Brutus, in his way, is there. Caesar asks, "What is't o'clock?" There are nine other persons present who might have answered, but it is Brutus who does so (II.ii.114).

Brutus, it must be granted, could not have exercised this power had the people around him not allowed it, and one can see this, for example, in a remark by the already-much-overruled Cassius shortly after Caesar's murder:

Dec. What, shall we forth?
Cas.            Ay, every man away.
Brutus shall lead; and we will grace his heels
With the most boldest and best hearts of
  Rome.
                                (III.i. l19-121)

Antony, moreover, sends his servant not to Cassius but to Brutus (III.i. 122-137). Brutus, on the other hand, had not been accorded this leadership unless he had been ready, willing, and more than willing to exercise it.

• Immediately after the assassination Metellus cries out for the conspirators to be wary: "Stand fast together, lest some friend of Caesar's / Should chance—" (III.i.87-88). Brutus interrupts and redirects activity:

Talk not of standing. Publius, good cheer;
There is no harm intended to your person,
Nor to no Roman else. So tell them, Publius.
                                 (III.i.89-91)

His estimate of the mob is not shared by Cassius: "And leave us, Publius; lest that the people, / Rushing on us, should do your age some mischief" (III.i.92-93). Being by implication overruled, Brutus takes refuge in the explicit expression of virtue, namely, of the very attitude of responsibility already implied in Cassius' preceding lines: "Do so: and let no man abide this deed, / But we the doers" (III.i.94-95). Later in the same scene his attitude toward the mob has changed: "Only be patient till we have appeas'd / The multitude, beside themselves with fear" (III.i.179-180). The word "appeas'd" could suggest something to fear, but the next line is so very patronizing that "appeas'd" is probably used only in the sense of "soothe" or "pacify". Both his trust and his patronage are misplaced.

• When Antony makes his second long address to the dead Caesar, Cassius' qualms are aroused again and he asks where Antony stands (III.i.211-217). Antony's answer, a friend on condition of knowing "Why or wherein Caesar was dangerous" (III.i.220-222), gives Brutus his chance for an apparently moral but really self-righteous reentry:

Or else were this a savage spectacle.
Our reasons are so full of good regard
That were you, Antony, the son of Caesar,
You should be satisfied.
                               (III.i.223-226)

He does all the dealing with Antony from there to the end of the scene.

(11) When Antony requests permission to speak at Caesar's funeral, Cassius objects twice, but he is again overruled by Brutus:

Cas. … Know you how much the people
  may be mov'd
By that which he will utter?
Bru.   By your pardon.
I will myself into the pulpit first
And show the reason of our Caesar's death.

Cas. I know not what my fall; I like it not.
Bru. Mark Antony, here, take you Caesar's
  body.
You shall not in your funeral speech blame
 us.
                                 (III.i.234-245)

Brutus' decision here is the fatal mistake; he and Cassius are never in agreement about Antony until the end, and although Cassius proves to have been right (V.i.45-47), it is Brutus' bad judgment that always prevails.

• The self-righteous willfulness of Brutus stands most fully revealed to us in the second and third scenes of Act IV. Cassius comes charging down on the expectant (IV.ii.13-19) Brutus with the declaration, "Most noble brother, you have done me wrong" (IV.ii.37). Brutus' answer drips with injured innocence and un-conscious hypocrisy: "Judge me, you gods! wrong I mine enemies? / And, if not so, how should I wrong a brother?" (IV.ii.38-39). This answer, so full of sanctimonious, imitation surprise, contains some fascinating assumptions, namely, that if one would not wrong an enemy, he could not wrong a friend, that Brutus never wrongs an enemy, and therefore that Brutus, like Caesar, "doth not wrong". But Caesar had been Brutus' friend, had shown him his love, and had advanced him to the praetorship; yet Brutus led the faction that murdered him. The rationalization by which he talked his virtue into acquiescence will be discussed presently.

Cassius is not to be put off with humbug. He makes one of those Shakespearian answers that forward the plot and at the same time express a general truth: "Brutus, this sober form of yours hides wrongs" (IV.ii.40).

Brutus' answer is to plead the impropriety of their wrangling before the troops, and so they enter the tent. In the ensuing quarrel (IV.iii.1-110) Brutus bears down Cassius on every point with moral indignation (eight times) or with naked will (nine times). The cause of the quarrel is Brutus' condemnation of Cassius' man Lucius Pella for extortion (IV.iii.1-28), and yet one of the reproaches Brutus throws at Cassius is that he failed to send to Brutus gold to pay his legions with (IV.iii.69-77). Brutus' position is illogical to the point of being irrational: he demands Cassius produce the funds for all their forces and he denies him the only means by which it could be done. Both logically and practically the wronged man in this argument is Cassius. Nevertheless Cassius is consistently undermined by Brutus' flamboyant and specious virtue; to that and to Brutus' remorseless anger Cassius loses the argument. Halfway through it he breaks, bleats, and retracts:

You wrong me every way; you wrong me
 Brutus;
I said an elder soldier, not a better.
Did I say "better"?
                                (IV.iii.55-57)

But Brutus carries on again as long, and not until Cassius offers his dagger to Brutus to kill him with (IV.iii.105) is Brutus sure enough of his victory to be satisfied. Having won again, he can subside:

O Cassius, you are yoked with a lamb
That carries anger as the flint bears fire;
Who, much enforced, shows a hasty spark,
And straight is cold again.
                             (lV.iii.110-113)

It is no hasty spark that burns twice as long as the opposition, and no lamb that rages on until that opposition is reduced from recantation to distraction and then to abject humiliation. Brutus likes to think of his virtue as being his strength:

There is no terror, Cassius, in your threats,
For I am armed so strong in honesty
That they pass by me as the idle wind,
Which I respect not.
                               (IV.iii.66-69)

From this virtue he thought his righteous will derived, but as this quarrel shows, his virtue is the shining armor of his will, and in this scene his angry will shatters that dazzling casing.

• On the very next occasion of difference with Cassius, Brutus again insists upon his own way:

Bru. Well, to our work alive. What do you
  think
Of marching to Philippi presently?
Cas. I do not think it good.
Bru.              Your reason?
Cas.                 This it is:
'Tis better that the enemy seek us.
So shall he waste his means, weary his
  soldiers,
Doing himself offence; whilst we, lying still,
Are full of rest, defence, and nimbleness.
Bru. Good reasons must, of force, give place
  to better.
                                    (IV.iii.196-203)

He then offers military grounds for his view. Cassius begins to object: "Hear me, good brother" (IV.iii.213). He gets no further. Brutus offers more good reasons, apparently military ones, and when he runs out of those, he shifts into his moral high gear with the famous lines about the tide in the affairs of men (IV.iii.218-221). Whether these lines be generally true who knows? But certainly they were not true either of Brutus' situation or of his proposal. The abundance and diversity of his reasons indicate rationalization. Cassius acquiesces (IV.iii.224-225), but subsequent remarks by Antony and Octavius (V.i.1-12) show Cassius to have been right and Brutus wrong—again.

• That Cassius has been effectively subordinated to Brutus' will is well shown by how they say good night:

Bru.        Everything is well.
Cas. Good-night, my lord.
                                      (IV.iii.236-237)

Cassius, for the first time in the play, calls him "my lord". Brutus, who has had his way in everything and with whom "everything is well", can now be all sweetness and light, virtue and loving kindness: "Bru. Good-night, good brother."

Of these fourteen occasions only about half can be said to have a nominal source in Plutarch. The rest are entirely Shakespeare's addition, as is his handling of them all. On most of these occasions we can see that Brutus uses his own and others' belief in his virtue as a cloak for relentless willfulness and that the judgment this willfulness implements is usually bad. Such handling, derived from the slightest hints in Shakespeare's source, converts his Brutus into a substantially different figure from the Brutus of Plutarch.

A natural concomitant to Brutus' need to run everything, and to his use of his own well-advertised virtue as justification for doing so, is his conscious conviction that he has no substantial faults: he is pure intellect and pure virtue happily united in a self-sufficient team. This attitude is well shown by the measured tone, considerate, thoughtful, and noncommittal, of his reply to Cassius' first overtures (I.ii.162-175), by his irritation at Casca's flippant and cynical reportage (I.ii.220-300), and by his grave, impartial leave-taking from Cassius (I.ii.307-310).

However, in the soliloquy in which he decides that Caesar must be murdered (II.i. 10-34) one can see his virtue and his intellect working together to produce only rationalization. He admits that he has no personal reason to kill Caesar (II.i. 10-12); he admits Caesar has shown no sign of his emotions overpowering his reason (II.i. 19-21); although he says he fears what the crown might do to Caesar's character (II.i.12-17, 21-27), he admits that there were no grounds for supposing a change would come about:

      And, since the quarrel
Will bear no colour for the thing he is,
Fashion it thus: that what he is, augmented,
Would run to these and these extremities.
                                  (II.i.28-31)

In spite of this evident lack of grounds, Brutus refers to Caesar not twenty minutes later as "high-sighted tyranny" (II.i. 118). That was what he wanted to think. Actually, Brutus' sole grounds for murdering Caesar are such generalizations as this: "Th' abuse of greatness is when it disjoins / Remorse from power" (II.i.18-19). The irony of those lines is that they apply to Brutus, not to Caesar. It is certainly psychologically as well as dramatically significant that this soliloquy opens with what should properly be its conclusion: "It must be by his death" (II.i. 10). It seems unlikely that crowning Caesar could have augmented any further the power he already wielded. Knowing what we now do of Brutus' will, we can surmise that Brutus agreed upon the assassination because he could not bear the thought of anyone's being able to rule over him.

Brutus, upon a grim joke by Cassius, also rationalizes Caesar's death with incongruous but characteristic paraphernalia of benignity:

Cas. Why, he that cuts off twenty years of life
Cuts off so many years of fearing death.
Bru. Grant that, and then is death a benefit;
So are we Caesar's friends, that have abridg'd
His time of fearing death.
                                        (III.i.101-105)

It is also characteristic of Brutus that he verbalizes what was already implied in Cassius' brief remark. (Cf. III.i.89-95, 111-116.)

Brutus also rationalizes repeatedly in the quarrel with Cassius, already discussed, and in his arguments for marching to Philippi, which move proved so disastrous in the event. We are probably intended to suppose that his real reason for wanting to march to Philippi was to get the battle over with.

A person like Brutus, who orders his life according to reason and virtue, may make mistakes, but he thinks he can scarcely have faults. Feeling free of faults himself, he can take out his aggressions in a consciousness of other people's faults, and while virtue dictates that the observation of them should be kindly, virtue also dictates that one should be firm.

"Fault", "blame", and their more specific variants are common words with Brutus. When he rings for his boy Lucius, who proves asleep, he reflects: "I would it were my fault to sleep so soundly" (II.i.4). This remark is not the same as merely saying, "I wish I could sleep so soundly", or "I wish I could barter my cares for his peace". It also means that Brutus is virtuously tending to his responsibilities and that the boy is at fault for not doing the same. When the conspirators depart, he again lets the boy sleep with similar remarks about their respective conditions, thereby once more demonstrating his virtue (II.i.229-233). When after Cassius' departure on the night Brutus sees the ghost Lucius proves asleep again, Brutus says: "What, thou speak'st drowsily? / Poor knave, I blame thee not; thou art o'erwatch'd" (IV.iii.240-241). When he receives his dressing gown and finds the missing book he says: "Look, Lucius, here's the book I sought for so; /I put it in the pocket of my gown" (IV.iii.252-253). Lucius' answer shows that he had been blamed for it:

Luc. I was sure your lordship did not give it
  me.
Bru. Bear with me, good boy, I am much
  forgetful.
                                     (IV.iii.254-255)

This last line is the only outright apology he ever makes. When the boy falls asleep again, he says: "Gentle knave, good-night. / I will not do thee so much wrong to wake thee" (IV.iii.269-270). If to wake him would be to wrong him, to let him sleep must be virtuous. But a very few minutes later, after he brazens the ghost back into thin air, he once more wakens that stuporous boy to ask the silliest question ever, namely, Had he spoken in his sleep? (IV.iii.290-297). In brief, if the boy does not supply Brutus' wants upon demand, he is to blame; if the boy is allowed to sleep because Brutus wants nothing, Brutus is virtuous for leaving the boy alone.

In his quarrel with Cassius he says: "I do not like your faults" (IV.iii.89). Cassius in his distraction summarizes Brutus' behavior toward himself:

… Cassius is aweary of the world;
Hated by one he loves; brav'd by his brother;
Check'd like a bondman; all his faults observ'd,
Set in a note-book, learn'd and conn'd by rote
To cast into my teeth.
                                       (IV.iii.95-99)

The closest Brutus comes to admitting his own fault in this scene is in the following exchange:

Cos. Hath Cassius liv'd
To be but mirth and laughter to his Brutus,
When grief and blood ill-temper'd vexeth
  him?
Bru. When I spoke that, I was ill-temper'd
  too.
Cas. Do you confess so much? Give me your
  hand.
                                     (IV.iii.113-117)

The incident of the intruding poet (IV.iii.124-138), although perhaps included to provide a few moments of comic relief, also illuminates Brutus' character. The poet delivers to Brutus the same kind of moral indignation as he has been so recently plying Cassius with, and on a point that Brutus had himself already made at the beginning of the scene (IV.ii.42-45); nevertheless, and in spite of his usual self-vaunted kindliness to the lowly, Brutus rejects him with angry contempt:

Bru. Get you hence, sirrah; saucy fellow,
  hence!
Cas. Bear with him, Brutus; 'tis his fashion.
Bru. I'll know his humour, when he knows
  his time.
What should the wars do with these jigging
  fools?
Companion, hence!
                            (IV.iii.134-138)

Lean and hungry Cassius is here the more tolerant of the two. Brutus' versions of kindness and virtue both seem to depend upon his not being crossed. That he himself should be blamed is intolerable. His second line to Antony, when he gives him permission to speak in Caesar's funeral, is this: "You shall not in your funeral speech blame us" (III.i.245). Before the battle of Philippi, when Antony taunts Brutus and Cassius so unmercifully, Cassius reminds Brutus of their past differences:

… Now, Brutus, thank yourself;
This tongue had not offended so to-day
If Cassius might have rul'd.
                                (V.i.45-47)

Brutus admits no fault by making no reply at all, and as soon as he can, he compensates by twice parading his conspicuous virtue before Octavius:

Bru. Caesar, thou canst not die by traitors'
  hands
Unless thou bring'st them with thee.
Oct.                           So I hope;
I was not born to die on Brutus' sword.
Bru. O, if thou wert the noblest of thy strain,
Young man, thou couldst not die more
 honourable.
                                 (V.i.56-60)

Brutus' last use of the term "blame" occurs when Cassius asks him what he will do if they lose the battle. For lack of anything better, Brutus trots out his old trumpery again, but it can not do service any more, and he senses it. The broken sentences and distracted language of his answer demonstrate the spiritual bankruptcy to which his arrant will and curdled virtue have brought him:

Even by the rule of that philosophy
By which I did blame Cato for the death
Which he did give himself,—I know not how,
But I do find it cowardly and vile,
For fear of what might fall, so to prevent
The time of life:—arming myself with
 patience
To stay the providence of some high powers
That govern us below.
                                (V.i.101-108)

He cannot openly abandon his philosophy, even though continued adherence to it implies condemnation of his beloved Portia, who had so recently committed suicide for him. Cassius, as keen-minded as ever, offers the alternative: to march captive in a triumphal procession. To Brutus that is equally impossible. He promptly contradicts himself with more of the old hollow noise:

No, Cassius, no. Think not, thou noble
 Roman,
That ever Brutus will go bound to Rome;
He bears too great a mind.
                               (V.i.111-113)

His philosophy, which had never been more than a specious structure of rationalizations for the various impulses of his character, he abandons, and, though it be "cowardly and vile," he chooses "to prevent the time of life" by running upon his sword rather than submit to the humiliation of someone else's triumph. But right to the end he preserves his habitual mask of kindly virtue: "My heart doth joy that yet in all my life /I found no man but he was true to me." (V.v.34-35) Caesar could not have said so much, and perhaps we are meant to suppose that ironic fact present in Brutus' mind as he dies: "Caesar, now be still; / I kill'd not thee with half so good a will" (V.v.50-51). Self-conscious and deliberate virtue and reason, the apparently infallible guides of conduct, proved inadequate. The best remark on Brutus is a multi-level one made by sleepy-headed Lucius: "The strings, my lord, are false" (IV.iii.292).

So much of Brutus' apparent high-mindedness, integrity, thoughtfulness and consideration have been shown to be either conditional or masks for something less admirable that it may be thought he has no good left in him. However, his diluted or deflected virtues are evidence of a wish to do what is right, and however misguided, they are more admirable than Caesar's megalomania or Antony's amorality. The fact that Brutus' virtue misfired is to be attributed to his will rather than to intrinsic fault in the virtue.

One of the more commendable aspects of his virtue is that he evidently did feel both guilt and remorse over Caesar's murder. He says that all the conspirators were full of pity (III.i.165-176), but there is no evidence that Cassius, Casca, or Cimber felt any, and Brutus' remarks may be interpreted as both guilt and projection. Somewhat earlier, Brutus describes the paralyzing conflict within himself (II.i.61-69), and he shows a momentary revulsion when the conspirators arrive (II.i.77-85). When Caesar invites the conspirators as friends to drink some wine (II.ii.126-127), Brutus in an aside grieves that he can not drink as a friend (II.ii.128-129). His response is very different from the treacherous aside of Trebonius (II.ii.124-125). When the assassination has been committed, Brutus more than anyone displays a terrible cheerfulness (III.i.89-121) that masks his inner desolation, which in turn betrays itself in the need for social and cosmic reassurance (III.i.89-90, 116-118, are social; 111-116 are cosmic). In the quarrel with Cassius evidence of guilty feelings reappears in his mention of Caesar as "the foremost man of all this world" (IV.iii. 19-22). It is natural that in a quarrel with his chief confederate, doubts as to the wisdom of his decisions should reactivate his sense of guilt. The last evidences of his guilty feelings appear as fortune goes against him at Philippi (V.iii.94-96), and when he takes his punishment with a mixture of dismay (V.v.35-38) and relief (V.v.50-51).

The happiest thing about Brutus is his relationship with his wife. Except for the curious second report of her death (IV.iii. 181-195), this relationship is in all respects commendable and illustrates the best side of his character. Portia's speeches are long, in contrast to his, but he suffers them to roll out their length. Her reproaches are engaging:

       You've ungently, Brutus,
Stole from my bed.
                                      (II.i.237-238)

And this:

       Am I yourself
But, as it were, in sort or limitation,
To keep with you at meals, comfort your bed,
And talk to you sometimes? Dwell I but in
 the suburbs
Of your good pleasure? If it be no more,
Portia is Brutus' harlot, not his wife.
                                          (II.i.282-287)

The fact that she can make these reproaches, especially the last quoted, demonstrates the non-authoritarian character of their marriage, in contrast to the lord-and-master one of Caesar and Calpurnia. And in contrast to Caesar, Brutus grants her request, as can be seen from the subsequent confusion between Portia and Lucius (II.iv). This equality between man and wife which allows no differences not peculiar to physiology or the accidents of vocation is psychologically and ethically the most admirable marital relationship. It has probably existed in all ages, as has its antithesis. Brutus also performs on several occasions small acts of kindness for other people—as when he bids his men to sleep (IV.iii.246-250) or when he takes the lute from the sleeping boy (IV.iii.271-272).

To summarize, we may say that Brutus' faults are seated at the very heart of his character. Although his behavior, even to himself, is clothed in the habit (both dress and custom) of virtue, his basic motivation is egotistical satisfaction of his will, for, as has been shown, he rules or overrules on all occasions, with brandished virtue if possible, without it if he must. In spite of all the external kindliness, he is more overbearing than Caesar, for Caesar allowed himself to be talked out of going to the capàtol and then back into it, but Brutus never bends so much. By various processes he elevates himself above his fellows even more than Caesar. Caesar demanded the outward forms of domination: Brutus, the essence. It is small wonder, then, that he fell in with Cassius' plans. As a means of implementing his will he engages in what might be called the conspicuous consumption of virtue. His own brand of virtue he elevates into an idol which no man may question except on pain of being morally corrupt. Brutus' character fault is overbearing will; his moral fault is Greek hybris or Christian pride—pride in his virtue and his righteousness. His specific virtues, therefore, which are in such frequent evidence, are nevertheless peripheral. He is apparently high-minded, honest, kind, and trusting; more important, he is capable of proper feelings of guilt and remorse. Whether the everyday practice of his peripheral virtues outweigh the less obvious but central faults must be a matter of private judgment.

As was said much earlier in this article, Shakespeare has presented us with the surface of a character. It is a many-faceted surface, with what to many people seem to be inconsistencies, and there is no direct revelation in the play of the source traits or the basic character structure that it would be so pleasant to be able to suppose Shakespeare had in mind when he constructed Brutus. Moreover, it is a portrait different from the one in Plutarch. Although we obviously cannot project twentieth-century concepts backward in time and suppose them to exist in a sixteenth-century dramatic representation, the present writer would like to suggest as the second main thesis of this article that Brutus is nevertheless a fairly full surface presentation of a re-current type of human being which does regularly show comparable surface traits and which does have an internal, psychological consistency. Certainly it is not possible to speak of Brutus as having been equipped by Shakespeare with all the modern apparatus of un-conscious mental life; but equally certainly it is possible to say that the behavior of Brutus parallels the surface behavior of modern persons whose unconscious mental life is explicable in analytic terms.

In one of his last books Freud divided the mental life of the human being into three main realms: superego, ego, and id. The superego is popularly equated with conscience; it is a collective term designating the functions of unconscious mental life that have to do with introjected values. Id is a collective term for the many unconscious and often anti-social forces in mental life; one such force is the need to control, to dominate, or to domineer. Ego is the term for the functions of mediation between the individual and external reality; it has "originated in the experiences of the perceptual system". Freud declared that the ego had three harsh masters: the superego, the id, and external reality.

In impractical and ineffectual reformers, do-gooders, and like persons obsessed with one or more systems of ethics who, like their Puritan prototypes, are also determined to see that things are run "properly", we see the effects of a tyrannical superego in its struggle against both id and ego. The superego tyrannizes over the ego but it cannot affect the id, which exerts equal or greater pressure on the ego for its own satisfactions. In this war between id and superego, the ego is not so much a battleground as a much-mauled mediator, and in trying to compromise the demands of the insatiable id and of the inexorable superego, the ego is not only proliferates rationalizations but also quite fails to perform what in less tormented persons is its proper function, namely, the effective manipulation of external reality. From such internal conflicts it is evident that such a person (1) will be highly idealistic, (2) will be very conscious of his own moral superiority, (3) will think he is best fitted to direct affairs, (4) will make incessant mistakes in his evaluations of external reality, (5) will ignore or deny these errors rather than deny the superego—conceived as "principles"—which is responsible for the errors, and (6) will employ rationalization to bolster (2) and (3) or to mitigate blame for the results of (4) and (5).

Clearly this little constellation of patterns is the essence of Brutus' character. How well Shakespeare understood their inextricable interdependence, I should not want to say. But it may be significant that Antony, who shows no signs of being tormented by "principles", and whose lusts for pleasure, power, or vengence suffer no inhibition, proves in this play to be so much more competent in dealing with comparable external realities.