'Ungartered' occurs in As You Like It and Hamlet, 'unbraced' in Hamlet and Julius Caesar. Rosalind gives a mocking description of a love-sick man, which Ophelia repeats seriously:
then your hose should be ungarter'd,
379 your bonnet unbanded, your sleeve unbutton'd,
380 your shoe untied, and every thing about you demonstrating
381 a careless desolation. (AYL 3.2.378-381)
75 Lord Hamlet, with his doublet all unbrac'd,
76 No hat upon his head, his stockins fouled,
77 Ungart'red, and down-gyved to his ankle,
78 Pale as his shirt, his knees knocking each other,
79 And with a look so piteous in purport
80 As if he had been loosed out of hell
81 To speak of horrors -- he comes before me.
(Ham.2.1.'75-81)
Portia reads the unbraced doublet as a symptom of Brutus' diseased mind:
261 Is Brutus sick? and is it physical
262 To walk unbraced and suck up the humors
263 Of the dank morning? (JuC 2.1.261-263)
Its only other occurrence is in Cassius's account of how he faced the storm. To be "unbraced" is the Republican's desperate expression of love for his cause:
46 For my part, I have walk'd about the streets,
47 Submitting me unto the perilous night;
48 And thus unbraced, Casca, as you see,
49 Have bar'd my bosom to the thunder-stone;
JuC 1.3.46-49)
The passages from As You Like It and Hamlet are often cited together, but the passages from Julius Caesar and Hamlet may be connected in a more interesting fashion. 'Unbraced' points to the theme of disrupted conversational intimacy in marriage that Shakespeare picked up from Plutarch's "Life of Brutus" and developed in multiple variations from 1 Henry IV to Macbeth (Mueller 1991).
This point is borne out by looking at another word that collocates with 'unbraced' in Julius Caesar. 'Incorporate' is one of Shakespeare's "heavy" words and in most of its ten occurrences has a strong sacramental meaning. Julius Caesar is the only play in which it occurs twice. Portia uses the word in the continuation of the speech that contains 'unbraced' and implores her husband to treat her as a true partner in marriage:
and upon my knees
271 I charm you, by my once commended beauty,
272 By all your vows of love, and that great vow
273 Which did incorporate and make us one,
274 That you unfold to me, yourself, your half,
275 Why you are heavy, and what men to-night
276 Have had resort to you; (JuC 2.1.270-276)
In the storm scene Cassius identifies Casca as "one incorporate/ To our attempts" (JuC 1.3.135-136). So the "unbraced" Republican lovers "incorporate" with each other, but the woman Portia is excluded from their enterprise.
20 September 1999
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