"We both have fed as well, and we can both
Endure the winter's cold as well as he...."
Julius Caesar (I, ii)
Cassius is trying to convince Brutus that Caesar is no better a man than they; why should he rule over them? Cassius is driven by motives baser than those of his more idealistic co-conspirator, but nevertheless both men, along with others, made sure that Caesar ended up very cold indeed.
In the Great Parlor of Agecroft Hall, near the fireplace, is an English oak "draught chair" or "settle chair" made circa 1600. Many Shakespearean scholars date his play Julius Caesar to 1599 or thereabouts. Some believe the play might have been the first performed at the newly-opened Globe, after Shakespeare and the Lord Chamberlain's Men had moved their theater, lock, stock, and timber, to Southwark on the south side of the Thames where it was outside the jurisdiction of sour, prudish, meddling city authorities.
The chair is about 62 inches tall and quite hefty. The top and base are covered with a half-moon design with molded edges; the arms are carved in an acanthus leaf motif and scroll outward at the hand rests. Archival records mention traces of paint that have been found, indicating that perhaps at one time some or all of the chair had been painted.
The settle was designed to retain as much heat as possible from a fireplace as well as from the person seated in the chair; heat was always at a premium in the typical drafty Tudor dwelling. Evidently, this type of chair was particularly meant to be used by the elderly and the infirm, for whom surviving English winters was no mean feat.
A settle can sometimes be seen in engravings of the period that show domestic scenes. One woodcut from the middle of the seventeenth century includes a description of the piece as "....a settle chaire, being so weighty that it cannot be moved from place to place....haveing a kind of box or cubburt in the seate of it."
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