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Julius Caesar,
Act 4, Scene 3, line 156

Note to JULIUS CAESAR, 4.3.156, 'swallow'd fire'

In North's Plutarch, Shakespeare's primary source, it is written that Portia "tooke hotte burning coles, and cast them into her mouth, and kept her mouth so close, that she choked her selfe."¹
¹Plutarch, Plutarch's Lives of the Noble Grecians and Romans Englished by Sir Thomas North, trans. Sir Thomas North, vol. 6 (1579. London: David Nutt, 1896) 236.