Shakspere's Julius Cæsar

Front matter

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Contents

Introduction: page.

I. Life ix

II. Publication and Date of " Julius Caesar " . . xvi

Index to Notes . , . . . , . , 155

INTKODUCTION

I. Life

Shakspere was born at Stratf ord-on-Avon, in 1564: — it is generally supposed, on the 23d of April. He was tlie eldest son of John Shakspere, a man of good yeoman stock, who moved from Snitterfield to Stratford somewhere about 1551, and started in business as a glover, according to one story ; as a butcher, according to another ; and as a produce merchant — a dealer in corn, malt, wool, meat, skins — according to a third, x4.ll accounts agree that this business, whatever its nature, was prosperous ; furthermore, John Shakspere's marriage to Mary, daughter of Robert Arden, a rich farmer of Wilmcote, added materially to his fortunes, for Eobert Arden, on his death in 1556, left this daughter Mary not only a legacy in money, but the fee-simple of Asbies, his chief property in Wilmcote, in addition to an interest he had previously given her in some Snitterfield property. It is probable, therefore, that at first the parents of the poet ■could well afford to maintain him at the Stratford grammar school, and here he must have acquired the^^ small Latin and less G-reek '' Ben Jonson credits him with knowing ; bits of Latin found in his plays come largely from text-books used by schoolboys of that time. The French and the Italian scattered through his work may have been learned in later life. Ordinarily a boy^s training at this .school would have continued from his seventh to his four-

X INTRODUCTION'

teentli year ; but it is assumed that Shakspere left in his thirteenth year, to prop the falling fortunes of his family.

Before this, John Shakspere had risen to a position of considerable influence in the town. In 1561, he was one of the two chamberlains of Stratford ; in 1565, alderman ;. and finally, in 1568, high bailiff ; from 1567 the corporation archives give him the honourable prefix '' Mr/" In 1575, he bought two houses in Stratford, one of them doubtless the alleged birthplace of the poet in Henley Street. But in 1578 he was unable to pay various corporation taxes. On J^ovember 14 of that year he wasforced to mortgage Asbies for £40, and a year later to dispose of his wife^s property at Snitterfield. Things went from bad to worse. In 1585 and 1586, a creditor found that John Shakspere had no goods on which distraintcould be levied ; finally, on September 6, 1586, the elder Shakspere was deprived of his alderman's gown because of his long absence from the council's meetings. It is quitelikely, then, that he may have removed from school hisoldest son to help him in business ; and this business maj have narrowed down to the one branch of butchering suggested in the tradition that makes the youthful poet onceto have been a slayer of cattle. '' When he killed a calf,"^ Aubrey quaintly tells us, '''he would do it in a high styleand make a speech."''

In 158.2, in spite of the distresses of his father, Shakspere married Anne Hathaway, daughter of a well-to-do yeoman of Shottery. Of this union three children were born. His wife was eight years his senior, and there are grounds for believing the marriage an uncongenial one. This fact, and the desire to help his family, probably, led Shakspere to seek his fortune in London, about 1585. Tradition, however, has always assigned, as the immediate cause of departure, a poaching expedition to the deer preserves of Sir Thomas Lucy of Charlecote Hall.

INTRODUCTION xi

There is a further tradition to the effect that Shakspere^s first connection with the theatre was purely external ; he watched over the horses of gallants who rode to the play. Within the playhouse he was at first but a servant of the actors^ a prompter or call-boy ; from this humble position he became actor and afterwards shareholder in the company to which he belonged. To just what theatre he was first attached is not known ; but after 1599 Ms fortunes were definitely and finally cast with the famous Globe Theatre. He was, after the accession of James I, one of the King's Players. His plays were frequently acted at court before both Elizabeth and James.

He began his work by adapting old plays, and these early efforts retain many of the crudities of the originals on which they were founded. But, as the years went on, Shakspere developed a style entirely his own, like — yet very unlike — what we call the Elizabethan style. It should alwa3^s be remembered that Shakspere was the greatest of a great school of dramatists, and that Marlowe, Massinger, Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher, Ford, Webster, and Chapman had gifts and graces far too distinguished to be eclipsed by any but the greatest. From '''Eomeo and Juliet,''^ in the early nineties of the sixteenth century, Shakspere's fame was assured.

His fortunes also rose. The Earl of Southampton was his patron, and is said to have helped him once with the princely gift of £1,000. Moreover, his profits from the theatre were large. He is known to have bought one house in London. ISTevertheless his thoughts were ever turning toward his native town. He longed most for the life of a country gentleman ; to that end, he strove to reestablish the family fortunes. He bought and lived in the pretentious New Place at Stratford ; and his father's success, on applying for a coat-of-arms, finally enrolled the Shaksperes among the rural gentry. To support this posixii INTROD UCTION

tion, Shakspere bought up a part interest in the tithes of Stratford ; and that he was no laggard in business is further proved by suits he brought to recover money from two insolvent debtors. The father^s misfortunes had made the son wary in his dealings. He joffers a curious instance of strongs practical business qualities combined with the highest imaginative power. At any rate, the poor boy who came to London in 1585 or thereabouts, left London, in 1611-13, very comfortably rich, for that time, in lands and goods, with his scutcheon firmly established, and with all the honour such solid respectability commands. Shakspere died April 23, 1616, and is buried in the parish church at Stratford. His wife and two daughters survived him.

This is all that is known, and much of what is surmised, of the life of Shakspere. But some recent writers, giving a personal interpretation of his sonnets, and fixing in some cases a purely arbitrary order for the production of his plays, have built up a fabric of romance around the poet^s life which makes him to have been a man of bright, good-humoured character, saddened by some great sorrow, later rendered misanthropic and distrustful of the whole world, and gradually emerging from this vortex of tragic gloom somewhere toward the end of his life. This story seems to be founded — except in so far as the sonnets are concerned — on the fact that in his young manhood Shakspere wrote stirring, manly plays like ^'^ Henry IV ^^ and ^' Henry Y," and rich, golden comedies like " Much Ado,^^ ^'As You Like It,'' and "Twelfth Mghf' ; that in his. mature manhood he wrote the great tragedies '^ Hamlet,''" *'Lear," "Macbeth," and "Othello," and the misanthropic " Troilus and Oressida," " Coriolanus," and "Timon of Athens"; and that in later life he wrote plays of a less plangent melancholy, especially enlivened with portraiture of lovely young girlhood — " The Winter's Tale," "Cymbeline," and "The Tempest." This theory

INTRODUCTION xiii

of his life apparently would deprive Shakspere of some of his dramatic power^ and make his characters but expressions of his own state of mind ; but it has strong advocates as well as strong opponents.

;N'o account of Shakspere would be complete that did not include some discussion of the times in which he lived. The England of Elizabeth has been celebrated in song and story^ and though we are likely now to exaggerate much of the charm of that by-gone ^' Merry Engknd/^ there can be little doubt that the period was one of almost unmatched vigour and richness of experience. In the first place, the discovery of the new world was opening men's eyes to the wonders of creation lying remote from the world of Europe ; and the manly English race were umong the first to seek those far-off regions in the sea. It should be remembered that in Shakspere's youth less than a century had elapsed since the discoveries of Columbus, and men by repeated voyages were still adding piece by piece to the ideas that were ultimately to take shape in the conception of the New World as we know it to-day. The discovery of America was a very gradual thing indeed, and people in Shakspere's day were still quick to believe anything hardy mariners might tell them ; this imaginative wonder is the very essence of Charles Kingsley's '^Westward Ho!'' Eurthermore, the Reformation had released men's minds from spiritual thraldom as the discovery of America had awakened their imagination.. It was an age of the renaissance of learning and letters to which Shakspere was born. Finally, the defeat of the Spanish Armada in 1588 and the downfall of England's greatest rival on the seas had aroused patriotism to the height of religious fervour ; as typified in the person of the '^'^ Virgin Queen," it had all the chivalrous elements that one associates with the most virile and romantic of nations. And all these traits were seen against a backxiv INTRODUCTION

ground of general commercial prosperity ; the nation could afford to enjoy life and to make its happiness picturesque.

This is the ideal condition of affairs for art and literature. And the Elizabethan age was the time of England's richest efflorescence in letters. The poet Spenser and the philosopher Bacon ; Sir Philip Sidney and Sir Walter Ealeigh — these are some of the names of that great period. But the minds of writers generally turned toward the theatre^ that new opening for literature^ and it is chiefly by the dramatic poets of the time that the Elizabethan age is celebrated. The greatest of these dramatists, beside Shakspere^ is Christopher Marlowe, whose " Dr. Faustus/' ^'^ Tamburlaine the Grreat/' and '^Edward II" are among the glories of English literature. Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher, Dekker, Ford, Chapman, Webster, — these men must be studied by one who wishes only a superficial knowledge of the Elizabethan drama. Against most of these authors Shakspere pitted his talents and from them he won the palm, not only in his own day, but for all time. It is a noble group of poets, distinguished all of them, by splendid energy of style and, often, by great interest of plot ; never, until the Victorian era, was England to know again so sweet an outburst of song.

Shakspere's best plays, it should be remembered, were all produced within a period of little more than twenty years. They have kept the stage until the collapse of the actor's art within the memory of people still young. The best of these plays — as plays — are those that have been most frequently acted : ^^ A Midsummer-Bight's Dream," ^^The Merchant of Venice," ^^Much Ado about IS^othing," ^^As You Like It," ^^ Twelfth N"ight," among the comedies; ^''Eomeo and Juliet," ^^ Julius Ca9sar," *''' Hamlet," ^^ Macbeth," ^^King Lear," ^^ Antony and Cleopatra," " Coriolanus," among the tragedies ; '' King

Introduction

XV

Eichard III/' ''King Henry IV (part I), ''King Henry V/' among the histories. These plays every reader of only average range should know ; there is no escape. Most of the early plays, on the other hand, are interesting simply for linguistic or other special reasons, and the other histories do not act very well. The latest plays form a group by themselves, characterised by grand poetical beauty, but by no very vital dramatic action. The most sublime poetry Shakspere ever wrote is to be found in "The Winter's Tale,'' " Cymbeline," and "The Tempest," and every well-read man loves them for that as well as for their portrayal of character ; but no one who has seen any of them on the stage — unless it be " The Winter's Tale " — has found the spectacle altogether alluring or helpful. This large body of superlative work produced in about twenty years by Shakspere, in the midst of all his labours as actor and manager, is one of the marvels of literature.

Finally, to reckon Shakspere's greatness, one must consider the stage for which he wrote. Those who attended the productions of Shaksperian plays by Edwin Booth and Augustin Daly at the theatres they controlled, or who may see the superb performances by Sir Henry Irving's company, might imagine that Shakspere wrote his plays with special regard for the scene painter and the stage carpenter. As a matter of fact, the Elizabethan theatre was a rude structure, in its worst state, built on the lines of an inn-yard, probably with only the stage or platform roofed over. On the ground — a place corresponding to the later English pit — stood the " groundlings," a miscellaneous, rowdy herd of dirty, ill-smelling, ill-behaved people, who were the constant terror of the manager and the actors. Around the sides of the building ran balconies with boxes, which were occupied by the richer classes. There were proscenium boxes on each side of the xvi INTRODUCTION

house. The nobles, rival playwrights, short-hand writers, and the young dandies sat or sprawled on the stage, a continual bother to the players. There was no scenery and the women's parts were assumed by boys. The stage was probably hung with some kind of tapestry or cloth, blue for a comedy, black for a tragedy ; a rude sign indicated where the scene was laid. There was a raised platform at the back of the stage which served as a cave, a room, a family vault, etc. Above it, on pillars, may have been a balcony ' which served for the walls of a besieged town, Juliet's balcony, or any such thing. The marvel is that Elizabethan auditors could obtain any illusion from such simple means ; yet there are some to-day who would cheerfully go back to these methods if only actors could give something of the needed inspiration to their work. Nevertheless, one cannot help suspecting that Shakspere, the stage-manager, would have taken uncontrolled delight, as Eichard Wagner did, in all the mechanical appliances of the modern stage.

Even in Elizabeth's day Puritanism was beginning to show itself, and the theatre was looked upon as loose and immoral. In consequence, the playhouses were banished to a remote and thinly populated district across the river, where they attracted both within and without a crowd of disreputable followers. The wonder is that, writing for such an audience, the dramatists kept their work to so high a standard as they did. And yet that Shakspere pleased these people is surely much in their favour.

II. PUBLICATIOI^' AN^D DATE OF ^^ JULIUS O^SAR ''

It was not until 1623, seven years after his death, that any effort was made to publish a collected edition of Shakspere's works. Except for the poems "Venus an(l ^ See Brandes, page 104.

INTRODUCTION xvii

Adonis ^^ and ^^Lucrece/'^ there is no evidence that he ever prepared for the press any of the productions of his pen. Many of the quarto editions of separate plays printed during his lifetime were pirated and set up from imperfect and (apparently) shorthand copies taken in the theatre during the performance of the plays ; yet Shakspere seems to have been indifferent. Some biographers reason that the theatre was distasteful to him, and that he cared for it but as a means to establish the fortunes of his family ; others maintain that he considered his poems literature, and his dramas mere business commodities. Such views overlook the art of the plays ; the highest creative art can never be wholly commercial, though great artists sometimes make fortunes.

It is to two of Shakspere^s fellow-actors — Heminge and Oondell — that we owe the publication of the 1623 folio Shakspere ; these obscure men, therefore, brought absolutely the most priceless gift to English letters. It was their aim " so to have published them, as where (before) you were abus^'d with diverse stolne and surreptitious copies, maimed and deformed by the frauds and stealthes of injurious impostors that exposed \_i.e., published] them — even those are now offered to your view cur^'d and perfect of their limbes ; and all the rest, absolute in their numbers, as he conceived them. ^^ This explains the differences between the folio copy and the earlier quarto editions.

In the folio appeared twenty plays never, so far as we know, printed before; one of these was '''Julius Ceesar.''^ The text throughout the book shows plentiful lack of editing ; many passages are so corrupt as to exhaust modern ingenuity to fathom and restore. ''^ Julius Caesar, ^^ however, has suffered less than most other plays in the volume, and though editors have fussed here and there, the text to-day stands in all essentials about as it is found in the original print.

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Heminge and Condell grouped the plays^ without regard to the order of their production^ under the heads of Comedies, Histories, and Tragedies. ^^ Julius Caesar '' stands among the tragedies, before " Macbeth,"^ '' Hamlet," '''King Lear," and '' Othello," about where it belongs chronologically. Two of the most stupendous tragedies, '' Coriolanus" and '^ Timon of Athens," precede it ; after those Titanic upheavals of Shakspere's genius, '' Julius Caesar," with its note of calm melancholy and its measured verse, has the slightest suggestion of anti-climax. Fortunately, however, the plaj^s are seldom read in that order.

From internal and external evidence it is supposed that " Julius Caesar " was produced somewhere between 1601 and 1603. In language, it has several points of resemblance to " Hamlet," which must have been played, even if in crude, early form, before it was entered in 1602 on the Stationers^ Company^s Eegister. Brandes, from the likeness of the chief characters of the two plays in motive and action, assumes that ^' Julius Caesar " was written just before " Hamlet." Brutus and Hamlet are both thrust into action from a life of contemplation : Brutus is an idealist ; Hamlet, a scholar and dreamer. Both are unfit for the work they are called upon to do, and both, in the end, bungle it badly ; Hamlet from procrastination and uncertainty, Brutus from mistaken judgment. The study of the idealist thrown into the world of action must have appealed to Shakspere's imagination, and those critics do not seem far afield who consider Brutus the sketch from which Hamlet was built up.

III. Source of the Plot

Though there were several earlier plays on the subject of Julius Caesar, Shakspere seems to have used none of

INTRODUCTION xix

them in tlie preparation of his tragedy. The materials for the play all lie embedded in North^s translation of Plutarch, published in 1579, and based, not on the Greek original, but on Amyot^s French translation. Erom the lives of Csesar, Brutus, and Antony in this volume, Shakspere built up the splendid drama of political intrigue in ancient Eome. We know that he always used whatever in the sources of his plots seemed worthy of preservation, but often that was little more than a bare outline. Here, on the contrary, the student of Shakspere, on reading the ISTorth Plutarch, is almost shocked, at first, to see how many touches in the play that seemed to him peculiarly Shakesperian are adapted almost without change from the ^^ Lives.''

Can any lines seem more in the master's spirit than those noble words of Brutus :

"Countrymen, My heart dotli joy that yet in all my life I found no man but he was true to me.

I shall have glory by this losing day More than Octavius and Mark Antony By this vile conquest shall attain unto."

Yet in his North's Plutarch Shakspere read :

" It rejoicetJh my heart that not one of my friends hath failed me at my need. . . . For as for me, I think myself happier than they that have overcome, considering that I leave a perpetual fame of virtue and honesty, the which our enemies the conquerors shall never attain unto by force or money," etc.

So, too, the scene between Cassius and Brutus, a little before, is reproduced largely from North, Cassius' question, ^'^What are you then determined to do?" being changed but from the second person singular of the original, and Brutus' answer being largely found in the answer in North, beginning, ''I trust (I know not how) a certain

XX INTRODUCTION

Tule of philosophy by the which I did greatly blame and Teprove Cato for killing himself, as being no lawful or godly act, touching the gods/^ etc.

Sometimes it is only a hint Shakspere requires. Thus Xorth^s ''Tor it was said that Antonius spake it openly divers times that he thought that of all them that had slain Csesar, there was none but Brutus only that was moved to doit, as thinking the act commendable of itself ; but that all the other conspirators did conspire his death , for some private malice or envy that they otherwise did hear against him/^ becomes Shakspere^s justly famous

" All the conspirators, save only he, Did that they did in envy of great Caesar ; He only, in a general honest thought And common good to all, made one of them," etc.

'Of course the best instance of this in the play is the celebrated oration of Antony. So far as we know, that great piece of rhetoric grew from these words in North^s Plutarch : ^'Afterwards, when Oaesar^s body was brought into the market-place, Antonius making his funeral oration in praise of the dead, according to the ancient custom of Eome, and perceiving that his words moved the common people to compassion, he framed his eloquence to make their hearts yearn the more ; and taking Csesar^s gown all bloody in his hand, he laid it open to the sight of them all, showing what a number of cuts and holes it had upon it. Therewithal the people fell presently into such a rage and mutiny . . . For some of them cried out : ' Kill the murtherers ' ; others plucked up forms, tables and stalls about the market place, ^^ etc.

And it is not only ideas ; sometimes it is words he thus freely borrows. The latter part of the last extract gives the source of the Shaksperian '' Pluck down benches. Pluck down forms, windows, anything," just as North^s

INTRODUCTION xxi

" colliers, tapsters, and such-like base mechanical people ''" was indubitably the origin of some of the wording in the first scene of the play. Who, further, that knows the quarrel scene, will not come with momentary regret upon ^N'orth^s ^' did condemn and note Lucius Pella^^ — so stronglj have those words become conjoined in our minds as purely Shaksperian ?

Many of the best touches of realism in the play are also found in the history — Osesar^s dislike of lean men, the prodigies preceding Caesar^s death, the battle on Cassius^' birthday, etc. But it all lay in the mine for the prospector — three of Plutarch ^s '' Lives," and no one to see their value but Shakspere. The result is a most interesting object lesson in the way a great mind works to bring its material into a fused and perfect unity ; and ultimately our admiration becomes but the livelier when we can trace the inspiration to its source. All that makes- ''Julius Cassar^so fine as a play is Shakspere's ; if the history shaped the limbs, Shakspere breathed into them the breath of life.

IV. The Play

Fortunate is the boy who first makes acquaintance with Shakspere through the pages of '' Julius Caesar," or, better still, by seeing '' Julius Caesar " well acted on the stage. ''As You Like It" or "King Lear" may be beyond the powers of a youthful mind, but that boy is dull indeed who cannot be moved by this great presentation of what took place "in the most high and palmy state of Rome a little ere" — and after — " the mightiest Julius fell." There is so much life in the narrative that even a reading quickens the blood ; on the stage it is irresistible — no time for parley, none for delay, but all straight action from beginning to end. The excited mob, quieted by the;

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tribunes ; Caesar in tlie gorgeous festal procession, with the dark by-play of the two chief conspirators becoming more prominent ; the wild storm presaging Csesar^s fall; the meeting of the conspirators ; the assassination ; the turbulent and vacillating crowds swayed, now by Brutus, now by Antony ; the flight of the conspirators ; the great quarrel of Brutus and Cassius ; and finally the reparation on the field of Philippi, — what story could be told more rapidly, or, on the whole, more entrancingly ? It is all a tale of the upheaval of the old Roman state, and we seem for the time to be in the very thick of the combat. And it is a combat ; that is why it appeals to the lad of spirit, who must always rejoice in a fight between opponents evenly matched, whether in football or in some great world struggle. Dr. John Brown asserts that all schoolboys who read the " Iliad " are Trojans ; but in our play there is a chance to be of the party of Brutus or of Antony, and still keep one^s self-respect.

The play, moreover, has the still greater charm of powerful character drawing. There is, perhaps, none of the noble development of character we get in ^^Lear'^ or '^ Hamlet,'^ but these Eomans are presented with a direct force that takes the imagination captive. They are all limned with swift, sure strokes. Brutus, the stern republican idealist, caught by the flattery of Cassius and his own brooding melancholy into a whirl of human passion for which he is entirely unfitted ; Cassius, the political schemer, grieving not so much over the downfall of the republic — though that grieves him too — as over the fact that some one else "should so get the start of the majestic world and bear the palm alone '^ — the practical man, yet always yielding to the idealist ; and Mark Antony, the lover of plays and reveller o^ nights, who loves his friend and goes honestly and directly to avenge his death, — these three men are so strongly yet subtly differentiated

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that even the veriest tyro may learn to distinguish them. In some way or other the three types are bound to appear in every political struggle^ and it is generally Antony — the man of practical common sense — who remains after the idealist has broken his wings against the bars of time and circumstance.

Even the minor characters are sketched as firmly. Ceesar — that parody of the historical figure — boastful and superstitious; Casca, whose ^^ rudeness is a sauce to his good wit ;^^ Cicero, who '^'^ will never follow anything that other men begin ; " Portia, the noble Eoman matron ; the faithful Titinius ; and finally the quaint little boy Lucius, — think of these as the background for the larger figures that fill the stage ! Finally, the mob — which Brandes would have us believe the aristocratic Shakspere hated — where shall we find a more vivid picture of that great surging rabble for whose favour successive Eoman leaders fought and died ? It becomes in '^Julius Caesar ^^ a distinct character, a wilful fortune ruling the destinies of man. He reckons ill on the dramatic possibilities of this play who leaves out that very important factor of the cast, — in the performances of the Meiningen company a few years ago it became almost the leading character of the drama.

Finally, for the boy^s suffrage, must be noted the splendid rhetorical quality of the writing. What boy does not love an orator ? What boy of any quality is not himself an orator swaying vast imaginary audiences to uphold the right ? And to this instinct " Julius Cassar '' makes appeal. The man that in early youth has not learned to •''spout " the famous oration of Antony, that has not been Brutus or Cassius or both in the quarrel, or that has not, with Cassius, ^' stemmed the torrent with hearts of controversy," has missed something that later years can not give him. This is, perhaps, the best reason why the bov xxiv INTRODUCTION

is to be congratulated who begins Shakspere with this play ; he can live it in word as well as in story ; the verse, like Antony, '^ speaks right on," and has no suggestion of the involution and the maze of some of the later, grander plays ; yet who can dispute the harmony and splendour ■of much of the language ?

Shakspere has sometimes been accused of naming this play badly, on the principle that a dramatic work should be called after its leading character, if any, and that Brutus, not Caesar, is the protagonist of ^^ Julius Caesar/'' Hudson explains by saying that Caesar lives on after his death, and that his spirit is strong still. Three quotations from the play might support this view. Before the assassination Brutus says,