Shakespeare's Julius Caesar

Introduction

History of the Play.

JULIUS C^SAR was first printed in the folio of 1623. None of the plays in that inestimable volume have reached us with the text in a sounder and clearer state ; there beiner few passages that give an editor any trouble, none that are very troublesome.

The Rev. Mr. Fleay, in his Shakespeare Manual, 1876, argues somewhat strenuously to the point that " this play, as we have it, is an abridgment of Shakespeare's play, made by Ben Jonson." In support of his theory he alleges, and truly, that Jonson did in fact exercise his hand more or less in altering and refitting other men's plays. He also points out the fact, — for such it is, — that the number of short lines or broken verses in Julius Ccesar is uncommonly large. And he cites several words and phrases, such as " quality and kind," "bear me hard," "chew upon this," &c, which do not occur elsewhere in Shakespeare ; while the same words and phrases, or something very like them, are met with in Jonson's plays. Still more to the purpose, he adduces a passage in Act iii., scene 1, which is evidently referred to in Jonson's Discoveries, 1637, and which, in all probability, — as I think, — has been altered, perhaps by Jonson's hand, from what Shakespeare wrote. As the question is discussed at some length in the Critical Notes, it need not be prosecuted further here.

Such are the main particulars urged by Mr. Fleay. His argument shows a good deal of learned diligence ; still it does not, to my mind, carry any great force, certainly is far from being conclusive, and, as the Clarendon Editor observes, is " not such as the readers of Shakespeare have a right to demand." Nevertheless, as, on comparing the quarto and folio copies, we find that the folio has several other plays more or less abridged, some to the extent of whole scenes ; so I think it nowise improbable that, after Shakespeare's retirement from the stage, perhaps after his death, Julius Ccesar may have been subjected to the same process, and for the same purpose, namely, to shorten the time of representation. If this was done, it is altogether credible that Jonson may have been the .man who did it : but I fail to catch any taste of Jonson's style or any smack of his idiom in the play as it stands. So that, while conceding that he may have struck out more or less of Shakespeare's matter, still I am by no means prepared to admit that he put in any thing of his own ; though, possibly enough, in a few places, as in that already specified, he may have slightly altered Shakespeare's language.

There were several other plays on the subject of Julius Caesar, written some before, some after, the composition of Shakespeare's play ; but, as no connection has been traced between any of these and Shakespeare's, it seems hardly worth the while to make any further notice of them.

Date of the Writing.

The time when Julius Ccesar was composed has been variously argued, some placing it in the middle period of the Poet's labours, others among the latest ; and, as no clear contemporary notice or allusion had been produced, the question could not be positively determined. It is indeed well known that the original Hamlet must have been written as early as 1602 ; and in iii. 2, of that play Polonius says, " I did enact Julius Caesar : I was killed in the Capitol ; Brutus killed me." As the play now in hand lays the scene of the stabbing in trfe Capitol, it is not improbable, to say the least, that the Poet had his own Julius Ccesar in mind when he wrote the passage in Hamlet. And that such was the case is made further credible by the fact, that Polonius speaks of himself as having enacted the part when he " play'd once in the University," and that in the title-page of the first edition of Hamlet we have the words, " As it hath been divers times acted by his Highness' Servants in the city of London ; as also in the two Universities of Cambridge and Oxford." Still the point cannot be affirmed with certainty ; for there were several earlier plays on the subject, and especially a Latin play on Caesar's Death, which was performed at Oxford in 1582.

Mr. Collier argued that Shakespeare's play must have been on the stage before 1603, his reason being as follows. Drayton's Mortimeriados appeared in 1596. The poem was afterwards recast by the author, and published again in 1603 as The Barons' Wars. The recast has the following lines, which were not in the original form of the poem : —

Such one he was, of him we boldly say,

In whose rich soul all sovereign powers did suit ;

In whom in peace the elements all lay

So mix'd, as none could sovereignty impute :

That 't seem'd when Heaven his model first began,

In him it show'd perfection in a man.

6 JULIUS CLESAR.

Here we have a striking resemblance to what Antony says of Brutus in the play : —

His life was gentle ; and the elements

So mix'd in him, that Nature might stand up

And say to all the world, This was a man.

Mr. Collier's theory is, that Drayton, before recasting his poem, had either seen the play in manuscript or heard it at the theatre, and so caught and copied the language of Shakespeare.

I confess there does not seem to me any great strength in this argument ; for the idea and even the language of the resembling lines was so much a commonplace in the Poet's time, that no one could claim any special right of authorship in it. Nevertheless it is now pretty certain that the play was written as early as 1601, Mr. Halliwell having lately produced the following from Weever's Mirror of Martyrs, which was printed that year : —

The many-headed multitude were drawn By Brutus' speech, that Caesar was ambitious ; When eloquent Mark Antony had shown His virtues, who but Brutus then was vicious ?

As there is nothing in the history that could have suggested this, we can only ascribe it to some acquaintance with the play : so that the passage may be justly regarded as decisive of the question.

The style alone of the drama led me to rest in about the same conclusion long ago. And I the rather make something of this matter, because it involves a good exercise of mind in discriminating the Poet's different styles ; which is a very nice art indeed, and therefore apt to render the perceptions delicate and acute. It has been said that a true tastejpr Shakespeare is like the creation of a special sense ; j and this saying is nowhere better approved than in reference to his subtile variations of language and style. For he began with what may be described as a preponderance of the poetic element over the dramatic. As we trace his course onward, we may, I think, discover a gradual rising of the latter element into greater strength and prominence, until at last it had the former in complete subjection. Now, where positive external evidence is wanting, it is mainly from the relative . strength of these elements that I argue the probable date of the writing. And it seems to me that in Julius Ccesar the diction is more gliding and continuous, and the imagery more round and amplified, than in the dramas known to have been of the Poet's latest period.

But these distinctive notes are of a nature to be more easily felt than described ; and to make them felt examples will best serve. Take, then, a sentence from the soliloquy of Brutus just after he has pledged himself to the conspiracy : —

'Tis a common proof, That lowliness is young ambition's ladder, Whereto the climber-upward turns his face ; But, when he once attains the upmost round, He then unto the ladder turns his back, .

Looks in the clouds, scorning the base degrees By which he did ascend.

Here we have a full, rounded period ' in which all the elements seem to have been adjusted, and the whole expression set in order, before any part of it was written down. The beginning foresees the end, the end remembers the beginning, and the thought and image are evolved together in an even continuous flow. The thing is indeed perfect in its way, still it is not in Shakespeare's latest and highest

8 JULIUS CiESAR.

style. Now compare with this a passage from The Winter's

Tale : —

When you speak, sweet, I'd have you do it ever : when you sing, I'd have you buy and sell so ; so give alms ; Pray so ; and for the ordering your affairs, To sing them too : when you do dance, I wish you A wave o' the sea, that you might ever do Nothing but that ; move still, still so, and own No other function.

Here the workmanship seems to make arid shape itself as it goes along, thought kindling thought, and image prompting image, and each part neither concerning itself with what has gone before, nor what is coming after. The very sweetness has a certain piercing quality, and we taste it from clause to clause, almost from word to word, as so many keen darts of poetic rapture shot forth in rapid succession, yet the passage, notwithstanding its swift changes of imagery and motion, is perfect in unity and continuity.

Such is, I believe, a fair illustration of what has long been familiar to me as the supreme excellence of Shakespeare's ripest, strongest, and most idiomatic style. Antony and Cleopatra is pre-eminently rich in this quality ; but there is enough of it in The Tempest, The Winter's Tale, Coriolanus, and Cymbeline, to identify them as belonging to the same stage and period of authorship. But I can find hardly so much as an earnest of it in Julius Ccesar ; and nothing short of very strong positive evidence would induce me to class this drama with those, as regards the time of writing.

Historical Sources.

The historic materials of this play were drawn from The Life of Julius Ccesar, The Life of Marcus Brutus, and The

Life of Marcus Antonius, as set forth in Sir Thomas North's translation of Plutarch. This work, aptly described by Warton as " Shakespeare's storehouse of learned history," was first printed in 1579, and reprinted in 1595, 1603, and 161 2, not to mention several later editions. The translation was avowedly made, not directly from the Greek, but from the French version of Jaques Amyot, Bishop of Auxerre. The book is among our richest and freshest literary monuments of that age ; and, apart from the use made of it by Shakespeare, is in itself an invaluable repertory of honest, manly, idiomatic Elizabethan English. A selection, embracing such portions of the work as specially illustrate Shakespeare's plays, has lately been published, with learned and appropriate editorial furnishings, by the Rev. Walter W. Skeat, M.A. "This has been of great service to me in preparing the present edition.

No abstract, nor any extracts, of the Plutarchian matter need be furnished here, as nearly all the passages drawn upon for the play are given in the foot-notes. Suffice it to say, that in most of the leading incidents the charming old Greek is minutely followed ; though in divers cases those incidents are worked out with surpassing fertility of invention and art. But, besides this, in many places the Plutarchian form and order of thought, and also the very words of North's racy and delectable old English, are retained, with such an embalming for immortality as Shakespeare alone could give. — It may be well to add, that on the 13th of February, B.C. 44, the feast of Lupercalia was held, when the crown was offered to Caesar by Antony. On the 15th of March following, Caesar was slain. In November, B.C. 43, the Triumvirs, Octavius, Antony, and Lepidus, met on a small island near Bononia, and there made up their bloody proscription.

IO JULIUS CAESAR.'

The overthrow of Brutus and Cassius near Philippi took place in the Fall of the next year. So that the events of the drama cover a period of something over two years and a half.

The Play rightly Named.

It has been justly observed that Shakespeare shows much judgment in the naming of his plays. From this observation, however, several critics, as Gildon and Schlegel, have excepted the play in hand, pronouncing the title a misnomer, on the ground that Brutus, and not Caesar, is the hero of it. It is indeed true that Brutus is the hero ; nevertheless, I must insist upon it that the play is rightly named, inasmuch as Caesar is not only the subject but also the governing power of it throughout. He is the centre and spring-head of the entire action, giving law and shape to every thing that is said and done. This is manifestly true in what occurs before his death ; and it is true in a still deeper sense afterwards, since his genius then becomes the Nemesis or retributive Providence, presiding over the whole course of the drama.

The Caesar of Shakespeare.

The characterization of this drama in some of the parts is, I confess, not a little perplexing to me. I do not feel quite sure as to the temper of mind in which the Poet conceived some of the persons, or why he should have given them the aspect they wear in the play. For instance, Caesar is far from being himself in these scenes ; hardly one of the speeches put into his mouth can be regarded as historically characteristic ; taken all together, they are little short of a downright caricature. As here represented, he is indeed little better than a grand, strutting piece of puff-paste ; and

INTRODUCTION. II

when he speaks, it is very much in the 'style of a glorious vapourer and braggart, full of lofty airs and mock-thunder ; than which nothing could be further from the truth of the man, whose character, even in his faults, was as compact and solid as adamant, and at the same time as limber and ductile as the finest gold. Certain critics have seized and worked upon this, as proving that Shakespeare must have been very green in classical study, or else very careless in the use of his authorities. To my thinking it proves neither the one nor the other.

It is true, Caesar's ambition was indeed gigantic, but none too much so, I suspect, for the mind it dwelt in ; for his character in all its features was gigantic. And no man ever framed his ambition more in sympathy with the great forces of Nature, or built it upon a deeper foundation of political wisdom and insight. Now this "last infirmity of noble minds " is the only part of him that the play really sets before us ; and even this we do not see as it was, because it is here severed from the constitutional peerage of his gifts and virtues ; all those transcendant qualities which placed him at the summit of Roman intellect and manhood being either withheld from the scene, or thrown so far into the background, that the proper effect of them is mainly lost.

Yet we have ample proof that Shakespeare understood Caesar thoroughly ; and that he regarded him as " the noblest man that ever lived in the tide of times." For example, in Hamlet, he makes Horatio, who is one of his calmest and most right-thinking characters, speak of him as " the mightiest Julius." In A?ito?iy and Cleopatra, again, the heroine is made to describe him as " broad-fronted Caesar." And in King Richard the Third, the young Prince utters these lines : —

That Julius Caesar was a famous man : With what his valour did enrich his wit, His wit set down to make his valour live : Death makes no conquest of this conqueror.

In fact, we need not go beyond Shakespeare to gather that Julius Caesar's was the deepest, the most versatile, and most multitudinous head that ever figured in the political affairs of mankind.

Indeed, it is clear from this play itself that the Poet's course did not proceed at all from ignorance or misconception of the man. For it is remarkable that, though Caesar delivers himself so out of character, yet others, both foes and friends, deliver him much nearer the truth ; so that, while we see almost nothing of him directly, we nevertheless get, upon the whole, a pretty just reflection of him. Especially, in the marvellous speeches of Antony and in the later events of the drama, both his inward greatness and his right of mastership over the Roman world are fully vindicated. For, in the play as in the history, Caesar's blood just hastens and cements the empire which the conspirators thought to prevent. They soon find that in the popular sympathies, and even in their own dumb remorses, he has " left behind powers that will work for him." He proves indeed far mightier in death than in life ; as if his spirit were become at once the guardian angel of his cause and an avenging angel to his foes.

And so it was in fact. For nothing did so much to set the people in love with royalty, both name and thing, as the reflection that their beloved Caesar, the greatest of their national heroes, the crown and consummation of Roman genius and character, had been murdered for aspiring to it. Thus their hereditary aversion to kingship was all subdued by the remembrance of how and why their Caesar fell ; and they who, before, would have plucked out his heart rather than he should wear a crown, would now have plucked out their own, to set a crown upon his head. Such is the natural result, when the intensities of admiration and compassion meet together in the human breast.

From all which it may well be thought that Caesar was too great for the hero of a drama, since his greatness, if brought forward in full measure, would leave no room for any thing else, at least would preclude any proper dramatic balance and equipoise. It was only as a sort of underlying potency, or a force withdrawn into the background, that his presence was compatible with that harmony and reciprocity of several characters which a well-ordered drama requires. At all events, it is pretty clear that, where he was, such figures as Brutus and Cassius could never be very considerable, save as his assassins. They would not have been heard of in after-times, if they had not " struck the foremost man of all this world " ; in other words, the great sun of Rome had to be shorn of his beams, else so ineffectual a fire as Brutus could nowise catch the eye.

Be this as it may, I have no doubt that Shakespeare knew the whole height and compass of Caesar's vast and varied capacity. And I sometimes regret that he did not render him as he evidently saw him, inasmuch as he alone perhaps of all the men who ever wrote could have given an adequate expression of that colossal man.

I have sometimes thought that the policy of the drama may have been to represent Caesar, not as he was indeed, but as he must have appeared to the conspirators ; to make us see him as they saw him ; in order that they too might have fair and equal judgment at our hands. For Caesar was literally too great to be seen by them, save as children often see bugbears by moonlight, when their inexperienced eyes are mocked with air. And the Poet may well have judged that the best way to set us right towards them was by identifying us more or less with them in mental position, and making us share somewhat in their delusion. For there is scarce any thing wherein we are so apt to err as in reference to the characters of men when time has settled and cleared up the questions in which they lost. their way: we blame them for not 'having seen as we see; while, in truth, the things that are so bathed in light to us were full of darkness to them ; and we should have understood them better, had we been in the dark along with them.

Caesar indeed was not bewildered by the political questions of his time ) but all the rest were, and therefore he seemed so to them ; and while their own heads were swimming they naturally ascribed his seeming bewilderment to a dangerous intoxication. As for his marvellous career of success, they attributed this mainly to his good luck ; such being the common refuge of inferior minds when they would escape the sense of their inferiority. Hence, as generally happens with the highest order of men, his greatness had to wait the approval of later events. He indeed, far beyond any other man of his age, "looked into the seeds of time " ; but this was not nor could be known, till time had developed those seeds into their fruits. • Why, then, may not the Poet's idea have been, so to order things that the full strength of the man should not appear in the play, as it did not in fact, till after his fall ? This view, I am apt to think, will both explain and justify the strange disguise — a sort of falsetto greatness — under which Caesar exhibits himself.

Now the seeming contradiction between Caesar as known and Caesar as rendered by Shakespeare is what, more than any thing else in the drama, perplexes me. But there is, I think, a very refined, subtile, and peculiar irony pervading this, more than any other of the Poet's plays ; not intended as such, indeed, by the speakers, but a sort of historic irony, — - the irony of Providence, so to speak, or, if you please, of Fate ; much the same as is implied in the proverb, " A haughty spirit goes before a fall." This irony crops out in many places. Thus we have Caesar most blown with arrogance and godding it in the loftiest style when the daggers of the assassins are on the very point of leaping at him. So too, all along, we find Brutus most confident in those very things where he is most at fault, or acting like a man " most ignorant of what he's most assured " ; as when he says that " Antony can do no more than Caesar's arm when Caesar's head is off." This, to be sure, is not meant ironically by him ; but it is turned into irony by the fact that Antony soon tears the cause of the conspirators all to pieces with his tongue. But indeed this sort of honest guile runs all through the piece as a perfusive and permeating efficacy. A still better instance of it occurs just after the murder, when the chiefs of the conspiracy are exulting in the transcendant virtue and beneficence of their deed, and in its future stage celebrity ; alnd Cassius says, —

So often shall the knot of us be call'd The men that gave their country liberty ;

and again, a little later, when Brutus says of Antony, "I know that we shall have him well to friend." Not indeed that the men themselves thought any irony in those speeches : it was natural, no doubt, that they should utter such things in all seriousness ; but what they say is interpreted into irony by the subsequent events. And when such a shallow

1 6 JULIUS CjESAR.

idealist as Brutus is made to overtop and outshine the greatest practical genius the world ever saw, what is it but a refined and subtile irony at work on a much larger scale, and diffusing itself, secretly, it may be, but not the less vitally, into the texture? It was not the frog that thought irony, when he tried to make himself as big as the ox ; but there was a pretty decided spice of irony in the mind that conceived the fable.

It is to be noted further, that Brutus uniformly speaks . of Caesar with respect, almost indeed with admiration. It is his ambition, not his greatness, that Brutus resents ; the thought that his own consequence is impaired by Caesar's elevation having no influence with him. With Cassius, on the contrary, impatience of his superiority is the ruling motive : he is all the while thinking of the disparagement he suffers by Caesar's exaltation.

This man Is now become a god ; and Cassius is A wretched creature, and must bend his body, If Caesar carelessly but nod on him.

Why, man, he doth bestride the narrow world Like a Colossus ; and we petty men Walk under his huge legs.

Thus he overflows with mocking comparisons, and finds his pastime in flouting at Caesar as having managed, by a sham heroism, to hoodwink the world.

And yet the Poet makes Caesar characterize himself very much as Cassius, in his splenetic temper, describes him. Caesar gods it in his talk, as if on purpose to approve the style in which Cassius mockingly gods him. This, taken by itself, would look as if the Poet sided with Cassius; yet one can hardly help feeling that he sympathized rather in

Antony's great oration. And the sequel, as we have seen, justifies Antony's opinion of Caesar. Thus, it seems to me, the subsequent course of things Jias the effect of inverting the mockery of Cassius against himself; as much as to say, " You have made fine work with your ridding the world of great Caesar : since your daggers pricked the gas out of him, you see what a grand humbug he was."

In sober truth, the final issue of the conspiracy, as represented by Shakespeare, is a pretty conclusive argument of the blunder, not to say the crime, of its authors. Csesar, dead, tears them and their cause all to pieces. In effect, they did but stab him into a mightier life ; so that Brutus might well say, as indeed he does at last, —

O Julius Caesar, thou art mighty yet !

Thy spirit walks abroad, and turns our swords

In our own proper entrails.

Am I wrong, then, in regarding the Nemesis which asserts itself so sternly in the latter part of the play, as a reflex of irony on some of the earlier scenes? I the rather take this view, inasmuch as it infers the disguise of Caesar to be an instance of the profound guile with which Shakespeare sometimes plays upon his characters, humouring their bent, and then leaving them to the discipline of events.*

* Julius Caesar is indeed protagonist of the tragedy : but it is not the Caesar whose bodily presence is weak, whose mind is declining in strength and sure-footed energy, — the Caesar who stands exposed to all the accidents of fortune. It is the spirit of Caesar which is the dominant power of the tragedy : against this — the spirit of Caesar — Brutus fought ; but Brutus, who for ever errs in practical politics, succeeded only in striking down Caesar's body : he who had been weak now rises as pure spirit, strong and terrible, and avenges himself upon the conspirators. The contrast between the weakness of Caesar's bodily presence in the first half of the play, and the might of his spiritual presence in the latter half, is emphasized and perhaps

The Caesar of History.

Merivale justly affirms 'Julius Caesar to be " the greatest name in history." And I believe the general verdict of mankind pronounces him at once the greatest soldier and the greatest statesman of the world. In oratory, also, he is acknowledged to have stood second only to Cicero at the time ; while, as an author, he ranks among the best and highest of our Latin classics. Therewithal "he was a perfect gentleman ; and of the world's great military conquerors he is probably the only one to whom that title can be justly applied. All the sweetness of humanity seems to have been concentrated in his native temper and disposition- Nor were his virtues less eminent than his talents and genius ; while the immense power to which he attained served, apparently, but to give his virtues larger scope and render "them more conspicuous : so that his rightful seat is among the loveliest, the largest-hearted, the .most magnanimous of men.

Julius Caesar loved Rome, too, at least as well as any of his haters did, and loved her a thousand times more wisely. But it was his peculiar lot, perhaps I should rather say his special mission, to contend — alone and single-handed in the fore-front, though, to be sure, with the great body of the Roman people at his back — with the proudest, the powerfullest,

over-emphasized by Shakespeare. It was the error of Brutus that he failed to perceive wherein lay the true Caesarean power, and acted with shortsighted eagerness and violence. Mark Antony, over the dead body of his lord, announces what is to follow : " Over thy wounds now do I prophesy," &c. The ghost of Caesar, which appears on the night before the battle of Philippi, serves as a kind of visible symbol of the vast posthumous power of the Dictator. Finally, the little effort of the aristocrat republicans sinks to the ground, foiled and crushed by the force which they had hoped to abolish by one violent blow. — DOWDEN.