The New Hudson Shakespeare: Julius Caesar Part 3

_Act V, Scene ii._ The opposing armies meet on the field, and a final flare-up of hope in the breast of Brutus is indicated by his spirited order to Messala to charge. The scene implies that Ca.s.sius was defeated by being left without support by Brutus.

V. DeNOUEMENT, CATASTROPHE, OR CONCLUSION (THE KNOT UNTIED)

_Act V, Scene iii._ The charge ordered by Brutus has been successful, and Octavius has been driven back, but Ca.s.sius is thus left unguarded, and Antony's forces surround him. He takes refuge on a hill and sends t.i.tinius to see "whether yond troops are friend or enemy." Believing t.i.tinius to be slain, he begs Pindarus to stab him, and Ca.s.sius dies "even with the sword that kill'd" Caesar. With the same sword t.i.tinius then slays himself, and Brutus, when Messala bears the news to him, exclaims in words that strike the keynote of the whole falling action and denouement:

O Julius Caesar, thou art mighty yet!

Thy spirit walks abroad, and turns our swords In our own proper entrails.

_Act V, Scene iv._ Like Hamlet, Brutus at the last is a man of supreme action. He rallies his forces for a last attack. With hopeless failure before him, he is at once a heroic figure and one of infinite pathos.

Young Cato falls. Lucilius is attacked; a.s.suming the name of Brutus, he is not killed but taken prisoner. Antony recognizes him and gives orders that he be treated kindly.

_Act V, Scene v._ Brutus dies by his own sword, and his last words tell the story of failure and defeat. Like a true Roman, he meets his doom without a murmur of complaint. He had been true to his ideals. The tragic denouement comes as the inevitable consequence, not of wilful sin, but of a n.o.ble mistake. In death he commands the veneration of both Antony and Octavius, who p.r.o.nounce over his body the great interpretation of his character, and in their speeches the tragedy closes as with a chant of victory for the hero of defeat.

VI. MANAGEMENT OF TIME AND PLACE

1. _Historic time._ Caesar's triumph over the sons of Pompey was celebrated in October, B.C. 45. Shakespeare makes this coincident with "the feast of Lupercal" on February 15, B.C. 44. In the play Antony delivers his funeral oration immediately after Caesar's death; historically, there was an interval of days. Octavius did not reach Rome until upwards of two months after the a.s.sa.s.sination; in III, ii, 261, Antony is told by his servant immediately after the funeral oration that "Octavius is already come to Rome." In November, B.C. 43, the triumvirs met to make up their b.l.o.o.d.y proscription, and in the autumn of the following year were fought the two battles of Philippi, separated historically by twenty days, but represented by Shakespeare as taking place on the same day.

2. _Dramatic Time._ Historical happenings that extended over nearly three years are represented in the stage action as the occurrences of six days, distributed over the acts and scenes as follows:

Day 1.--I, i, ii.

Interval.

Day 2.--I, iii.

Day 3.--II, III.

Interval.

Day 4.--IV, i.

Interval.

Day 5.--IV, ii, iii.

Interval.

Day 6.--V.

This compression for the purposes of dramatic unity results in action that is swift and throbbing with human and ethical interest.

3. _Place._ Up to the second scene of the fourth act Rome is the natural place of action. The second and third scenes of the fourth act are at Sardis in Asia Minor; the last act shifts to Philippi in Macedonia. The only noteworthy deviation from historical accuracy is in making the conference of the triumvirs take place at Rome and not at Bononia. See note, p. 116. But there is peculiar dramatic effectiveness in placing this fateful colloquy in the city that was the center of the political unrest of the time.

VII. VERSIFICATION AND DICTION

BLANK VERSE

The characteristics of Shakespeare's blank verse--the rhymeless, iambic five-stress (decasyllabic) verse, or iambic pentameter, introduced into England by Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey, about 1540--and its proportion to rhyme and to prose have been much used in recent years to determine the chronological order of the plays and the development of the poet's art. In blank verse as used by Shakespeare we have really an epitome of the development of the measure in connection with the English drama. In his earlier plays the blank verse is often similar to that of _Gorboduc_, the first English tragedy. The tendency is to adhere to the syllable-counting principle, to make the line the unit, the sentence and phrase coinciding with the line (end-stopped verse), and to use five perfect iambic feet to the line. In plays of the middle period, such as _The Merchant of Venice_ and _As You Like It_, written between 1596 and 1600, the blank verse is more like that of Kyd and Marlowe, with less monotonous regularity in the structure and an increasing tendency to carry on the sense from one line to another without a syntactical or rhetorical pause at the end of the line (run-on verse, _enjambement_).

Redundant syllables now abound and the melody is richer and fuller. In Shakespeare's later plays the blank verse breaks away from all bondage to formal line limits, and the organic continuity is found in a succession of great metrical periods.

The verse of _Julius Caesar_ is less monotonously regular than that of the earlier plays; it is more flexible and varied, more musical and sonorous, but it lacks the superb movement of the verse in _Oth.e.l.lo_, _The Winter's Tale_, and _The Tempest_. End-stopped, normally regular iambic pentameter lines often occur (as, for instance, I, i, 37, 41, 44, 62, 76), but everywhere are variations and deviations from the norm, and there is an unusual number of short lines and interjectional lines of two or three stresses. See Abbott's _A Shakespearian Grammar_, ---- 511, 512.

RHYME

Apart from the use of rhyme in songs, lyrics, and portions of masques (as in _The Tempest_, IV, i, 60-138), a progress from more to less rhyme is a sure index to Shakespeare's development as a dramatist and a master of expression. In the early _Love's Labour's Lost_ are more than one thousand rhyming five-stress iambic lines; in _The Tempest_ are only two; in _The Winter's Tale_ not one. _In Julius Caesar_ are found only thirty-four rhyming lines.

PROSE

If "of the soule the bodie forme doth take," it is small wonder that attempts have been made to explain Shakespeare's distinctive use of verse and prose. Of recent years there have been interesting discussions of the question "whether we are justified in supposing that Shakespeare was guided by any fixed principle in his employment of verse and prose, or whether he merely employed them, as fancy suggested, for the sake of variety and relief."[1] It is a significant fact that in many of Shakespeare's earlier plays there is little or no prose, and that the proportion of prose to blank verse increases with the decrease of rhyme.

In _Julius Caesar_ three kinds of prose may be distinguished: (1) The prose of homely dialogue, as in the talk of the common people in I, i, and III, iii. (2) The prose of serious information as to the nature of a situation, as in Casca's description of the offer of the crown to Caesar.

This kind of prose reaches its highest development in Brutus's famous speech, III, ii, with its dignified defense and laconic exposition of his honesty of purpose. (3) The prose of formal doc.u.ments, as in the letter of Artemidorus, II, iii, 1-8.

[Footnote 1: Professor J. Churton Collins's _Shakespeare as a Prose Writer_. See Delius's _Die Prosa in Shakespeares Dramen (Shakespeare Jahrbuch_, V, 227-273); Janssen's _Die Prosa in Shakespeares Dramen_; Professor Hiram Corson's _An Introduction to the Study of Shakespeare_, pp. 83-98.]

VIII. THE CHARACTERS

JULIUS CaeSAR

The characterization of this drama in some of the parts is not a little perplexing. Hardly one of the speeches put into Caesar's mouth can be regarded as historically characteristic; taken all together, they seem little short of a caricature. As here represented, Caesar appears little better than a braggart; and when he speaks, it is in the style of a glorious vapourer, full of lofty airs and mock thunder. 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 Shakespeare's lack of cla.s.sical knowledge, or carelessness in the use of his authorities. It proves neither the one nor the other.

It is true, Caesar's ambition was gigantic, but none too much so 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 n.o.ble 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 const.i.tutional peerage of his gifts and virtues; all those transcendent 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 lost.

Yet we have ample proof that Shakespeare understood Caesar thoroughly, and that he regarded him as "the n.o.blest 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 _Antony 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. [III, i, 84-87.]

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

Indeed, it is clear from this play itself that Shakespeare 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 just reflection of him. Especially in the marvelous 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 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. 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 compa.s.sion 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 anything 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 Ca.s.sius could never be very considerable, save as his a.s.sa.s.sins. 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, there is no doubt that Shakespeare knew the whole height and compa.s.s of Caesar's vast and varied capacity. It may be regretted 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.

It is possible 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 Shakespeare 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 anything 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 marvelous 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, and could not be known, till time had developed those seeds into their fruits. Why then may not Shakespeare'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 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 anything else, perplexes.

But a very refined, subtile, and peculiar irony pervades this, more than any other of Shakespeare'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 goeth before a fall." This irony crops out in many places. Thus we have Caesar most blown with arrogance and G.o.dding it in the loftiest style when the daggers of the a.s.sa.s.sins 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 a.s.sured"; 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 transcendent virtue and beneficence of their deed, and in its future stage celebrity; and Ca.s.sius says,--

So often shall the knot of us be call'd The men that gave their country liberty. [III, i, 118-119.]

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 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 Ca.s.sius, 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.