world.' Others have suggested more plausibly that Cæsar is presented as he appeared to the conspirators. Certainly he at times seems to justify Cassius' jaundiced vision of him in his weaker moments.1 But what may hold of Cassius certainly does not hold of Brutus. His Cæsar has no personal faults, and he has never 'known when his affections sway'd more than his reason'; his Cæsar is doomed for what he might become, not for what he is. Brutus alone distinguishes between the man Cæsar and what he stood for. At the outset he would gladly spare the man if he could annihilate the spirit. 'O, that we then could come by Cæsar's spirit, and not dismember Cæsar !' It is his fatal illusion to believe that Cæsar's spirit will perish when Cæsar is dismembered. But Cæsar is no sooner dead than the tokens accumulate that Cæsarism is still alive; and they seem to be specially addressed to Brutus. 'Let Brutus be Cæsar!' cry the mob when he has spoken, confuting him by their very applause. When he 'looks on the dead body of Cassius his eyes are opened, and the thrilling cry that breaks from him O Julius Cæsar, thou art mighty yet! Thy spirit walks abroad, and turns our swords is the final confession of failure. The apparition of Cæsar's spirit is a visible embodiment of the invisible forces which are controlling the issues of the plot. Shakespeare here finely modified tradition to his own purpose. In the drama, as in Plutarch, the ghost replies to his question, 'I am thy evil spirit.' Shakespeare draws this trivial episode into touch with the very heart of the tragedy by identifying Brutus' evil 1 Cassius' story of the swimming-match in Tiber, when Cæsar succumbed with a 'Help me, Cassius, or I sink' (i. 2. 111), is Shakespeare's. spirit with 'the ghost of Cæsar.' Thus Julius Cæsar at the threshold of the tragic period already betrays that sense of mysterious persistences of spiritual energy which continually emerges in the tragedies and inspires some of their most haunting and thrilling moments;-energy which defies the accident of death Brutus' For it is, as the air, invulnerable, O Julius Cæsar, thou art mighty yet! is the pathetic recognition of that which Macbeth divines with his horror-stricken the time has been That, when the brains were out, the man would die. Undoubtedly, however, Shakespeare's wonderful intuition of the potency of Cæsarism was facilitated by positive political prepossessions. He interpreted the Rome of Cæsar by the England of Elizabeth, and the analogy was sufficiently close to supply in a measure the place of genuine historical insight. Elizabeth, like Plutarch's Cæsar, was old and infirm, capricious and vain; her death was imminent and the succession not absolutely sure. The failure of Essex's fatuous rebellion may or may not have occurred when Shakespeare wrote; but in any case the monarchy itself must have seemed to him utterly beyond assault. His picture of the Roman demos is notoriously coloured by the Elizabethan's genial contempt for the masses. Plutarch's People, as we have seen, were far from being a quantité négligeable to a clever orator. JULIUS CÆSAR ACT I. SCENE I. Rome. A street. Enter FLAVIUS, MARULLUS, and certain Commoners. Flav. Hence! home, you idle creatures, get you home : Is this a holiday? what! know you not, Of your profession? Speak, what trade art thou? Mar. Where is thy leather apron and thy rule ? Sec. Com. Truly, sir, in respect of a fine workman, I am but, as you would say, a cobbler. Mar. But what trade art thou? answer me directly. Sec. Com. A trade, sir, that, I hope, I may 3. mechanical, of the artisan class. 3. you ought not walk, etc.; a VOL. VIII 17 ΤΟ regulation borrowed from English trade-guilds. 12. directly, without evasion, use with a safe conscience; which is, indeed, sir, a mender of bad soles. Mar. What trade, thou knave? thou naughty knave, what trade? Sec. Com. Nay, I beseech you, sir, be not out with me yet, if you be out, sir, I can mend you. Mar. What meanest thou by that? mend me, 20 thou saucy fellow ! Sec. Com. Why, sir, cobble you. Flav. Thou art a cobbler, art thou? Sec. Com. Truly, sir, all that I live by is with the awl: I meddle with no tradesman's matters, nor women's matters, but with awl. I am, indeed, sir, a surgeon to old shoes; when they are in great danger, I recover them. As proper men as ever trod upon neat's leather have gone upon my handiwork. Flav. But wherefore art not in thy shop today? Why dost thou lead these men about the streets? Sec. Com. Truly, sir, to wear out their shoes, to get myself into more work. But, indeed, sir, we make holiday, to see Cæsar and to rejoice in his triumph. Mar. Wherefore rejoice? brings he home? What conquest What tributaries follow him to Rome, To grace in captive bonds his chariot-wheels? O you hard hearts, you cruel men of Rome, 40. senseless, inanimate. 30 40 Your infants in your arms, and there have sat And do you now put on your best attire? And do you now strew flowers in his way That comes in triumph over Pompey's blood? Run to your houses, fall upon your knees, Pray to the gods to intermit the plague Flav. Go, go, good countrymen, and, for this fault, Assemble all the poor men of your sort; Draw them to Tiber banks, and weep your tears Do kiss the most exalted shores of all. [Exeunt all the Commoners. : 56. Pompey's blood, i.e. his son, Cneius, who had fallen in the battle of Munda, the immediate occasion of Cæsar's Triumph. That blood' has this special reference is shown by Plutarch's emphatic statement, which Shakespeare clearly had in view, that this triumph was peculiarly offensive to the 60 Romans 'because he had not overcome captains that were strangers, nor barbarous kings, but had destroyed the sons of the noblest man of Rome, whom fortune had overthrown' (Shakspeare's Library, iii. 172). 62. sort, class, rank. 66. whether, pronounced 'where.' |