Page images
PDF
EPUB

For fear of what might fall, so to prevent
The term of life—arming myself with patience
To stay the providence of some high powers,
That govern us below."

But the next question of Cassius drives the thought of Brutus from its place of rest, and sends it down the incline of that passion for liberty which makes him now as ready to kill himself as he before was to kill Cæsar. Cassius says:

"Then, if we lose this battle,

You are contented to be led in triumph
Thorough the streets of Rome?

Brutus. No, Cassius, no. Think not, thou noble Roman,

That ever Brutus will go bound to Rome;

He bears too great a mind."

The passion for freedom begets action that contradicts his calm unbiassed sense of right. So against right he had struck Cæsar-doing evil to find good-and brought down upon himself and his country greater evils than he had intended to avert. For the common good he committed crime from which, if it had been for himself, his soul would have recoiled. For it is no more true in public than in private life that good can come of evil done; and let high politics stink as they may, there is no difference between public and private morality, Evil is only to be overcome with good. The noblest motives in a man of purest character cannot turn moral wrong even into political right, and the more completely Shakespeare impresses us with the ideal beauty of the character of Brutus, the more surely he brings home to us this truth.

"Julius Cæsar."

Let us turn now to the conduct of the story which has this truth at its heart. The play opens at a time when there is general belief that Cæsar desires an imperial crown. It is the fifteenth of February, "the Feast of Lupercal," celebrated annually in honour

C C-VOL. X.

of a shepherd god, when Cæsar himself, having returned in triumph from the wars, hopes publicly to receive the crown from Antony, supported by the acclamations of the people. The fickle populace are in the streets. Their tribunes, who are expecting Caesar's grasp at empire, meet them, chide them, drive them to their homes, pluck Caesar's trophies from the images, and the last words of the scene clearly express their motive:

"These growing feathers plucked from Cæsar's wing

Will make him fly an ordinary pitch,

Who else would soar above the view of men

And keep us all in servile fearfulness."

Here is the aim of Cæsar as seen from without by heads of the democracy.

The second scene shows Cæsar's aim in Cæsar himself, and as seen from without by the republicans. It tells the failure of that day's attempt upon the crown, and begins the tale of the conspiracy with the attempt of Cassius to bring Brutus into it. The scene opens with Cæsar passing to the games, and, as he hopes, to his crowning. But hope of empire brings with it to the childless man desire for a direct heir to the throne. This thought underlies the first words spoken by Cæsar in the play, addressed to his wife and to Antony, who is stripped for the course, and whose touch in the chase, as he passed her, might remove sterility. The same ten lines of the opening of the scene paint Cæsar so far risen above surrounding men that he is treated as a god; and afterwards in his own speech, big with the sense of his sole dignity and power, he assumes the god. "I shall remember," Antony replies to the bidding that he should not forget, in his speed, to touch Calphurnia:

"When Cæsar says, 'Do this,' it is performed."

So men speak of Divine but not of human power. Upon this glorying in a vain sense of supreme power breaks the despised warning of the soothsayer, who bids Cæsar "beware the Ides of March." Caesar passes with triumphal music in the hope to return crowned. Cassius remains to work on at his endeavour to bring Brutus into the conspiracy already formed for saving Rome from a sole master by killing Cæsar. The whole dialogue between them has this meaning. Distant shouts of the people cause Brutus to express his fear that they choose Cæsar for their king

"Cassius.

Ay, do you fear it?

Then must I think you would not have it so.

Brutus. I would not, Cassius; yet I love him well."

In the dialogue between them Cassius is the speaker; the words of Brutus are not answers to his persuasion, but detached expression of ' his own thought prompted once and again by the shouting of the people. And Cassius, though he is seeking to lead Brutus, is unable to put his argument upon ground higher than that which satisfies himself. It is based upon personal resentment that another man should be accounted greater than himself. For this reason Shakespeare has not allowed Brutus to speak a word that would associate his way of reasoning with that of Cassius. Only he asks at last that he may not be any further moved; but he is so far won that, while indicating knowledge of his brother-in-law's aim, he is willing to find occasion to hear more:

Cassius.

"Till then, my noble friend, chew upon this:

Brutus had rather be a villager

Than to repute himself a son of Rome

Under these hard conditions as this time

Is like to lay upon us.

I am glad

That my weak words have struck but thus much show
Of fire from Brutus."

Cæsar then passes, on his return from disappointment, with the angry spot upon his brow. The people, as we learn presently from Casca, had applauded, not the offer of the crown, but the show made of rejection, that it might be urged upon him by their voices. Vexation had been great enough to bring on an attack of the epilepsy to which Cæsar was subject, and as he passes he observes the eye of Cassius upon him, of Cassius, "who looks quite through the deeds of men." His irritation of mind, blended with that knowledge of men which had helped Cæsar to power, then fastens upon Cassius, whom he describes to Antony with a real insight into the danger of his character. Cæsar sums up what has been shown in the preceding argument of Cassius with Brutus

"Such men as he are never at heart's ease

Whiles they behold a greater than themselves;
And therefore are they very dangerous."

Then he assumes the god

"I rather tell thee what is to be feared

Than what I fear,-for always I am Cæsar."

To which Shakespeare at once adds a dramatic touch of irony on the frail man who speaks like an eternal power

"Come on my right side, for this ear is deaf,

And tell me truly what thou think'st of him."

When Casca has been plucked by the sleeve, and has told in terms bluntly contemptuous the tale of Cæsar's disappointment, Cassius does not leave him till he has bidden him to his house. Then Brutus parts from Cassius, with renewed indication that he may be won, since he is willing to hear more.

"For this time I will leave you :
To-morrow, if you please to speak with me,
I will come home to you; or, if you will,
Come home to me, and I will wait for you.

Cassius. I will do so:-till then, think of the world."

"Think of the world!" says Cassius in parting, consciously playing on his brother-in-law's unselfish devotion to whatever he may be brought to regard as the common good. That he knows himself to be playing with what selfish men regard as weakness in a nature higher than their own, Shakespeare shows by taking us down at once into the mind of Cassius. It is to be remembered always that a soliloquy or an aside in Shakespeare, and in our English dramatists generally, represents unspoken thought

"think of the world.

[Exit Brutus.

Well, Brutus, thou art noble, yet, I see,
Thy honourable mettle may be wrought
From that it is disposed: therefore, 'tis meet
That noble minds keep ever with their likes;

For who so firm that cannot be seduced?

Cæsar doth bear me hard; but he loves Brutus :

If I were Brutus now, and he were Cassius,

He should not humour me."

And he plans then throwing writings in the way of Brutus that

seem to represent voices of Roman citizens

"all tending to the great opinion

That Rome holds of his name; wherein obscurely

Cæsar's ambition shall be glanced at."

Between the second and third scenes of the First Act a month has passed. The two first scenes of the play represent Cæsar's attempt to obtain the crown from the people in the middle of February, at the feast of Lupercal. The story proceeds now to the fifteenth of March, when Cæsar sought to be crowned by the Senate. From the heavens in storm in the third scene of the First Act, to the full bursting of the storm of civil fury at the end of the Third Act, we are in the Ides of March. The action extends over one night and day-the day of Cæsar's murder and the night before it.

Of the portents that formed part of Plutarch's record, Shakespeare makes throughout a poetical use, joining them with the course of events, to represent offended Heaven and the presence of a higher power in affairs of men. The conspirators are gathering in Pompey's porch, under "a tempest dropping fire," safe against observation in deserted streets. But Brutus is not yet enrolled among their number, although Cassius has so used the time that but a few words on the eve of Cæsar's second attempt to be crowned, a few words representing that the plan is formed, and that the blow will be struck against tyranny whether Brutus give it countenance or no, will be enough to win him. The conspirators are meeting in Pompey's porch; Cassius has not joined them, and Metellus Cimber has been sent to his house to fetch him. Under such conditions the scene opens with Casca meeting Cicero in the portentous storm that suggests

"Either there is a civil strife in heaven,

Or else the world, too saucy with the gods,
Incenses them to send destruction."

To Casca's recital of the prodigies that moved men's minds, Cicero's answer is

"Indeed, it is a strange-disposéd time;

But men may construe things, after their fashion,
Clean from the purpose of the things themselves.
Comes Cæsar to the Capitol to-morrow?"

[ocr errors]

Cæsar was to fall, not for ills done, but for the ills he might do if he wore a crown. "Mistrust of good success,' and "hateful Error, Melancholy's child," would do this deed. So Cassius, next meeting Casca, interprets the signs in the heavens "clean from their purpose" as portending a just war against the tyranny of Cæsar

"Now could I, Casca, name to thee a man
Most like this dreadful night;

« PreviousContinue »