The Tragedy of Julius Caesar (The Warwick Shakespeare)/Introduction

INTRODUCTION.

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1. LITERARY HISTORY OF THE PLAY.

The earliest known edition of Julius Cæsar is that of the First Folio, 1623, in which the plays were for the first time collected. We have no knowledge of the text on which it was based; but the passages which show distinct signs of corruption are few: the readings are rarely open to serious question.

The means of settling the date when the play was written are to be found (1) in references to it, or in parallel passages, in contemporary writers; (2) in phrases here and there in the play which point to some particular period; (3) and in characteristics of scansion, construction, or thought, marking the particular phase of the author's development.

(1) A passage is quoted from Drayton's Barons' Wars, 1603, a revised edition of his Mortimeriados—

"In whome, in peace, the elements all lay

So mixt," &c.

which bears an obvious resemblance to Shakespeare's

"His life was gentle, and the elements

So mixed in him," &c.

If one of the two authors was borrowing from the other, the borrower was more probably Drayton; but it is quite as probable that the case is merely one of coincidence, and really proves nothing.

But in Weever's Mirror of Martyrs, 1601, are the lines—

"The many-headed multitude were drawne

By Brutus' speech, that Cæsar was ambitious.

When eloquent Mark Antonie had shewne

His vertues, who but Brutus then was vicious?"

Weever's lines appear distinctly to refer to some well-known account of these orations; but they are not based on Plutarch, and the inference is that they are based on Shakespeare, unless both he and Shakespeare were familiar with some other narrative of which we know nothing. The presumption therefore is that the play is not later in date than 1601.

(2) At i. 2. 160 are the words, "the eternal devil". Some commentators are of opinion that 'eternal' was substituted for 'infernal' out of deference to the growing strength of the public sentiment against the freedom of language on the stage, which culminated in the act of James I. 'Eternal' seems to have been so substituted for 'infernal' in two other instances both subsequent to 1600, but not before. It is extremely doubtful whether Shakespeare may not have used 'eternal' as the better word; still the alternative possibility points to the play dating about 1600.

(3) The arguments from scansion are discussed in the appendix on prosody, q.v., and entirely bear out the view that the play belongs to the middle period of Shakespeare's workmanship; is earlier than Hamlet, and about the same period as Much Ado, As You Like It, and Twelfth Night; i.e. between 1598 and 1602.

The character of the play itself leads to the same conclusion. Shakespeare seems to have finished all the English historical subjects he cared about with Henry V. in 1599, and it seems improbable that until that was done he would have gone farther afield. (Henry VIII. was written to order later.) Moreover the play constitutes in certain respects a new departure. The earlier tragedies were primarily tragedies of action; this is primarily a tragedy of character. It is more meditative and more complex; the thoughtful note which is characteristic of the comedies named above is prominent, but the philosophic interest does not predominate as in Hamlet, nor is there the same intensity of emotion as in the later tragedies. All of which agrees again with the conclusion that 1600 is the earliest and 1601 the latest date at which we should expect to find the play had been written. Thus the three classes of evidence are entirely in harmony, and though none of them would be conclusive, taken in conjunction they make the date 1600-1601 practically certain.

2. SOURCES OF THE PLAY.

The sole literary source of Shakespeare's Julius Cæsar was Plutarch, whose 'Lives' he read in North's translation (the mistakes wherein he several times repeats, showing that he had not read the original). North himself translated (1579 and 1595) not from the Greek, but from the French translation by Amyot (1559). I have quoted freely in the notes; but the student is advised to read the 'Lives' of Cæsar, Brutus, and Antony. Professor Skeat's reprint in Shakespeare's Plutarch (Macmillan) is the most convenient volume.

A Latin play on the same subject was performed at Oxford in 1582, from which the 'et tu, Brute' may have been derived; and mention is found of other plays dealing with it. But whether Shakespeare's play was at all affected by these, we have no means of ascertaining. Attention is called in the notes to points which seem to show conclusively that Shakespeare had no first-hand knowledge of the classical writers.

3. CHARACTERISTICS OF THE PLAY.

When Shakespeare set himself to write a historical play, it was not primarily his intention to educate his audience in historical details of which they had been previously ignorant; but he wrote as a dramatist who happened to have found an interesting story to tell in the pages of history. He treated Plutarch and Holinshed very much as he treated Boccaccio. He had not any great regard for accuracy of detail for its own sake, caring only for its dramatic interest. And for that end, speaking broadly, it was of much more importance to follow accepted popular tradition than to defy tradition for the sake of strict historical precision. We all know that in the case of the stories which are most popular in the nursery, children resent any variation on the version to which they are accustomed; and the great public takes very much the same view. Now it may be a very good thing for the child to have a revised version forced upon it, and it doubtless is an excellent thing for the great public to be set right in matters historical; but the dramatic interest suffers if your audience—child or great public—has its attention turned to cavilling at your innovations instead of to the leading motives of the story.

Therefore in telling the story of the fall of Cæsar and of the conspirators Shakespeare deliberately accepted the familiar version as presented in the English translation of Plutarch. It was no part of the dramatist's business to see whether Plutarch told the truth in everything; whether his estimate of the conspirators was a just one; whether the supernatural accompaniments were credible in themselves. It was legitimate from his point of view to use anything and everything that was dramatically effective, and to reject everything unsuited to his purpose.

That Shakespeare followed his original so closely as he has done is no small tribute to the admirably artistic character of Plutarch's narrative. There is hardly a point in the play which is not directly suggested in the Life of Cæsar, or Brutus, or Antony. None of the characters vary appreciably from their portraits as drawn by Plutarch. The very arguments used in the various discussions are reproduced from the same source. Omens and portents reappear with hardly a change of importance except in one particular—the substitution of Cæsar's ghost for Brutus' 'evil angel'. In short, the whole of Shakespeare's material is in Plutarch; yet the play is as completely original, as entirely Shakespearian, as a picture by Turner is a Turner and nothing else. To say that Shakespeare borrowed from Plutarch would be a good deal like saying that Turner 'borrowed' from a landscape.

The play of Julius Cæsar has one characteristic in a very much more marked degree than any other of Shakespeare's plays—in the way in which it is pervaded by the notion of irresistible Destiny. Some such effect accompanies almost of necessity any serious introduction of the supernatural; but neither in Macbeth nor in Hamlet is the idea present with any thing like the same force as in the play with which we are now dealing, though it accompanies Octavius through Antony and Cleopatra. The feeling that the events of greatest import in the world's history are beyond the manipulation of the actors in them—that in these high matters, at any rate,

"There's a divinity that shapes our ends,

Rough-hew them how we will"—

seems to permeate the whole play. Cæsar sometimes speaks as if he would have said of Destiny what he does say of Danger—

"We are two lions littered in one day":

yet it is he who says

"What can be avoided,

Whose end is purposed by the mighty gods?"

Cassius can proclaim with Epicurean fervour that

"The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars,

But in ourselves, that we are underlings";

but even he is thoroughly possessed with the sense of doom at the end of the play. And the whole of the supernatural machinery is utilized to farther this same effect. If the overruling powers so will it, we cannot calculate that the normal result will follow any given act or event. The owl hooting in the market-place is simply a reminder that the ultimate control of things is beyond calculation or human management. And most of all, the idea is embodied in the person of the boy Octavius, who impresses one throughout as the instrument of Fate: triumphant over Brutus and Cassius, and one day to triumph over Antony, not because he is nobler or abler than they, but because he is the chosen means for fulfilling the will of heaven.

At the same time it would be an error to base any argument as to Shakespeare's own belief in omens, spirits, and the like on his use of them in the play. They are appropriate dramatically because they are part of the accepted narrative. Whether the things reported ever actually took place, or are really credible, is of no consequence; they are true, so to speak, as illustrations, whether true or not in fact. There is nothing in the tale as told in the play which the stoutest of sceptics need complain of. In most of the signs and portents, from the appearance of the owl down to Cassius being slain with the very sword that slew Cæsar, there is nothing inherently incredible. Casca's assertions in i. 3 and Calpurnia's in ii. 2 are made in each case by a person in an extreme state of superstitious alarm. All these things intensify the feeling of doom; they affect us, so to speak, with the electricity in the atmosphere: but they do so independently of the view we may take of their explanation, and they convey no hint of what Shakespeare himself believed. It is characteristic of the great dramatist that he never does give us a clue to his own opinion on most subjects. We go on the general principle that if any of his characters pronounces an opinion with which we agree, that was Shakespeare's own view; and if another pronounces a view with which we disagree, that was not the opinion of Shakespeare. In fact, as with life in general so with Shakespeare's plays: every man finds there conclusive proof that his own ideas on any subject are correct.

So it may plausibly be argued from this play that Shakespeare was a Republican or a Monarchist, a naturalist or a supernaturalist, that he condoned or condemned assassination—the plain fact being that he no more sets about teaching views than Nature does. He shows us the truth of things, and lets his characters tell what they think about them, and leaves us to draw our own conclusions. And just as we can draw from an examination of natural objects or actual events inferences and conclusions with a considerable degree of certainty, so we can extract lessons and guiding principles from Shakespeare's plays. They are the same lessons, the same guiding principles, which we should extract from an intelligent study of the life around us; only that we are relieved from the difficulty of having to disencumber ourselves of trivial and barren details which are often misleading. The salient facts are collected for us denuded of the superfluous circumstances. Although the play is named after Julius Cæsar there is no question that in fact the hero of the piece is Marcus Brutus. So far at least as character is concerned the interest he inspires altogether overshadows that of the rest of the dramatis personæ, and we are somewhat apt to draw from a hasty reading a more superficial and erroneous idea of the other principal performers than is usual in Shakespeare's plays.

Thus the first idea that we get of Cæsar is that he is a good deal of a braggart, decidedly superstitious while pretending to a contempt for superstition, overweening, with more gasconade than real dignity; justifying, or at any rate fairly excusing the bitter terms in which Cassius speaks of him. Nevertheless a closer study reveals something very different. Cassius cries out in amazement that

"A man of such a feeble temper should

So get the start of the majestic world",

and we are inclined to agree. But to Antony he is

"the noblest man

That ever lived in the tide of times".

Brutus calls him "the foremost man of all this world", and says

"I have not known when his affections sway'd

More than his reason";

so that the position requires to be reconsidered. The explanation seems to lie in this, that Cæsar appears in the flesh at perhaps the least favourable moment in his career: the brief instant in which he might be excused for allowing himself to lapse into arrogance. He has attained complete mastery: the last remnant of open opposition has just been crushed at Munda, and the great conqueror stands on a height such as had never yet been attained by mortal man. There is plenty for him yet to do, but in the brief interval the strain is relaxed; for the time he can afford to give rein to the frailties of his nature and display the weaknesses of ordinary men. In the play we are shown nothing of the means whereby he attained to that eminence—the greatness is taken for granted. We have but the touch here and there that reminds us of it, in the shrewd characterization of Cassius which marks the judge of men; in the right kingly "What touches us ourself, shall be last served".

Now, it is the human frailties of Cæsar which make the attitude of the conspirators intelligible. Cassius argues his whole case on the ground that Cæsar himself is no better a man than his neighbours. His discourse to Brutus would be too palpably splenetic if Cæsar's conduct did not give it some colour, though Cæsar is, as a matter of fact, only doing so by accident—acting, so to speak, out of his true character, believing as he does merely because the occasion offers a fair excuse for his falling below himself. But it is the greatness of Cæsar which justifies the denouement. The conspirators from Brutus down had read him wrong. While he lived he was the incarnation of the new, inevitable, order of things. When slain, he is not dead; he is the spirit pervading the world; the good angel of Octavius as he is the ill angel of Brutus. Perhaps that is why the vision recorded in Plutarch is changed to the apparition of Cæsar's Ghost. In his person the conspirators attempted to overthrow destiny; it is by the murdered Cæsar that they themselves are overthrown.

Cassius is perhaps more liable to misinterpretation than any other character in the play. We are tempted at sight to suppose merely that he was an ill-tempered man with a personal grudge against Cæsar, and that he concocted the conspiracy solely to satisfy his rancour, inveigling others into it by assuming the airs of a patriot while plotting to gratify his personal spleen at the expense of almost unlimited bloodshed.

These merely personal motives, however, are quite insufficient. The idea of being the slave of a man no better than himself—

"I had as lief not be, as live to be

In awe of such a thing as I myself"—

is abhorrent to him, and his bitterness is indefinitely increased by his misconception of Cæsar himself. But his hatred of the tyrant needs to be reinforced by his genuine political hatred of monarchy in the abstract. He will in no wise endure to be a bondsman himself; but, though only in a secondary degree, he would have all Romans free. He cares little whether Cæsar is formally crowned, but that Cæsar or anyone else should have absolute power is intolerable. He is perfectly honest in his sentiments; they are not invented to deceive Brutus. He wants Brutus to share the leadership at least, not to make a mere tool of him. From end to end of the play, he does his best to induce Brutus to take his own view of what ought to be done; but he always gives way if his persuasion fails. Cicero is excluded; Antony is spared, and subsequently allowed to speak at the funeral; the fortunes of the conspirators are staked on a great battle—in each case Cassius withdraws his opposition in deference to Brutus, whom he loves; in each case we know that Brutus was wrong and Cassius right: yet Cassius has no reproach for his colleague, attempts no rivalry with him, acts throughout with an admirable loyalty. And to appreciate all this fully, we must remember that he is drawn always as a man with a fiery temper, irritable and passionate, to whom it was singularly galling to be crossed.

Certainly Cassius is not a hero. His moral standard is not of the highest. When he has an end in view, he has no inclination to palter about the means. He has no qualms of conscience in the matter of removing Antony as well as Cæsar; he will not cavil at the measures taken by his lieutenants for raising money—

"In such a time as this, it is not meet

That every nice offence should bear his comment".

He allows his political convictions to be coloured by his personal feelings, his 'affections sway more than his reason' to an extent which is utterly destructive of statesmanship. But if that applies to his hatred of Cæsar, it applies no less to his love for Brutus. In spite of his angry temper, his followers are devoted to him; Titinius slays himself on the body of his dead chief; to Brutus he is "the last of all the Romans". And intellectually he stands out from the rest of the conspirators as incomparably the shrewdest; the man who can take an initiative; who sees the course which policy requires; who understands other men and knows their true value and danger, unless he is blinded by personal prejudice. He reads Casca like a book; he can even manage Brutus to some extent; he alone recognizes the latent capacities of the arch-foe Antony.

It is the moral elevation of Brutus which makes us forget the great qualities that are in Cassius; and in that moral elevation is the essence of the tragedy, because it is in great part directly responsible for the failure, the ultimate defeat, of the project to which Brutus had devoted himself. That is a rather dangerous statement on the face of it, requiring some explanation.

The problem with which Brutus has to deal is a complex one; the motives which stir his coadjutors are various. No one knows better than the arch-conspirator, Cassius, that the assassination is very difficult to justify, and that most of those who take part in it are not actuated by a spirit of abstract justice; that the cause is not good enough to depend for success on strenuous moral conviction. Now had every man engaged in the conspiracy been as Brutus was—unmoved by personal resentments and jealousies, and wholly convinced that the act was right—the movement would have been attended by that moral force which would have carried public feeling irresistibly along with it. As it was, public feeling could be counted on to only a very limited extent, and required to be supported by the active exercise of physical force. Brutus, strong in his own conviction of the righteousness of his cause, measuring his companions and even the general public by his own standard, confident that it needs nothing more than a plain statement of the case to ensure the support of any honest patriot, insists on being content with the death of Cæsar himself, on letting loose Antony to fire the popular mind, on letting go the means absolutely required to make a miscellaneous army efficient. The purity of his own motives prevents him from seeing the selfishness in those of his companions, or the immense moral weight thrown into the other scale by the spectacle of Cæsar falling beneath the daggers of men whom he held among his dearest friends. When Brutus is fully convinced that the act is right, it seems to him that the fact that he, "Cæsar's angel", endorses it must convince every one that its justification is overwhelming. But to the world the act really appears to be one of rank personal treachery and disloyalty. Brutus loved the man he slew, but slew him for the general good; but the onlookers saw him repaying the trust of Cæsar by murdering him. In fact the plot was a moral shock to the world, and it was therefore utterly hopeless to carry through the policy intended on high moral grounds alone. It followed then that the enterprise was foredoomed to failure, unless, in the employment of means, the dictates of expediency were allowed to carry weight against those of abstract justice.

In his very blindness to this lies much of the beauty of Brutus' character. He is so single-minded himself that he cannot realize the duplicity of others; so unselfish, that he credits every one else with a like purity of motive. Having made up his mind that a certain course will be right if it can be carried out in completeness, he never asks whether it can be so carried out without stooping to base methods, such as he will never countenance. The merely practical person, having fixed on the end, adopts the surest means without consideration of their moral justification; the entirely unpractical person assumes that because the end is desirable, it must be attainable by means of which he will approve. It is possible, however, to be as conscientious as Brutus, without ceasing to be practical—but then the cost must be counted beforehand, and the fact that the end cannot be attained will be recognized.

Brutus fails therefore because his unselfishness, his genuine patriotism, his conscientiousness, are combined with a want of judgment, an ignorance of men, a want of insight in affairs, which utterly unfit him for leadership. He is not wrecked by the vacillation of Hamlet, the passion of Othello; he does not swerve because he has a divided mind, nor suffer feeling to outweigh reason; but he reasons wrongly. He trusts his own judgment, because he does not realize that the assumptions from which he reasons are incorrect. He has lived with books, and does not understand the world around him. Cæsar's dictatorship fills him with dismay; but it is not so much the actual absolutism which shocks him as the fear that Cæsar will claim a crown: whereas Cassius cares little about the coronation except so far as he can use the fear of it as a lever to get rid of the monarch. He judges Antony by prepossessions—no man of the world would have assumed that there was nothing to fear in Antony because he was given "to sports, to wildness, and much company"; or have been soothed by his artfully-worded message into cheerful trustfulness. He takes for granted that a Roman mob will placidly accept his assurance of high motives, and be convinced by his nicely-balanced reasoning—without a suspicion that the entire effect might be scattered to the winds by a skillful appeal to popular passion. He sternly rebukes Cassius for wringing "from the hard hands of peasants their vile trash", and would never dream of doing it himself; but it never occurs to him that when he calls on Cassius to aid him with supplies he is practically compelling his colleague to resort to such pressure in order that he may have supplies to give.

It is thoroughly consistent with all this that he is unconsciously open to flattery, and ready to be beguiled by it; for that is part of his own supreme honesty. Never stooping to flattery himself, conscious of his own integrity, he assumes a like honesty in his companions; he counts their praises as genuine expressions of conviction, not artful methods of persuasion; he sees no double meanings, because his own meaning is always so simple and direct. It is a phase not of conceit but of simplicity. This simplicity is in fact the keynote of his character; its combination with his natural tenderness of disposition makes up the whole man who is so lovable. This tenderness comes out alike in the way he yearns over Cæsar himself and over the woes he is bringing upon the Roman world; and in his gentleness to the boy Lucius, his consideration for Claudius and Varro, his affection for Portia, his readiness to be reconciled with Cassius; it justifies the warmth of the regard which all his followers show for him; it explains the fact that his arch-enemy has words to say of him as kindly as his dearest friends. In fine, he is a very noble gentleman, seeking to accomplish what could only be effected by a very able man. Being both unpractical and impracticable he fails completely; and yet he leaves on our minds the feeling that the high panegyric pronounced over his dead body by Antony is well deserved, and that it comes most fittingly and rightly from his most implacable foe.

The character of Antony is not completed in this play; in its strength and weakness it is fully presented in Antony and Cleopatra. The most noteworthy points of it are shown in the great scene of the funeral oration, and will be found treated at considerable length in the notes. Perfectly remorseless, he has very strong affections and is genuinely devoted to Cæsar, while he is capable of a generous appreciation in Brutus of virtues which he lacks himself. His great capacities are to be wrecked by his uncontrollable passions; but as yet the passions have not broken loose. What we are here impressed by is his extraordinary brilliancy and power of rising to a crisis, combined with the intensity of his personal feelings, and his complete absence of scruple. He has no hesitation in abusing the trust reposed in him by Brutus, and absolutely defying the spirit of his promise while he adheres to its letter; nor has he any qualms about using Lepidus as a temporary tool, to be tossed on one side when convenient. When his personal feelings are stirred and his affections warmly engaged he is ready to face any danger or difficulty; but he has no sense of moral obligation whatever.

Octavius is his foil—as cold and calm and stubborn as Antony is fiery and impulsive; as remorseless, as unscrupulous, as unflinching—we feel here, as we feel with treble force in Antony and Cleopatra, that he is resistless, unvanquishable, the chosen instrument of Fate that will not be denied.

The parts of Portia and Calpurnia are small, but they afford an effective and artistic contrast in their appropriateness to the wives of their respective husbands. Calpurnia is merely Cæsar's shadow; she is devoted to him, but seems to have no independent existence; makes no claim to be accounted his companion, but allows her fears to make her importunate—not for trust and confidence, but to have her way. Portia, on the contrary, has a marked and vigorous personality; her womanly fears are as strong as Calpurnia's, but she will not let them master her. If her husband is to be in danger she would fain share it; if she may not do so in the body she claims the right to be with him in spirit; but she will in nowise allow her fears to hamper his action. Not till she feels that she has put her powers of self-control to the proof, not till she knows herself worthy, does she claim her right to stand forth as her husband's counsellor and comrade; but when she does claim it, it is not as a favour but as an uncontrovertible right.

There are only two others of the dramatis personæ who need some reference here—Casca and Cicero. Each, rather curiously, affords an instance of slight deviation from Plutarch. Of Casca's character, indeed, the historian gives very little suggestion. But he mentions that at the assassination Casca cried out in Greek; whereas Shakespeare makes him scoff at Cicero for quoting Greek, much as an ultrainsular Englishman might scoff at a French quotation. In the play Casca assumes prominence, not as a particularly important conspirator, but to serve as a foil to Cassius. He is a man without strength or decision of character, but anxious to pass for the honest, sturdy citizen. Afraid of Cassius' cleverness, he wishes above everything to get credit with him for being clever and energetic; and is generally ready to profess entire agreement with anyone who expresses himself vigorously enough. The extravagance of his superstitious terrors is merely another phase of the same weakness which he commonly endeavours to conceal under a mask of cynical indifference or brusquerie.

Though Cicero speaks very little and is spoken of hardly more, we have a singularly distinct impression of him: a man with the emotional irritability of a passionate orator (i. 2. 185), and the sententious manner of one who esteems himself a philosopher (i. 3). We observe also that his adherence to any cause would give it an air of respectability (ii. 1. 141), but that Brutus objects to him on the ground of his dislike to regarding anyone else as his leader. It is in this last point that the divergence from Plutarch appears; as the conspirators are described as rejecting him on the ground that he was too timid to commit himself loyally to so dangerous a scheme. Shakespeare's outline is in fact thoroughly consistent with all we know of the man; but on the particular point it is pretty certain that Plutarch was right. Shakespeare's conception of him was probably derived from casual impressions picked up from incidental allusions to the great orator which he had come across in his miscellaneous reading.

Although there is abundance of action in the play, the whole drama is one of character rather than action. This is the justification of the fourth act, which somewhat impedes the action, but strengthens the feeling of reality in the whole: because it explains how Brutus and Cassius managed to work together; how, with tempers so opposite and with such different conceptions of the task before them, they were not sundered as Antony and Octavius were subsequently sundered; while it affords an admirable opportunity of drawing out the most fundamental characteristics of the two men.

For purposes of reference, the Globe text is now recognized generally as the standard. That text and numbering of lines have therefore been adhered to with scarcely any change, and such changes are mentioned in the notes. As a rule, even where the present editor thinks that some alteration might be preferable, he has only called attention in the notes to his reasons instead of actually changing the text.