Irish Jesuit Province

Shakespeare's Julius Csar. 1: The Csar Difficulty

Author(s): Frederick C. Kolbe
Source: The Irish Monthly, Vol. 24, No. 279 (Sep., 1896), pp. 449-459
Published by: Irish Jesuit Province
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20499017
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SEPTEMBER,

SHAKESPEARE'S

I896.

JULIUS

OzASAR.

1.-THE1 CESARDIFFICULTY.
now and again a feeling comes over me that we make
of Shakespeare;
that in national generosity we are
perhaps overdoing our attempt to atone for past national neglect;
or maybe
that, when we see the Germans
piling up his praises to
EVERY

too much

the stars, we too leap into his grave

a wart with

the thought

rant as well

as thou."

andI talk of making

Ossa
" Nay an thou'lt mouth,

like

in our minds,
And

yet, whenever

occasion

I'll

leads me back

to Shakespeare himself,-and no lover of books can stay away from

him long,-this feeling immediately gives place to the very idolatry
of which it was jealous; I no sooner enter the charmed circle of
than the great
plays,
he has but to wave
control;

his

to say, " Pardon,

master;

enchanter
his wand,
I will be

has me

under his complete

I am obliged

nndwith Ariel
c-orrespondent

to command,

and do my spiriting gently."

Many great reputationshave been ni ride,and some of the greatest
have been increased,simply by teachinl"theworld how to appreciate
e. In any one of his plays,
the genius of Shakespe-'
"
"
and certainly
is no exception, you may reap a rich
Julius Caesar
and stil igo gleaning for yourself and
harvest with these annotators,
a little better

not return empty-handed. Some she;yxesthen from their reaping,

and

some

handfuls

from my

own

cleaning,

I here venture

I anmgoing

to maintain

to

present.
Yet

there are critics and critics.

VOL. XXIV.

No.

279

with
33

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The Irish Jontthly,

450
somethat

the play of " Julius Caesar " stands

in the very front rank

of Shakespeare'smasterpieces. But you will find critics of very

great name, not merely in the old days when they knew not
Shakespeare, but even suchmen asWilliam Hazlitt, speak almost
slightingly of it. Whom are we to believe ? If an art-critic tells
us of a picture of Titian's

that the colouring

is crude, or of a Raphael

that the composition is faulty, or of aMichael Angelo that the

drawing is out, although I may not know much of art myself, yet
I startwith the assumption that it is a thousand to one in favour
of theMaster against the critic. Now Shakespeare is at one and
the same time the Titian and theRaphael and theMichael Angelo
of Literature. And the story of his fame is a long series of
victories over adverse criticism. Hazlitt said some noble things of
Shakespeare's characters: all the beauties he foundwere realbeauties
and we are grateful to him for pointing them out: but when he
takes to finding fault with Shakespeare in the essentials of his art,
then he begins to expose the beam in his own eye. In this play, he
tells us, Shakespeare fails in the character of Julius Caesar the hero
of it; and further, this fault of character is the fault of the plot.
Fancy Shakespeare not knowing how to draw a character or
construct

a plot

It is Hazlitt

rather who has failed

For Caesar is not the hero of the play,

in criticism.

and any one who

thinks

he

is justmisses the whole point of it. We need not therefore be

disturbed by Hazlitt's calling this an inferior play.
The position

I take up is this,-that

I do not

know

in which Shakespeare shows such complete mastery

materials

as i.n this.

I cannot

find a weak

any

play

over his

spot in the whole

drama.

There is not a single word superfluous,not a single scene which,

besides being beautiful in itself, does not add to the effect of the
whole. The events portrayed are of a dignity unsurpassed in
profane history; the story of them here does not in the smallest
essential depart from the truth; the language fits the story like a
garment. Four times in the play Shakespeare rises to the very
heights of his genius. Pa8sion sweeps through it like a hurricane.
The

dramatic

action

rises to its climax,

and sinks to its close, with

absolutely perfect symmetry. In other plays, as in Lear or

Hamlet orMacbeth, where Shakespeare chose to let loose the reins,
the Pegasus of his imagination may have risen to sublimer heights
or plunged intomore appalling depths. In the Tempest, or the
Midsummer Night's Dream, his poetic fancymay shed a more

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Julius

Shakespeare's

451

Cwsar.

enchanting glow. But in none of them does he domore completely

what

he wanted

to do;

in none of them does he

impress

us more

deeply with the sense of irresistiblepower: he makes us feel as if

words and thoughts and passions and charactersand even unchange
able history itself were somany spirits summoned from the vasty
deep to do his bidding.
We

may

begin

our study

of the play by looking

at the original

story fromwhich Shakespeare drew his materials. It gives an

excellent lesson to inquire how he arranged these materials; why
he began where he did, and ended where he did; why Brutus is
the hero, and not (Ceesar; why
trophe of the play,

as many

the death of CBsar

critics

say

it should

is not the catas

have

been;

and

yet why the play itself is called Julius Casar after all, and not
Brutus.
For some forty years after the date 70 B. C., Roman history
is told in the four names,

Pompey,

Coesar, Antony,

and Octavius.

During that time the world-wide Republic died, and the world
wide Empire was born. Pompey was the darling of the people;
he had

gained

a triumph

and the title of ", the Great

" when

only

twenty-four years of age; he bad carried theRoman arms to glorious

victory in three different quarters of theworld; he had swept the
pirates from theMediterranean Sea. ccI have but to stamp my
foot in Italy, and legionswill spring from the soil " was his boast,
Yet his glory faded before that of Julius COesar, a man of
inflexiblewill aud persistent purpose, who depended on fear rather
on love for his power. And when in a nation fear is stronger than
love, that nation is ripe for tyranny; and perhaps tyranny is the
best thing

for it.

The

light

of Caosar waxed

and

the

light

of

Pompey waned; and the strife between them ended with that
scene so tempting to a dramatist, when Fompey's head was brought
in and Cuesarwept over it a victor's tears. But (Cesar'sturn came
at length; the aristocracy raised their hands in the name of the
Republic, and for that now empty name COesardied. Mark
Antony picked up the torch of empire from his fallen hands, and
might perhaps have been Rome's first emperor,had he not been
lured into effeminate inactivity by the wiles of the Egyptian
sorceress Cleopatra; so that Mark Antony the "masker and
reveller

" was brushed

aside by

the " beardless

boy,"

and

it was

Octavius inwhom with his doubly Imperial name of Cuesarand

Augustus the Roman Empire was born.

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452

The IrnchMonthly.

Such is the outline of the story, and one's first impression is

that it falls naturally into two dramatic plots, of which Pompey
and Ceosar are the heroes of the first, and Antony

and Octavius

of

the second. In fact the earliest dramatisation of it inEngland was

precisely

the play " Pompey

and Caesar " ; and so obvious

is this

prejudice that even still there arepeople who think that Shakespeaxe
blundered in not making Caesar's assassination the end of his play.
However, rememberour principle that it ismore than a thousand
to one on Shakespeare against his critics; and Shakespeare,while
he tookAntony and Octavius for his second play, certainly took
the rise and fall of themurderers of Casar for his first. Let us
seewhy.
What

is it that is wanted

for a dramatic

plot ?

Obviously

we

must have sufficiency of character. The men and women of the

story must be such that they can be portrayedwith vigour and
contemplatedwith interest. Nonentities will not do in a drama.
Here Shakespeare could have been in no difficulty: Rome at this
period was full of charactcr. But we may observe that by taking
Brutus for his hero, he doubles the character-powerof the play. Had
it been a Pompey-CEesar play, there could have been only two
full-sized figures, with the rest subordinate. Now we have
four colossal characters completely drawn and wonderfully
grouped, (Ct?sar,Brutus, Cassius andAntony), with two more
sketched (Octaviusand Cicero) and one (Pompey) shadowed in.
Next, theplot of a play should combine diversity with itsunity;
in otherwords its unity ought to be organic and notmechanical. If
it has not unity, it is disjointed; if it has not diversity, it is bald.
A Pompey-Cwesarplay would have lacked unity; a Pompey play
alone, or a Ca3sarplay alone,might have lacked diversity. But a
Brutus play gives us one unbroken story which contains thewhole
of the Cwsar interest,which opens up the Antony and Octavius
interest, and in which even the Pompey interest has a share, and
yet it is full of a deep interest of its own as well.
Again, every tragedy must of course have a catastrophe,
towards which the whole movement of the play tends. As a
rule thismovement is farmore effective if it rises to a climax and
and thus gathers strength for its fall. A tragedywith a climax at
the centre and a catastrophe at the close satisfies our sense of
balance and proportion. Herein too the dramatist holds up the
mirror toNature; for, to sav itwith reverence, the whole history

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Julius

Skakespeare's

453

(cemsar.

of the human race is a tragedy which rose to its climax on the hill
of Calvary and will sink to its close in the vale of Josaphat.
Now,
a Pompey-Casar
assassination
we have

play would

seen, the

and waning

now we have

Whereas

have
cannot

the whole

story

in the

As
ino tangible climax.
and the light of Pompey

of Ccesar waxed

light

and waxing

waned;

of course have a catastrophe

of Caosar; but it would

be expressed
gradually

in a scene.

rising up to the

climax of OJesar's death, and thence swiftly descending to the

catastrophe of the battle of Philippi, And in order that this
descentmay not be a bathos, in order that the catastrophemay be
in due proportion to the climax, Shakespeare takes care to point out
to us that the real issue of the battle of Philippi was not merely
the death of Brutus and Cassius, but the downfall of the Roman
Republic itself,
Oncemore, in Shakespeare's lofty conception of the drama, every
play must embody somehigh moral teaching. It is not that he tells
us a bit

of history

and

then

tags a moral

on to it.

If the tale

itself does not tell its ownmoral, it will not do for him. What
would

if the play

be the moral

ended with

Casar's

death ?

At

best, a doubtful lessonagainst ambition,-doubtful, becauseperhaps

in reality Casar's ambition was then the best thing for Rome.
But even prescinding from this, the lesson would be quite
neutralised, for the assassination of Casar was a crime and a
blunder,

and our

intellectual

and moral

sense would

have

been

offended rather than edified, had the play closedwith a successful

blunder and an unpunished crime.
choice of Brutus
The last and greatest reason for Shakespeare's
is so great that I must perforce give the consideration
of it a wider
it is centred

the very

essence

of the grandeur

of the

scope.

Upon

play.

It is the conceptionwhich the Greeks called Nemesis,-nor

have we been able to find a better word.

product

and the domain

of Universal

This world

Law:

of ours is the

it is the Great King's

beaten highway of justice, of Nomos, of due distribution. Let

on the right hand of
to leave this highway,
a power (the
excess, or on the left hand of defect, and straightway
daughter of Nomos, therefore called Nemesis) will set out in pursuit,
any creature

attempt

and dog its steps, and bring

it down.

The Greeks

religion personified this power,-making

in their picturesque

it the embodiment of

Thus it was they mused over the events

divine wrath and jealousy.
to
of life: they saw men raised by the bountiful gifts of Fortune

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454

The Irish Monthly.

the pinnacle of wealth or prosperity or power; they saw the

infatuated insolence (hybris) of success; and then some hand from
the dark would strike and lay its victim in the dust; and they said
it was the gods avenging themselves on puny mortals trying to
lift themselves above their sphere. Often this undue elevation
was the result of some great crime, and thusNemesis often came
to mean the Goddess of Retribution in the moral world. With
their keen eye for every thing artistic, the Greeks saw in this
Nemesis the great means of putting ameaning and a purpose and
a moral into the human stories they dramatised. It is their
great contribution to the Drama. Ourown little lives give us
experience of it: continued success begets confidence, and con
fidence,when it becomes overweening, is the sure prelude to a fall.
Of course our modern idea of Nemesis ismuch more completely
that of Retribution; but both forms exist,-the one seems to satisfy
our intellectuai sense of proportion, the other ourmoral sense of
justice. The former is the artistic boncdbetween excess and reaction;
the latter

the artistic

in life we

see these

bond between
two shadowy

sin and retribution.

forms intermingling

And
as

as
they

pervade our destinies, so Shakespeare, whose art is but the

reflection
Sometimes

in his
of life, loves to weave them together
comes
the Nemesis
stealing up with the cat-like

dramas.
tread of

a beast of prey, and you feel its approach in hints and suggestions,
in rumours and presentiments, until it is all gathered up together
for its final spring: sometimes it swoops down on its victim like
the eagle from the skies. Sometimes, linkedwith Fate, it mtakes
itself known by oracle and prophecy and warning; and then
borrowing themockery of Fate, itmakes these oracles andwarnings
the very means of their own accoumplishment. The dramatic
presentation thereforeof Nemesis is heightened by presentiment,
by rumour,by oracle, by warning, by irony, by the hybris or
infatuated confidence of the victim, and by the swiftness or the
terror of the blow. See the dreadNemesis that gathered slowly
round the crimesofMacbeth. Look at the play Richard III, where
the hero is the most colossa-lvillain that even Shakespeare ever
portrayed: it is a perfect sonata of Nemesis, several themes of it
running into one another and forming the undertone of the great
Retribution which gradually crushesRichard himself.
In Julius Cwesarwe have a grand symmetrv of Nemesis. The
play

rises to its climax which

is a great Nemesis

of Reaction,

and

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Shiakespeare'sJulius Ocesar.

455

sinks to its closewhich is a great Nemesis of Retribution. The

two are interwoven: theNemesis which strikes down Osesar is the
crimewhich brings on Brutus the Nemesis of Retribution: and
theNemesis of Brutus is seen to be the very work of Casar's spirit
ranging for revenge. Moreover the twoNemeses aremade to run
parallel, and are emphasised in precisely parallel ways. There is
presentiment in both,-Caesar's antipathy to Cassius, and Cassius's
shrewdmisgivings aboutAntony. There is the supernaturalwarning
in both,-the soothsayer's "Ctosar, beware the Ides of March,"
and the appearance of Cwsar's spirit to Brutus. There is the
infatuated confidence in both,-OCsar's going tothe Capitol in spite
of portents, and Brutus allowing Antony to speak in spite ofwarn
ings. That of Caesar ismade more striking by his arrogant sense of
unassailableness,-" Hence, wilt thou lift Olympus? "-and that
of Brutus ismade more striking by the apparent justification and
seourity of the conspiracy at first, and by the partial victory at
Philippi itself. Moreover around both there plays a constant
flickering of irony. When the soothsayer bids Cnsar beware the
Ides of March, it isBrutus and Cassius who bring him forward
and interpret forhim; it is at the triumph over Pompey that the
conspiracy begins; the conspiracy itself is hatched in Pompey's
theatre, and Cwsar
hour

arranged

falls at the foot of Pompey's

the
statue; when
it is Brutus of whom Cwsar

for his death had struck,

asks the time; he bids the conspiratorsbe near bim; he sportswith

the soothsayer; the moment before his death he calls himself
unassailable. This irony is even more marked in the conspirators:
was the only man they wanted, and it was just through him
the sword on which Cassius
that the whole
slew
thing failed;
himself was the very sword which had slain Casar;
ancd when

Brutus

Brutus meditates suicide, he applies to himself, and condemns, the

the very reasoningwhich had led him to kill Coesar.
It is not wonderful therefore that Shakespeare has chosen
Brutus for his hero-if it doubles his Character-power, trebleshis
Plot-interest, gives him a Climax as well as Catastrophe, conveys
so impressive a moral, and opens the way for so striking a com
bination and contrast of Nemesis. The wonder rather is that so
many of Shakespeare's critics have not seen this.
Yet itmust not be forgotten, that if theBrutus point of view
was

by far the most

advantageous,

it was

also

by far the most

difficult; and perhaps it was the contemplation of these difficulties

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456

The

Irish Monthly.

a priori which blinded the critics, as a priori views so often do.

The first and most obvious difficulty was how tomake Brutus
the hero at all, while Cesar was there. Anybody but Shakespeare
would have got over this by keeping Cirsar altogether in the
background. All but the very greatest artists keep awkward
placesi in the shade to try to slur them over. But whether in
Architecture or in Painting or in the Drama, theMaster is often
known by his daring treatment of incongruities. Mr. Ruskin
shows us how the builders of Venice threw awkward corners of a
design into strong prominence by lavishing upon them a wealth
which

as it were

should

dazzle

the eyes

of Art.

So Shakespeare

made this difficulty the occasion of a bold, masterly and quite

unique

display

of dramatic

power.

He

invented

a new status in

the drama, and we shall see how he maintains it. Brutus is the
hero, but Cesar is the Centre. All the actionmoves with Brutus,
but it is action

in a curve round a centre, and that centre

is Cisar.

In mathematical language, Brutus is given inmagnitude, Casear

in position.

To make this clear, Shakespeare takes unusual pains to indicate

Brutus as his hero. A hero reveals himself by action: Brutus is
active throughout, Caesar does nothing in thewhole play. A hero
sways others, is not swayed by them: Brutus overbears the judg
ment of all the other conspirators,moves Caius Ligarius with a
word, silences the mob, subdues even Cassius by his anger, dis
misses the Ghost of Cmsar, and after his death wrings praises
from his very foes-Caesar is swayed by superstitious fears,
baulked by the mob, moved from his purpose by Calphurnia,
fooled back into it by Decius. Again each stage of the storymust
be concerned about the hero: now in this play the closing words
of each Act

sum up the stage

at which

the story has

in all five cases they are about Brutus-in

the conspiracy,

about

"We

awake him and be sure of him;

will

and

the Act

hesitating

arrived,

and

the lst Act Brutus is

closes with the words
" in the 2nd the con

spiracy is fully formed, and at the end of it Portia is sending a

message toBrutus, and saying "0 Brutus, the heavens speed thee
i the 3rd the conspiracy strikes, and is
in thine enterprise; in
struck back, and fails, and at the end

the mob

is rushing

to burn

the house of Brutus; at the end of the 4th we find Brutus march
ing to Philippi; and then of course the whole play closeswith the
praise uttered by Antony and Octavius over the body of Brutus.

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Shakespeare'sJulius Cesar.

457

Once more, it is upon the hero that most of the oharacter

touches are lavished: now the character of Brutus is drawnwith
a care almost painfully minute; and in order tomake him more
worthy of his place as hero, Shakespeare has improved on the
already noble character given him by Plutarch. As for Caesar,on
the other hand, no wonder Hazlitt was disappointed at his
character, for in fact it is not there, and Shakespeare never in
tended to put it there; if he had, it would have spoilt the whole
play. All he has portrayed is Caesar'sposition in Rome, and to
this everything in thewhole play points. Quite as much care is
lavished over the position of Caesar as over the character of
Brutus. The first scene shows the mob making holiday to see
Caesar, with the first muttering of the storm against him
in the rebuke of the tribunes, Flavius and Marullus. When
Cesar enters, it is in procession, surrounded by the greatest men
in Rome, who are as nothing in his presence; Cicero is silent,
Antony comes at a beck, Casca is his herald, Brutus and Cassius
act as his interpreters (and though herein as we have seen they are
the servants of Nemesis, yet towardsCaesar their attitude is one of
submission); when Caesar speaks, all stand still and the music
ceases; what he says is only superstition, but it is enough that he
says it; every word he utters is aword of command; evenAntony
speaks

to him

like

slave,

calls

him " Cesar,

my

lord,"

and

promises unconditional obedience. When he himself is no longer

on the stage, we hear

the mob

for him,

shouting

and on the stage

all the conversation is about him; he returns, and Brutus says,

"1The

angry

spot doth glow

brow, and all the rest look

on Casar's

like a chidden train." During the next three scenes there is a

terrible storm of thunder and lightning, and throughout we are
made to feel it isCesar's storm,-Casca is terrifiedby it into seeing
wonders and portents; Cicero disregards it, because Caesar is to
him of greater

consequence:

" Brought

you Caesar home ? " he asks

Casca, and, when the latter relates the awful events of the night,
he brushes him aside with a sceptical "Men may construe things
after their fashion clean from the purpose of the things them
selves,"

but " Comes Cesar

to the Capitol

to-morrow

? " To Cicero

then the secondman in Rome, the first in some respects, therewas

but one thing of importanceand that was Casar. Cassius enters
the storm and is roused by it to defiance,

because

he

sees in it an

emblem of Cesar, "a man no mightier than thyself or me, in

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The IrishMontthly.

468

personal action; yet prodigious grown." Brutus is in the storm,

but is elevated beyond being able to notice it by deep thoughts,
and these thoughts are all of Caesar. In the great third Act, of
course Caesar towersover all: Shakespeare showshim for amoment
in both position and character to increase the grandeur of the
climax. But even after his death he remains the centre: Antony
when he comes in, first kneels over the dead body of Casar; when
the servant of Octavius enters, he stops in themiddle of his message
to weep over Caesar; and the scene closes by the body being carried
out by Antony and the slave, the patrician and the pariah as it
were taking the same level in Caesar's regard. In Antony's great
speech, the body of Caesarwe must remember is all along the
dramatic centre roundwhich all are grouped. When Brutus and
Cassius quarrel, it is Caesar's name they taunt each other with.
When the ghost appears to Brutus, it is Caesar'sghost-ranging
for revenge, asAntony had prophesied-though does not say so.
When Cassius dies, he cries, "Caesar, thou art revenged"; and
Brutus finding him dead says, "0 Julius Caesar, thou art mighty
yet," and again when he himself dies, " Casar, now be still : I
killed not thee with half so good a will." My list of proofs is
long, but you could double it by going through the play: I add
only one more touch, a technical one,-it is that the name Caesar
occurs no less than 214 times in the play,-a circumstanceI should
think unparalleled; and that it was done deliberately is shown by
the name often appearing where we should expect a pronoun
instead. Now the effect of this repetition of themere name is
certainly tomagnify the position of the man without making his
characterprominent. Thus Shakespeare's first difficulty is converted
into a triumph, and we now understand how Brutus is the hero, and
yet why

the play

is called " Julius

Caesar " after all.

I venture to claim that this solution ofmine is a distinct advance

in the theory of the play,-partly because I have been told so by
so great an authority asMr. R. G. Moulton, and partjy because it
seems to me to correct, combine, and harmonise the two best
solutions hitherto given. These two are by Gervinus speaking for
Germany, and Professor Dowden representing home scholarship.
The solution of Gervinus is two-fold,-(1) that Shakespeare could
not venture to create toogreat an interest in Caesar; (2) that there
fore it was necessary to present only that view of him which gave
a reason for the conspiracy. Professor Dowden's solution is also

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Shakespeare's Julius Cesar.

459

two-fold,-(1) " Julius Caesar is indeed the protagonist of the

tragedy; but it is not the CGesarwhose bodily presence isweak; "
and (2) " This bodily presence of Ceesar is but of secondary
importance,andmay be suppliedwhen it actually passes away by
Octavius as its substitute. It is the spirit of Ccesarwhich is
the dominant power of the tragedy."
If I may talkwith freedom of critics so eminent, I will make so
bold as to say that Gervinus is right in maintaining that
Shakespeare intended to portray only a partial view of Cesar's
character,and that Professor Dowden is right in maintaining that
it is the spirit of Cesar

which

is the mainspring

of the play.

But

it seems tome thatGervinus iswrong in thinking that Shakespeare

shrank frommaking Caesar" of too great interest," or kept him in
the background; for after all the whole interest is in Cwsar, and as
amatter of fact he is kept continually in the foreground. And for
a similar reason I cannot but think thatProfessor Dowden iswrong
in saying that Coesar'sbodily presence is of secondary importance;
its importance is even exaggerated. Indeed there is a hint in the
play itself that the antithesis as stated by Professor Dowden was
before themind of Shakespeare with explicit precision; for in so
many words he makes Brutus ponder over the problem, "How to
come ,by the spirit of Ctrsar and not dismember Ctesar." The
viewwhich makes the bodily presence of C(esar the dramaticCentre,
and the spirit of Cwsar themoving force, of the whole play, seems
tome to harmonise all. At any rate I submitmy audacious claim
to the judgment of the learned.
Fit EIDERICKC. KOLBx.

(To be continued).

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