Julius Caesar

Author: William Shakespeare (1564 - 1616)
Written: c 1599
Editors: Jonathan Bate and Eric Rasmussen
Publisher: Modern Library (2011 Edition)
Bought from: Book Depository


Introduction

Julius Caesar is one of Shakespeare’s Roman tragedies based on Plutarch’s Lives of the Noble Grecians and Romans.

Ancient Rome was a republic from c 508 BC (when Tarquinius, the last king was overthrown by Lucius Junius Brutus) to c 27 BC (when the Senate gave Octavius the title Augustus). The main political institutions during this period were the Senate, the Legislative Assembly and the Executive Magistrates. The Senate controlled the treasury and foreign policy. The Legislative Assembly passed laws and elected magistrates. The Executive Magistrates were officials elected by Roman citizens. There were several classes of Magistrates, each with different powers. Each office was held concurrently by at least 2 people and lasted for only one year. The highest ranking Magistrates were the consuls. They were effectively the heads of state. When a consul was abroad, he commanded an army and his powers were effectively unlimited. When he was in Rome, his military powers were suspended.

Demographically, the Roman Republic period was characterised by conflict between the plebeians, common citizens, and the patricians, land-owning aristocracy.

Gaius Julius Caesar (100 - 44 BC) lived in this period. In 60 BC, he, Pompey and Crassus formed an informal political alliance that became known as the First Triumvirate. He was elected consul for the year 59 BC. At the end of his one year term, Caesar outmaneuvered the Senate and secured a position of governor (proconsul) of several provinces but more importantly command of a large army. He then embarked on his greatest military triumphs. First, he conquered Gaul (present day France) after the Gallic War (58 to 50 BC). He fought as far as what is now Germany and he even crossed the English Channel to Britannia (Britain) twice.

In the meantime, the First Triumvirate has broken down. Pompey sided with the Senate and ordered Caesar to disband his army and return to Rome. Caesar disobeyed the order and, in 49 BC, crossed the Rubicon River (which marked the border of Italy proper) with one legion of his army. This sparked the Roman Civil War. Pompey and his supporters fled Rome. Caesar spent the next 4 years pursuing and battling Pompey’s forces in Hispania (present day Iberian Peninsula), Greece, Egypt and Africa. Pompey was murdered in Egypt. In March 45 BC, Caesar finally defeated the forces then led by Pompey’s sons Gnaeus and Sextus.

Caesar returned in triumph to Rome in September 45 BC. He began to introduce wide-ranging reforms of everything from the political institutions to the calendar. Most importantly, he began to consolidate his power at the expense of the Senate. At some point between January and February 44 BCE he was appointed dictator perpetuo (dictator in perpetuity). There was unease amongst many Romans that Caesar will soon assume absolute power and rule as tyrant, effectively as king.


What is it about?

The play begins in Rome on February 15, 44 BC. Julius Caesar parades through the streets near the Palatine Hill in a triumphal procession celebrating his victory over Pompey in the Roman Civil War.

A group of Senators, led by Cassius, seek to persuade Brutus to join their conspiracy to kill Caesar. Cassius invokes the name of the earlier Brutus who overthrew the last king of Rome. In a soliloquy, Brutus voices his fear that only death will prevent Caesar’s rise to absolute power:

It must be by his death, and for my part,
I know no personal cause to spurn at him
But for the general. He would be crowned:
How that might change his nature, there’s the question.
It is the bright day that brings forth the adder,
And that craves wary walking: crown him that,
And then I grant we put a sting in him,
That at his will he may do danger with.
Th’abuse of greatness is when it disjoins
Remorse from power: and to speak truth of Caesar,
I have not known when his affections swayed
More than his reason. But ’tis a common proof
That lowliness is young ambition’s ladder,
Whereto the climber upward turns his face.
But when he once attains the upmost round,
He then unto the ladder turns his back,
Looks in the clouds, scorning the base degrees
By which he did ascend: so Caesar may;
Then, lest he may, prevent. And since the quarrel
Will bear no color for the thing he is,
Fashion it thus: that what he is, augmented,
Would run to these and these extremities.
And therefore think him as a serpent’s egg—
Which, hatched, would as his kind grow mischievous—
And kill him in the shell.
(2.1.10-34)

Brutus lead the conspirators and stab Caesar to death on the Ides of March, 14 March 44 BC. Then comes the centerpiece of the play. In prose, Brutus addresses the citizens and wins over the crowd by telling them that the reason he rose against Caesar was “not that I loved Caesar less, but that I loved Rome more” (3.2.21-22). Then, he makes a fatal mistake in allowing Antony, Caesar’s second-in-command, to address the crowd after he leaves (“Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears”). Antony uses a wonderful array of literary devices (and the promise of a substantial financial incentive) to completely undermine Brutus and manipulate the citizens to turn on the conspirators:

For Brutus, as you know, was Caesar’s angel. -
Judge, O you gods, how dearly Caesar loved him. -
This was the most unkindest cut of all.
For when the noble Caesar saw him stab,
Ingratitude, more strong than traitors’ arms,
Quite vanquished him: then burst his mighty heart,
And, in his mantle muffling up his face,
Even at the base of Pompey’s statue -
Which all the while ran blood - great Caesar fell.
(3.2.185-193)

Antony then forms an alliance, the so-called Second Triumvirate, with Octavius (Caesar’s heir) and Lepidus. The play ends in Philippi, Greece, in 42 BC, when Cassius and Brutus commit suicide after defeat to the forces of Mark Antony and Octavius.

Brutus is arguably the protagonist of the play. Even his mortal enemy Antony praises him in the final scene of the play:

This was the noblest Roman of them all:
All the conspirators save only he
Did that they did in envy of great Caesar.
He only, in a general honest thought
And common good to all, made one of them.
His life was gentle, and the elements
So mixed in him, that Nature might stand up
And say to all the world, “This was a man!”
(5.5.73-80)

Themes

Shakespeare’s contemporaries, who were well versed in ancient Greek and Roman history, would very likely have detected parallels between the play’s portrayal of the shift from republican to imperial Rome and the Elizabethan era’s trend toward consolidated monarchal power. In 1599, when the play was first performed, Queen Elizabeth I had sat on the throne for nearly forty years, enlarging her power at the expense of the aristocracy and the House of Commons. As she was then sixty-six years old, her reign seemed likely to end soon, yet she did not have any heirs (the same as Julius Caesar). Many feared that her death would plunge England into the kind of chaos that had plagued England during the fifteenth-century Wars of the Roses. In an age when censorship would have limited direct commentary on these worries, Shakespeare could nevertheless use the story of Caesar to comment on the political situation of his day.

Shakespeare is fond of symmetries and often repeats scenes, conversations, or even characters. In Julius Caesar, the two female characters Portia, Brutus’s wife, and Calpurnia, Caesar’s wife, tried but failed to persuade their husbands from the events on the Ides of March.

The play also offers a primer to two major schools of Greek philosophy. The first is Epicureanism, founded by Epicurus (342 - 270 BC). He believed in gods who did not control nature; they lived a life of infinite bliss which would be spoilt if they worried about human affairs (source: The Concise Encyclopedia of Western Philosophy and Philosophers, Urmson & Ree, 1991). As the gods were indifferent to human affairs, omens did not influence the course of events. The second is Stoicism, founded by Zeno (c 333 - 262 BC). The Stoics believe that unhappiness was the result of pursuing what was not wholly under the control of the individual and the only thing completely in our power is the correct moral attitude of mind which is virtue (source: The Concise Encyclopedia of Western Philosophy and Philosophers, Urmson & Ree, 1991). The Stoics came up with was a strategy of emotional disengagement from life, apathia (apathy) and they acted only from reason, never from passion (source: Plato and a Platypus Walk into a Bar, Cathcart & Klein, 2007).

In the beginning of the play, Cassius declared himself an Epicurean. He dismissed various omens appearing all over Rome and said, “Men at some time are master of their fates. / The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars / But in ourselves, that we are underlings” (1.2.145-147). By the end of the play, he has changed his mind (at least a little). He now said that he “... partly credit things that do presage” (5.185) and believed that he has seen omens that predicted the defeat of his army. Brutus on the other hand was initially a Stoic. Even when faced with defeat, he felt it was cowardly and vile (ie. not Stoic) to contemplate suicide (5.1.109-116). In the end, however, his forces and his spirit broken, he admitted:

Our enemies have beat us to the pit;
It is more worthy to leap in ourselves
Than tarry till they push us in ...
(5.5.27-29)

So how is the book?

Each of the books in the RSC Shakespeare series published by The Modern Library comes with very informative footnotes, helpful scene-by-scene analysis and, best of all, commentary on past and current productions that comes with interviews with leading directors and actor. The books are also very reasonably priced. Best of all, the introductions are not overly long and focus on a few talking points for each play. The paper quality is not particularly good though. Unlike the other titles in this series, I actually like the cover for this title (a bloodied knife).

The proof-readers made an unforgivable error in Scene 2. On the eve of the assassination of Caesar, Brutus asks his young servant: “Is not tomorrow, boy, the first of March?” (2.1.40). It should of course have been the “fifteenth” of March.


Et cetera

In Dante’s The Divine Comedy, Brutus and Cassius are punished in the lowest level of Purgatory (together with Judas Iscariot).

In Hamlet (written one to two years after Julius Caesar), there is a sly reference to Julius Caesar. Polonius say: “I did enact Julius Caesar / I was killed in the Capitol; Brutus killed me.” To which Hamlet replies, “It was a brute part of him to kill so capital a calf there” (3.2).