IX.

For he is superstitious grown of late,Quite from the main opinion he held onceOf fantasy, of dreams and ceremoniesTo come back to a world of which you have mastered the machinery, and to find that it is no longer governed by machinery at all, that causes no longer produce their effectsâ€”this, if anything, might well drive a strong intellect to superstition. And herein consists the pathos of CÃ¦sar's situation. The deepest tragedy of the play is not the assassination of CÃ¦sar, it is rather seen in such a speech as this of Decius:ii.i. 202.If he be so resolved,I can o'ersway him; for he loves to hearThat unicorns may be betray'd with trees,And bears with glasses, elephants with holes,Lions with toils and men with flatterers;But when I tell him, he hates flatterers,He says he does, being then most flattered.Assassination is a less piteous thing than to see the giant intellect by its very strength unable to contend against the low cunning of a fifth-rate intriguer.Such, then, appears to be Shakespeare's conception of Julius CÃ¦sar. He is the consummate type of the practical: emphatically the public man, complete in all the greatness that belongs to action. On the other hand, the knowledge of self produced by self-contemplation is wanting, and so when he comes to consider the relation of his individual self to the state he vacillates with the vacillation of a strong man moving amongst men of whose greater intellectual subtlety he is dimly conscious: no unnatural conception for a CÃ¦sar who has been founding empires abroad while his fellows have been sharpening their wits in the party contests of a decaying state.Cassius: his whole character developed and subjected to a master-passion that is disinterested.The remaining members of the group are Cassius and Antony. In Cassius thought and action have been equally developed, and he has the qualities belonging to both the outer and the inner life. But the side which in Brutus barely preponderated, absolutely tyrannises in Cassius; his public life has given him a grand passion to which the whole of his nature becomes subservient. Inheriting a 'rashhumour' from his mother, he was specially prepared for impatience of political anomalies;iv.iii. 120.republican independence has become to him an ideal dearer than life.i.ii. 95.I had as lief not be as live to beIn awe of such a thing as I myself.i.ii, iii;ii.i;iii.i. 177, &c.He has thus become a professional politician. Politics is to him a game, and men are counters to be used;i.ii. 312-319.Cassius finds satisfaction in discovering that even Brutus's 'honourable metal may be wrought from that it is disposed.' He has the politician's low view of human nature; while Brutus talks of principles Cassius interposes appeals to interest: he says to Antony,iii.i. 177.Your voice shall be as strong as any man'sIn the disposing of new dignities.His party spirit is, as usual, unscrupulous; he seeks to work upon his friend's unsuspecting nobility by concocted letters thrown in at his windows;i.ii. 319.in the Quarrel Scene loses patience at Brutus's scruples.iv.iii. 7, 29, &c.I'll not endure it: you forget yourself,To hedge me in; I am a soldier, I,Older in practice, abler than yourselfTo make conditions.At the same time he has a party politician's tact; his advice throughout the play is proved by the event to have been right,iii.i. 145.and he does himself no more than justice when he says his misgiving 'still falls shrewdly to the purpose.'Antony: his whole character developed and subjected to selfish passion.Antony also has all the powers that belong both to the intellectual and practical life; so far as these powers are concerned, he has them developed to a higher degree than even Brutus and Cassius. His distinguishing mark lies in the use to which these powers are put; like Cassius, he has concentrated his whole nature in one aim, but this aim is not a disinterested object of public good, it is unmitigated self-seeking. Antony has greatness enough to appreciate the greatness of CÃ¦sar; hence in the first half of the play he has effaced himself,choosing to rise to power as the useful tool of CÃ¦sar.esp.i.ii, from 190; comp.ii.i. 165.Here, indeed, he is famed as a devotee of the softer studies, but it is not till his patron has fallen that his irresistible strength is put forth. There seems to be but one element in Antony that is not selfish:iii.i, from 254; comp. 194-213.his attachment to CÃ¦sar is genuine, and its force is measured in the violent imagery of the vow with which, when alone for a moment with the corpse, he promises vengeance till all pity is 'choked with custom of fell deeds.' And yet this perhaps is after all the best illustration of his callousness to higher feelings; for the one tender emotion of his heart is used by him as the convenient weapon with which to fight his enemies and raise himself to power.The Grouping as a whole surveyed.Such, then, is the Grouping of Characters in the play ofJulius CÃ¦sar. To catch it they must be contemplated in the light of the antithesis between the outer and inner life. In Brutus the antithesis disappears amid the perfect balancing of his character, to reappear in the action, when Brutus has to choose between his cause and his friend. In CÃ¦sar the practical life only is developed, and he fails as soon as action involves the inner life. Cassius has the powers of both outer and inner life perfect, and they are fused into one master-passion, morbid but unselfish. Antony has carried to an even greater perfection the culture of both lives, and all his powers are concentrated in one purpose, which is purely selfish. In the action in which this group of personages is involved the determining fact is the change that has come over the spirit of Roman life, and introduced into its public policy the element of personal aggrandisement and personal risk. The new spirit works upon Brutus: the chance of winning political liberty by the assassination of one individual just overbalances his moral judgment, and he falls. Yet in his fall he is glorious: the one false judgment of his life brings him, what is more to him than victory, the chance of maintaining the calmness of principle amid the ruins of a falling cause, and showing how a Stoic can fail and die. The new spiritaffects CÃ¦sar and tempts him into a personal enterprise in which success demands a meanness that he lacks, and he is betrayed to his fall. Yet in his fall he is glorious: the assassins' daggers purge him from the stain of his momentary personal ambition, and the sequel shows that the Roman world was not worthy of a ruler such as CÃ¦sar. The spirit of the age effects Cassius, and fans his passion to work itself out to his own destruction, and he falls. Yet in his fall he is glorious: we forgive him the lowered tone of his political action when we see by the spirit of the new rulers how desperate was the chance for which he played, and how Cassius and his loved cause of republican freedom expire together. The spirit of the age which has wrought upon the rest is controlled and used by Antony, and he rises on their ruins. Yet in his rise he is less glorious than they in their fall: he does all for self; he may claim therefore the prize of success, but in goodness he has no share beyond that he is permitted to be the passive instrument of punishing evil.IX.How the Play of Julius CÃ¦sar works to a Climax at the centre.A Study in Passion and Movement.Passion and Movement as elements of dramatic effect.THE preceding chapters have been confined to two of the main elements in dramatic effect, Character and Plot: the third remains to be illustrated. Amongst other devices of public amusement the experiment has been tried of arranging a game of chess to be played by living pieces on a monster board; if we suppose that in the midst of such a game the real combative instincts of the living pieces should be suddenly aroused, that the knight should in grim earnest plunge his spear into his nearest opponent, and that missiles should actually be discharged from the castles, then the shock produced in the feelings of the bystanders by such a change would serve to bring out with emphasis the distinction between Plot and the third element of dramatic effect, Passion. Plot is an interest of a purely intellectual kind, it traces laws, principles, order, and design in the incidents of life. Passion, on the other hand, depends on the human character of the personages involved; it consists in the effects produced on the spectator's emotional nature as his sympathy follows the characters through the incidents of the plot; it is War as distinguished fromKriegspiel. Effects of such Passion are numerous and various: the present study is concerned with itsMovement. This Movement comprehends a class of dramatic effects differing in one obviousparticular from the effects considered so far. Character-Interpretation and Plot are both analytical in their nature; the play has to be taken to pieces and details selected from various parts have to be put together to give the idea of a complete character, or to make up some single thread of design.Passion connected with the movement of a drama.Movement, on the contrary, follows the actual order of the events as they take place in the play itself. The emotional effects produced by such events as they succeed one another will not be uniform and monotonous; the skill of the dramatist will lie in concentrating effect at some points and relieving it at others; and to watch such play of passion through the progress of the action will be a leading dramatic interest. Now we have already had occasion to notice the prominence which Shakespeare in his dramatic construction gives to the central point of a play; symmetry more than sensation is the effect which has an attraction for his genius, and the finale to which the action is to lead is not more important to him than the balancing of the whole drama about a turning-point in the middle. Accordingly it is not surprising to find that in the Passion-Movement of his dramas a similar plan of construction is often followed; that all other variations are subordinated to one great Climax of Passion at the centre.The regular arch-form applicable to Passion-Movement.To repeat an illustration already applied to Plot: the movement of the passion seems to follow the form of a regular arch, commencing in calmness, rising through emotional strain to a summit of agitation at the centre, then through the rest of the play declining into a calmness of a different kind. It is the purpose of the two remaining studies to illustrate this kind of movement in two very different plays.Julius CÃ¦sarhas the simplest of plots; our attention is engaged with a train of emotion which is made to rise gradually to a climax at the centre, and then equally gradually to decline.Lear, on the contrary, is amongst the most intricate of Shakespeare's plays; nevertheless the dramatist contrives to keep the same simple form of emotionaleffect, and its complex passions unite in producing a concentration of emotional agitation in a few central scenes.In Julius CÃ¦sar the movement follows the justification of the conspirators to the audience:The passion in the play ofJulius CÃ¦sargathers around the conspirators, and follows them through the mutations of their fortunes. If however we are to catch the different parts of the action in their proper proportions we must remember the character of these conspirators, and especially of their leaders Brutus and Cassius. These are actuated in what they do not by personal motives but by devotion to the public good and the idea of republican liberty; accordingly in following their career we must not look too exclusively at their personal success and failure. The exact key to the movement of the drama will be given by fixing attention uponthe justification of the conspirators' causein the minds of the audience;this rises to the centre and declines from the centre.and it is this which is found to rise gradually to its height in the centre of the play, and from that point to decline to the end. I have pointed out in the preceding study how the issue at stake inJulius CÃ¦saramounts to a conflict between the outer and inner life, between devotion to a public enterprise and such sympathy with the claims of individual humanity as is specially fostered by the cultivation of the inner nature. The issue is reflected in words of Brutus already quoted:ii.i. 18.The abuse of greatness is, when it disjoinsRemorse from power.Brutus applies this as a test to CÃ¦sar's action, and is forced to acquit him: but is not Brutus here laying down the very principle of which his own error in the play is the violation? The assassin's dagger puts Brutus and the conspirators in the position of power; while 'remorse'â€”the word in Shakespearean English means human sympathyâ€”is the due of their victim CÃ¦sar, whose rights to justice as a man, and to more than justice as the friend of Brutus, the conspirators have the responsibility of balancing against the claims of a political cause. These claims of justice and humanity aredeliberately ignored by the stoicism of Brutus, while the rest of the conspirators are blinded to them by the mists of political enthusiasm; this outraged human sympathy asserts itself after CÃ¦sar's death in a monstrous form in the passions of the mob, which are guided by the skill of Antony to the destruction of the assassins. Of course both the original violation of the balance between the two lives and the subsequent reaction are equally corrupt. The stoicism of Brutus, with its suppression of the inner sympathies, arrives practically at the principleâ€”destined in the future history of the world to be the basis of a yet greater crimeâ€”that it is expedient that one man should die rather than that a whole people should perish. On the other hand, Antony trades upon the fickle violence of the populace, and uses it as much for personal ends as for vengeance. This demoralisation of both the sides of character is the result of their divorce. Such is the essence of this play if its action be looked at as a whole; but it belongs to the movement of dramatic passion that we see the action only in its separate parts at different times. Through the first half of the play, while the justification of the conspirators' cause is rising, the other side of the question is carefully hidden from us; from the point of the assassination the suppressed element starts into prominence, and sweeps our sympathies along with it to its triumph at the conclusion of the play.First stage: the conspiracy forming. Passion indistinguishable from mere interest.In following the movement of the drama the action seems to divide itself into stages. In the first of these stages, which comprehends the first two scenes, the conspiracy is only forming; the sympathy with which the spectator follows the details is entirely free from emotional agitation; passion so far is indistinguishable from mere interest.i.i, ii.The opening scene strikes appropriately the key-note of the whole action.Starting-point: signs of reaction in the popular worship of CÃ¦sar.In it we see the tribunes of the peopleâ€”officers whose wholeraison d'Ãªtreis to be the mouthpiece of the commonaltyâ€”restraining their own clients from the noisy honours they are disposedto pay to CÃ¦sar.i.i.To the justification in our eyes of a conspiracy against CÃ¦sar, there could not be a better starting-point than this hint that the popular worship of CÃ¦sar, which has made him what he is, is itself reaching its reaction-point. Such a suggestion moreover makes the whole play one completewaveof popular fickleness from crest to crest.The Rise begins. The cause seen at its best, the victim at his worst.The second is the scene upon which the dramatist mainly relies for thecrescendoin the justification of the conspirators. It is a long scene, elaborately contrived so as to keep the conspirators and their cause before us at their very best, and the victim at his very worst.i.ii.Cassius is the life and spirit of this scene, as he is of the whole republican movement. Cassius is excellent soil for republican principles. The 'rash humour' his mother gave him would predispose him to impatience of those social inequalities and conventional distinctions against which republicanism sets itself. Again he is a hard-thinking man, to whom the perfect realisation of an ideal theory would be as palpable an aim as the more practical purposes of other men. He is a Roman moreover, at once proud of his nation as the greatest in the world, and aware that this national greatness had been through all history bound up with the maintenance of a republican constitution. His republicanism gives to Cassius the dignity that is always given to a character by a grand passion, whether for a cause, a woman, or an ideaâ€”the unification of a whole life in a single aim, by which the separate strings of a man's nature are, as it were, tuned into harmony. In the present scene Cassius is expounding the cause which is his life-object. Nor is this all. Cassius was politician enough to adapt himself to his hearers, and could hold up the lower motives to those who would be influenced by them; but in the present case it is the 'honourable metal' of a Brutus that he has to work upon, and his exposition of republicanism must be adapted to the highest possiblestandard. Accordingly, in the language of the scene we find the idea of human equality expressed in its most ideal form. Without it Cassius thinks life not worth living.i.ii. 95.I had as lief not be as live to beIn awe of such a thing as I myself.I was born free as CÃ¦sar; so were you;We both have fed as well, and we can bothEndure the winter's cold as well as he.The examples follow of the flood and fever incidents, which show how the majesty of CÃ¦sar vanished before the violence of natural forces and the prostration of disease.115.And this manIs now become a god, and Cassius isA wretched creature and must bend his body,If CÃ¦sar carelessly but nod on him.In the eye of the state, individuals are so many members of a class, in precisely the way that their names are so many examples of the proper noun.142.Brutus and CÃ¦sar: what should be in that 'CÃ¦sar'?Why should that name be sounded more than yours?Write them together, yours is as fair a name;Sound them, it doth become the mouth as well;Weigh them, it is as heavy; conjure with them,Brutus will start a spirit as soon as CÃ¦sar.Now, in the names of all the gods at once,Upon what meat doth this our CÃ¦sar feed,That he is grown so great?And this exposition of the conspirators' cause in its highest form is at the same time thrown into yet higher relief by a background to the scene, in which the victim is presented at his worst.from 182.All through the conversation between Brutus and Cassius, the shouting of the mob reminds of the scene which is at the moment going on in the Capitol, while the conversation is interrupted for a time by the returning procession of CÃ¦sar. In this action behind the scenes which thus mingles with the main incident CÃ¦sar is committing the one fault of his life: this is the fault of 'treason,' which can be justifiedonly by being successful and so becoming 'revolution,' whereas CÃ¦sar is failing, and deserving to fail from the vacillating hesitation with which he sins. Moreover, unfavourable as such incidents would be in themselves to our sympathy with CÃ¦sar, yet it is not the actual facts that we are permitted to see, but they are further distorted by the medium through which they reach usâ€”the cynicism of Casca which belittles and disparages all he relates.i.ii. 235.Bru.Tell us the manner of it, gentle Casca.Casca.I can as well be hanged as tell the manner of it: it was mere foolery; I did not mark it. I saw Mark Antony offer him a crown;â€”yet 'twas not a crown neither, 'twas one of these coronets:â€”and, as I told you, he put it by once: but, for all that, to my thinking, he would fain have had it. Then he offered it to him again; then he put it by again: but, to my thinking, he was very loath to lay his fingers off it. And then he offer'd it the third time; he put it the third time by: and still as he refused it, the rabblement hooted and clapped their chapped hands and threw up their sweaty night-caps and uttered such a deal of stinking breath because CÃ¦sar had refused the crown that it had almost choked CÃ¦sar; for he swounded and fell down at it: and, for mine own part, I durst not laugh, for fear of opening my lips and receiving the bad air.... When he came to himself again, he said, If he had done or said anything amiss, he desired their worships to think it was his infirmity. Three or four wenches, where I stood, cried, 'Alas, good soul!' and forgave him with all their hearts; but there's no heed to be taken of them; if CÃ¦sar had stabbed their mothers they would have done no less.Second stage: the conspiracy formed and developing. Passion-Strain begins.At the end of the scene Brutus is won, and we pass immediately into the second stage of the action: the conspiracy is now formed and developing, and the emotional strain begins. The adhesion of Brutus has given us confidence that the conspiracy will be effective, and we have only towaitfor the issue.i.iiiâ€”ii.ii.This mere notion ofwaitingis itself enough to introduce an element of agitation into the passion sufficient to mark off this stage of the action from the preceding.Suspense one element in the strain of passion.How powerful suspense is for this purpose we have expressed in the words of the play itself:ii.i. 63.Between the acting of a dreadful thingAnd the first motion, all the interim isLike a phantasma, or a hideous dream:The Genius and the mortal instrumentsAre then in council; and the state of man,Like to a little kingdom, suffers thenThe nature of an insurrection.The background of tempest and supernatural portents a device for increasing the strain.But besides the suspense there is a special device for securing the agitation proper to this stage of the passion: throughout there is maintained a Dramatic Background of night, storm, and supernatural portents.The conception of nature as exhibiting sympathy with sudden turns in human affairs is one of the most fundamental instincts of poetry. To cite notable instances: it is this which accompanies with storm and whirlwind the climax to theBook of Job, and which leads Milton to make the whole universe sensible of Adam's transgression:Earth trembl'd from her entrails, as againIn pangs, and Nature gave a second groan;Sky lowr'd, and muttering thunder, some sad dropsWept at completing of the mortal sinOriginal.So too the other end of the world's history has its appropriate accompaniments: 'the sun shall be darkened and the moon shall not give her light, and the stars shall be falling from heaven.' There is avaguenessof terror inseparable from these outbursts of nature, so mysterious in their causes and aims. They are actually the most mighty of forcesâ€”for human artillery is feeble beside the earthquakeâ€”yet they are invisible: the wind works its havoc without the keenest eye being able to perceive it, and the lightning is never seen till it has struck. Again, there is something weird in the feeling that the most frightful powers in the material universe are allsoft things. The empty air becomes the irresistible wind; the fluid and yielding water wears down the hard and massive rock and determines the shape of the earth; impalpable fire that is blown about in every direction can be roused till it devours the solidest constructions of humanskill; while the most powerful agencies of all, electricity and atomic force, are imperceptible to any of the senses and are known only by their results. This uncanny terror attaching to the union between force and softness is the inspiration of one of Homer's most unique episodes, in which the bewildered Achilles, struggling with the river-god, finds the strength and skill of the finished warrior vain against the ever-rising water, and bitterly feels the violation of the natural orderâ€”That strong might fall by strong, where now weak water's luxuryMust make my death blush.i.iii;ii.ii, &c.To the terrible in nature are added portents of the supernatural, sudden violations of the uniformity of nature, the principle upon which all science is founded. The solitary bird of night has been seen in the crowded Capitol; fire has played around a human hand without destroying it; lions, forgetting their fierceness, have mingled with men; clouds drop fire instead of rain; graves are giving up their dead; the chance shapes of clouds take distinctness to suggest tumult on the earth. Such phenomena of nature and the supernatural, agitating from their appeal at once to fear and mystery, and associated by the fancy with the terrible in human events, have made a deep impression upon primitive thought; and the impression has descended by generations of inherited tradition until, whatever may be the attitude of the intellect to the phenomena themselves, their associations in the emotional nature are of agitation. They thus become appropriate as a Dramatic Background to an agitated passion in the scenes themselves, calling out the emotional effect by a vague sympathy, much as a musical note may set in vibration a distant string that is in unison with it.This device then is used by Shakespeare in the second stage of the present play. We see the warning terrors through the eyes of men of the time, and their force ismeasured by the fact that they shake the cynical Casca into eloquence.i.iii. 3.Are not you moved, when all the sway of earthShakes like a thing unfirm? O Cicero,I have seen tempests, when the scolding windsHave rived the knotty oaks, and I have seenThe ambitious ocean swell and rage and foam,To be exalted with the threatening clouds:But never till to-night, never till now,Did I go through a tempest dropping fire.Either there is a civil strife in heaven,Or else the world, too saucy with the gods,Incenses them to send destruction.And the idea thus started at the commencement is kept before our minds throughout this stage of the drama by perpetual allusions, however slight, to the sky and external nature.compareii.i. 44, 101, 198, 221, 263;ii.ii.Brutus reads the secret missives by the light of exhalations whizzing through the air; when some of the conspirators step aside, to occupy a few moments while the rest are conferring apart, it is to the sky their thoughts naturally seem to turn, and they with difficulty can make out the East from the West; the discussion of the conspirators includes the effect on CÃ¦sar of the night's prodigies. Later Portia remonstrates against her husband's exposure to the raw and dank morning, to the rheumy and unpurged air; even when daylight has fully returned, the conversation is of Calpurnia's dream and the terrible prodigies.i.iii.Against this background are displayed, first single figuresii.i. 1-85.of Cassius and other conspirators; then Brutus alone in calm deliberation:ii.i. 86-228.then the whole band of conspirators, their wild excitement side by side with Brutus's immovable moderation.ii.i, from 233.Then the Conspiracy Scene fades in the early morning light into a display of Brutus in his softer relations; and withii.ii.complete return of day changes to the house of CÃ¦sar on the fatal morning. CÃ¦sar also is displayed in contact with the supernatural, as represented by Calpurnia's terrors and repeated messages of omens that forbid his venturing uponpublic action for that day.CÃ¦sar still seen at a disadvantage;CÃ¦sar faces all this with his usual loftiness of mind; yet the scene is so contrived that, as far as immediate effect is concerned, this very loftiness is made to tell against him. The unflinching courage that overrides and interprets otherwise the prodigies and warnings seems presumption to us who know the reality of the danger.ii.ii. 8-56.It is the same with his yielding to the humour of his wife. Why should he not? his is not the conscious weakness that must be firm to show that it is not afraid. Yet when, upon Decius's explaining away the dream and satisfying Calpurnia's fears, CÃ¦sar's own attraction to danger leads him to persevere in his first intention, this change of purpose seems to us,ii.i. 202.who have heard Decius's boast that he can o'ersway CÃ¦sar with flattery, a confirmation of CÃ¦sar's weakness. So in accordance with the purpose that reigns through the first half of the play the victim is made to appear at his worst: thepassingeffect of the scene is to suggest weakness in CÃ¦sar, while it is in fact furnishing elements which, upon reflection, go to build up a character of strength.and the justification of the conspirators still rising.On the other hand, throughout this stage the justification of the conspirators' cause gains by their confidence and their high tone; in particular by the way in which they interpret to their own advantage the supernatural element.i.iii. 42-79.Cassius feels the wildness of the night as in perfect harmony with his own spirit.i.iii. 46.For my part, I have walk'd about the streets,Submitting me unto the perilous night,And, thus unbraced, Casca, as you see,Have bared my bosom to the thunder-stone;And when the cross blue lightning seem'd to openThe breast of heaven, I did present myselfEven in the aim and very flash of it.And it needs only a word from him to communicate his confidence to his comrades.i.iii. 72.Cassius.Now could I, Casca, name to thee a manMost like this dreadful night,That thunders, lightens, opens graves, and roarsAs doth the lion in the Capitol,A man no mightier than thyself or meIn personal action, yet prodigious grownAnd fearful, as these strange eruptions areâ€”Casca.'Tis CÃ¦sar that you mean; is it not, Cassius?Third stage. The Crisis: the passion-strain rises to a Climax.The third stage of the action brings us to the climax of the passion; the strain upon our emotions now rises to a height of agitation. The exact commencement of the crisis seems to be marked by the soothsayer's words at the opening of Act III.ii.iiiâ€”iii.i. 121.CÃ¦sar observes on entering the Capitol the soothsayer who had warned him to beware of this very day.CÃ¦sar.The ides of March are come.Sooth.Ay, CÃ¦sar; but not gone.Such words seem to measure out a narrow area of time in which the crisis is to work itself out. There is however no distinct break between different stages of a dramatic movement like that in the present play;Devices for working up the agitation.and two short incidents have preceded this scene which have served as emotional devices to bring about a distinct advance in the intensification of the strain.Artemidorus;ii.iii. andiii.i. 3.In the first, Artemidorus appeared reading a letter of warning which he purposed to present to CÃ¦sar on his way to the fatal spot. In the Capitol Scene he presents it, while the ready Decius hastens to interpose another petition to take off CÃ¦sar's attention. Artemidorus conjures CÃ¦sar to read his first for 'it touches him nearer'; but the imperial chivalry of CÃ¦sar forbids:What touches us ourself shall be last served.Portia;ii.iv.The momentary hope of rescue is dashed. In the second incident Portia has been displayed completely unnerved by the weight of a secret to the anxiety of which she is not equal; she sends messengers to the Capitol and recalls them as she recollects that she dare give them no message; her agitation has communicated itself to us, besides suggesting the fear that it may betray to others what she is anxious to conceal. Our sympathy has thus been tossedfrom side to side, although in its general direction it still moves on the side of the conspirators.Popilius Lena.In the crisis itself the agitation becomes painful as the entrance of Popiliusiii.i. 13.Lena and his secret communication to CÃ¦sar cause a panic that threatens to wreck the whole plot on the verge of its success. Brutus's nerve sustains even this trial, and the way for the accomplishment of the deed is again clear. Emotional devices like these have carried the passion up to a climax of agitation; and the conspirators now advance to present their pretended suit and achieve the bloody deed. To the last the double effect of CÃ¦sar's demeanour continues. Considered in itself, his unrelenting firmness of principle exhibits the highest model of a ruler; yet to us, who know the purpose lurking behind the hypocritical intercession of the conspirators, CÃ¦sar's self-confidence resembles the infatuation that goes before Nemesis.from 58.He scorns the fickle politicians before him as mere wandering sparks of heavenly fire, while he is left alone as a pole-star of true-fixed and resting quality:â€”and in answer to his presumptuous boast that he can never be moved come the blows of the assassins which strike him down;compare 115.while there is a flash of irony as he is seen to have fallen beside the statue of Pompey, and the marble seems to gleam in cold triumph over the rival at last lying bleeding at its feet. The assassination is accomplished, the cause of the conspirators is won: pity notwithstanding we are swept along with the current of their enthusiasm;The justification at its height in the appeal to all time.and the justification that has been steadily rising from the commencement reaches its climax as, their adversaries dispersing in terror, the conspirators dip their hands in their victim's blood, and make their triumphant appeal to the whole world and all time.111.Cassius. Stoop, then, and wash. How many ages henceShall this our lofty scene be acted overIn states unborn and accents yet unknown!Brutus. How many times shall CÃ¦sar bleed in sport,That now on Pompey's basis lies along,No worthier than the dust!Cassius.So oft as that shall be,So often shall the knot of us be call'dThe men that gave their countryliberty!Catastrophe, and commencement of the Reaction.Enter a servant:this simple stage-direction is the 'catastrophe,' the turning-round of the whole action; the arch has reached its apex and the Reaction has begun.iii.i, from 122.So instantaneous is the change, that though it is only the servant of Antony who speaks, yet the first words of his message ring with the peculiar tone of subtly-poised sentences which are inseparably associated with Antony's eloquence; it is like the first announcement of that which is to be a final theme in music, and from this point this tone dominates the scene to the very end.125.Thus he bade me say:Brutus is noble, wise, valiant, and honest,CÃ¦sar was mighty, bold, royal, and loving,Say I love Brutus, and I honour him;Say I fear'd CÃ¦sar, honour'd him, and lov'd him.If Brutus will vouchsafe that AntonyMay safely come to him, and be resolv'dHow CÃ¦sar hath deserved to lie in death,Mark Antony shall not love CÃ¦sar deadSo well as Brutus living.In the whole Shakespearean Drama there is nowhere such a swift swinging round of a dramatic action as is here marked by this sudden up-springing of the suppressed individuality in Antony's character,ii.i. 165.hitherto so colourless that he has been spared by the conspirators as a mere limb of CÃ¦sar.iii.i. 144.The tone of exultant triumph in the conspirators has in an instant given place to Cassius's 'misgiving' as Brutus grants Antony an audience;from 164.and when Antony enters, Brutus's first words to him fall into the form of apology. The quick subtlety of Antony's intellect has grasped the whole situation, and with irresistible force he slowly feels his way towards using the conspirators' aid for crushing themselvesand avenging their victim.iii.i. 211, compare 177.The bewilderment of the conspirators in the presence of this unlooked-for force is seen in Cassius's unavailing attempt to bring Antony to the point, as to what compact he will make with them. Antony, on the contrary, reads his men with such nicety that he can indulge himself in sailing close to the wind,from 184.and grasps fervently the hands of the assassins while he pours out a flood of bitter grief over the corpse. It is not hypocrisy, nor a trick to gain time, this conciliation of his enemies. Steeped in the political spirit of the age, Antony knows, as no other man, the mob which governs Rome, and is conscious of the mighty engine he possesses in his oratory to sway that mob in what direction he pleases; when his bold plan has succeeded, and his adversaries have consented to meet him in contest of oratory, then ironical conciliation becomes the natural relief to his pent-up passion.220.Friends am I with you all and love you all,Upon this hope, that you shall give me reasonsWhy and wherein CÃ¦sar was dangerous.It is as he feels the sense of innate oratorical power and of the opportunity his enemies have given to that power, that he exaggerates his temporary amity with the men he is about to crush: it is the executioner arranging his victim comfortably on the rack before he proceeds to apply the levers. Already the passion of the drama has fallen under the guidance of Antony. The view of CÃ¦sar as an innocent victim is now allowed full play upon our sympathies when Antony,from 254.left alone with the corpse, can drop the artificial mask and give vent to his love and vengeance.231-243.The success of the conspiracy had begun to decline as we marked Brutus's ill-timed generosity to Antony in granting him the funeral oration;iii.ii, from 13.it crumbles away through the cold unnatural euphuism of Brutus's speech in its defence;iii.ii, from 78.it is hurried to its ruin when Antony at last exercises his spell upon the Roman people and upon the reader. The speechof Antony, with its mastery of every phase of feeling, is a perfect sonata upon the instrument of the human emotions.iii.ii. 78.Its opening theme is sympathy with bereavement, against which are working as if in conflict anticipations of future themes, doubt and compunction.95, 109, &c.A distinct change of movement comes with the first introduction of what is to be the final subject,133.the mention of the will. But when this new movement has worked up from curiosity to impatience,177.there is a diversion: the mention of the victory over the Nervii turns the emotions in the direction of historic pride,178.which harmonises well with the opposite emotions roused as the orator fingers hole after hole in CÃ¦sar's mantle made by the daggers of his false friends,200.and so leads up to a sudden shock when he uncovers the body itself and displays the popular idol and its bloody defacement.243.Then the finale begins: the forgotten theme of the will is again started, and from a burst of gratitude the passion quickens and intensifies to rage, to fury, to mutiny.The mob won to the Reaction.The mob is won to the Reaction;iii.iii.and the curtain that falls upon the third Act rises for a moment to display the populace tearing a man to pieces simply because he bears the same name as one of the conspirators.

For he is superstitious grown of late,Quite from the main opinion he held onceOf fantasy, of dreams and ceremonies

For he is superstitious grown of late,

Quite from the main opinion he held once

Of fantasy, of dreams and ceremonies

To come back to a world of which you have mastered the machinery, and to find that it is no longer governed by machinery at all, that causes no longer produce their effectsâ€”this, if anything, might well drive a strong intellect to superstition. And herein consists the pathos of CÃ¦sar's situation. The deepest tragedy of the play is not the assassination of CÃ¦sar, it is rather seen in such a speech as this of Decius:

ii.i. 202.

If he be so resolved,I can o'ersway him; for he loves to hearThat unicorns may be betray'd with trees,And bears with glasses, elephants with holes,Lions with toils and men with flatterers;But when I tell him, he hates flatterers,He says he does, being then most flattered.

If he be so resolved,

I can o'ersway him; for he loves to hear

That unicorns may be betray'd with trees,

And bears with glasses, elephants with holes,

Lions with toils and men with flatterers;

But when I tell him, he hates flatterers,

He says he does, being then most flattered.

Assassination is a less piteous thing than to see the giant intellect by its very strength unable to contend against the low cunning of a fifth-rate intriguer.

Such, then, appears to be Shakespeare's conception of Julius CÃ¦sar. He is the consummate type of the practical: emphatically the public man, complete in all the greatness that belongs to action. On the other hand, the knowledge of self produced by self-contemplation is wanting, and so when he comes to consider the relation of his individual self to the state he vacillates with the vacillation of a strong man moving amongst men of whose greater intellectual subtlety he is dimly conscious: no unnatural conception for a CÃ¦sar who has been founding empires abroad while his fellows have been sharpening their wits in the party contests of a decaying state.

Cassius: his whole character developed and subjected to a master-passion that is disinterested.

The remaining members of the group are Cassius and Antony. In Cassius thought and action have been equally developed, and he has the qualities belonging to both the outer and the inner life. But the side which in Brutus barely preponderated, absolutely tyrannises in Cassius; his public life has given him a grand passion to which the whole of his nature becomes subservient. Inheriting a 'rashhumour' from his mother, he was specially prepared for impatience of political anomalies;iv.iii. 120.republican independence has become to him an ideal dearer than life.

i.ii. 95.

I had as lief not be as live to beIn awe of such a thing as I myself.

I had as lief not be as live to be

In awe of such a thing as I myself.

i.ii, iii;ii.i;iii.i. 177, &c.

He has thus become a professional politician. Politics is to him a game, and men are counters to be used;i.ii. 312-319.Cassius finds satisfaction in discovering that even Brutus's 'honourable metal may be wrought from that it is disposed.' He has the politician's low view of human nature; while Brutus talks of principles Cassius interposes appeals to interest: he says to Antony,

iii.i. 177.

Your voice shall be as strong as any man'sIn the disposing of new dignities.

Your voice shall be as strong as any man's

In the disposing of new dignities.

His party spirit is, as usual, unscrupulous; he seeks to work upon his friend's unsuspecting nobility by concocted letters thrown in at his windows;i.ii. 319.in the Quarrel Scene loses patience at Brutus's scruples.

iv.iii. 7, 29, &c.

I'll not endure it: you forget yourself,To hedge me in; I am a soldier, I,Older in practice, abler than yourselfTo make conditions.

I'll not endure it: you forget yourself,

To hedge me in; I am a soldier, I,

Older in practice, abler than yourself

To make conditions.

At the same time he has a party politician's tact; his advice throughout the play is proved by the event to have been right,iii.i. 145.and he does himself no more than justice when he says his misgiving 'still falls shrewdly to the purpose.'Antony: his whole character developed and subjected to selfish passion.Antony also has all the powers that belong both to the intellectual and practical life; so far as these powers are concerned, he has them developed to a higher degree than even Brutus and Cassius. His distinguishing mark lies in the use to which these powers are put; like Cassius, he has concentrated his whole nature in one aim, but this aim is not a disinterested object of public good, it is unmitigated self-seeking. Antony has greatness enough to appreciate the greatness of CÃ¦sar; hence in the first half of the play he has effaced himself,choosing to rise to power as the useful tool of CÃ¦sar.esp.i.ii, from 190; comp.ii.i. 165.Here, indeed, he is famed as a devotee of the softer studies, but it is not till his patron has fallen that his irresistible strength is put forth. There seems to be but one element in Antony that is not selfish:iii.i, from 254; comp. 194-213.his attachment to CÃ¦sar is genuine, and its force is measured in the violent imagery of the vow with which, when alone for a moment with the corpse, he promises vengeance till all pity is 'choked with custom of fell deeds.' And yet this perhaps is after all the best illustration of his callousness to higher feelings; for the one tender emotion of his heart is used by him as the convenient weapon with which to fight his enemies and raise himself to power.

The Grouping as a whole surveyed.

Such, then, is the Grouping of Characters in the play ofJulius CÃ¦sar. To catch it they must be contemplated in the light of the antithesis between the outer and inner life. In Brutus the antithesis disappears amid the perfect balancing of his character, to reappear in the action, when Brutus has to choose between his cause and his friend. In CÃ¦sar the practical life only is developed, and he fails as soon as action involves the inner life. Cassius has the powers of both outer and inner life perfect, and they are fused into one master-passion, morbid but unselfish. Antony has carried to an even greater perfection the culture of both lives, and all his powers are concentrated in one purpose, which is purely selfish. In the action in which this group of personages is involved the determining fact is the change that has come over the spirit of Roman life, and introduced into its public policy the element of personal aggrandisement and personal risk. The new spirit works upon Brutus: the chance of winning political liberty by the assassination of one individual just overbalances his moral judgment, and he falls. Yet in his fall he is glorious: the one false judgment of his life brings him, what is more to him than victory, the chance of maintaining the calmness of principle amid the ruins of a falling cause, and showing how a Stoic can fail and die. The new spiritaffects CÃ¦sar and tempts him into a personal enterprise in which success demands a meanness that he lacks, and he is betrayed to his fall. Yet in his fall he is glorious: the assassins' daggers purge him from the stain of his momentary personal ambition, and the sequel shows that the Roman world was not worthy of a ruler such as CÃ¦sar. The spirit of the age effects Cassius, and fans his passion to work itself out to his own destruction, and he falls. Yet in his fall he is glorious: we forgive him the lowered tone of his political action when we see by the spirit of the new rulers how desperate was the chance for which he played, and how Cassius and his loved cause of republican freedom expire together. The spirit of the age which has wrought upon the rest is controlled and used by Antony, and he rises on their ruins. Yet in his rise he is less glorious than they in their fall: he does all for self; he may claim therefore the prize of success, but in goodness he has no share beyond that he is permitted to be the passive instrument of punishing evil.

How the Play of Julius CÃ¦sar works to a Climax at the centre.

A Study in Passion and Movement.

Passion and Movement as elements of dramatic effect.

THE preceding chapters have been confined to two of the main elements in dramatic effect, Character and Plot: the third remains to be illustrated. Amongst other devices of public amusement the experiment has been tried of arranging a game of chess to be played by living pieces on a monster board; if we suppose that in the midst of such a game the real combative instincts of the living pieces should be suddenly aroused, that the knight should in grim earnest plunge his spear into his nearest opponent, and that missiles should actually be discharged from the castles, then the shock produced in the feelings of the bystanders by such a change would serve to bring out with emphasis the distinction between Plot and the third element of dramatic effect, Passion. Plot is an interest of a purely intellectual kind, it traces laws, principles, order, and design in the incidents of life. Passion, on the other hand, depends on the human character of the personages involved; it consists in the effects produced on the spectator's emotional nature as his sympathy follows the characters through the incidents of the plot; it is War as distinguished fromKriegspiel. Effects of such Passion are numerous and various: the present study is concerned with itsMovement. This Movement comprehends a class of dramatic effects differing in one obviousparticular from the effects considered so far. Character-Interpretation and Plot are both analytical in their nature; the play has to be taken to pieces and details selected from various parts have to be put together to give the idea of a complete character, or to make up some single thread of design.Passion connected with the movement of a drama.Movement, on the contrary, follows the actual order of the events as they take place in the play itself. The emotional effects produced by such events as they succeed one another will not be uniform and monotonous; the skill of the dramatist will lie in concentrating effect at some points and relieving it at others; and to watch such play of passion through the progress of the action will be a leading dramatic interest. Now we have already had occasion to notice the prominence which Shakespeare in his dramatic construction gives to the central point of a play; symmetry more than sensation is the effect which has an attraction for his genius, and the finale to which the action is to lead is not more important to him than the balancing of the whole drama about a turning-point in the middle. Accordingly it is not surprising to find that in the Passion-Movement of his dramas a similar plan of construction is often followed; that all other variations are subordinated to one great Climax of Passion at the centre.The regular arch-form applicable to Passion-Movement.To repeat an illustration already applied to Plot: the movement of the passion seems to follow the form of a regular arch, commencing in calmness, rising through emotional strain to a summit of agitation at the centre, then through the rest of the play declining into a calmness of a different kind. It is the purpose of the two remaining studies to illustrate this kind of movement in two very different plays.Julius CÃ¦sarhas the simplest of plots; our attention is engaged with a train of emotion which is made to rise gradually to a climax at the centre, and then equally gradually to decline.Lear, on the contrary, is amongst the most intricate of Shakespeare's plays; nevertheless the dramatist contrives to keep the same simple form of emotionaleffect, and its complex passions unite in producing a concentration of emotional agitation in a few central scenes.

In Julius CÃ¦sar the movement follows the justification of the conspirators to the audience:

The passion in the play ofJulius CÃ¦sargathers around the conspirators, and follows them through the mutations of their fortunes. If however we are to catch the different parts of the action in their proper proportions we must remember the character of these conspirators, and especially of their leaders Brutus and Cassius. These are actuated in what they do not by personal motives but by devotion to the public good and the idea of republican liberty; accordingly in following their career we must not look too exclusively at their personal success and failure. The exact key to the movement of the drama will be given by fixing attention uponthe justification of the conspirators' causein the minds of the audience;this rises to the centre and declines from the centre.and it is this which is found to rise gradually to its height in the centre of the play, and from that point to decline to the end. I have pointed out in the preceding study how the issue at stake inJulius CÃ¦saramounts to a conflict between the outer and inner life, between devotion to a public enterprise and such sympathy with the claims of individual humanity as is specially fostered by the cultivation of the inner nature. The issue is reflected in words of Brutus already quoted:

ii.i. 18.

The abuse of greatness is, when it disjoinsRemorse from power.

The abuse of greatness is, when it disjoins

Remorse from power.

Brutus applies this as a test to CÃ¦sar's action, and is forced to acquit him: but is not Brutus here laying down the very principle of which his own error in the play is the violation? The assassin's dagger puts Brutus and the conspirators in the position of power; while 'remorse'â€”the word in Shakespearean English means human sympathyâ€”is the due of their victim CÃ¦sar, whose rights to justice as a man, and to more than justice as the friend of Brutus, the conspirators have the responsibility of balancing against the claims of a political cause. These claims of justice and humanity aredeliberately ignored by the stoicism of Brutus, while the rest of the conspirators are blinded to them by the mists of political enthusiasm; this outraged human sympathy asserts itself after CÃ¦sar's death in a monstrous form in the passions of the mob, which are guided by the skill of Antony to the destruction of the assassins. Of course both the original violation of the balance between the two lives and the subsequent reaction are equally corrupt. The stoicism of Brutus, with its suppression of the inner sympathies, arrives practically at the principleâ€”destined in the future history of the world to be the basis of a yet greater crimeâ€”that it is expedient that one man should die rather than that a whole people should perish. On the other hand, Antony trades upon the fickle violence of the populace, and uses it as much for personal ends as for vengeance. This demoralisation of both the sides of character is the result of their divorce. Such is the essence of this play if its action be looked at as a whole; but it belongs to the movement of dramatic passion that we see the action only in its separate parts at different times. Through the first half of the play, while the justification of the conspirators' cause is rising, the other side of the question is carefully hidden from us; from the point of the assassination the suppressed element starts into prominence, and sweeps our sympathies along with it to its triumph at the conclusion of the play.

First stage: the conspiracy forming. Passion indistinguishable from mere interest.

In following the movement of the drama the action seems to divide itself into stages. In the first of these stages, which comprehends the first two scenes, the conspiracy is only forming; the sympathy with which the spectator follows the details is entirely free from emotional agitation; passion so far is indistinguishable from mere interest.i.i, ii.The opening scene strikes appropriately the key-note of the whole action.Starting-point: signs of reaction in the popular worship of CÃ¦sar.In it we see the tribunes of the peopleâ€”officers whose wholeraison d'Ãªtreis to be the mouthpiece of the commonaltyâ€”restraining their own clients from the noisy honours they are disposedto pay to CÃ¦sar.i.i.To the justification in our eyes of a conspiracy against CÃ¦sar, there could not be a better starting-point than this hint that the popular worship of CÃ¦sar, which has made him what he is, is itself reaching its reaction-point. Such a suggestion moreover makes the whole play one completewaveof popular fickleness from crest to crest.

The Rise begins. The cause seen at its best, the victim at his worst.

The second is the scene upon which the dramatist mainly relies for thecrescendoin the justification of the conspirators. It is a long scene, elaborately contrived so as to keep the conspirators and their cause before us at their very best, and the victim at his very worst.i.ii.Cassius is the life and spirit of this scene, as he is of the whole republican movement. Cassius is excellent soil for republican principles. The 'rash humour' his mother gave him would predispose him to impatience of those social inequalities and conventional distinctions against which republicanism sets itself. Again he is a hard-thinking man, to whom the perfect realisation of an ideal theory would be as palpable an aim as the more practical purposes of other men. He is a Roman moreover, at once proud of his nation as the greatest in the world, and aware that this national greatness had been through all history bound up with the maintenance of a republican constitution. His republicanism gives to Cassius the dignity that is always given to a character by a grand passion, whether for a cause, a woman, or an ideaâ€”the unification of a whole life in a single aim, by which the separate strings of a man's nature are, as it were, tuned into harmony. In the present scene Cassius is expounding the cause which is his life-object. Nor is this all. Cassius was politician enough to adapt himself to his hearers, and could hold up the lower motives to those who would be influenced by them; but in the present case it is the 'honourable metal' of a Brutus that he has to work upon, and his exposition of republicanism must be adapted to the highest possiblestandard. Accordingly, in the language of the scene we find the idea of human equality expressed in its most ideal form. Without it Cassius thinks life not worth living.

i.ii. 95.

I had as lief not be as live to beIn awe of such a thing as I myself.I was born free as CÃ¦sar; so were you;We both have fed as well, and we can bothEndure the winter's cold as well as he.

I had as lief not be as live to be

In awe of such a thing as I myself.

I was born free as CÃ¦sar; so were you;

We both have fed as well, and we can both

Endure the winter's cold as well as he.

The examples follow of the flood and fever incidents, which show how the majesty of CÃ¦sar vanished before the violence of natural forces and the prostration of disease.

115.

And this manIs now become a god, and Cassius isA wretched creature and must bend his body,If CÃ¦sar carelessly but nod on him.

And this man

Is now become a god, and Cassius is

A wretched creature and must bend his body,

If CÃ¦sar carelessly but nod on him.

In the eye of the state, individuals are so many members of a class, in precisely the way that their names are so many examples of the proper noun.

142.

Brutus and CÃ¦sar: what should be in that 'CÃ¦sar'?Why should that name be sounded more than yours?Write them together, yours is as fair a name;Sound them, it doth become the mouth as well;Weigh them, it is as heavy; conjure with them,Brutus will start a spirit as soon as CÃ¦sar.Now, in the names of all the gods at once,Upon what meat doth this our CÃ¦sar feed,That he is grown so great?

Brutus and CÃ¦sar: what should be in that 'CÃ¦sar'?

Why should that name be sounded more than yours?

Write them together, yours is as fair a name;

Sound them, it doth become the mouth as well;

Weigh them, it is as heavy; conjure with them,

Brutus will start a spirit as soon as CÃ¦sar.

Now, in the names of all the gods at once,

Upon what meat doth this our CÃ¦sar feed,

That he is grown so great?

And this exposition of the conspirators' cause in its highest form is at the same time thrown into yet higher relief by a background to the scene, in which the victim is presented at his worst.from 182.All through the conversation between Brutus and Cassius, the shouting of the mob reminds of the scene which is at the moment going on in the Capitol, while the conversation is interrupted for a time by the returning procession of CÃ¦sar. In this action behind the scenes which thus mingles with the main incident CÃ¦sar is committing the one fault of his life: this is the fault of 'treason,' which can be justifiedonly by being successful and so becoming 'revolution,' whereas CÃ¦sar is failing, and deserving to fail from the vacillating hesitation with which he sins. Moreover, unfavourable as such incidents would be in themselves to our sympathy with CÃ¦sar, yet it is not the actual facts that we are permitted to see, but they are further distorted by the medium through which they reach usâ€”the cynicism of Casca which belittles and disparages all he relates.

i.ii. 235.

Bru.Tell us the manner of it, gentle Casca.Casca.I can as well be hanged as tell the manner of it: it was mere foolery; I did not mark it. I saw Mark Antony offer him a crown;â€”yet 'twas not a crown neither, 'twas one of these coronets:â€”and, as I told you, he put it by once: but, for all that, to my thinking, he would fain have had it. Then he offered it to him again; then he put it by again: but, to my thinking, he was very loath to lay his fingers off it. And then he offer'd it the third time; he put it the third time by: and still as he refused it, the rabblement hooted and clapped their chapped hands and threw up their sweaty night-caps and uttered such a deal of stinking breath because CÃ¦sar had refused the crown that it had almost choked CÃ¦sar; for he swounded and fell down at it: and, for mine own part, I durst not laugh, for fear of opening my lips and receiving the bad air.... When he came to himself again, he said, If he had done or said anything amiss, he desired their worships to think it was his infirmity. Three or four wenches, where I stood, cried, 'Alas, good soul!' and forgave him with all their hearts; but there's no heed to be taken of them; if CÃ¦sar had stabbed their mothers they would have done no less.

Bru.Tell us the manner of it, gentle Casca.

Casca.I can as well be hanged as tell the manner of it: it was mere foolery; I did not mark it. I saw Mark Antony offer him a crown;â€”yet 'twas not a crown neither, 'twas one of these coronets:â€”and, as I told you, he put it by once: but, for all that, to my thinking, he would fain have had it. Then he offered it to him again; then he put it by again: but, to my thinking, he was very loath to lay his fingers off it. And then he offer'd it the third time; he put it the third time by: and still as he refused it, the rabblement hooted and clapped their chapped hands and threw up their sweaty night-caps and uttered such a deal of stinking breath because CÃ¦sar had refused the crown that it had almost choked CÃ¦sar; for he swounded and fell down at it: and, for mine own part, I durst not laugh, for fear of opening my lips and receiving the bad air.... When he came to himself again, he said, If he had done or said anything amiss, he desired their worships to think it was his infirmity. Three or four wenches, where I stood, cried, 'Alas, good soul!' and forgave him with all their hearts; but there's no heed to be taken of them; if CÃ¦sar had stabbed their mothers they would have done no less.

Second stage: the conspiracy formed and developing. Passion-Strain begins.

At the end of the scene Brutus is won, and we pass immediately into the second stage of the action: the conspiracy is now formed and developing, and the emotional strain begins. The adhesion of Brutus has given us confidence that the conspiracy will be effective, and we have only towaitfor the issue.i.iiiâ€”ii.ii.This mere notion ofwaitingis itself enough to introduce an element of agitation into the passion sufficient to mark off this stage of the action from the preceding.Suspense one element in the strain of passion.How powerful suspense is for this purpose we have expressed in the words of the play itself:

ii.i. 63.

Between the acting of a dreadful thingAnd the first motion, all the interim isLike a phantasma, or a hideous dream:The Genius and the mortal instrumentsAre then in council; and the state of man,Like to a little kingdom, suffers thenThe nature of an insurrection.

Between the acting of a dreadful thing

And the first motion, all the interim is

Like a phantasma, or a hideous dream:

The Genius and the mortal instruments

Are then in council; and the state of man,

Like to a little kingdom, suffers then

The nature of an insurrection.

The background of tempest and supernatural portents a device for increasing the strain.

But besides the suspense there is a special device for securing the agitation proper to this stage of the passion: throughout there is maintained a Dramatic Background of night, storm, and supernatural portents.

The conception of nature as exhibiting sympathy with sudden turns in human affairs is one of the most fundamental instincts of poetry. To cite notable instances: it is this which accompanies with storm and whirlwind the climax to theBook of Job, and which leads Milton to make the whole universe sensible of Adam's transgression:

Earth trembl'd from her entrails, as againIn pangs, and Nature gave a second groan;Sky lowr'd, and muttering thunder, some sad dropsWept at completing of the mortal sinOriginal.

Earth trembl'd from her entrails, as again

In pangs, and Nature gave a second groan;

Sky lowr'd, and muttering thunder, some sad drops

Wept at completing of the mortal sin

Original.

So too the other end of the world's history has its appropriate accompaniments: 'the sun shall be darkened and the moon shall not give her light, and the stars shall be falling from heaven.' There is avaguenessof terror inseparable from these outbursts of nature, so mysterious in their causes and aims. They are actually the most mighty of forcesâ€”for human artillery is feeble beside the earthquakeâ€”yet they are invisible: the wind works its havoc without the keenest eye being able to perceive it, and the lightning is never seen till it has struck. Again, there is something weird in the feeling that the most frightful powers in the material universe are allsoft things. The empty air becomes the irresistible wind; the fluid and yielding water wears down the hard and massive rock and determines the shape of the earth; impalpable fire that is blown about in every direction can be roused till it devours the solidest constructions of humanskill; while the most powerful agencies of all, electricity and atomic force, are imperceptible to any of the senses and are known only by their results. This uncanny terror attaching to the union between force and softness is the inspiration of one of Homer's most unique episodes, in which the bewildered Achilles, struggling with the river-god, finds the strength and skill of the finished warrior vain against the ever-rising water, and bitterly feels the violation of the natural orderâ€”

That strong might fall by strong, where now weak water's luxuryMust make my death blush.

That strong might fall by strong, where now weak water's luxury

Must make my death blush.

i.iii;ii.ii, &c.

To the terrible in nature are added portents of the supernatural, sudden violations of the uniformity of nature, the principle upon which all science is founded. The solitary bird of night has been seen in the crowded Capitol; fire has played around a human hand without destroying it; lions, forgetting their fierceness, have mingled with men; clouds drop fire instead of rain; graves are giving up their dead; the chance shapes of clouds take distinctness to suggest tumult on the earth. Such phenomena of nature and the supernatural, agitating from their appeal at once to fear and mystery, and associated by the fancy with the terrible in human events, have made a deep impression upon primitive thought; and the impression has descended by generations of inherited tradition until, whatever may be the attitude of the intellect to the phenomena themselves, their associations in the emotional nature are of agitation. They thus become appropriate as a Dramatic Background to an agitated passion in the scenes themselves, calling out the emotional effect by a vague sympathy, much as a musical note may set in vibration a distant string that is in unison with it.

This device then is used by Shakespeare in the second stage of the present play. We see the warning terrors through the eyes of men of the time, and their force ismeasured by the fact that they shake the cynical Casca into eloquence.

i.iii. 3.

Are not you moved, when all the sway of earthShakes like a thing unfirm? O Cicero,I have seen tempests, when the scolding windsHave rived the knotty oaks, and I have seenThe ambitious ocean swell and rage and foam,To be exalted with the threatening clouds:But never till to-night, never till now,Did I go through a tempest dropping fire.Either there is a civil strife in heaven,Or else the world, too saucy with the gods,Incenses them to send destruction.

Are not you moved, when all the sway of earth

Shakes like a thing unfirm? O Cicero,

I have seen tempests, when the scolding winds

Have rived the knotty oaks, and I have seen

The ambitious ocean swell and rage and foam,

To be exalted with the threatening clouds:

But never till to-night, never till now,

Did I go through a tempest dropping fire.

Either there is a civil strife in heaven,

Or else the world, too saucy with the gods,

Incenses them to send destruction.

And the idea thus started at the commencement is kept before our minds throughout this stage of the drama by perpetual allusions, however slight, to the sky and external nature.compareii.i. 44, 101, 198, 221, 263;ii.ii.Brutus reads the secret missives by the light of exhalations whizzing through the air; when some of the conspirators step aside, to occupy a few moments while the rest are conferring apart, it is to the sky their thoughts naturally seem to turn, and they with difficulty can make out the East from the West; the discussion of the conspirators includes the effect on CÃ¦sar of the night's prodigies. Later Portia remonstrates against her husband's exposure to the raw and dank morning, to the rheumy and unpurged air; even when daylight has fully returned, the conversation is of Calpurnia's dream and the terrible prodigies.

i.iii.

Against this background are displayed, first single figuresii.i. 1-85.of Cassius and other conspirators; then Brutus alone in calm deliberation:ii.i. 86-228.then the whole band of conspirators, their wild excitement side by side with Brutus's immovable moderation.ii.i, from 233.Then the Conspiracy Scene fades in the early morning light into a display of Brutus in his softer relations; and withii.ii.complete return of day changes to the house of CÃ¦sar on the fatal morning. CÃ¦sar also is displayed in contact with the supernatural, as represented by Calpurnia's terrors and repeated messages of omens that forbid his venturing uponpublic action for that day.CÃ¦sar still seen at a disadvantage;CÃ¦sar faces all this with his usual loftiness of mind; yet the scene is so contrived that, as far as immediate effect is concerned, this very loftiness is made to tell against him. The unflinching courage that overrides and interprets otherwise the prodigies and warnings seems presumption to us who know the reality of the danger.ii.ii. 8-56.It is the same with his yielding to the humour of his wife. Why should he not? his is not the conscious weakness that must be firm to show that it is not afraid. Yet when, upon Decius's explaining away the dream and satisfying Calpurnia's fears, CÃ¦sar's own attraction to danger leads him to persevere in his first intention, this change of purpose seems to us,ii.i. 202.who have heard Decius's boast that he can o'ersway CÃ¦sar with flattery, a confirmation of CÃ¦sar's weakness. So in accordance with the purpose that reigns through the first half of the play the victim is made to appear at his worst: thepassingeffect of the scene is to suggest weakness in CÃ¦sar, while it is in fact furnishing elements which, upon reflection, go to build up a character of strength.and the justification of the conspirators still rising.On the other hand, throughout this stage the justification of the conspirators' cause gains by their confidence and their high tone; in particular by the way in which they interpret to their own advantage the supernatural element.i.iii. 42-79.Cassius feels the wildness of the night as in perfect harmony with his own spirit.

i.iii. 46.

For my part, I have walk'd about the streets,Submitting me unto the perilous night,And, thus unbraced, Casca, as you see,Have bared my bosom to the thunder-stone;And when the cross blue lightning seem'd to openThe breast of heaven, I did present myselfEven in the aim and very flash of it.

For my part, I have walk'd about the streets,

Submitting me unto the perilous night,

And, thus unbraced, Casca, as you see,

Have bared my bosom to the thunder-stone;

And when the cross blue lightning seem'd to open

The breast of heaven, I did present myself

Even in the aim and very flash of it.

And it needs only a word from him to communicate his confidence to his comrades.

i.iii. 72.

Cassius.Now could I, Casca, name to thee a manMost like this dreadful night,That thunders, lightens, opens graves, and roarsAs doth the lion in the Capitol,A man no mightier than thyself or meIn personal action, yet prodigious grownAnd fearful, as these strange eruptions areâ€”Casca.'Tis CÃ¦sar that you mean; is it not, Cassius?

Cassius.Now could I, Casca, name to thee a man

Most like this dreadful night,

That thunders, lightens, opens graves, and roars

As doth the lion in the Capitol,

A man no mightier than thyself or me

In personal action, yet prodigious grown

And fearful, as these strange eruptions areâ€”

Casca.'Tis CÃ¦sar that you mean; is it not, Cassius?

Third stage. The Crisis: the passion-strain rises to a Climax.

The third stage of the action brings us to the climax of the passion; the strain upon our emotions now rises to a height of agitation. The exact commencement of the crisis seems to be marked by the soothsayer's words at the opening of Act III.ii.iiiâ€”iii.i. 121.CÃ¦sar observes on entering the Capitol the soothsayer who had warned him to beware of this very day.

CÃ¦sar.The ides of March are come.Sooth.Ay, CÃ¦sar; but not gone.

CÃ¦sar.The ides of March are come.

Sooth.Ay, CÃ¦sar; but not gone.

Such words seem to measure out a narrow area of time in which the crisis is to work itself out. There is however no distinct break between different stages of a dramatic movement like that in the present play;Devices for working up the agitation.and two short incidents have preceded this scene which have served as emotional devices to bring about a distinct advance in the intensification of the strain.Artemidorus;ii.iii. andiii.i. 3.In the first, Artemidorus appeared reading a letter of warning which he purposed to present to CÃ¦sar on his way to the fatal spot. In the Capitol Scene he presents it, while the ready Decius hastens to interpose another petition to take off CÃ¦sar's attention. Artemidorus conjures CÃ¦sar to read his first for 'it touches him nearer'; but the imperial chivalry of CÃ¦sar forbids:

What touches us ourself shall be last served.

Portia;ii.iv.

The momentary hope of rescue is dashed. In the second incident Portia has been displayed completely unnerved by the weight of a secret to the anxiety of which she is not equal; she sends messengers to the Capitol and recalls them as she recollects that she dare give them no message; her agitation has communicated itself to us, besides suggesting the fear that it may betray to others what she is anxious to conceal. Our sympathy has thus been tossedfrom side to side, although in its general direction it still moves on the side of the conspirators.Popilius Lena.In the crisis itself the agitation becomes painful as the entrance of Popiliusiii.i. 13.Lena and his secret communication to CÃ¦sar cause a panic that threatens to wreck the whole plot on the verge of its success. Brutus's nerve sustains even this trial, and the way for the accomplishment of the deed is again clear. Emotional devices like these have carried the passion up to a climax of agitation; and the conspirators now advance to present their pretended suit and achieve the bloody deed. To the last the double effect of CÃ¦sar's demeanour continues. Considered in itself, his unrelenting firmness of principle exhibits the highest model of a ruler; yet to us, who know the purpose lurking behind the hypocritical intercession of the conspirators, CÃ¦sar's self-confidence resembles the infatuation that goes before Nemesis.from 58.He scorns the fickle politicians before him as mere wandering sparks of heavenly fire, while he is left alone as a pole-star of true-fixed and resting quality:â€”and in answer to his presumptuous boast that he can never be moved come the blows of the assassins which strike him down;compare 115.while there is a flash of irony as he is seen to have fallen beside the statue of Pompey, and the marble seems to gleam in cold triumph over the rival at last lying bleeding at its feet. The assassination is accomplished, the cause of the conspirators is won: pity notwithstanding we are swept along with the current of their enthusiasm;The justification at its height in the appeal to all time.and the justification that has been steadily rising from the commencement reaches its climax as, their adversaries dispersing in terror, the conspirators dip their hands in their victim's blood, and make their triumphant appeal to the whole world and all time.

111.

Cassius. Stoop, then, and wash. How many ages henceShall this our lofty scene be acted overIn states unborn and accents yet unknown!Brutus. How many times shall CÃ¦sar bleed in sport,That now on Pompey's basis lies along,No worthier than the dust!Cassius.So oft as that shall be,So often shall the knot of us be call'dThe men that gave their countryliberty!

Cassius. Stoop, then, and wash. How many ages hence

Shall this our lofty scene be acted over

In states unborn and accents yet unknown!

Brutus. How many times shall CÃ¦sar bleed in sport,

That now on Pompey's basis lies along,

No worthier than the dust!

Cassius.So oft as that shall be,

So often shall the knot of us be call'd

The men that gave their countryliberty!

Catastrophe, and commencement of the Reaction.

Enter a servant:this simple stage-direction is the 'catastrophe,' the turning-round of the whole action; the arch has reached its apex and the Reaction has begun.iii.i, from 122.So instantaneous is the change, that though it is only the servant of Antony who speaks, yet the first words of his message ring with the peculiar tone of subtly-poised sentences which are inseparably associated with Antony's eloquence; it is like the first announcement of that which is to be a final theme in music, and from this point this tone dominates the scene to the very end.

125.

Thus he bade me say:Brutus is noble, wise, valiant, and honest,CÃ¦sar was mighty, bold, royal, and loving,Say I love Brutus, and I honour him;Say I fear'd CÃ¦sar, honour'd him, and lov'd him.If Brutus will vouchsafe that AntonyMay safely come to him, and be resolv'dHow CÃ¦sar hath deserved to lie in death,Mark Antony shall not love CÃ¦sar deadSo well as Brutus living.

Thus he bade me say:

Brutus is noble, wise, valiant, and honest,

CÃ¦sar was mighty, bold, royal, and loving,

Say I love Brutus, and I honour him;

Say I fear'd CÃ¦sar, honour'd him, and lov'd him.

If Brutus will vouchsafe that Antony

May safely come to him, and be resolv'd

How CÃ¦sar hath deserved to lie in death,

Mark Antony shall not love CÃ¦sar dead

So well as Brutus living.

In the whole Shakespearean Drama there is nowhere such a swift swinging round of a dramatic action as is here marked by this sudden up-springing of the suppressed individuality in Antony's character,ii.i. 165.hitherto so colourless that he has been spared by the conspirators as a mere limb of CÃ¦sar.iii.i. 144.The tone of exultant triumph in the conspirators has in an instant given place to Cassius's 'misgiving' as Brutus grants Antony an audience;from 164.and when Antony enters, Brutus's first words to him fall into the form of apology. The quick subtlety of Antony's intellect has grasped the whole situation, and with irresistible force he slowly feels his way towards using the conspirators' aid for crushing themselvesand avenging their victim.iii.i. 211, compare 177.The bewilderment of the conspirators in the presence of this unlooked-for force is seen in Cassius's unavailing attempt to bring Antony to the point, as to what compact he will make with them. Antony, on the contrary, reads his men with such nicety that he can indulge himself in sailing close to the wind,from 184.and grasps fervently the hands of the assassins while he pours out a flood of bitter grief over the corpse. It is not hypocrisy, nor a trick to gain time, this conciliation of his enemies. Steeped in the political spirit of the age, Antony knows, as no other man, the mob which governs Rome, and is conscious of the mighty engine he possesses in his oratory to sway that mob in what direction he pleases; when his bold plan has succeeded, and his adversaries have consented to meet him in contest of oratory, then ironical conciliation becomes the natural relief to his pent-up passion.

220.

Friends am I with you all and love you all,Upon this hope, that you shall give me reasonsWhy and wherein CÃ¦sar was dangerous.

Friends am I with you all and love you all,

Upon this hope, that you shall give me reasons

Why and wherein CÃ¦sar was dangerous.

It is as he feels the sense of innate oratorical power and of the opportunity his enemies have given to that power, that he exaggerates his temporary amity with the men he is about to crush: it is the executioner arranging his victim comfortably on the rack before he proceeds to apply the levers. Already the passion of the drama has fallen under the guidance of Antony. The view of CÃ¦sar as an innocent victim is now allowed full play upon our sympathies when Antony,from 254.left alone with the corpse, can drop the artificial mask and give vent to his love and vengeance.231-243.The success of the conspiracy had begun to decline as we marked Brutus's ill-timed generosity to Antony in granting him the funeral oration;iii.ii, from 13.it crumbles away through the cold unnatural euphuism of Brutus's speech in its defence;iii.ii, from 78.it is hurried to its ruin when Antony at last exercises his spell upon the Roman people and upon the reader. The speechof Antony, with its mastery of every phase of feeling, is a perfect sonata upon the instrument of the human emotions.iii.ii. 78.Its opening theme is sympathy with bereavement, against which are working as if in conflict anticipations of future themes, doubt and compunction.95, 109, &c.A distinct change of movement comes with the first introduction of what is to be the final subject,133.the mention of the will. But when this new movement has worked up from curiosity to impatience,177.there is a diversion: the mention of the victory over the Nervii turns the emotions in the direction of historic pride,178.which harmonises well with the opposite emotions roused as the orator fingers hole after hole in CÃ¦sar's mantle made by the daggers of his false friends,200.and so leads up to a sudden shock when he uncovers the body itself and displays the popular idol and its bloody defacement.243.Then the finale begins: the forgotten theme of the will is again started, and from a burst of gratitude the passion quickens and intensifies to rage, to fury, to mutiny.The mob won to the Reaction.The mob is won to the Reaction;iii.iii.and the curtain that falls upon the third Act rises for a moment to display the populace tearing a man to pieces simply because he bears the same name as one of the conspirators.

Back to Index Next