Introduction.

1. Our class on Julius Caesar will focus on Brutus as a tragic protagonist. The work itself marks the transition from English history play to tragedy as the principal mode of serious play for Shakespeare. Earlier excursions in tragedy were "tragicall history," like Richard III and Richard II, the crude revenge melodrama Titus Andronicus, and the unique Romeo and Juliet. With this play and its central character, Shakespeare creates the patterns that will mark the major tragedies to come. The subjects will not be English kings, and the fate of England will not be at stake. (King Lear is a mythic figure from ancient Britain, unlike Shakespeare's previous historical subjects. The myths are represented in the Mirror for Magistrates, Holinshed, Sidney, and Spenser.)

2. While the play is named for Julius Caesar, probably for box office reasons, the main character is clearly Brutus, and he is the model for Hamlet, in a sense, because he struggles to come to grips with a world that's out of kilter. Like Hamlet, he is praised to the skies and has a sterling public reputation. The idea of a tragically flawed hero is the most common misconception about Shakespearian tragedy. James Hammersmith argues a more sensible approach to the nature of the main character. We should try to understand the vulnerabilities of the tragic figure instead of blamimg him for a theoretical "flaw."

Interpretation: performance and the text.

3. To understand Brutus, we need to share Shakespeare's view of Roman society. Plutarch's Parallel Lives was translated into English in 1579 by Sir Thomas North and read by Shakespeare. Julius Caesar is one of three "Roman plays," to be followed by Coriolanus and Antony and Cleopatra. Our play is set at the crucial moment when the Republic begins to evolve into the Empire, and that moment provides the critical irony of Brutus' experience. Devoted to his idealized form of the Republic, echoing his family tradition, Brutus is seduced into the conspiracy to assassinate Caesar and unknowingly sets into motion the wheels of Empire.

4. The play begins with a portrait of a society sharply divided between rulers and commoners, with two tribunes (civil servants) trying to manipulate the crowd against the new national hero, Julius Caesar:

Julius Caesar1.1

Wary of change, Marullus and Flavius cast their lot against Caesar, and for their pains are "put to silence" (1.2.284). Caesar is the man and Antony his favorite. It is Antony who offers the "crown" to Caesar offstage at the festival games, and Brutus sees him as a natural rival: " I am not gamesome: I do lack some part/ Of that quick spirit that is in Antony" (1.2.28-29). So Brutus avoids the festival and consorts with Cassius instead:

Brutus. What means this shouting? I do fear, the people
Choose Caesar for their king.

Cassius. Ay, do you fear it?
Then must I think you would not have it so.

Brutus. I would not, Cassius, yet I love him well.
But wherefore do you hold me here so long?
What is it that you would impart to me?
If it be aught toward the general good,
Set honor in one eye and death i' th' other,
And I will look on both indifferently;
For let the gods so speed me, as I love
The name of honor more than I fear death. (78-89)

5. In 1.2, the political seduction of Brutus by Cassius, prefigures the undoing of Othello by Iago, or Macbeth by his wife. Cassius channels his envy of Caesar into an apparent patriotism for Brutus' benefit, preying on his devotion to republican government. As with Oliver in As You Like It, envy gnaws at Cassius as he mocks Caesar's weakness, or illness. As he and Brutus hear the shouts of the crowd, Cassius poisons Brutus' ear:

Why, man, he doth bestride the narrow world
Like a Colossus, and we petty men
Walk under his huge legs and peep about
To find ourselves dishonorable graves.
Men at some time are masters of their fates:
The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars,
But in ourselves, that we are underlings.
Brutus and Caesar: what should be in that "Caesar"?
Why should that name be sounded more than yours? (135-143)

The portrait of Cassius does not look back to the melancholy Jaques in As You Like It, but forward to Edmund in King Lear, dangerously cynical and mocking. For all Caesar's blind ego, he can sum him up:

Yet if my name were liable to fear,
I do not know the man I should avoid
So soon as that spare Cassius. He reads much;
He is a great observer, and he looks
Quite through the deeds of men: he loves no plays,
As thou dost, Antony; he hears no music;
Seldom he smiles, and smiles in such a sort
As if he mocked himself and scorned his spirit
That could be moved to smile at anything.
Such men as he be never at heart's ease
Whiles they behold a greater than themselves,
And therefore are they very dangerous. (199-210)

JuliusCaesar1.2

6. In the latter part of the clip we just saw, Cassius says, "For who so firm he cannot be seduced?" (1.2.310). The techniques of political seduction here prefigure the workings of Iago, and Edmund, leading their victims indirectly to the desired conclusion. And Shakespeare has offstage events narrated, rather than seen, to create a similar doubt in the audience, like Hamlet's appearance in Ophelia's room. We cannot know for sure, nor can Brutus, exactly how Antony and Caesar behaved in front of the crowd, since the oily Casca slants his version of events:

I saw Mark Antony offer him a crown—yet 'twas not a crown neither, 'twas one of these coronets—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. (234-240)

Plutarch, Shakespeare's source for Julius Caesar, attributes epilepsy to Caesar, although not at this appearance before the people. But Shakespeare evidently sees a way to convey more of the mystery and terror of the story through this symbolic affliction:

And then he offered it the third time. He put it the third time by; and still as he refused it, the rabblement hooted and clapped their
chopt hands, and threw up their sweaty nightcaps, and uttered such a deal of stinking breath because Caesar refused the crown,
that it had almost choked Caesar; for he swounded and fell down at it...

Cassius. But, soft, I pray you; what, did Caesar swound?

Casca. He fell down in the market place, and foamed at mouth, and was speechless.

Brutus. 'Tis very like he hath the failing-sickness.

Cassius. No, Caesar hath it not; but you, and I,
And honest Casca, we have the falling-sickness. (240-54)

Cassius suggests that all noble Romans will "fall" under the weight of Caesar's ambition. In both Othello and Julius Caesar, epilepsy seems to mark an extreme emotional upset in the patient, so perhaps Caesar is under the utmost stress as he refuses the "crown," at least according to Casca.

7. Shakespeare uses storms to symbolize political and moral upset, and the thunder and lightning of 2.1 highlight Brutus' moral dilemma as well as the making of the assassination plot:

JuliusCaesar2.1

Brutus' speech at the beginning of the scene establishes him as the tragic protagonist:

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.
The 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. (10-34)

Brutus' tragedy is not a moral failing, but a cognitive one. He is utterly devoted to the freedom of the Roman republic, and hates the thought of tyranny. At the same time, he so little understands the world of power that he cannot conceive himself as a pawn of the conspirators, nor can he imagine that Antony can be dangerous:

Cassius...Let Antony and Caesar fall together.

Brutus. Our course will seem too bloody, Caius Cassius,
To cut the head off and then hack the limbs,
Like wrath in death and envy afterwards;
For Antony is but a limb of Caesar.
Let's be sacrificers, but not butchers, Caius.
We all stand up against the spirit of Caesar,
And in the spirit of men there is no blood:
O, that we then could come by Caesar's spirit,
And not dismember Caesar! But, alas,
Caesar must bleed for it. And, gentle friends,
Let's kill him boldly, but not wrathfully;
Let's carve him as a dish fit for the gods,
Not hew him as a carcass fit for hounds...
We shall be called purgers, not murderers.
And for Mark Antony, think not of him;
For he can do no more than Caesar's arm
When Caesar's head is off. (161-83)

8. Antony is much deeper than Brutus, as Cassius suspects. Yet Cassius gives way to Brutus because he needs him for the public face of the conspiracy, respected as he is by the people. This is their fatal error. Brutus' fantasy that a ritual murder for his high moral purpose will win over the people is, of course, famously misplaced. As Macbeth learns to his dismay, "Blood will have blood." Here is their ritual:

JuliusCaesar3.1

Antony risks all by coming into the scene, but puts on an accomodating face and shakes the hands of the murderers. Brutus naively consents to let Antony speak, and the conspirators withdraw. In the BBC version which you have just seen, there is an interesting voiceover treatment of Antony's soliloquy. Marlon Brando's Antony drops his conciliatory mask after the conspirators spare him, leaving him by Caesar's body at the foot of Pompey's statue:

JuliusCaesarBrando

(Coached by John Gielgud, who played Cassius in this 1953 Mankiewicz film, Brando shows in this speech what a great Shakespearian actor he could have been.)

9. "Cry 'Havoc', and let slip the dogs of war." As Antony predicts, chaos follows his brilliant address to the people:

JuliusCaesar3.2

The staging of Antony's appearance emphasizes his brilliant political sense, as he plays the crowd with varying pace and with pauses where he evaluates the effect of his rhetorical gambits. This scene prefigures the long seduction scene in Othello, where Iago subverts Othello's peace of mind with various rhetorical tacks and strategic pauses. Antony's shameless manipulation of the mob destroys the credibility of he conspirators, which gives Antony and Octavius, Julius Caesar's nephew, the space they need to team up with Lepidus and his money to become the Second Triumvirate, the transition phase from the Republic to the Empire. Octavius Caesar (the "Caesar Augustus" of biblical fame) is a coldly ambitious counterweight to the "quick spirit" of Antony, and in fact will become Antony's nemesis in Antony and Cleopatra some seven years later in Shakesperare's career. The overwhelming irony of Brutus' tragedy is that he has doomed the Republic, the very form of government he strove to preserve.

10. This online class will not pursue the political and military machinations which result from the counter-coup led by Antony. Suffice it to say that Shakespeare has established the pattern of his mature tragic protagonist with Brutus, who prefigures Hamlet in his idealism and nobility, and in his defeat by the forces of political corruption. Cassius and Antony know far better than he what stirs the public, and Brutus' naivete proves his downfall. After the inevitable victory by Antony and Octavius, Brutus is eulogized by Antony, who can afford to be generous, like Hal over the body of Hotspur in 1 Henry IV:

JuliusCaesar5.5

Here is the likeness:

As we enter the period of the great tragedies, we might also note that Shakespeare's portraits of women take on the dimensions of the history play rather than the romantic comedies. To continue the parallel with 1 Henry IV, notice that Brutus shuts out his wife, Portia, from public affairs (2.1), as Hotspur did with Kate (2.3). Kate is left a widow, however, while Portia is a noble suicide, in the "high Roman fashion" (Antony and Cleopatra, 4.15.86) that Cleopatra chooses also.

Journal Notes.

Please use the following prompts for your journal. Add your own if you like, and send them to me before class. They may suggest ideas for your students.

Brutus is the protagonist of the play, although Julius Caesar gets the title for box office appeal. What makes him a good man?
How does Brutus misjudge his world? What does he care about, and how does his strategy go wrong?
Who are the winners in Rome?
Cassius is one of Shakespeare's prototype villains, like Richard III, Edmund, or Iago. What drives his hatred of Caesar?

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