Julius Caesar – A. J. Drake's Shakespeare Site

Act 1, Scene 1 (289-90, The Roman people are celebrating the dictator Julius Caesar’s triumph over his slain rival Pompey’s sons at Munda, Spain; the Tribunes Murellus and Flavius scold the plebeians for celebrating Caesar’s victory when they had once made holiday to view Pompey’s triumphant processions through Rome; the people decamp, and the two Tribunes strip the nearby statues of Caesar of the crowns with which his adherents had decked them.)

Although the Tribunes only mention it briefly, the play’s action begins during the Feast of Lupercalia in 45 BCE. [1] This holiday is a vibrant Roman tradition, one that that involves sacrifices, feasting, and a ritual whereby male runners lightly whip female bystanders on their wrists with a cord, which action may have replaced the random sexual coupling that supposedly occurred early in the Lupercal’s history. It is in large measure a fertility ritual, and in that capacity a prayer for the perpetuation of Roman society. [2]

During the Lupercalia, the ordinary laws that restrain people are tacitly suspended, and in Shakespeare’s play, the common people, who “make holiday to see Caesar” (1.1.), flaunt their temporary idleness and treat the Tribunes Flavius and Murellus saucily. Why is the carpenter not wearing the clothing he should be wearing? asks Murellus. No answer is forthcoming. And a cobbler, [3] when grilled by Flavius, jests, “Nay, I beseech you, sir, be not out with me. Yet if / you be out, sir, I can mend you” (289, 1.1.16-17). Flavius is not pleased by this sassy talk.

No doubt both Tribunes (in spite of their traditional role as the people’s defenders) [4] believe commoners should know their places, holiday or not. Flavius and Murellus are annoyed not about the Lupercal Feast itself, but rather about the “holiday” emphasized in Scene 1, which is the triumph granted to Caesar over the killing of Pompey’s sons at the Battle of Munda, Spain. [5] Flavius and Murellus, who clearly favored the Pompeian faction in the now defunct First Triumvirate of Caesar, Pompey, and Crassus, [6] bristle at seeing the plebeians celebrating Caesar’s exultation over the death of fellow Romans.

The Tribunes seem certain that their own moral pronouncements and symbolic gestures—mainly, removing the “crowns” placed upon Caesar’s statues by his adherents—will set things right, but they are badly mistaken. Caesar had already violated Roman precedent in January of 49 BCE by crossing the Rubicon River and entering Italy with his army. Now, having essentially started a civil war in Italy and situated himself as Rome’s dictator, [7] he constitutes a grave threat to the Republic. Stern words are unlikely to lead a corrupted Rome back to political health.

The problem isn’t just with the clever and ambitious Julius Caesar. How much difference was there, really, between the three illustrious men (Caesar, Pompey, and Crassus) who formed the loose entity now called the First Triumvirate in 60 BCE? Indeed, Rome had long been beset by powerful factions led by the likes of the autocratic Sulla and the populist Marius. These rulers were not unconflicted republicans; they were “strongmen,” and their supremacy led to bloodletting and mass proscriptions against the opposing faction. [8] These were ruthless individuals looking to enhance their own wealth and power, not preserve the state. [9]

Murellus himself points out to the commoners that they once adored Pompey as much as they now adore Caesar, saying to them, “Many a time and oft / Have you climbed up to walls and battlements, / … / … and there have sat / The livelong day with patient expectation / To see great Pompey pass the streets of Rome” (289-90, 1.1.36-41). [10]

This “great Pompey,” then, whom the Tribunes deeply respect, was once the equivalent of these commoners’ present darling, Julius Caesar. This is a clue that things are not so simple in Rome as to allow us to heap all of the blame on Caesar for the City’s precarious state. The Roman republic had been in trouble for many decades by the time of the setting of Shakespeare’s play. That historical fact should influence how we interpret the true status of Julius Caesar and the subsequent decisions and actions of the conspirators Marcus Junius Brutus, [11] Gaius Cassius Longinus, [12] and their confederates.

The scene ends with Flavius telling Murellus: “These growing feathers plucked from Caesar’s wing / Will make him fly an ordinary pitch, / Who else would soar above the view of men / And keep us all in servile fearfulness” (290, 1.1.71-74). Flavius can’t know it, but we know the history that follows: he couldn’t be more mistaken. If there’s one thing we can say about the great “bird of prey” Caesar, it is that he would neveraccept anyone’s demand to “fly an ordinary pitch.”

Act 1, Scene 2 (290-97, Mark Antony is instructed by Caesar to attend especially to Calphurnia during the Lupercal’s fertility rites; a soothsayer warns Caesar that the Ides of March will be dangerous for him, but Caesar rebuffs him; Cassius begins to work upon Brutus about the need to check Caesar’s pretensions to kingship; Casca fills both men in on the “theater” whereby Antony mock-offered Caesar a crown three times; Brutus promises to speak further with Cassius; alone, Cassius expresses surprise at how receptive Brutus already is to his incitement, and is determined to pursue his advantage with all speed.)

Upon first view, Julius Caesar seems a grand figure, ordering great men about in an intimate way. Still, what Caesar says to Antony during his Lupercal procession reminds us that his wife, Calpurnia, is unable to have children. Impressive as he is, he is human; alone in the middle of an admiring, obliging crowd, he depends upon Antony’s guidance and friendship.

Caesar seems to credit the fertility-based supernatural underpinnings of the Lupercal Festival, but what is probably a combination of vanity and the genuine fearlessness of an old military man, he will not listen to a soothsayer’s plea to “Beware the Ides of March” (291, 1.2.23), and calls him “a dreamer” (291, 1.2.24) before imperiously waving the procession past the disregarded prophet.

Immediately afterwards, we are treated to the first conversation between two men who have kept themselves aloof from Caesar’s holiday procession, Brutus and Cassius. This conversation turns upon the issues of self-awareness tied together with the all-important Roman concept of honor.

Cassius asks Brutus if he can see himself as if from outside or through the eyes of others who expect him to save the Republic. The honest reply that Brutus gives reminds us how difficult it is for a person to be so self-reflective: Brutus says, “the eye sees not itself / But by reflection, by some other things” (292, 1.2.52-53). It is clear that this honorable Roman has been thinking along the same lines as Cassius, though in a nobler strain. He would not find it tolerable for Caesar to become a king, but he is circumspect about speaking what he feels.

Cassius is not so shy: he both resents and envies Caesar, and holds him in contempt even as he marvels at the man’s success. Recounting a time when Caesar challenged him to a swim in the choppy waters of the Tiber, Cassius refers to Virgil’s Aeneid, putting himself in place of Aeneas and casting Caesar as the hero’s enfeebled father Anchises, who had to be carried from the burning, defeated Troy. [13] Cassius says with disdain, “so from the waves of Tiber / Did I the tired Caesar; and this man / Is now become a god …” (293, 1.2.114-16).

Cassius does not so much seek justice as an opportunity to take power himself, at least vicariously through his more illustrious friend Marcus Brutus. He also sees a deep disjunction between what ordinary people think Caesar is and what he actually is to those who know him. In this, he seems correct: Caesar’s image with the public is clearly not the same as who he really is. What’s troublesome isn’t so much Cassius’s assessment, it’s his attitude in offering it.

We like to think of the Romans as thoroughly upstanding and ancient times as somehow simpler and more noble, but Roman political culture was at least as sophisticated as ours is today. “Spin” and other manipulative varieties of public relations would hardly have been foreign to Roman politicians. Cassius, ever the slick rhetorician, tries to stir resentment like his own in the breast of Brutus, and in that effort, he connects Brutus to his illustrious ancestor and founder of the Republic Lucius Junius Brutus, who helped drive out the last Tarquin King from Rome. [14]

Brutus, we can’t help but notice, is naïve concerning the motives of his friend. He will, he tells Cassius, find an appropriate time “to hear and answer such high things” (294, 1.2.170). This is one of those moments in Shakespeare when dramatic irony arises without the explicit information given directly in soliloquy. Any reasonably astute reader can see that Cassius’s motives are nowhere near as upright as Brutus thinks they are. The illustrious Marcus Brutus is an idealist who transforms everyone around him into something more noble and righteous than is really the case.

As the holiday procession continues, Caesar speaks to Antony again, and makes it clear that he does not trust Cassius, finding in him an anxiety-provoking degree of pride. It is also manifest that Caesar surrounds himself with people willing to tell him what he wants to hear.

A quip often attributed to Alice Roosevelt Longworth goes something like, “If you have nothing good to say about anyone, sit right here next to me.” [15] Well, Caesar the great favorite of Lady Fortune also seems quite fond of Dame Gossip, as we may gather when he criticizes the “lean and hungry” appearance of Cassius (294, 1.2.194), and then invites Antony to dish out whatever he knows about the man. Caesar says, “Come on my right hand, for this ear is deaf, / And tell me truly what thou think’s of him” (295, 1.2.13-14).

This lover of gossip, we might note, who has just finished declaring himself quite fearless and above the common run of men, for as he says, “I rather tell thee what is to be feared / Than what I fear; for always I am Caesar” (295, 1.2.211-12). There is an “always on” quality to Caesar that seems in line with Casca’s comments about the great man’s fine piece of street theater in the presence of the common people, with a “best supporting actor” assist from no less a performer than Mark Antony.

Casca tells Cassius and Brutus that in this theatrical interlude, Antony offered Caesar a crown three times, and each time Caesar refused it, though (according to Casca), each time a little more reluctantly. After the third refusal, the crowd became agitated and caused Caesar to have one of his occasional epileptic fits: Casca describes the scene as follows: “He fell down in the marketplace, and foamed at mouth, / and was speechless” (296, 1.2.249-50).

Casca is clearly scornful of the common people because, he understands, they would gladly make Caesar king. The “tag-rag” crowd seems like an ordinary Elizabethan rabble. They follow their own appetites and are greedy for emotional spectacle, which is exactly what they get when Caesar swoons in an epileptic fit. It is easy to see the implications of Shakespeare’s representation of Rome’s plebeians as a disorderly mob: if these are the people who must ultimately render Rome worthy of a continued republican government, the Eternal City is indeed in imminent danger.

Cassius draws the lesson: it isn’t Caesar who is sick, it’s everyone else: he tells Brutus and Casca, “Caesar hath it not, but you and I, / And honest Casca, we have the falling sickness” (296, 1.2.252-53). We find out a further and quite chilling bit of news from Casca, who tells Brutus and Cassius that the Tribunes Murellus and Flavius have been thrown out of office for stripping Caesar’s statues of their imitation crowns. (296, 1.2.278-79)

At the end of the second scene, after Brutus exits, Cassius clarifies for us how he plans to drive his plan forward and win Brutus to a conspiracy to kill Caesar. The plan is to manipulate Brutus still more intensively by taking advantage of his honesty, patriotism, and great stature among Romans as a descendant of the Republican founder Lucius Junius Brutus, who expelled the Tarquins from Rome.

Cassius the cynical realist is surprised at how much progress he has already made, but he knows there’s still work to be done, and so he says, “I will this night / In several hands in at his windows throw … / Writings, all tending to the great opinion / That Rome holds of his name …” (297, 1.2.308-09, 311-12). Brutus, Cassius believes, won’t be able to resist the call of his fellow citizens in the name of one of Rome’s most legendary founders.

Act 1, Scene 3 (297-300, Casca encounters Cicero and shares with him the strange sights he’s seen in Rome’s streets, which he—though not Cicero—considers portents; Cassius convinces Casca to sign on to the plot to kill Caesar before he accepts kingly status; Cinna also joins the conspiracy, and Cassius dispatches him to place some letters in spots where Brutus will discover them and take the hint that the people want him to act.)

When he speaks to Casca, Cicero proves unwilling to buy into all the breathless talk about prodigies and omens. Cicero believes what’s happening is all a matter of interpretation; as he says, “men may construe things after their fashion, / Clean from the purpose of the things themselves” (298, 1.3.34-35). Casca fears the omens, but Cassius is more aggressive in his interpretation: he directly compares Caesar to such thunder and lightning as Romans now see.

Caesar is, says Cassius, “A man no mightier than thyself or me / In personal action, yet prodigious grown, / And fearful, as these strange eruptions are” (299, 1.3.76-78). A Roman, he insists, must confront his fears if he would be free, and if captivity looms, the Stoic philosophy offers a remedy for that: “That part of tyranny that I do bear / I can shake off at pleasure” (299, 1.3.99-100). [16]

As far as Cassius is concerned, Caesar’s greatness is a mark of the people’s degeneracy. Of course, this comment shows the weakness in the entire conspiratorial plan. If Cassius’s Roman contemporaries are in fact something quite other than noble, if they are merely “we the Roman Sheeple,” how are they supposed to maintain the virtuous Republic of old, even if an assassination restores, or creates an opportunity to restore, that form of government? If they are fit only to be led, someone must lead them. So the argument, at its most pessimistic, is really over who will dominate the populace.

As Thomas Carlyle will later write, “In the long run, every government is the exact symbol of its people.” [17] Democracies and republics die when the citizenry are no longer worthy of such noble experiments or capable of sustaining them. This is not to say that Shakespeare or his audience were sympathetic to republican arguments—in Shakespeare’s time, monarchy was generally considered the best form of government. Or perhaps, as Winston Churchill said of democracy, “the worst form of government except for all those other forms of government.”

When Cinna arrives, Cassius gives him several letters and tells him to place then in locations where Brutus is all but certain to find them and suppose that the people desire him to act soon enough to prevent the catastrophic installation of “King Caesar.” Cinna agrees to perform the task and goes directly to do it.

Cassius’s strong rhetoric convinces Casca to join in with the other conspirators and do his part. Both he and Cassius want to borrow Brutus’s connection to heroic Roman history, thinking to render their own deeds noble and acceptable by reference to the violent acts by Lucius Junius Brutus that, along with Lucretia’s honor-based suicide, helped create the Republic. As Casca puts the matter, “that which would appear offense in us, / His countenance, like richest alchemy, / Will change to virtue and to worthiness” (300, 1.3.158-60).

ACT 2

Act 2, Scene 1 (301-08, Brutus reflects earnestly on whether to join Cassius’s conspiracy; it takes only one of Cassius’s letters to win his consent; when the conspirators visit his home, he joins the group but chastises them for wanting to swear an oath and for favoring the murder of Mark Antony in addition to Caesar; Brutus tells his fellow conspirators they must not act like “butchers”; Brutus’s wife Portia asks him to explain what’s going on, but they are interrupted; Brutus leaves with Caius Ligarius to pay Caesar a visit.)

Brutus, in his ruminations about what course to take, says that he would act only for the general good, not because he bears any particular grudge against Caesar, who has always been a friend to him and a man who, like a good Stoic, knows how to subordinate passion to reason. [18] Brutus admits that this man, his mentor no less, has as yet not given the offense that would justify the terrible action he is meditating.

Indeed, Brutus’s main argument is an abstract one that sounds very much like the modern Acton’s Law: an excess of power would corrupt his friend, so it is necessary to extrapolate what that friend might do if given absolute power. A would-be king is a serpent, the idea runs, and so he must be dealt with as such: we must “think him as a serpent’s egg / Which, hatched, would as his kind grow mischievous, / And kill him in the shell” (301, 2.1.32-34). [19]

It is true that the very existence of the Republic is at stake—a political entity that was founded by Brutus’s ancestor Lucius Junius Brutus, husband of the Tarquin-violated Lucretia. [20] Even so, it is difficult to swallow a plan to murder a man on the idea that “It is the bright day that brings forth the adder” (301, 2.1.14). Brutus’s argument, grounded mainly in assumptions and adages, is very near “slippery slope” status. It bears an unpleasant similarity to the reasoning of a sci-fi police authority planning preemptive action against “future crime.” [21]

In Marcus Brutus’s own time, Rome confronts a potential return of the kings, not in the person of an Etruscan but a Roman, Julius Caesar. The letter that Brutus reads—the one written and planted by Cassius, not anonymous citizens, takes care to mention this glorious ancestry, and in truth, it seems as if the letter only (to adapt a line from Macbeth [22]) “marshalls Brutus the way that he was going.” He is very taken with the heroic past connected to his family name, and clearly considers it vital to his identity.

“O Rome,” he declares, “I make thee promise, / If the redress will follow, thou receivest / Thy full petition at the hand of Brutus” (302, 2.1.56-58).

All the same, participating in a conspiracy has begun to exact a toll upon Brutus. As he describes what he is experiencing, “Between the acting of a dreadful thing / And the first motion, all the interim is / like a phantasma or a hideous dream …” (302, 2.1.63-65). [23] He has not been able to sleep since Cassius began his suit in favor of doing away with Caesar, and he feels that the whole affair has disordered his body and mind, just as the body politic and nature have both been wrenched out of their normal frame. [24]

When Brutus is introduced to the conspirators, he is at first taken aback by the disguises the men are wearing—the ominous appearance of this group sorts ill with this great patrician’s ordinary bearing and disposition. He asks for a joining of hands, but when Casca expresses a wish to “swear our resolution” (303, 2.1.312), Brutus finds it necessary to explain how un-Roman it is to require an oath in important matters: “What need we any spur but our own cause / To prick us to redress?” (303, 2.1.122-23).

It is decided that the conspirators should not bother trying to recruit the shrewd senator and orator Cicero, for, says Brutus, “he will never follow anything / That other men begin” (304, 2.1.150-51). That sounds like a wise choice since Cicero is a difficult character.

Brutus also tries to limit the bloodiness of the conspirators’ intent. Decius asks if anyone besides Caesar should be cut down as well, and Cassius pipes up with the name “Mark Antony.” His logic for taking out Caesar’s favorite is impeccable as such things go, but Brutus will have none of it. “Our course will seem too bloody,” he tells Cassius, “To cut the head off and then hack the limbs, / Like wrath in death and envy afterwards …” (304, 2.1.162-64).

Sparing Mark Antony from the violence directed against Caesar will, of course, turn out to be a big mistake, but it also shows Brutus’s nobility of mind. It’s possible to attribute to Brutus some degree of less than high-minded strategizing when he says that Antony “can do no more than Caesar’s arm / When Caesar’s head is off” (305, 2.1.182-83), but that would be ungenerous.

Brutus seems naïve throughout this scene, nowhere more so than when he says of Caesar, “Let’s carve him as a dish fit for the gods, / Not hew him as a carcass fit for hounds” (304, 2.1.173-74). How is that possible? It isn’t, and the thought sounds delusional on Brutus’s part. Even if the act is a sacrifice and not an act of sadistic butchery, nevertheless Caesar “must bleed for it” (304, 2.1.171), as Brutus himself admits.

Clearly, Brutus is most comfortable with philosophical abstractions, not with practical action. The conspirators are in fact setting themselves up as “butchers,” whatever their intentions towards Caesar and the state. Brutus’s noble words of moderation do not hint at any recognition of the impending deed’s full horror.

Cassius worries that Caesar, who has apparently grown superstitious with advancing age and the isolation that stems from great power, might prove unwilling to come to the Capitol. But Decius allays that fear, telling the conspirators that a little flattery will do the trick: “when I tell him he hates flatterers, / He says he does, being then most flattered. / Let me work …” (305, 2.1.207-09). The Man of Destiny has become a rather easy mark for those who know his flaws.

Portia shows herself to be the only character who really understands Brutus, with the possible exception of Octavius, who treats him as a worthy opponent. (306-07, 2.1.233-302). She requests insistently that Brutus let her in on what is troubling him: “Dwell I but in the suburbs / Of your good pleasure?” she asks, and continues, “If it be no more, / Portia is Brutus’ harlot, not his wife” (307, 2.1.285-87). Brutus promises to explain, but he is interrupted by Caius Ligarius.

Still, he must tell Portia subsequently since later on, as the plot rolls toward execution, she seems aware of what is about to happen, and anxious about its success.

In speaking to Caius Ligarius, Brutus again employs the metaphor of sickness and health—it seems he sees himself as a physician or a surgeon as well as a priest with respect to the body politic. He is about, says Brutus, “A piece of work that will make sick men whole” (308, 2.1.327). That the action contemplated is a profound violation of the Hippocratic Oath doctors were familiar with even well before Brutus’s time goes almost without saying.

Act 2, Scene 2 (308-11, The Ides of March have come, and Calphurnia, Caesar’s wife, on the basis of the prodigies that have occurred in the City, gets him to say he will cancel his expected visit to the Capitol; Decius Brutus arrives and says that the senate means to offer Caesar a crown today, but also that the offer is unlikely to be repeated; Caesar brings up Calphurnia’s ominous “blood fountain” dream, but Decius Brutus puts a positive spin on it, and Caesar departs for the Capitol in the company of Mark Antony and all the conspirators.)

Calphurnia is alarmed about the prodigies appearing as accompaniment to the wild, stormy weather that is pelting Rome: “graves have yawned and yielded up their dead,” she has heard, and “Fierce, fiery warriors fight upon the clouds …” (308, 2.2.18-19). In responding to Calphurnia’s anxious report, Caesar seems genuinely magnificent when he asks rhetorically, “What can be avoided / Whose end is purposed by the mighty gods?” (309, 2.2.26-27)

At the same time, Caesar pompously declares himself more dangerous than danger itself: “We are two lions littered in one day,” says he, “And I the elder and more terrible …” (309, 2.2.46-47). At such moments, he presents as a politician who has come to believe his own PR—always a dangerous thing to do because it unfits leaders to exercise power, but more to the point in the context of Julius Caesar, it may blind them to impending dangers. Politicians must be aware of their image, but they must avoid becoming mere creatures of that image.

Still, when Calphurnia offers Caesar the cover of her own fear, he declares boldly that he will not go to the Capitol today. Not that he is afraid or sick—he simply won’t go. Fortunately for the conspirators, Decius Brutus is able to use Caesar’s vanity to draw him to the Capitol, where he will meet his fate. Decius’s opening comes when Caesar recounts Calphurnia’s dream about his statue, which, “Like a fountain with an hundred spouts, / Did run pure blood; and many lusty Romans / Came smiling and did bathe their hands in it” (310, 2.2.77-79).

Decius Brutus’s interpretive skills work wonders for Caesar’s mood: the dream, he says, “Signifies that from you great Rome shall suck / Reviving blood, and that great men shall press / For tinctures, stains, relics, and cognizance” (310, 2.2.87-89). That’s good enough for Caesar, whose concern for public opinion is sufficiently aroused to send him out on a stroll to the Capitol from which he will never return.

If, as seems probable, Shakespeare follows the general line that the time has come for Rome to turn imperial, the aging, vainglorious Julius Caesar he depicts is not the right man to wield such enormous power. This is not to say, though, that the Caesar in Julius Caesar (or real life) was or is anybody’s fool, or merely a run-of-the-mill politician.

Rather, Shakespeare’s representation pays tribute to the difficulty of settling on any one image of such a colossal, polarizing figure as Julius Caesar. On display are certain physical debilities (partial deafness, epilepsy) and character-based weaknesses such as a tendency toward self-inflation and grandiosity, but counter-balancing these traits are an impressive military career, undoubted skills as a ruler, as well as the pageantry, the sheer spectacle, surrounding “Great Caesar’s” every move. The “real” Julius Caesar is a strange concatenation of self-promotion, the opinions swirling around him, and an unknowable number of deep, complex qualities residing within his own spirit.

Act 2, Scene 3 (311, Artemidorus waits for Caesar to pass by in a street procession; this soothsayer’s goal is to hand him a letter revealing the conspiracy that threatens his life.)

A soothsayer named Artemidorus [25] waits for Caesar to walk by him in a street procession on the Ides of March. As he waits, he reads through his own letter, which lays out the extreme danger in which Caesar stands, naming eight of the conspirators against him. [26] Artemidorus is hopeful that the fates will side with the man he considers Rome’s rightful ruler. He sees the conspirators as being motivated by envy, not concern for the Republic.

Act 2, Scene 4 (311-12, Portia is on pins and needles about the conspirators’ progress at the Capitol; she encounters the soothsayer, who will make a second attempt today to get Caesar’s attention.)

By now, Portia has been informed about the conspiracy in which her husband Brutus is involved, and she sends Lucius to check on what Brutus is doing at the Capitol. She also speaks at home with the soothsayer who warned Caesar back in Act 1, Scene 2. He tells Portia that he fears the worst for Caesar, and then leaves to position himself where he has a chance to catch Caesar’s attention and once again call to him about the Ides of March.

ACT 3

Act 3, Scene 1 (312-19, Caesar taunts the soothsayer and deals brusquely with Artemidorus when he tries to hand him a warning letter; Popilius startles Cassius by wishing him good luck with his “enterprise”; at the Capitol, Metellus Cimber pleads with Caesar about the banishment of his brother, Publius; Brutus, Cassius, Cinna, and Decius surround Caesar and join Metellus with their pleas; Caesar spurns these entreaties, declaring himself “constant as the Northern Star.” (SYNOPSIS CONTINUES …)

On his way to the Capitol, Caesar catches sight of the soothsayer and says to him, “The Ides of March are come,” and receives the chilling reply, “Ay, Caesar, but not gone” (312, 3.1.102). Then, he is hailed by Artemidorus, who begs him urgently to read the petition he means to hand him. But Caesar is a bit offended, and says brusquely, “What touches us ourself shall be last served” (312, 3.1.8). Little does he know it, but these two men were his last chance to avert his doom, and he has brushed them aside.

When the party arrive at the Capitol, a senator named Popilius Lena startles Cassius by saying, “I wish your enterprise today may thrive” (313, 3.1.13). Evidently, Portia isn’t the only other person who knows what is going to happen. Trebonius takes Mark Antony aside to keep him from helping Caesar escape death, and Metellus Cimber strikes up a plea for the return of his exiled brother, Publius Cimber. The stage is now set for the assassination of the would-be king.

Caesar, tyrant-like, castigates Metellus, saying, “Thy brother by decree is banishèd. / If thou dost bend and pray and fawn for him, / I spurn thee like a cur out of my way” (313, 3.1.45-47). Brutus, Cinna, Cassius, and Decius surround Caesar and add their pleas to those of Metellus, which only angers Caesar the more, as he says in the most grandiose and arrogant manner, “I am constant as the Northern Star” and “I was constant Cimber should be banished / And constant do remain to keep him so” (314, 3.1.61, 73-74).

These words are nearly Caesar’s last, as the conspirators move in a rush to strike at him with their knives. Casca strikes first, and the others join in the frenzy. According to Shakespeare’s representation, Brutus is the last to stab Caesar, who utters his final words, “Et tu, Brutè?” [27] and then falls to the pavement, dead. His dying expression flows from astonishment that his noble friend Brutus would join in such an act of betrayal against him.

After the killing is done, Cinna shouts “Liberty! Freedom! Tyranny is dead! / Run hence, proclaim, cry it about the streets” (314, 3.1.79-80), Cassius offers a similar thought, and Brutus aims to soothe the shocked spirits of the bystanders who have witnessed the bloody deed.

Brutus is particularly concerned to strike the right ceremonial note, telling his fellow conspirators to bathe their hands in the blood of the slain ruler and make their way to the marketplace, where they will proclaim “Peace, freedom, and liberty” (315, 3.1.111) for all.

Cassius and Brutus also make bold to consider the historic nature of what they have just done, treating it as if it were a piece of stagecraft for the ages. Cassius exclaims, “How many ages hence / Shall this our lofty scene be acted over / In states unborn and accents yet unknown!” and Brutus adds, “How many times shall Caesar bleed in sport, / That now on Pompey’s basis lies along / No worthier than the dust!” (315, 3.1.112-17)

Obviously, this is metadramatic on Shakespeare’s part since his English audience is implicated in the callousness implied by Brutus and Cassius’s words. Neither of these Romans, it seems, has escaped his own narrow ideological construction of events to recognize the bloody horror of the so-called “scene” that he has helped to create. It may be appropriate, if not kind, for audiences sixteen hundred (or two thousand) years on to feel a certain aesthetic distance from one of history’s most consequential murders, but in Brutus and Cassius, it implies something more like dissociation.

Antony does not share in this failing, if such it be. His messenger arrives in advance of his master, and promises that if he is satisfied with what the conspirators adduce as their reasons for performing such a terrible deed, he, Antony, will befriend them and bear them no grudge. Antony’s real reason for this gesture, of course, is to find out how the conspirators plan to peddle what they’ve done for public consumption. That way, he will be better prepared to undo their efforts at justification.

Antony soon boldly steps into the midst of the still-assembled conspirators to speak with them directly. His speech to Brutus and Cassius is a masterpiece of mingled flattery and sly condemnation. First, he asks them to go ahead and kill him outright if that’s what they think best: “No place,” he says, “will please me so, no mean of death, / As here by Caesar and by you cut off, / The choice and master spirits of this age” (316, 3.1.163-65). Brutus promises a sound explanation, and Antony shakes hands with the conspirators, naming each as he does so.

Antony soon lets slip, though, what he really thinks of the conspirators when he turns to the gashed body of his old friend, and addresses him in anguish, “Shall it not grieve thee dearer than thy death / To see thy Antony making his peace, / Shaking the bloody fingers of thy foes, / Most noble, in the presence of they corpse?” (317, 3.1.198-201) The emotion is no doubt genuine, but it’s difficult to avoid the thought that it is also a threat deliberately aimed at Brutus and his fellow assassins.

Cassius seems to catch something of that sort, but not the full measure of it since he asks Antony only, “Will you be pricked in number of our friends, / Or shall we on and not depend on you?” (317, 3.1.218-19) That seems rather naïve, especially for Cassius, who has never trusted Mark Antony.

Antony has two last “asks,” which is that he may be allowed to speak at Caesar’s funeral rites, and that he may bestow the body in the marketplace for that purpose. Cassius opposes the request to let Antony speak, and he is right to do so. But Brutus shuts him down, and promises that all will be well since he, Brutus, will speak first and thereby prevent Antony’s words from having too much impact. [28] His only requirement, really, is that Antony should not speak unfairly against the conspirators, or so-called “liberators.”

For a Roman orator, this shows an astonishing lack of savviness about how public speaking works, especially when one is confronting a master speaker and crowd-pleaser such as Mark Antony. This wily operator has no intention of playing by the rules, and now Brutus has not only allowed him to speak the last word, but also to speak it while standing next to the horribly butchered corpse of a man who was loved, even if with some ambivalence, by many of the Roman people. [29] Brutus has agreed to be the hapless “warmup act” for a much better speaker.

When Antony is finally left alone, out of the conspirators’ range, he expresses his rage fully in speaking to the dead Caesar: there will be war against these men, and the angry spirit of Caesar, accompanied by Ate, goddess of discord, “Shall in these confines with a monarch’s voice / Cry havoc, and let slip the dogs of war, / That this foul deed shall smell above the earth / With carrion men groaning for burial” (318, 3.1.274-77). No quarter is to be given to these villains.

The scene ends with Antony dispatching a servant to tell Octavius that Rome is not yet safe for him to enter. Antony, that is, must still test the public’s reaction to the words he plans to speak about Caesar.

Act 3, Scene 2 (319-25, Brutus gives his speech in the marketplace, and says he killed Caesar for his ambition to be king; Antony demolishes Brutus’s references to “ambition,” slyly reverses his own statement that the conspirators are “honorable men,” shows the public Caesar’s wounds; and reads them Caesar’s supposed will, which gifted them parks and cash; furious now with the assassins, the people run to attack them and burn down their houses; a servant tells Antony that Octavius has arrived in Rome and that Brutus and Cassius have fled.)

Brutus speaks first at Caesar’s funeral, and the sum total of his argument is, “Not that I loved Caesar less, / but that I loved Rome more” (319, 3.2.21-22) That is, Brutus loved Caesar as a friend and colleague, but he put his country before personal, private amicitia. Caesar was slain, says Brutus, not for his good qualities, but for his unacceptable ambition. This is logical, but rather thin and barren stuff. It works upon the people favorably, but only in the absence of Antony’s much more passionate and compelling performance.

The irony of the people’s reaction to Brutus is hard to miss—even as Brutus grounds his actions in the need to prevent the establishment of a monarchy, one of the citizens shouts out, “Let him be Caesar!” and another follows up with, “Caesar’s better parts / Shall be crowned in Brutus” (320, 3.2.47-48). He has killed Caesar, but the rabble want to make him Caesar for doing so. Perhaps Brutus doesn’t hear them, but in any case he makes no rebuttal against their clamorous demands that he should be crowned.

Antony’s speech to the common people is a masterpiece from its near-beginning line, “I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him” (321, 3.2.72) to its conclusion with “Here was a Caesar! When comes such another?” (324, 3.2.250) Knowing well that the people are entirely at the mercy of their own passions, he shapes his utterances carefully to drive them where he wants them to go.

It’s good to note, too, that we need not suppose Antony is insincere—the genius of his speech is that he is, like many good actors, skillfully corralling his genuine affection for Caesar into a great force for avenging his death at the hands of men he considers “butchers.”

Antony’s first move is to pretend to honor Brutus’s claim that Caesar deserved to die because he was ambitious, and in the course of doing this, he works the word “honorable” into his speech for the first of what will be ten times. Brutus and company must, that is, be telling the truth because they are all“honorable men” (321, 3.2.81). But even after the first few repetitions of this word, it begins to ring hollow, as overly repeated words quickly tend to do. And while he’s at it, Antony reduces the conspirators’ arguments down to “it’s true because we say so.”

Next comes Antony’s mention of the will that Caesar supposedly left behind, one filled with benefits for them. He at first withholds his assent to their demands to hear this will, the better to create a sham sense of agency in people who agree with whoever is speaking to them presently. His refusal also insinuates that reading the will can only make them angry and violent: “You are not wood, you are not stones, but men; / And being men, hearing the will of Caesar, / It will inflame you, it will make you mad” (322, 3.2.140-42).

Antony goes on to clear a sacred space around Caesar’s body, making the dead dictator an object of veneration. With this move completed, the great orator describes the most shocking moment in Caesar’s assassination: the moment when he realized that Brutus, too—dear Brutus—was one with the fiendish killers that beset him. “This,” says Antony while pointing to a particular wound on Caesar’s body, “was the most unkindest cut of all” (323, 3.2.181): he refers, of course, to the stab wound inflicted last by none other than Marcus Junius Brutus. [30]

When Caesar registered this ingratitude, says Antony, “Then burst his mighty heart, / And in his mantle muffling up his face, / Even at the base of Pompey’s statue, / Which all the while ran blood, Caesar fell (323, 3.2.184-87). Using Caesar’s multiply stabbed body as a prop, Antony has conjured up the most moving image of the murder imaginable, and it has exactly the effect upon the public as we should expect: it drives them wild with pity and rage.

Antony then serves up a standard bit of rhetoric [31] by insisting that he is no orator like Brutus; no, he’s just “a plain blunt man” (323, 3.2.216) speaking the truth about what happened on the Ideas of March, five days ago. This plain blunt man goes on to read the will (which the people had all but forgotten about by now) that Caesar supposedly left for the common people of Rome—a will that, claims Antony, gifts them with seventy-five drachmas each and, on top of that, public recreation areas created from his own private gardens and orchards.

The people have heard enough by now to know what they want to do, which is to riot and burn down the homes of the conspirators. Antony has led them to believe that “honor” consists in standing by your friends, which is what he has, in effect, urged the impassioned crowd to do now. As they rush out of the marketplace in their fury, Antony tells us what he really thinks: “Now let it work. Mischief, thou art afoot; / Take thou what course thou wilt” (324, 3.2.258-59).

The deed that the deluded Brutus and Cassius believed would bring order and liberty, Antony correctly understands as the harbinger of violence and chaos. Antony knows that Fortune favors those willing to ride the waves of passion arising from great and terrible events, not those who, like Brutus, believe human affairs can be set right by the dispassionate operations of reason. For the moment, violence and chaos are Antony’s elements, and with them he will set to work forging a new order with Octavius, to whom he goes to pay a visit now that things have begun to seem somewhat clearer.

Act 3, Scene 3 (325, Cinna the poet goes out for a walk, and the enraged mob slaughters him because he has the same name as that of one of the conspirators. Any Cinna will do.)

Cinna the poet is probably one of Shakespeare’s most hapless characters. His mistake is to go out walking while the mob that Antony has just harangued into a murderous frenzy is on the hunt for conspirators. Cinna tries to tell them that he’s not that Cinna, the one who helped to kill Caesar, but the truth does him no good at all. The cry now is, “Tear him for his bad verses, tear him for his bad verses!” (325, 3.3.29-30) Poor Cinna the poet!

ACT 4

Act 4, Scene 1 (325-27, Antony meets with Lepidus and Octavius to proscribe their opponents; Antony sends Lepidus to fetch Caesar’s will, and tells Octavius that he holds the man in contempt as a mere soldier; Antony and Octavius plan to raise an army against Brutus and Cassius.)

Antony the man of deep feeling now shows another side of himself—the side that allows him to sit down with Octavius and Lepidus to proscribe [32] strangers and relatives alike if anyone in this newly formed “Second Triumvirate” [33] finds them objectionable or threatening. When Lepidus insists, for example, that Antony agree to have his own nephew killed, he responds with a callous sentence, “with a spot I damn him” (326, 4.1.6). Proscription was, of course, a cruel and lethal political practice that already had a substantial history behind it by Antony’s time.

This same cold side allows Antony to send Lepidus on a messenger’s errand (to fetch Caesar’s will) and then, when the man leaves the room, abuse him as a mere pack mule for him and Octavius. This contempt for someone whom Octavius calls “a tried and valiant soldier” (326, 4.2.28) surprises the young man, but Antony points out that he is older than Octavius and doesn’t care to have his judgment questioned. He won’t change a word of his dismissive pronouncement against Lepidus.

In Antony’s authoritative view, it’s time to head for the wars that Brutus and Cassius are presently stirring up, and that means raising armies adequate to the struggle.

Act 4, Scene 2 (327-28, Brutus and Cassius are at odds over an unnamed disagreement; they agree to settle their quarrel in Brutus’s tent, out of the troops’ hearing.)

Outside Brutus’s tent at Sardis, Cassius approaches his old friend and directly accuses him: “Most noble brother, you have done me wrong” (328, 4.2.37). Ever the more temperate of the two old friends, Brutus asks Cassius to keep a lid on their disagreements until the troops have been told to move to some distance. The two of them go into Brutus’s tent to hash things out.

Act 4, Scene 3 (328-35, Brutus and Cassius argue in the former’s tent; Brutus mocks Cassius for defending his dishonest dealings; the two men reconcile, and Brutus lets Cassius know that Portia has committed suicide; they plan their military strategy; Brutus waves off Cassius’s disagreements and declares that they must march toward Philippi and there offer battle to Antony and Octavius; Brutus is visited in his tent by Caesar’s Ghost, who says he will appear to him again at Philippi.)

Brutus and Cassius, now with some privacy in the former’s tent in Sardis, become embroiled in a bitter argument about funding for their armies. Brutus accuses Cassius of behaving corruptly—he says that he has been selling offices and perks for gold. This charge enrages Cassius, who begins to threaten Brutus, and even claims he is “older in practice” (329, 4.3.31) as a soldier. Brutus is not impressed with those threats, and the two men get down to the heart of their disagreement.

Brutus says, “I did send to you / For certain sums of gold, which you denied me, / For I can raise no money by vile means” (329-30, 4.3.69-71). Unlike Cassius, Brutus refuses to shark up the money he needs for supplies and troop salaries by corrupt practices such as the selling of offices, commissions, and so forth. Without much ado, Cassius more or less admits that he is at fault in not advancing the money Brutus requested.

All the same, the two men reconcile warmly, and that marks the end of their quarrel: the Roman concept of amicitia or friendship once again comes to the rescue. When Brutus sees that his starchy righteousness has humiliated Cassius, he softens and becomes more considerate of his friend’s frailties. “A friend should bear his friend’s infirmities” (330, 4.3.85), pleads Cassius, and in the end he brings Brutus around.

Shakespeare is capable of shredding cherished notions of classical chivalry, as he does in Troilus and Cressida, [34] but here in Julius Caesar no such thoroughgoing cynicism seems to be afoot. When a “cynic” poet tries to force his way into the tent and help the two generals make up their differences (331, 4.3.38-39), Brutus makes Cassius dismiss the fellow as impertinent: amicitia requires that they themselves resolve their own quarrels—it is not a task that another man can perform for them.

Brutus now informs Cassius that Portia has committed suicide; she has swallowed hot coals (331, 4.3.146, 151-55). Cassius is stunned, but the two generals must move on to discuss military strategy. Cassius wants to hold back, but Brutus comes down in favor of marching out to meet the enemy rather than waiting: he tells his friend, “There is a tide in the affairs of men / Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune; / Omitted, all the voyage of their life / Is bound in shallows and in miseries” (333, 4.3.219-22).

This is one of the most famous pronouncements in the play, but the “tide” metaphor is also revealing—although Brutus counsels heroic action, he still sees this action as a reaction, as a principled response to what the rhythm of life brings. Contrast this attitude with Antony and Octavius. Antony in particular, at least in this play if not in Antony and Cleopatra, is a supreme opportunist: masterful, often proactive, and creative. [35]

By the end of Act 4, Scene 3, Brutus is afflicted with a vision of Julius Caesar, who tells him that he is his “evil spirit” (334, 4.3.286). Caesar says that this visit is simply to inform Brutus that they will meet again at Philippi. The supernatural is arrayed against Brutus, and we know that history does not favor him in his struggle to preserve republican principles.

ACT 5

Act 5, Scene 1 (335-38, two great armies confront one another at Philippi in northeastern Greece; in a parley before the battle, Brutus and Cassius trade barbs with Antony and Octavius; Brutus and Cassius say their goodbyes in case the battle doesn’t go their way.)

A parley between the opposing generals takes place, and during this prelude, Brutus and Cassius exchange angry, contemptuous words with Octavius and Antony. Cassius calls these two, respectively, “A peevish schoolboy” and “a masquer and a reveler” (337, 5.1.60-61). The recent past—particularly the murder of Julius Caesar—comes in for some unpleasant discussion, but finally, the parley ends and the battle is about to begin.

Cassius confides to Messala that while he has never been one to put much faith in omens and portents, a recent incident in which friendly eagles were been replaced by “ravens, crows, and kites” (337, 5.1.86) has shaken his confidence about the “liberators’” prospects for victory. Cassius next asks Brutus what he will do if they lose the battle, and Brutus responds that he agrees with Plato over his own Stoic mentors on the matter of suicide. All the same, Brutus has no intention, he says, of being captured by Antony and Octavius.

Brutus and Cassius say their heartfelt farewells, just in case things go badly, and Brutus ends the scene on a philosophical and humble note: “Oh, that a man might know / The end of this day’s business ere it come. / But it sufficeth that the day will end …” (338, 5.1.126-28). We do not hear a similar kind of humility or philosophical spirit coming from Antony or Octavius.

Act 5, Scene 2 (338, Brutus dispatches Messala to tell Cassius’s troops that they must advance and defeat Octavius’s wing.)

Brutus sends Messala to deliver an urgent message to Cassius’s legions: they must advance quickly and take advantage of weakness in Octavius’s wing or flank. Immediate action may win the day.

Act 5, Scene 3 (338-41, Cassius wrongly believes that his scout Titinius has been captured and that the battle at Philippi is lost; Titinius returns, only to find that Cassius has committed suicide, and so the scout nobly does the same; Brutus continues the fight.)

Cassius sends Titinius on a reconnaissance mission to find out whether his side is winning or losing the battle. Pindarus sees Titinius being surrounded by what he believes to be enemy troops, and Cassius is convinced that he and Brutus have lost the battle. He orders Pindarus to hold his sword steady while he, Cassius, runs upon it. That is how Cassius dies, right after he makes his peace with his old foe: “Caesar, thou art revenged, / Even with the sword that killed thee” (339, 5.3.45-46).

Soon, Titinius returns wearing a victory wreath—he had not been captured but hailed by troops on his own side. The news comes too late for Cassius, who died believing all was lost. Overcome with grief, Titinius transfers his victory wreath to Cassius, and himself commits suicide. Brutus and others arrive soon thereafter, and find Cassius and Titinius’ bodies. Brutus is chastened in spite of the day’s favorable turn, and says, “O Julius Caesar, thou art mighty yet; / Thy spirit walks abroad and turns our swords / In our own proper entrails” (340, 5.3.94-96).

Brutus gives orders to remove Cassius’s body to Thasos since holding the funeral rites at Philippi would be distressing for the soldiers. There is one last battle to fight, and then the outcome will be known.

Act 5, Scene 4 (341-42, Lucilius pretends to be Brutus and is captured; Cato the Younger dies fighting for the Republican cause; Antony commends Lucilius’s courage and spares his life, and then gives orders to find out whether the real Brutus is still alive.)

Brutus’s army appears to be losing the second battle, and Cato, son of the great Stoic senator, dies fighting. Lucilius sets himself forth as Brutus in an attempt to draw attention away from the real Brutus. Lucilius is captured, but Mark Antony commends him and spares his life. Antony sends a search party to find out whether the real Brutus still lives, and orders others to verify how the day has gone. [36]

Act 5, Scene 5 (342-43, Brutus says that he, and not Antony and Octavius, will be well respected in times to come; Strato holds Brutus’s sword steady, and he runs on it and dies; Antony arrives and declares that Brutus, alone among the conspirators, acted from a noble motive; Octavius orders funeral rites for Brutus, and tells Antony that it’s time to “part the glories of this happy day.”)

In the end, Brutus, making his peace with Caesar as Cassius did, says “Caesar, now be still. / I killed not thee with half so good a will” (343, 5.5.50-51), requests that Strato hold his sword steady while he runs upon it. He leaves it to the people of the future and to history to judge his actions, expressing confidence in the outcome: “I shall have glory by this losing day / More than Octavius and Antony” (342, 5.5.36-37).

Octavius and Antony are impressed with the end Brutus makes, and Antony declares him “the noblest Roman of them all” (343, 5.5.68) He alone, says Antony, acted for the general good rather than for his own personal interest. But then it’s on to the future, as Octavius indicates to Antony: “let’s away / To part the glories of this happy day” (343, 5.5.80-81).

Reflections on Ancient Rome as the Republic Gave Way to Empire

On the whole, we find in Julius Caesar not so much a wholesale or cynical rejection of the republican, anti-monarchical principles enunciated by Marcus Brutus as a complex, ambivalent exploration of those principles. Ideals seldom, if ever, match events on the ground: participation in almost any kind of politics compels even the best people to abandon or at least compromise their noblest aspirations and their customary civility. This is not to abandon politics since that really isn’t possible; it is to see things as they are without flinching or dissembling.

We might ask, was Brutus right about what the future would say about him, at least in the context of Roman history? Most of us would probably agree that in the broadest possible context—that of political philosophy across the ages—what Brutus tried to do was at least done in support of the better kind of political theory: republicanism, cousin to the more fully participatory democracy of, say, Athens in its golden era.

In the context of ancient Rome, however, we can see that his noble, if bloody, attempt to preserve the republic was ultimately futile. Opinions will vary as they always do with regard to history, but the historical consensus seems to be that Rome’s imperial growth, its aggressive international posture, rendered any truly democratic form of government untenable. [37] Julius Caesar may have been the first politician astute enough to acknowledge fully that the old republic was essentially defunct, and as has happened to so many trailblazers, it cost him his life.

Still, the way was made straight for Julius’s adopted son, Octavius, who would go on to be Rome’s first fully fledged emperor, initiating several centuries of Roman history that would put on display both the best and the worst qualities of the imperial and monarchical forms of government. If Caesar was a populist impresario, Octavius, or “Augustus Caesar,” as he is known to us today, is perhaps best understood as something like the CEO of a massive corporation. Or at least that’s one way of looking at the matter.

Edition. Greenblatt, Stephen et al., editors. The Norton Shakespeare: Tragedies + Digital Edition. 3rd ed. W. W. Norton, 2016. ISBN-13: 978-0-393-93860-9.

ENDNOTES

*To return to exact part of the text referenced by the endnotes below, left-click on the endnote’s numbered link. By contrast, the blue scroll-up button at the bottom right of the page returns to the top of the document.

[1] In strict historical terms, Shakespeare’s chronology is not accurate since the February Lupercal holiday is conflated with Caesar’s fifth triumph in October of 45 BCE, just five months before his assassination.

[2] See the entry “Lupercal” in History.com. Accessed 8/8/2024.

[3] That is, a shoe repairman.

[4] See the entry “Tribune” in Worldhistory.org. Accessed 8/10/2024.

[5] Pompey. Crassus died invading Parthia in 53 BCE, and in 48BCE, Pompey was murdered in Egypt after having lost the battle of Pharsalus to Julius Caesar’s smaller forces. See also the later Battle of Munda, in which Pompey’s sons were killed. Imperiumromanun.pl. Accessed 8/10/2024.

[6] See the entry First Triumvirate and Second Triumvirate. Imperiumromanun.pl. Accessed 8/10/2024.

[7] See “Caesar as Dictator….” Worldhistory.org. Accessed 8/10/2024.

[8] See “Proscription in Ancient Rome.” Imperiumromanun.pl. Accessed 8/10/2024.

[9] Since gaining their freedom from Etruscan kings, the Romans had for centuries struggled with balancing their desire for self-determination with the reality of nearly constant class warfare between the rich and the poor. This struggle, in turn, meant that often-destructive demagoguery and populism were never far from the great City’s reality. See, for example, Mike Duncan’s The Storm Before the Storm: The Beginning of the End of the Roman Republic. Public Affairs, 2018 (reprint ed.). ISBN-13:‎978-1541724037.

[10] See Plutarch. Life of Pompey. Gutenberg e-text. Accessed 8/10/2024. See also “The Roman Triumph.” Pressbooks.bccampus.ca. Accessed 8/10/2024.

[11] See entry “Marcus Junius Brutus.” Worldhistory.org. Accessed 8/10/2024.

[12] See entry “Gaius Cassius Longinus.” Worldhistory.org. Accessed 8/10/2024.

[13] Virgil. The Aeneid. Trans. A. S. Kline. Romanroadstatic.com. Accessed 8/10/2024. See Bk. II.705-29.

[14] See “Lucius Junius Brutus” in Livius.org. Accessed 8/10/2024.

[15] See “Alice Roosevelt Longworth Quotes.” Goodreads.com. Accessed 8/10/2024.

[16] See “The Stoics’ View of Suicide.” Psychology Today. Accessed 8/10/2024.

[17] Carlyle, Thomas. Past and Present. The relevant quote occurs in Book 4, Chapter 4: “Captains of Industry.”

[18] As the Norton introduction to Julius Caesar points out on pg. 281, Shakespeare brackets out the way Julius Caesar attained the level of power he held at the time of his murder. However, his bringing destruction to northern Europe’s tribes and crossing the Rubicon aside, it remains true that Caesar was a man of considerable merit; he was cultivated and by no means a boor or a brute.

[19] See Acton’s Law as stated in his correspondence with Archbishop Creighton. Oll.libertyfund.org. Accessed 8/10/2024.

[20] Titus Livius. Ab Urbe Condita. Book I, Chs. 57-60. Perseus Project. Accessed 8/10/2024.

[21] See IMDB’s entry “Judge Dredd.” Accessed 8/10/2024.

[22] Shakespeare, William. The Tragedy of Macbeth. In The Norton Shakespeare: Tragedies, 3rd ed. 917-69. See “Thou marshall’st me the way that I was going” (930, 2.1.42).

[23] It is odd that Brutus’s analogy references the concept of monarchy, but it was common in Shakespeare’s time to make political analogies using the functioning of the human body. See Shakespeare, William. The Tragedy of Coriolanus. In The Norton Shakespeare: Tragedies, 3rd ed. 1072-1152. See Menenius’s “belly” analogy at 1074-75, 1.1.87-96, 98-104, 119-32.

[24] Norton footnote 8 for 302.

[25] Artemidorus. The name seems to be drawn from a later historical individual, a soothsayer and writer on prophecy. See Brittanica.com’s entry “Artemidorus.” Accessed 8/9/2024.

[26] There were reportedly at least 40 senators who were in on the conspiracy. Shakespeare has reduced that figure to a manageable number. See “The Death of Caesar: Do We Know the Whole Story?” Historyextra.com. Accessed 8/9/2024.

[27] See Suetonius’ narrative of the murder, which has Caesar maintaining dignified silence. Livius.org. Accessed 8/9/2024.

[28] According to Plutarch, Brutus spoke to the people immediately after the murder of Caesar; Antony spoke at the funeral on March 20, 44 BCE. See Plutarch’s Life of Marcus Brutus.

[29] See “Mark Antony’s Oration at Caesar’s Funeral.” Worldhistory.org. Accessed 8/10/2024.

[30] In The Divine Comedy, Dante places Brutus and Cassius in the lowest section of the inferno for that reason: they are traitors to their lord. See also Cicero’s fine treatise De Amicitia, or “On Friendship,” and Seneca’s Letters, deal with the concept of friendship insightfully. See especially Letter IX.

[31] An appeal to the speaker’s ethos, or character.

[32] On the ghoulish practice of proscription, see Norton footnote 4, 327. See also “Proscription in Ancient Rome.” Imperiumromanun.pl. Accessed 8/10/2024.

[33] See Second Triumvirate. Word History Encyclopedia. Accessed 8/10/2024.

[34] Shakespeare, William. The Tragedy of Troilus and Cressida. Folio. In The Norton Shakespeare: Comedies, 3rd ed. 812-89.

[35] Antony is closer to the view of Edmund in King Lear: “All with me’s meet that I can fashion fit” (775, 1.2.162). See Shakespeare, William. King Lear. Folio with additions from the Quarto. In The Norton Shakespeare: Tragedies, 3rd ed. Combined text 764-840.

[36] On the “fog of war” (i.e. confusions inherent in military action) in ancient times, See this interesting discussion on Reddit: “How thick was the fog of war …?” r/askhistorians. Accessed 8/10/2024. Ancient armies did not, of course, have “high-tech” means of communication, so it would have been difficult for even the ranking officers to know at all times what was happening. [continued ….]

See, for example, Shakespeare, William. The Life of Henry the Fifth. Folio. In The Norton Shakespeare: Histories, 3rd ed. 790-857. When the French Herald Montjoy encounters England’s King Henry V at the end of the Battle of Agincourt, Henry doesn’t know whether he has won or lost: “I tell thee truly, herald, / I know not if the day be ours or no, / For yet a many of your horsemen peer / And gallop o’er the field.” (843, 4.7.75-78)

[37] In the wake of Caesar, was Rome’s transformation to empire inevitable? See “How to Establish an Empire. The Emperor Augustus Transforms Rome.” The Collector. Accessed 8/10/2024.

Commentaries onShakespeare’s Tragedies

ACT 1

ACT 2

ACT 3

ACT 4

ACT 5

ENDNOTES

Commentaries on
Shakespeare’s Tragedies