Julius Caesar revisited

Before last year, the Shakespeare plays I had read were Hamlet, Julius Caesar, King Lear, Twelfth Night, and As You Like It. My favourite, I believe, was Julius Caesar. Let’s see if anything changes. 

1/ Cassius thinking about Brutus after he’s gone:  

“CASSIUS […] Well, Brutus, thou art noble; yet I see 

Thy honorable mettle may be wrought 

From that it is disposed; therefore it is meet 

That noble minds keep ever with their likes, 

For who so firm that cannot be seduced?...” 

(Act 1 scene 2) 

In my blog post about Timon of Athens, I wrote that Shakespeare’s Roman and ancient Greek plays tended to be heavy in ideas and filled with debates. Antony and Cleopatra is an exception, but Julius Caesar isn’t—it is full of rhetoric. It doesn’t feel heavy, however, and doesn’t have the sour, bitter tone of Timon of Athens or Troilus and Cressida. 

2/ Lots of great passages in Julius Caesar. 

“CASCA 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 

Th’ ambitious ocean swell and rage and foam, 

To be exalted with the threat’ning clouds; 

But never till tonight, 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.” 

(Act 1 scene 3) 

Striking images: “scolding winds”, “knotty oaks”, “swell and rage and foam”, “tempest dropping fire”, etc. I love Shakespeare’s choice of words.  

The descriptions of the night make me think of Macbeth. 

“LENNOX The night has been unruly. Where we lay, 

Our chimneys were blown down, and, as they say, 

Lamentings heard i’ th’ air, strange screams of death, 

And prophesying with accents terrible 

Of dire combustion and confused events 

New hatched to th’ woeful time: the obscure bird 

Clamored the livelong night. Some say, the earth 

Was feverous and did shake.” 

(Act 2 scene 3) 

Note the earthquake in both. Later: 

“OLD MAN Threescore and ten I can remember well; 

Within the volume of which time I have seen 

Hours dreadful and things strange, but this sore night 

Hath trifled former knowings.” 

(Act 2 scene 4) 

I love “dark night strangles the traveling lamp” and “that darkness does the face of earth entomb” in Ross’s answer. The old man and Ross talk about the unusual scenes they saw. Look at this: 

“OLD MAN […] On Tuesday last

A falcon, tow’ring in her pride of place, 

Was by a mousing owl hawked at and killed.” 

(ibid.) 

There is also an owl in Julius Caesar. 

“CASCA […] And there were drawn 

Upon a heap of hundred ghastly women, 

Transformèd with their fear, who swore they saw 

Men, all in fire, walk up and down the streets.

And yesterday a bird of night did sit

Even at noonday upon the market place, 

Hooting and shrieking…” 

(Act 1 scene 3) 

3/ The two plays are different but, in my head, I still want to compare Julius Caesar and Macbeth.  

“BRUTUS […] Since Cassius first did whet me against Caesar, 

I have not slept. 

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 a man, 

Like to a little kingdom, suffers then

The nature of an insurrection.” 

(Act 2 scene 1)

That makes me think of Macbeth before the killing of Duncan. Brutus, however, is colder and driven by reason—or so he thinks. He sees no dagger before him. 

4/ Calphurnia’s bad dream about Caesar is reminiscent of Andromache’s dream about Hector in Troilus and Cressida (Act 5 scene 3). In both cases, the women are right but ignored by their husbands. 

The conversation between Caesar and Decius about Calphurnia’s dream makes me laugh though—what would Shakespeare have thought of Freud?  

“CICERO Indeed, it is a strange-disposèd time: 

But men may construe things after their fashion, 

Clean from the purpose of the things themselves…” 

(Act 1 scene 3) 

And that is demonstrated time and time again throughout the play. Even Cassius, who earlier persuades Casca to join his conspiracy by suggesting that “all these fires, all these gliding ghosts” are “instruments of fear and warning/ Unto some monstrous state” (Act 1 scene 3), believes in the omens himself in the final act. He then is no longer secure. 

5/ When Cassius speaks of killing Mark Antony, Brutus stops him: 

“BRUTUS […] Let us 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…” 

(Act 2 scene 1) 

Cool-headed, rational. But after Caesar’s death: 

“BRUTUS […] And let us bathe our hands in Caesar’s blood 

Up to the elbows, and besmear our swords.

Then walk we forth, even to the market place, 

And waving our red weapons o’er our heads, 

Let’s all cry “Peace, freedom, and liberty!”” 

(Act 3 scene 1) 

Doesn’t that sound a bit sick? Or am I looking at it through modern eyes? 

6/ Except for the little disguise of the conspirators when they go to Brutus’s house, Julius Caesar doesn’t really have the disguise theme as we find in almost every other Shakespeare play. But it does have two common Shakespearean themes: appearance vs reality, and manipulation, or the danger of words. 

“MESSALA […] O hateful Error, Melancholy’s child, 

Why dost thou show to the apt thoughts of men

The things that are not?...” 

(Act 5 scene 3) 

The problem with “seeming” is a recurrent theme in Shakespeare. Things are not as they seem. 

Related is the theme of deception, manipulation, and the danger of words. At the beginning of the play, the manipulator is Cassius, who gets Brutus to join the conspiracy and to think that he does it for a good cause. He also persuades other people. But over time he becomes quieter, and barely says anything in the scene after Caesar’s death—before Mark Antony, the main speaker is Brutus. The new manipulator in the play is Mark Antony, especially in the scene before the plebians. The people are fickle and impressionable, just like the crowd in Coriolanus, but Mark Antony does talk well. He is very different from Mark Antony in Antony and Cleopatra, like Falstaff in The Merry Wives of Windsor is different from Falstaff in the Henry IV plays. 

In a way, he makes me think of Iago in the way he drops some little things to make people curious, and get them all worked up—I mean in terms of persuasion. But Mark Antony is not a villain. His loyalty to Caesar is admirable, and I like him in this passage: 

“ANTONY This is not Brutus, friend, but, I assure you, 

A prize no less in worth. Keep this man safe; 

Give him all kindness. I had rather have 

Such men my friends than enemies…” 

(Act 5 scene 4) 

7/ I like the sea metaphors in this passage: 

“BRUTUS […] 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. 

On such a full sea are we now afloat, 

And we must take the current when it serves, 

Or lose our ventures.” 

(Act 4 scene 3) 

I must thank Himadri (Argumentative Old Git) for pointing out the self-centredness and sanctimony of Brutus. Look at this: 

“BRUTUS […] For I am armed so strong in honesty 

That they pass by men as the idle wind, 

Which I respect not. I did send to you 

For certain sums of gold, which you denied me; 

For I can raise no money by vile means. 

By heaven, I had rather coin my heart 

And drop my blood for drachmas than to wring 

From the hard hands of peasants their vile trash

By any indirection. I did send 

To you for gold to pay my legions, 

Which you denied me…” 

(ibid.) 

“I am armed so strong in honesty”, “I can raise no money by vile means”—where do you think Cassius’s gold comes from, Brutus? As long as Brutus’s own hands are clean, it’s fine. What a virtue signaller.

Brutus also talks a lot about his own nobility. It’s probably true to some extent—after all, he inspires respect and loyalty—but he talks a lot about it. As he appears more sanctimonious, Cassius becomes more sympathetic in the last two acts. 

In his essay, Tony Tanner points out that Brutus is a bad politician: he kills the tyrant but releases chaos and anarchy; “he does not dispatch Antony; he lets Antony address the people; he insists on the wrong military tactics at Philippi—in all these matters, from a purely political point of view, Cassius is right.” (Introduction) 

As I wrote at the beginning of the blog post, before last year, Julius Caesar was my favourite Shakespeare play. Naturally it no longer is, but I still love the play. And rereading has deepened my understanding of it.