Critical Essays
Who’s In Charge Here?
Who’s in charge, who ought to be in charge,
and how well are those in charge doing? These are central questions in Julius Caesar. The Elizabethan expectation
would be that the ruling class ought to rule and that they ought to rule in the
best interests of the people. Such is not the case in the Rome of this play. Barely controlled chaos
has come to Rome,
and this unsettled state is personified in the first
scene of Julius
Caesar through the
characters of the cobbler and the carpenter. These characters give readers a
sense that the people themselves are a sort of amorphous mass, potentially
dangerous and, at the same time, absolutely essential
to the success of the ruling class. Throughout the play, they are addressed: Caesar must give them entertainment and seeks their
approbation for his crowning, Brutus
recognizes that he must explain his actions to them, and Antony uses them
for his own purposes. Yet, despite the plebeians’ surging power, real chaos
actually lies in the failure of the ruling class to exercise their authority
properly and to live by the accepted rules of hierarchy and order.
These same
threats and concerns resonated to an Elizabethan audience. At the time this
play was performed in 1599, civil strife was within
living memory. Henry
VIII’s reformation of the Church of England had brought
violence and unrest to the country. In addition, despite all of his efforts, Henry had not provided a living and legitimate male
heir for England.
At his death, his daughter Mary
returned the church to the bosom of Rome,
demanding that her subjects align themselves with Catholicism. When Mary, too, died without heir, her sister, Elizabeth, took the throne. What followed was a long
period, from 1548 to her death in 1603, of relative peace and prosperity.
However, Elizabeth’s
subjects experienced unease during her reign. She was, after all, a woman, and
according to the Elizabethan understanding of order, men ruled women, not the
other way around.
Her subjects wished for Elizabeth to marry for a
number of reasons. They would have felt much more secure knowing that a man was
in charge, but further, they were tired of worries over succession. A
legitimate heir was necessary. The Queen, on the other hand, over the period of
her fertility refused the suits of a number of appropriate men, knowing that
once married, she would no longer rule the realm. By the time this play was performed Elizabeth was an old woman,
well beyond the age of childbearing. Even then, she refused to name an heir and
the country worried that they would face another period of unrest at her death.
But even without this historical context, Elizabethans would have
been interested in questions of order and hierarchy—questions raised by the
political upheaval of Julius
Caesar. The Elizabethan
worldview was one in which everyone had their place. In many ways, they
understood the world in terms of the family unit. God was the head of the
heavenly family, with Jesus as his
son. The monarch was subservient only to God, receiving power to head the
English family from Him. The monarch’s subjects maintained their kingdoms
through the various levels of society and finally into their own homes, with
men ruling their wives and wives ruling their children. Elizabethan thinking
went so far as to order all living things in a hierarchy known as the Great
Chain of Being, from God and the various levels of angels right through to
the lowliest animal. In such a rigidly structured society
it is entirely understandable that its members would be interested in exploring
and examining the potentials of and the excitement that would be provided by an
inversion of that order.
On the other hand, while it would have been acceptable to examine
this relatively objective philosophical issue in the public theater, it would
have been much less acceptable (to say the least) to set it within the context
of the history of their own period. No direct questioning of England’s state
or monarch would have been possible. Playwrights of the time were aware of the
dilemma and crafted their plays so that they would not
offend. The setting of this play, therefore, in ancient Rome was the perfect answer. The story, taken
from the Roman historian, Plutarch’s, work called Lives, was
well known to Shakespeare’s audience, full of drama
and conflict, and was sufficiently distant in time to allow both Shakespeare
and his audience to operate in safety.
Now, on to the play itself. At the point in ancient history in
which Julius Caesar is set, Rome was becoming slightly more
democratic—well, democratic in their terms, not in modern ones. Tribunes, meant
as representatives of the people, were being elected
in order to protect them from the rigors of tyranny. Thus, to have a man like
Caesar, charismatic and fresh from military triumph, come into the city and
begin to establish himself as a supreme ruler was a
dangerous trend. It is not surprising, then, that Flavius and Marullus behave as they do at the beginning of the play.
They are, in effect, doing their job properly and to an Elizabethan audience
their behavior, despite its autocratic tone to a modern reader’s ears, would
have been perfectly acceptable and should have been met
with obedience and respect. The carpenter and cobbler, however, are barely
under control and show little respect, although they do ultimately obey.
But it is not the masses who are the
problem in this play. The real failure is that the ruling class does not rule
properly. Instead of uniting for the good of the people
as they ought to, they imagine themselves as individuals forming small splinter
groups that, in the end undermine genuine authority. By disabling themselves in
this way, the aristocratic class can still manipulate unruly plebeians but
cannot keep them in check.
As a member of
that class, Brutus is as much at fault as anyone else. It is, in fact, tempting to think of Brutus
as an entirely sympathetic character. At the end of the play, the audience
hears extravagant words of praise: “This was the noblest Roman
of them all” and “This was a man.” By this point, however, readers ought to
mistrust their reactions to such praise. Antony and Octavius
have shown themselves to be perfectly capable of using and misusing language in
order to establish their own positions, and the play has given ample evidence
of a tendency to objectify the dead rather than to remember them as they
actually were.
To be fair, there are gradations of character fault in this play
and Brutus is more sympathetic than other
characters. He does indeed believe that what he has done by murdering Caesar was necessary, and believes that anyone who hears his
rationale will side with him. His very naïveté suggests innocence. On the other
hand, upon examining his soliloquy in Act II, Scene 1, note that Brutus must do
a fair amount to convince himself that Caesar must die: He has to admit that
Caesar has not yet done anything wrong and so decides that his violent act will
be preemptory, heading off the inevitable results of Caesar’s ambition. Brutus’
dilemma is that he has bought into the belief that if one lives life entirely
by a philosophy—in his case one of logic and reason—everyone will be all right.
He denies any other viewpoint and so is as blinded as Caesar
is deaf. Before praising Brutus as Antony does after his death, remember that Brutus brought himself and the state of Rome to a point of such instability.
Antony, another member of that ruling class,
is also one of the more sympathetic characters of the play. But is he a good
ruler? The audience may like him for his emotion. His outrage at the murder of
Caesar and his tears over Caesar’s corpse are undoubtedly genuine. His revenge
is partly fuelled by the horror and anger he feels at the outrage,
and the reader is drawn to such loyalty. In addition, the skill that he
exhibits in his manipulation of theatrical effects and language during his
funeral oration is powerful and attractive. Yet, Antony is culpable
too. While his emotional response is undoubtedly justified, it, too,
contributes to unrest and political instability. While he, Octavius,
and Lepidus ultimately
form a triumvirate to return the state to stability, in fact, that it is a
ruling structure fraught with problems. Lepidus
is weak and a power struggle is on the horizon for Antony and Octavius. (In Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra, Octavius
is the ultimate winner of that struggle.)
A World without Women
“This was a man” is Antony’s
final tribute to Brutus. Brutus’
reputation, damaged as it has been by his participation in the conspiracy, and by his rather self-deluding rationale for
it, has been reclaimed. It has been reclaimed
partially because his character, defined at the beginning of the play as
entirely masculine, has taken on some feminine characteristics, such as grief
over his wife’s death, love for his friend, and tender concern for his followers.
By the end of the play, Brutus’ character is more
fully-rounded but is the world he leaves us better off? Can it be when the
world left behind is entirely without women? Shakespeare
takes the opportunity in Julius
Caesar to say both “yes” and
“no.” At times, characters take on so-called feminine characteristics and lose
their ability to rule well. At other times, characters like Brutus
gain a great deal from incorporating the feminine into their own personalities.
Shakespeare’s suggestion is that while a balance can be struck and an ideal attained, it is ultimately
unworkable.
You find only
two female characters in Julius
Caesar. The first, Calphurnia, is Caesar’s wife, and is emblematic of one
standard sexist Elizabethan understanding of woman. She is a shrew. She
controls instead of being controlled. She exists as a foil for her husband’s
character. By her strength, the audience sees what Caesar
ought to be; by her conscience, what his ought to be; by her death, what he
ought to be prepared to do. For this reason, her character is
not developed on a psychological level in the way that Caesar’s is.
The reader’s first contact with her is during the feast of Lupercal. Caesar asks Antony
to touch her as he passes her in the race that is a part of the celebrations. Caesar asks this because Calphurnia
is childless, and superstition dictates that the touch of the athlete during
this holy feast will make her fertile. The implication, then, is that she is at
fault for not producing an heir. In fact, the implication is that Caesar is no longer potent enough to impregnate her. His
request of the athletic womanizer, Antony, is an indication of
Caesar’s own effeminacy.
Such is the root of Caesar’s downfall. He has taken on too many
feminine characteristics. His prowess is in the past and is only momentarily evident in Act II, Scene 2 when he refuses to
listen to Calphurnia’s worries about what will happen
if he goes to the Capitol. “Caesar shall forth. The
things that threatened me / Ne’er looked but on my back; when they shall see / The face of Caesar, they are vanished.” However, he is convinced, bowing to her hysteria and his mind is changed
only after Decius
embarrasses him. “[I]t were a mock / Apt to be rendered for someone to say /
‘Break up the Senate till another time, / When Caesar’s wife shall meet with
better dreams.’” On to his own death.
Portia is a much more interesting character on her own and yet
she, too, is really only portrayed through her relationship with men. Her
relationship with her husband is clearly one of intimacy and respect. She
speaks openly with him about the unrest he has recently exhibited and forces
him to speak to her and tell her what is going on.
Note, however, how she does this. Brutus
does not want her to know what is going on. She changes his mind by pressing
him to define her in one of the two ways in which a woman can be defined in
this society: She is either a good Roman woman worthy of his secrets, well-wived and well-fathered, or she is “Brutus’
harlot.” Faced with this distinction, Brutus can
only choose to tell her what is happening. Unfortunately
for Portia, the knowledge that he imparts is her downfall. In Act II, Scene 4
Portia complains that she has “a man’s mind, but a woman’s might.” She has been given access to a man’s knowledge but because of
her position as a woman, she is unable to use it and must sit and wait for the
outcome of men’s affairs. Such knowledge is too much for her and she commits
suicide in the very garden in which she first heard Brutus’
secrets.
With this,
Portia is gone from the play, and the reader never again sees a female
character. What the audience does see, however, is a
transference of Portia’s feminine qualities to her husband by means of
his relationship with Cassius. At the beginning of the play, the relationship
between these two men was less than profound. They are
connected by a common desire to overturn Caesar’s tyranny but have
entirely different motivations. In addition, Cassius’ approach toward
convincing Brutus to join him has been cynical to
say the least.
By Act IV, Scene 2, their relationship has become a friendship,
and it has become a friendship that has the decided qualities
of a love relationship. In Act IV, Scene 2, Brutus has taken offense at what he believes was
Cassius’ refusal to send money when he needed it. Cassius is quite taken aback
by this accusation and the conversation quickly descends into a “yes you did,
no I didn’t” affair that almost results in a fight. Cassius is innocent of the
offense and is hurt that he is “Hated by one he loves, braved by his brother.”
What motivates Brutus to this anger? It
turns out that it is grief over Portia’s death. It is to Cassius that Brutus turns in his grief. The grief that he feels, the
loss, the sense of betrayal are all translated into anger toward this friend,
and after those emotions are spent, the two men are closer in some ways than
Brutus ever was with Portia. The latter relationship shares the same respect
for each other and the same sharing of intimacy, yet it is a
relationship that can operate in the same spheres because it encompasses a
level of equality not possible between a woman and a man.
From that moment, the audience has an increasing amount of
sympathy for Brutus, who has been
humanized by his wife’s death. While he clearly loved his wife, there
was also some distance between them, partly because of her rather stoic nature
(remember her self-wounding), partly because he is unwilling to confide in her.
This combination of the masculine and the feminine in her character was not a
completely appropriate one. It was unworkable given the way in which the Roman world worked. The flip
side, of course, was Caesar’s behavior. His combination of femininity and
masculinity was also unworkable. With their deaths, Brutus
is able to incorporate both aspects of their personalities, most directly from
his wife, given her more moral nature. With the banishment of women and
inappropriate femininity from Rome,
the state ought to be a better one. But there is an unattractive sterility to
such a world. What has been created is an unworkable
ideal. Brutus’ death is an indication of just how
unworkable it is.
Theater within a
Theater
How many ages hence
Shall this our
lofty scene be acted over,
In states unborn and accents yet
unknown!
Cassius speaks these words in Act 3, Scene 1 just as he convinces
the exultant conspirators to smear their hands with Caesar’s blood. At this
moment of highest drama, one of the chief actors of this piece draws attention
to its theatricality. Why?
It is a common trope of Elizabethan thinking to draw attention to
life’s fictions. Queen Elizabeth
staged many public processions and scenes and created
and lived the role of the Virgin Queen. Her subjects were both her fellow
actors and her audience. Playwrights of the time, and Shakespeare
in particular, made use of this metaphor in a number of ways (for an
interesting example, take a look at Hamlet and the play within a play, The
Mousetrap).
In Julius
Caesar, theatricality is both
an example of one of the major themes of the play, persuasion, and a comment on
the deterioration of the state of Rome.
A number of characters use theater in an attempt to persuade.
During the first meeting of Cassius and Brutus,
(Act I, Scene 2), they hear a number of shouts. Later in the scene, Casca enters and reports on the offstage theater that has
taken place. Caesar has staged a mock refusal of the
crown, thinking that he will build a desire in his audience (the plebeians)
that he eventually accept it. Think of this as someone refusing an award,
saying, “Oh no, I couldn’t possibly . . . oh no . . . well, if you insist.”
(For another example of this dramatic effect, one which works more successfully
for the protagonist, see Shakespeare’s Richard
III.) Caesar’s stage managing backfires though, and instead of acclaiming
him, the people behave like a real audience passing judgement
on the quality of the spectacle. “If the tag-rag people did
not clap him and hiss him / according as he pleased and displeased them, as
they use to / do the players in the theatre.” Caesar’s performance isn’t good enough. It proves his superficiality. The people
perceive this and refuse to accept him as their ruler.
Antony is much more successful with his
theatrics. Unfortunately, Brutus does not recognize
what Antony
is up to when he asks to give Caesar’s funeral oration in Act III, Scene 2. The
opportunity to stage a scene is evident to the reader and to at least one of
the conspirators, Cassius, who tries to dissuade Brutus,
but to no avail. Imagine the power of Antony’s
entrance as he bears Caesar’s body in his arms. This is a
exhibition meant to move an audience—and it works. Antony’s persuasive rhetoric that follows allows him to realize
his objective: to incite the mob to revolt against the conspirators, with
another showy scene. When Antony gradually uncovers Caesar’s
body and exposes its wounds, the first Plebeian responds with “O piteous
spectacle” and that is precisely what it is. By means of the theatrical, then,
the people have been convinced to act, not in their own best interests but in
the interests of Antony,
Octavius, and Lepidus.
Theater’s power has been to continue the strife rather than to resolve it. To
an Elizabethan audience, such dramatic tension would have been both threatening
and seductive.