Julius Caesar
William Shakespeare.  

Second reading.
Posted 26 October 2005.
 

It has been a long time – too long – since I pulled my big Riverside Shakespeare down from the shelf.  It has been longer yet since my last reading of this great play.  There were certain scenes that I had remembered well: the early scene in which Cassius seduces Brutus to mutiny; the murder of Caesar itself, which seems to happen so suddenly even to we who know it is coming; and of course the great speech in which Marc Antony rouses the people of Rome to mutiny against Caesar’s assassins.

Yet there were scenes, too, and whole elements of the plot, which I had forgotten or misremembered.  It is good to have those memories refreshed and corrected, and to have new thoughts added to my appreciation.  I do not think that I perceived before how the play has structural problems: the first three acts, extending to the end of Marc Antony’s oration, are focused and play well, but the final two acts, recounting the political aftermath of the assassination and the battle between the conspirators and the armies of Octavius and Marc Antony, seem too disorderly and muddled to sustain the force of the narrative.  I think it can fairly be said, too, that there are too many minor characters crowding into the story.  Even so, the play is a treasure for its portrait of traitorous envy and loyal friendship.

I was partly motivated to take up the play tonight by rumours of a recent book of Shakespeare interpretation (Shadowplay, by Clare Asquith).  The author, building on the influential work of Cambridge historian Eamon Duffy (in, for instance, his wonderful The Stripping of the Altars), re-imagines Shakespeare against a political and religious background that was far more troubled than we had been led to believe. She apparently argues that Shakespeare was a recusant, and that, if we tune our ears to catch the contemporary resonances of his words, we will find under and behind the plays veiled condemnations of Elizabeth, and encouragements of his beleaguered Catholic countrymen. The analogy she draws is with the arts under the Soviet regime, in which certain words, phrases, and even gestures would be understood by the audience as covert critiques of the powers-that-be.  Think of the rich resonance they could give to a phrase like 'the troubles'.  In other words, Asquith sees Shakespeare as a kind of Elizabethan Shostakovich.

This is an interesting idea not only because it potentially casts new light on these great plays, but because it challenges the common view that Shakespeare was a cipher who disappeared behind his plays so thoroughly that nothing can be known of him.  Of course, how seriously one ought to take these suggestions depends on her arguments, so I must defer judgment, but in the meantime it struck me an intriguing way to approach the plays.

I had these ideas in mind as I read Julius Caesar, yet I cannot say that I found any great evidence in its favour.  Asquith contends, plausibly enough, that the explicitly Roman plays are also, implicitly, Roman – in the sense of Roman Catholic.  That is, Caesar is an image of the Pope or the Roman Church, and Brutus, Cassius, and the rest of them of the Church of England.  The evidence I was able to gather in support of this reading was scant: Brutus does exclaim that he would renounce his sonship to Rome ‘Under these hard conditions as this time / Is like to lay upon us’ (I, ii, 174-5), which infidelity may have struck close to the hearts of some hearers, and perhaps Caesar’s speech immediately before his death, beginning ‘I am as constant as the northern star’ (III, i. 60-70), could have put his hearers in mind of Catholic faith in the steadfastness of the Church, but these, admittedly, are but feeble offerings.  When opportunity permits I will peer into Ms. Asquith’s book to see if she does better than me.

I have never seen this play on the stage, and I would like to amend that.

[Caesar]
But I am as constant as the northern star,
Of whose true-fix’d and resting quality
There is no fellow in the firmament.
The skies are painted with unnumb’red sparks,
They are all fire, and every one doth shine;
But there’s only one in all doth hold his place.
So in the world: ‘tis furnish’d well with men,
And men are flesh and blood, and apprehensive;
Yet in the number I do know but one
That unassailable holds on his rank,
Unshak’d of motion; and I am he

[Marc Antony]
For I have neither wit, nor words, nor worth,
Action, nor utterance, nor the power of speech
To stir men’s blood; I only speak right on.
I tell you that which you yourselves do know,
Show you sweet Caesar’s wounds, poor, poor, dumb mouths,
And bid them speak for me.

[Not everyone enjoys poetry]
3 Pleb:       Your name, sir, truly.
Cinna:        Truly, my name is Cinna.
1 Pleb:       Tear him to pieces, he’s a conspirator.
Cinna:        I am Cinna the poet, I am Cinna the poet.
4 Pleb:       Tear him for his bad verses, tear him for his bad verses.

---

Back to Book Note Index

Back to Books