Asimov’s Guide To Shakespear. Volume 1

by Isaac Asimov

  Cassius, uneasily appalled by Brutus' blindness, tries to argue against it. Cassius says of Mark Antony:

  Yet I fear him;

  For in the ingrafted love he bears to Caesar…

  —Act II, scene i, lines 183-84

  But Brutus won't even let him finish. Brutus has spoken, and that's that

  … Count the clock

  At this point there is the sound of a clock striking, and Brutus says:

  Peace! Count the clock.

  —Act II, scene i, line 192

  This is one of the more amusing anachronisms in Shakespeare, for there were no mechanical clocks in the modern sense in Caesar's time. The best that could be done was a water clock and they were not common, and did not strike. Striking clocks, run by falling weights, were inventions of medieval times.

  Indeed, the very same scene, at the beginning, shows Brutus speaking of time telling in a way far more appropriate to his period. He says then, peevishly, as he sleeplessly paces his bedroom:

  I cannot, by the progress of the stars,

  Give guess how near to day.

  —Act II, scene i, lines 2-3

  … Cato's daughter

  Some last arrangements are made. Decius volunteers to make certain that Caesar doesn't change his mind and that he does come to the Capitol.

  There is talk of adding new conspirators and of the exact time of meeting. The conspirators then leave and Brutus is left alone.

  But not for long. His wife enters, and demands to know what is going on. Who are these men who came? Why is Brutus acting so strangely? She feels she has a right to know, for

  I grant I am a woman; but withal

  A woman that Lord Brutus took to wife.

  I grant I am a woman; but withal

  A woman well reputed, Cato's daughter.

  —Act II, scene i, lines 292-95

  Cato was the Pompeian leader referred to earlier, who led the anti-Caesar forces in Africa. His full name was Marcus Porcius Cato, and he is usually called "Cato the Younger," because his great-grandfather, another Marcus Porcius Cato (see page I-227), was also important in Roman history. Cato the Younger was a model of rigid virtue. He deliberately conducted his life along the lines of the stories that were told of the ancient Romans.

  Since he was always very ostentatious about his virtue, he annoyed other people; since he never made allowances for the human weaknesses of others, he angered them; and since he never compromised, he always went down to defeat in the end.

  Later generations, however, who didn't have to deal with him themselves, have greatly admired his stiff honesty and his unbending devotion to his principles.

  Cato, after the defeat of the anti-Caesarian forces in Africa at the Battle of Thapsus in 46 b.c., was penned up with the remnants of the army in the city of Utica (near modern Tunis). Rather than surrender, he killed himself, so that he is sometimes known to later historians as "Cato of Utica." (Meanwhile the "noble" Brutus, far from emulating his uncle's steadfastness, had switched to Caesar's side and was serving under him.)

  Cato had a daughter, Porcia, or "Portia" as the name appears in this play, who was thus Brutus' first cousin. The two had married in 46 b.c. and were thus married about two years at the time of the conspiracy. It was the second marriage for each.

  … a voluntary wound

  Portia is an example of the idealized view of the Roman matron-almost repulsive in their high-minded patriotism, as in the case of Volumnia (see page I-225). Thus, Shakespeare follows an unpleasant story told by Plutarch and has Portia say:

  / have made strong proof of my constancy,

  Giving myself a voluntary wound

  Here in the thigh; can I bear that with patience,

  And not my husband's secrets?

  —Act II, scene i, lines 299-302

  According to Plutarch, she slashed her thigh with a razor, and then suffered a fever, presumably because the wound grew infected. She recovered and, showing Brutus the scar, said this indicated how well she could endure pain and ensured that even torture would wring no secrets out of her.

  Roman legend spoke frequently of the manner in which Romans could endure pain in a patriotic cause. There is the tale, for instance, of Gaius Mucius, who in the very early days of the Roman Republic was captured by the general of the army laying siege to Rome. Mucius had invaded the general's tent with the intention of assassinating him and now the general demanded, under threat of torture, information on Rome's internal condition.

  Mucius then deliberately placed his right hand in a nearby lamp flame and held it there till it was consumed, to indicate how little effect torture would have on him. Perhaps Portia's self-inflicted wound was inspired by the Mucius legend. And perhaps the tale concerning Portia is no more true than that concerning Mucius.

  If the matter of Portia's wound were true, then the fact that Brutus was unaware of a bad wound in his wife's thigh until she showed it to him gives us a surprising view of the nature of their marriage.

  Caius Ligarius …

  Before Brutus can explain the situation to Portia, however, a new conspirator enters and she must leave. Brutus greets him:

  Caius Ligarius, that Metellus spake of.

  —Act II, scene i, line 311

  Plutarch calls him Caius Ligarius, but he is named Quintus Ligarius in other places. In either case, he is a senator who supported Pompey and held out for him with Cato the Younger. He was taken prisoner after the Battle of Thapsus, but was pardoned by Caesar after he had been brought to trial, with Cicero as his defender.

  Ligarius would have joined the conspiracy sooner but he is sick. As soon as he hears of the details, however, he says:

  By all the gods that Romans bow before,

  1 here discard my sickness!

  —Act II, scene i, lines 320-21

  This story too is from Plutarch, and it is another example of the kind of heroism Romans loved to find in their historical accounts.

  The heavens themselves…

  That same night on which Casca has seen supernatural prodigies and Brutus has joined the conspiracy, Caesar himself has had a restless sleep. His wife, Calphurnia, has had nightmares. What's more, she has heard of the sights men have seen and she doesn't want Caesar to leave the house the next day, fearing that all these omens foretell evil to him.

  Caesar refuses to believe it, maintaining the omens are to the world generally and not to himself in particular. To which Calphurnia replies:

  When beggars die, there are no comets seen;

  The heavens themselves blaze forth the death of princes.

  —Act II, scene ii, lines 30-31

  The comets, appearing in the skies at irregular intervals, and, with then-tails, taking on a most unusual shape, were wildly held to presage unusual disasters. For anything else, their appearance is too infrequent. Similarly, the unusual portents of the night must apply to some unusual person.

  This makes sense provided astrology in general does.

  Caesar does not go so far as to scorn astrology, but he does scorn fear in a pair of famous lines:

  Cowards die many times before their deaths;

  The valiant never taste of death but once.

  —Act II, scene ii, lines 32-33

  Their minds may change

  Nevertheless, Calphurnia continues to beg and eventually Caesar is sufficiently swayed to grant her her wish and to agree to send Mark Antony in his place.

  It is morning by now, however, and Decius comes to escort Caesar to the Capitol. The news that Caesar has changed his mind and will not come staggers him. Quickly, he reinterprets all the omens and hints the senators will laugh. Not only does he make use of the threat of ridicule, but he also says:

  … the Senate have concluded

  To give this day a crown to mighty Caesar.

  If you shall send them word you will not come,

  Their minds may change.

  —Act II, scene ii, lines 93-96

  This seems true enough. Caesa
r is trying to pull off a coup that runs counter to the deepest Roman prejudices and it was bound to be a near thing. He had failed, at the Lupercalian festival, to gain a crown by popular acclamation. If he now missed a chance to force the Senate to give him one, he would be giving his opponents a chance to mobilize their forces and the whole project might be ruined. The historic Caesar won many successes by striking when the iron was hot and it isn't likely that he would let such a crucial moment pass.

  Caesar changes his mind once again and makes the fateful decision to go.

  … Read it, great Caesar

  Caesar's progress toward the Capitol is attended by further warnings, according to Plutarch's story, which Shakespeare follows. The soothsayer is there and Caesar tells him ironically that the ides of March are come (presumably implying that all is well). To which the soothsayer answers, portentously:

  Ay, Caesar, but not gone.

  —Act III, scene i, line 2

  Another man, Artemidorus, attempts to give Caesar a warning. According to Plutarch, he was a Greek professor of rhetoric from whom a number of the conspirators had been taking lessons. (In those days, rhetoric, the art of oratory, was indispensable to a public career.) He had picked up knowledge of their plans, presumably because they spoke carelessly before him, and he was anxious to reveal those plans to Caesar (perhaps out of pro-Caesarian conviction or perhaps out of the hope of profiting by Caesar's gratitude).

  In any case, he passes a note of warning to Caesar, telling him of the plot. According to Plutarch, Caesar tried several times to read the note but was prevented from doing so by the press of people about him. Shakespeare makes it more dramatic, showing Caesar, by his arrogance, bringing his fate upon himself.

  Artemidorus, in an agony of Impatience, cries out, as other petitions are handed Caesar:

  O Caesar, read mine first; for mine's a suit

  That touches Caesar nearer. Read it, great Caesar.

  —Act III, scene i, lines 6-7

  But Caesar answers grandly:

  What touches us ourself should be last served.

  —Act III, scene i, line 8

  And thus he condemns himself.

  Et tu, Brute…

  In what follows, Shakespeare follows Plutarch very closely. The conspirators crowd around Caesar on the pretext that they are petitioning for the recall of the banished Publius Cimber, the brother of Metellus Cimber. Caesar refuses, in a fine oratorical display of unyieldingness, saying:

  … I am constant as the Northern Star

  Of whose true-fixed and resting quality

  There is no fellow in the firmament.

  —Act III, scene i, lines 60-62

  The Northern Star (Polaris) does not itself move. Rather, all the other stars circle about it as a hub (in reflection, actually, of the earth's rotation about its axis, the northern end of which points nearly at Polaris). Caesar's picture of himself as the unchanging Northern Star about which all other men revolve is an example of what the Greeks called hubris ("overweening arrogance") and it is followed quickly by what the Greeks called ate ("retribution"). It is the biblical "Pride goeth before… a fall."

  The conspirators have now surrounded him so that the onlookers cannot see what is happening, as each approaches on pretense of adding his own pleas to the petition. When Brutus makes his plea, Caesar is embarrassed. The Dictator has repulsed Metellus Cimber haughtily but he cannot use similar language to the beloved Brutus. All he can say is an uneasy:

  What, Brutus?

  —Act III, scene i, line 54

  Then, later, when Decius begins his plea, Caesar points out that he cannot do it even for Brutus, saying:

  Doth not Brutus bootless kneel?

  —Act III, scene i, line 75

  At which point Casca strikes with his dagger, crying:

  Speak hands for me!

  —Act III, scene i, line 76

  According to Plutarch, they each proceed to strike at Caesar, having made an agreement among themselves that each conspirator must be equally involved in the assassination. No one of them must be able to try to escape at the expense of the others by pleading he did not actually stab Caesar.

  Caesar tried vainly to avoid the blows until it was Brutus' turn. Brutus, according to Plutarch, struck him "in the privities." That was the last straw for Caesar. When Brutus lifted his weapon to strike, Caesar cried out, "Thou also, Brutus!" and attempted no further to avoid the strokes. His outcry, in Latin, was so famous that Shakespeare made no attempt to translate it, but kept it as it was, a small patch of Latin in the midst of the play:

  Et tu, Brute? Then fall Caesar.

  —Act III, scene i, line 77

  … in Caesar's blood

  So died Julius Caesar, on March 15, 44 b.c., hacked to death by twenty-three stabs. Brutus had earlier made an apparently noble speech to the effect that they not "hack the limbs" and that they "be sacrificers, but not butchers" (see page I-279). He had meant it figuratively with reference to the possible death of Mark Antony, but now that speech takes on a grislier aspect, when it turns out that Caesar has, deliberately, been hacked and butchered to death.

  Was Shakespeare sardonically contrasting Brutus' brutal acts with his "noble" words? What should we think? Perhaps Brutus merely went along with the general feeling of the conspirators that the assassination be carried out by universal hacking. This seems doubtful since in every other case in the play he insists on having his own way even though the consensus is against him. Then too, Shakespeare has Brutus go on to say:

  Stoop, Romans, stoop,

  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 III, scene i, lines 105-10

  Plutarch merely says the swords were bloodied, but Shakespeare has Brutus suggest that they deliberately bloody their arms. Does this not give them all the precise appearance of butchers? Does this not deliberately belie Brutus' plea to "be sacrificers, but not butchers"?

  It is precisely as butchers that Brutus would have them all go out to the market place; that is, the forum. The Latin word forum means "market place." It was located in the valley between the Capitoline and Palatine hills, the first two hills to be occupied by the city. The market place is a natural site for people to gather, trade news, and discuss business, so that the word "forum" has now come to mean any public place for the discussion of ideas.

  … on Pompey's basis…

  When Cassius foretells grimly that this scene will be re-enacted in tragedies through future centuries, the "noble" Brutus evinces no sorrow. Rather, he lends himself to this lugubrious fantasy and says:

  How many times shall

  Caesar bleed in sport,

  That now on Pompey's basis lies along

  No worthier than the dust!

  —Act III, scene i, lines 114-16

  The reference to "Pompey's basis" is to the pedestal of the statue of Pompey that stood at the Capitol. The statues and trophies of Pompey which had come to grace the Capitol in the time of Pompey's greatness had been taken away in the aftermath of Caesar's victory at Pharsalia by those in Rome who thought to ingratiate themselves with the victor in this way. Caesar, on his return, ordered them replaced, forgiving the memory of Pompey even as he had forgiven so many of Pompey's followers.

  And yet not only was he assassinated by those he had forgiven, but in death he was dragged by them (probably deliberately) to the base of Pompey's statue in order that he might lie there a symbolic victim at the feet of the man he had defeated.

  … no harm intended…

  At the realization that Caesar was dead, the Capitol emptied itself of the panicked spectators. Who knew, after all, how broad and general the plot was and how many were marked for death?

  It was necessary, therefore, for the conspirators to cal
m the city at once lest a panicked populace, once it regained its breath, break out in uncontrollable rioting of which no one could foresee the end. One senator, Publius, too old and infirm to fly with the rest, remains on the scene terrified. He is accosted gently and sent with a message. Brutus says:

  Publius, good cheer;

  There is no harm intended to your person,

  Nor to Roman else. So tell them, Publius.

  —Act III, scene i, lines 89-91

  … to lie in death

  Mark Antony is a special case. He knew that if the plot extended to even one person beyond Caesar himself, he would be the one. So far he had been spared; he had even been taken aside at the time of the assassination. It was necessary now for him to play for time and gain, temporarily, the friendship of the conspirators, or at least allay their suspicions.

  In Shakespeare's version, Mark Antony sends a messenger to Brutus with a most humble message:

  // Brutus will vouchsafe that Antony