This quarry cries on havoc. O proud Death,
What feast is toward in thine eternal cell,
That thou so many princes at a shot
So bloodily hast struck?
1 AMBASSADOR The sight is dismal;
And our affairs from England come too late.
375
The ears are senseless that should give us hearing
To tell him his commandment is fulfill’d,
That Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are dead.
Where should we have our thanks?
HORATIO Not from his mouth,
Had it th’ability of life to thank you.
380
He never gave commandment for their death.
But since, so jump upon this bloody question,
You from the Polack wars and you from England
Are here arriv’d, give order that these bodies
High on a stage be placed to the view,
385
And let me speak to th’yet unknowing world
How these things came about. So shall you hear
Of carnal, bloody, and unnatural acts,
Of accidental judgments, casual slaughters,
Of deaths put on by cunning and forc’d cause,
390
And, in this upshot, purposes mistook
Fall’n on th’inventors’ heads. All this can I
Truly deliver.
FORTINBRAS Let us haste to hear it,
And call the noblest to the audience.
For me, with sorrow I embrace my fortune.
395
I have some rights of memory in this kingdom,
Which now to claim my vantage doth invite me.
HORATIO Of that I shall have also cause to speak,
And from his mouth whose voice will draw on more.
But let this same be presently perform’d
400
Even while men’s minds are wild, lest more mischance
On plots and errors happen.
FORTINBRAS Let four captains
Bear Hamlet like a soldier to the stage,
For he was likely, had he been put on,
To have prov’d most royal; and for his passage,
405
The soldier’s music and the rite of war
Speak loudly for him.
Take up the bodies. Such a sight as this
Becomes the field, but here shows much amiss.
Go, bid the soldiers shoot.
410
Exeunt marching, bearing off the bodies, after which a peal of ordnance is shot off.
Julius Caesar
Julius Caesar seems to have been one of the first plays to be performed in the new Globe Theatre in the summer or autumn of 1599: Thomas Platter, a Swiss doctor who was in London from 18 September to 20 October, recorded having seen a performance of ‘the tragedy of the first Emperor Julius’ on 21 September which was in all probability Shakespeare’s play. It is unlikely to have been written earlier since it is not included in the list of plays given by Francis Meres in Palladis Tamia (1598), but allusions to it begin to appear in 1600, indicating that it was a popular and influential work. It was not published, however, until it was included in the First Folio in 1623, as the fifth of the tragedies, in an unusually accurate text based apparently on a very clear manuscript, formerly thought to be authorial but now assumed to be a good scribal copy.
While today Julius Caesar tends to be categorized as a ‘classical tragedy’ or a ‘Roman play’, and discussed in relation to later plays of this kind such as Antony and Cleopatra and Coriolanus, its immediate context in Shakespeare’s career as a dramatist gives it equally strong links with Henry V and Hamlet. By 1599 Shakespeare had written only two ‘straight’ tragedies, Titus Andronicus and Romeo and Juliet, though some of the English history plays had been printed with the word ‘tragedy’ on their title-pages. He seems to have been reading and thinking about Julius Caesar when he wrote Henry V (also generally dated 1599) since in the Chorus to act 5 he compares the triumphant return of Henry to England to the greeting of ‘conquering Caesar’ by the senators and plebeians of ‘antique Rome’ – the material of the opening scene of this play. A further link is provided by Fluellen’s comparison of Henry and Alexander in 4.7 of Henry V: Shakespeare read about Alexander in Thomas North’s translation of Plutarch’s Lives of the Noble Grecians and Romans, where Alexander is paired with Julius Caesar in Plutarch’s system of providing parallel Greek and Roman biographies. Shakespeare, who used Plutarch extensively in Julius Caesar, seems to suggest that Henry V could be added as a third, English example of a great military leader.
As Henry V looks forward to Julius Caesar, the latter play looks forward to Hamlet. The difficulty Brutus faces in arriving at his decision to kill Caesar can be compared with Hamlet’s dilemma over killing Claudius, and the way Brutus describes the ‘interim’ between ‘the acting of a dreadful thing / And the first motion’ in 2.1 is if anything more accurate about Hamlet’s situation than it is about his own. The ‘sheeted dead’ squeaking and gibbering in the Roman streets ‘A little ere the mightiest Julius fell’ are remembered in the first scene of Hamlet, and Polonius recalls acting the part of Caesar in 3.2.
While Hamlet quickly became a personal tragedy, with many of its political passages cut in performance, the theatrical and critical history of Julius Caesar has seen debate centred on its main political issue: were the conspirators justified in killing Caesar? The question was familiar to educated people in Elizabethan England as a stock topic for debate or ‘disputation’ in schools and universities. In the theatre, where it has been one of the most frequently performed of Shakespeare’s plays, there has been a long tradition of presenting Brutus as a sympathetic hero and endorsing his republican sympathies; critics, and especially editors of the play, have been more inclined to find fault with him and to view the murder of Caesar as a crime or even ‘sacrilege’. Many twentieth-century productions since Orson Welles’s sensational 1937 New York version (subtitled ‘Death of a Dictator’) have modernized and simplified the play’s politics by presenting Caesar as a Fascist leader like Hitler or Mussolini.
The 1998 Arden text is based on the 1623 First Folio.
LIST OF ROLES
Julius CAESAR
conspirators against Julius Caesar
triumvirs after the death of Caesar
CALPHURNIA
wife of Caesar
PORTIA
wife of Brutus
LUCIUS
personal servant to Brutus
senators
tribunes of the people
CINNA
a poet
supporters of Brutus and Cassius, and officers in their army
soldiers with Brutus and Cassius
PINDARUS
ARTEMIDORUS
CARPENTER
COBBLER
POET
SOOTHSAYER
SERVANT
to Caesar
SERVANT
to Antony
SERVANT
to Octavius
MESSENGER
FOUR PLEBEIANS
THREE SOLDIERS
in the army of Brutus
TWO SOLDIERS
in the army of Antony
GHOST of Caesar
Commoners, Soldiers and others
Julius Caesar
1.1 Enter FLAVIUS, MURELLUS and certain Commoners over the stage.
FLAVIUS
Hence! home, you idle creatures, get you home!
Is this a holiday? What, know you not
(Being mechanical) you ought not walk
Upon a labouring day, without the sign
Of your profession? Speak, what trade art thou?
5
CARPENTER Why, sir, a carpenter.
MURELLUS Where is thy leather apron, and thy rule?
What dost thou with thy best apparel on?
You, sir, what trade are you?
COBBLER Truly, si
r, in respect of a fine workman, I am
10
but as you would say, a cobbler.
MURELLUS
But what trade art thou? Answer me directly.
COBBLER A trade, sir, that I hope I may use with a safe
conscience, which is indeed, sir, a mender of bad soles.
FLAVIUS
What trade, thou knave? Thou naughty knave, what trade?
15
COBBLER Nay I beseech you, sir, be not out with me:
yet if you be out, sir, I can mend you.
MURELLUS What mean’st thou by that? Mend me, thou
saucy fellow?
COBBLER Why, sir, cobble you.
20
FLAVIUS Thou art a cobbler, art thou?
COBBLER Truly, sir, all that I live by, is with the awl: I
meddle with no tradesman’s matters, nor women’s
matters; but withal I am indeed, sir, a surgeon to old
shoes; when they are in great danger, I recover them.
25
As proper men as ever trod upon neat’s leather have
gone upon my handiwork.
FLAVIUS But wherefore art not in thy shop today?
Why dost thou lead these men about the streets?
COBBLER Truly, sir, to wear out their shoes, to get
30
myself into more work. But indeed, sir, we make
holiday to see Caesar and to rejoice in his triumph.
MURELLUS
Wherefore rejoice? What conquest brings he home?
What tributaries follow him to Rome
To grace in captive bonds his chariot wheels?
35
You blocks, you stones, you worse than senseless things!
O you hard hearts, you cruel men of Rome,
Knew you not Pompey? Many a time and oft
Have you climbed up to walls and battlements,
To towers and windows, yea, to chimney-tops,
40
Your infants in your arms, and there have sat
The livelong day, with patient expectation,
To see great Pompey pass the streets of Rome:
And when you saw his chariot but appear,
Have you not made an universal shout,
45
That Tiber trembled underneath her banks
To hear the replication of your sounds
Made in her concave shores?
And do you now put on your best attire?
And do you now cull out a holiday?
50
And do you now strew flowers in his way,
That comes in triumph over Pompey’s blood?
Be gone!
Run to your houses, fall upon your knees,
Pray to the gods to intermit the plague
55
That needs must light on this ingratitude.
FLAVIUS Go, go, good countrymen, and for this fault
Assemble all the poor men of your sort;
Draw them to Tiber banks, and weep your tears
Into the channel, till the lowest stream
60
Do kiss the most exalted shores of all.
Exeunt all the Commoners.
See where their basest mettle be not moved.
They vanish tongue-tied in their guiltiness.
Go you down that way towards the Capitol.
This way will I. Disrobe the images,
65
If you do find them decked with ceremonies.
MURELLUS May we do so?
You know it is the feast of Lupercal.
FLAVIUS It is no matter. Let no images
Be hung with Caesar’s trophies. I’ll about,
70
And drive away the vulgar from the streets.
So do you too, where you perceive them thick.
These growing feathers plucked from Caesar’s wing
Will make him fly an ordinary pitch,
Who else would soar above the view of men,
75
And keep us all in servile fearfulness. Exeunt.
1.2 Enter CAESAR, ANTONY for the course, CALPHURNIA, PORTIA, DECIUS, CICERO, BRUTUS, CASSIUS, CASKA, a Soothsayer; after them MURELLUS and FLAVIUS.
CAESAR Calphurnia.
CASKA Peace, ho! Caesar speaks.
CAESAR Calphurnia.
CALPHURNIA Here, my lord.
CAESAR Stand you directly in Antonio’s way
When he doth run his course. Antonio.
ANTONY Caesar, my lord.
5
CAESAR Forget not in your speed, Antonio,
To touch Calphurnia; for our elders say,
The barren touched in this holy chase
Shake off their sterile curse.
ANTONY I shall remember.
When Caesar says ‘Do this’, it is performed.
10
CAESAR Set on, and leave no ceremony out. [Music.]
SOOTHSAYER Caesar!
CAESAR Ha! Who calls?
CASKA Bid every noise be still. Peace yet again!
CAESAR Who is it in the press that calls on me?
15
I hear a tongue shriller than all the music
Cry ‘Caesar!’ Speak. Caesar is turned to hear.
SOOTHSAYER Beware the Ides of March.
CAESAR What man is that?
BRUTUS
A soothsayer bids you beware the Ides of March.
CAESAR Set him before me. Let me see his face.
20
CASSIUS
Fellow, come from the throng. Look upon Caesar.
CAESAR
What sayst thou to me now? Speak once again.
SOOTHSAYER Beware the Ides of March.
CAESAR He is a dreamer. Let us leave him. Pass.
Sennet. Exeunt all but Brutus and Cassius.
The Arden Shakespeare Complete Works Page 140