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The Complexity of Julius Caesar

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

Mildred E. Hartsock
Mildred E. Hartsock*
Affiliation:
Atlantic Christian College Wilson, N.C.
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Extract

From the eighteenth century to the present, editors, critics, and directors have recognized special problems in the interpretation of Shakespeare's Julius Caesar. Every major play has been extensively debated, to be sure, but discussions of this play have been marked by an unusual perplexity. There is little agreement about the most elementary questions. Is Caesar an egocentric, dangerous dictator—a genuine threat to Rome; or is he the “noblest man / That ever lived in the tide of times,” as Antony says he is? Is Brutus the mistaken idealist, strong in abstract principle but weak in human perceptiveness; or is he, as Swinburne thought, the “very noblest figure of a typical and ideal republican in all the literature of the world”? Is he the Aristotelian hero, noble but flawed, recognizing at last that he has erred? Or is he the willful egoist, embodying the very traits of Caesarism which he professes to hate? Is Cassius the dedicated republican that Brutus, Titinius, and many of his own speeches make him appear to be? Or is he the “lean and hungry” envious one who hates Caesar for merely personal reasons? These are only a few of the questions the play poses. Everywhere one turns, contradictions loom.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 81 , Issue 1 , March 1966 , pp. 56 - 62
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1966

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References

1 William Shakespeare, Julius Caesar, ed. T. S. Dorsch, New Arden Edition (Cambridge: Harvard Univ. Press, 1955), iii.i.256–257. All citations will be to this edition.

2 A. C. Swinburne, A Study of Shakespeare, 1880. In Augustus Ralli, A History of Shakespearian Criticism (New York: Humanities Press, 1951), ii, 3.

3 Transactions of Royal Soc. Lit., x (1931), 136.

4 “Unto Caesar: A Review of Recent Productions,” in Shakespeare Survey, ii, ed. Allardyce Nicoli (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1958), 128–135.

5 Shakespeare and His Predecessors (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1896), p. 461.

6 “The ‘Cinna’ and ‘Cynicke’ Episodes in Julius Caesar,” SQ, xi (Autumn 1960), 443.

7 E. E. Stoll, Shakespeare Studies (New York: Frederick Ungar, 1960), p. 197. This view is also proferred by Ernest Schanzer in The Problem Plays of Shakespeare (New York: Schocken Books, 1963), and by Norman Rabkin in “Structure, Convention, and Meaning in Julius Caesar,” JEGP, lxiii (April 1964), 249–254.

8 Michael Macmillan, Julius Caesar, Arden Edition (London: Methuen, 1902). Dover Wilson, Julius Caesar, New Cambridge Edition, p. xxv. George Bernard Shaw, Three Plays for Puritans (London: Constable, 1925), p. xxx. Thomas Marc Parrott, William Shakespeare: A Handbook, revised ed. (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1955), p. 156.

9 Anne Paolucci, “The Tragic Hero in Julius Caesar,” SQ, xi (Summer 1960), 332–333.

10 The Imperial Theme (London: Methuen, 1951), Chs. ii and iii.

11 E. E. Stoll, Art and Artifice in Shakespeare (New York: Barnes & Noble rpt., 1951), p. 144. Paul Stapfer, Shakespeare et l'antiquité (1879) as paraphrased in Augustus Ralli, A History of Shakespeare Criticism, ii, 53. John Uhler, Studies in Shakespeare, Univ. of Miami Pubs. in English and American Lit. (Univ. of Miami Press, 1964), p. 120. A. C. Bradley, Shakespearean Tragedy (New York: Meridian Books, 1955), p. 56. J. I. M. Stewart, Character and Motive in Shakespeare (New York: Longmans, Green, 1950), p. 54. R. A. Foakes, “An Approach to Julius Caesar,” SQ, v (Summer 1954), 259–270.

12 “The Problem of Brutus: An Eighteenth-Century Solution,” in Studies in Honor of T. W. Baldwin, ed. Don Cameron Allen (Urbana: Univ. of Illinois Press, 1958).

13 Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Lectures on Shakespeare (London: J. M. Dent, 1951), p. 95.

14 Allardyce Nicoli, Shakespeare (London: Oxford Univ. Press, 1952), p. 134, Boas, p. 458. Stoll, Art and Artifice in Shakespeare, pp. 144–145, and Levin L. Schücking, Character Problems in Shakespeare's Plays (London: G. G. Harrop, 1919). Schanzer, p. 70. Harley Granville-Barker, Prefaces to Shakespeare (Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 1947), ii, 354.

15 A Life of William Shakespeare (London: John Murray, 1931), p. 337.

16 Walter W. Skeat, ed., Shakespeare's Plutarch (London: Macmillan, 1875), p. 94. All citations will refer to this edition.

17 See John Palmer, Political Characters of Shakespeare (London: Macmillan & Co., 1957), pp. 22 ff.

18 Shakespeare does make a change in the character of the ghost. In Plutarch, it is not Caesar's ghost. The identification of the apparition as Caesar's spirit might suggest that it comes to stir the conscience of Brutus, except that Brutus shows no stirring of conscience. The ghost seems merely to portend the defeat at Philippi. Brutus responds very scantly to it. In Plutarch, his words to the spirit are almost the same but they are followed up later with an expression of concern which Cassius successfully allays (p. 136).

19 Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies, A Facsimile Edition of the First Folio, ed. Helge Kökeritz (New Haven: Yale Univ. Press, 1955).

20 Paolucci, p. 332.

21 “Brutus, Virtue, and Will,” SQ, x (Summer 1959) 367–381. Opposing evidence may be found in J.C. ii.i.116–140; ii.i.288–303; ii.i.229–233; ii.iii.127–129; iii.ii.12–37; iv.iii. 112–122; iv.iii.239–240; v.iv.98–105; v.v. Norman Rabkin (see n. 7) recognizes the points of similarity between Caesar and Brutus, but does not develop a convincing theory as to reasons for the parallelisms.

22 Schanzer, pp. 63 ff. T. S. Dorsch points out the contradictory elements in the major characters but concludes that Brutus is the tragic hero and that Shakespeare finally “buries Brutus's crime in his virtues.” Julius Caesar, New Arden, p. xliv. Cf. pp. xxvi–lv.

23 Holland, p. 441.

24 “The ‘Capability’ of Shakespeare,” SQ, xi (Spring 1960), 135.