Ernst writes:
That wonderful line, "We owe God a death," is used by a Spanish-speaking doctor the Cary Grant figure in Howard Hawks' Only Angels have Wings warns about the dangers of flying with him and landing on an island mountain top. (trans: "As your own Shakespeare says in Henry the Fourth, 'We...'")
This doctor, like Caesar, is a generation older than most of the other characters. His moral choice lies between retiring comfortably and carrying on boldly with a pretty god notion of who he is and what bravery in this world amounts to. Something THIS old man (thinking of Yeats' "Why Should not Old Men be Mad') does not find particularly ignoble.
Ernst
Showing posts with label Julius Caesar. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Julius Caesar. Show all posts
Saturday, October 24, 2009
Saturday, October 3, 2009
Julius Caesar - Then and Now
Ernst writes:
Julius Caesar is a challenging play in several ways. I would begin by noting that the play contains no Talbots, Queen’s gardeners, Poinses, Bastards, French ambassadors—middle level characters to enrich the play’s viewpoints and give you various angles on its larger world. Shakespeare keeps to his historical sources pretty closely, so his play is more a telling of what everyone knew/knows with little embellishment.
Then to some other reflections. I find myself thinking about Julius Caesar then and now. We in the early 21st century have been increasingly surrounded by the dangers, stupidities and failures of so-called ”republican” (“democratic”? “liberal”?) governments for years and years. We have seen incident after incident of initially idealistic revolutions gone bad, have listened to years and years of “democracy’s” demagogues and their tricky doubletalk, which breeds fear and hate in the “mob” (and, by the dint of the mob’s overwhelming numbers, in us). We have seen the two last great political romanticisms, Communism and Fascism, rise, kill, and turn to ashes. We presently fear that our own government is bound for its grave. To us, a lot of the politics of Julius Caesar is old stuff.
Where were the democracies of Shakespeare’s time? There weren’t any. Even in the “Brave New World” of the western Hemisphere” (which The Tempest reminds us is but a flashily put on set of surfaces [Facebook, anyone?]), there was little beside exploitation and butchery with a smattering of mini-theocracies more authoritarian than most of England at the time. There was the possible exception of Champlain’s dream of settlers and Native Americans living in harmony, but Shakespeare and his audience knew little about that that dream. And anyway, Champlain would be in an English prison for three years and would die only a couple more after getting back to Canada—his dream with him.
The people Shakespeare was writing for did not know what we know about this subsequent history. They had not seen revolution after revolution decay into triumvirates of clever pitchmen (Antony/Rush Limbaugh), bankers (Lepidus/Lehman Brothers) and cagey politicos (Octavius/Dick Cheney).
They probably agreed with Shakespeare that Julius Caesar was the best bet to become a king like the ones they were accustomed to and admired (as, one might note, admiration for Elizabeth was waning), and that he would die with stoic nobility. They probably also realized that, once he became emperor, Augustus wouldn’t be all that bad either, and that imperial Rome would achieve more wonders (including 200 years of relative peace) than the world had seen before or since (England’s attempt at its own “Augustan Age” was, after all, only a century and a bit away).
So the question is: what new and what would a contemporary audience have found compelling about this play which, to a modern reader, is a little bit boring? Yes, the various orations are beautifully wrought, and the sight of historical giants upon the humble stage re-enacting their well-known stories is stirring, but what else?
To me, the most interesting aspect of Julius Caesar is the way in which Shakespeare continues his deepening study of individual characters—using some of the psychological tools of his time. I remember some teacher from days gone by explaining that Brutus was in the grips of the melancholic humour and that Cassius’ humour was choleric or fiery. This makes sense as far as it goes, I suppose. These seem to me to be the only characters that really interest Shakespeare; the others are mostly treated as historical figures who need to be fleshed out for dramatic purposes, but not gone into too deeply. (Is Caesar slightly over-the-hill sanguine?) Cassius seems pretty straightforward to me also.
This leaves Brutus as the most interesting study, and what I find interesting about him is that he is a break from Shakespeare’s earlier melancholic. Yes, he has a case of melancholia (the “scholar’s melancholy,” but he would not strike one as a flat character like Don John, Jacques, or even—to an extent—an “antic-disposition” Hamlet puts on. He is related to a humours character, but he is more than one. Caesar’s team might call him a malcontent in one of their historical revisions, but he is not. He is a whole character dealing with serious decisions. Hamlet—here we come.
Postscript: If this is incoherent, it is partly because it is coming to you from the Champlain Valley Physicians Hospital, where I am in a bed, having had a very close call with an eschemic (blood supply to intestine blocked) small intestine (lost more than a yard). At least I am not on the terrible “trip” (hallucinations of the worst sort) Adavan put me on the day after my surgery.” I hope to leave soon and get back to Kingston, and also to get into further correspondence with you all.
Ernst
Julius Caesar is a challenging play in several ways. I would begin by noting that the play contains no Talbots, Queen’s gardeners, Poinses, Bastards, French ambassadors—middle level characters to enrich the play’s viewpoints and give you various angles on its larger world. Shakespeare keeps to his historical sources pretty closely, so his play is more a telling of what everyone knew/knows with little embellishment.
Then to some other reflections. I find myself thinking about Julius Caesar then and now. We in the early 21st century have been increasingly surrounded by the dangers, stupidities and failures of so-called ”republican” (“democratic”? “liberal”?) governments for years and years. We have seen incident after incident of initially idealistic revolutions gone bad, have listened to years and years of “democracy’s” demagogues and their tricky doubletalk, which breeds fear and hate in the “mob” (and, by the dint of the mob’s overwhelming numbers, in us). We have seen the two last great political romanticisms, Communism and Fascism, rise, kill, and turn to ashes. We presently fear that our own government is bound for its grave. To us, a lot of the politics of Julius Caesar is old stuff.
Where were the democracies of Shakespeare’s time? There weren’t any. Even in the “Brave New World” of the western Hemisphere” (which The Tempest reminds us is but a flashily put on set of surfaces [Facebook, anyone?]), there was little beside exploitation and butchery with a smattering of mini-theocracies more authoritarian than most of England at the time. There was the possible exception of Champlain’s dream of settlers and Native Americans living in harmony, but Shakespeare and his audience knew little about that that dream. And anyway, Champlain would be in an English prison for three years and would die only a couple more after getting back to Canada—his dream with him.
The people Shakespeare was writing for did not know what we know about this subsequent history. They had not seen revolution after revolution decay into triumvirates of clever pitchmen (Antony/Rush Limbaugh), bankers (Lepidus/Lehman Brothers) and cagey politicos (Octavius/Dick Cheney).
They probably agreed with Shakespeare that Julius Caesar was the best bet to become a king like the ones they were accustomed to and admired (as, one might note, admiration for Elizabeth was waning), and that he would die with stoic nobility. They probably also realized that, once he became emperor, Augustus wouldn’t be all that bad either, and that imperial Rome would achieve more wonders (including 200 years of relative peace) than the world had seen before or since (England’s attempt at its own “Augustan Age” was, after all, only a century and a bit away).
So the question is: what new and what would a contemporary audience have found compelling about this play which, to a modern reader, is a little bit boring? Yes, the various orations are beautifully wrought, and the sight of historical giants upon the humble stage re-enacting their well-known stories is stirring, but what else?
To me, the most interesting aspect of Julius Caesar is the way in which Shakespeare continues his deepening study of individual characters—using some of the psychological tools of his time. I remember some teacher from days gone by explaining that Brutus was in the grips of the melancholic humour and that Cassius’ humour was choleric or fiery. This makes sense as far as it goes, I suppose. These seem to me to be the only characters that really interest Shakespeare; the others are mostly treated as historical figures who need to be fleshed out for dramatic purposes, but not gone into too deeply. (Is Caesar slightly over-the-hill sanguine?) Cassius seems pretty straightforward to me also.
This leaves Brutus as the most interesting study, and what I find interesting about him is that he is a break from Shakespeare’s earlier melancholic. Yes, he has a case of melancholia (the “scholar’s melancholy,” but he would not strike one as a flat character like Don John, Jacques, or even—to an extent—an “antic-disposition” Hamlet puts on. He is related to a humours character, but he is more than one. Caesar’s team might call him a malcontent in one of their historical revisions, but he is not. He is a whole character dealing with serious decisions. Hamlet—here we come.
Postscript: If this is incoherent, it is partly because it is coming to you from the Champlain Valley Physicians Hospital, where I am in a bed, having had a very close call with an eschemic (blood supply to intestine blocked) small intestine (lost more than a yard). At least I am not on the terrible “trip” (hallucinations of the worst sort) Adavan put me on the day after my surgery.” I hope to leave soon and get back to Kingston, and also to get into further correspondence with you all.
Ernst
Friday, September 18, 2009
Julius Caesar - R.I.P.
Gil writes:
Caesarians,
My Julius Caesar challenge is to consider why three significant figures in this dramatization of Roman history rejected, ignored, or turned away from sound advice or astute observation, each with fatal—or tragic—consequence. Caesar, Cassius, and Calphurnia intuit danger, but Antony, Brutus, and then Caesar reject heeding such warning.
Randall asked if intuition matters when after Caesar observes “Yond Cassius has a lean and hungry look,/ thinks too much. Such men are dangerous,” Antony tells him to “Fear him not.” Then, after Cassius has argued that Mark Antony should not outlive Caesar, Brutus replies, “for Mark Antony, think not of him,/ For he can do no more than Caesar’s arm/ When Caesar’s head is off.” And after Calphurnia has dreamed Caesar is murdered on the steps of Pompey’s monument, she pleads with her husband and lord not to stir out of the house, yet Caesar changes his mind and leaves to visit the Senate when Decius plays on his vanity and predicts he will there be crowned. Yet, of course, to ignore all three warnings or predictions turns out to be disastrous, and the question is why the warnings are ignored.
Take Caesar first. Of the three, he is the most self-absorbed. Brutus is correct—Caesar is ambitious, and he is also vain. It is interesting that Shakespeare (or Plutarch) emphasizes his fallibility: he is deaf (“Come on my right hand [Antony], for this ear is deaf” I.ii.213), he is possibly impotent (he instructs Antony, about to run in the Lupercal fertility festival race, “To touch Calphurnia: for our elders say,/ The barren, touched in this holy chase,/ Shake off their sterile curse” (I.ii.6-8), though I’ve been told it takes two to procreate) , and he has epilepsy (“He fell down in the market-place, and foam’d at the mouth, and was speechless…’Tis very like he hath the falling sickness,” I.ii.252-54).
Cassius interprets such signs of mortality, and adds a long description of Caesar failing to swim the frozen Tiber and of when the two were in Spain: Caesar shook violently with a fever (ah, cursed Swine Flu). “[Yet]this man has now become a god” (I.ii.115-16). Admittedly both Casca, reporting the falling sickness, and Cassius, stirring up the conspirators, are bent on underscoring Caesar’s mortality, but these physical frailties are arrayed as background to the susceptibility of character which allow Decius to play on his pride, ambition and vanity, so that he goes forth to the Senate on the Ides of March to meet his death. Still, Caesar is also a fatalist: “What can be avoided/ Whose end is purpos’d by the mighty gods?” (II.ii.26-7) and more nobly “Cowards die many times before their deaths,/ The valiant never taste of death but once” (II.i.32-33), an heroic sentiment worthy of the most noble Feeble in 2 Henry IV: “A man can die but once, we owe God a death.”
So the physically fragile Caesar rejects his wife’s nightmare prophesy (as well as that of the Soothsayer), goes forth to the Senate, likens himself wonderfully to the constant, true-fix’d Northern Star, and dies on the steps of the Senate at the hands of a coven of conspirators. Dead by Act III, scene 1 of The Tragedy of Julius Caesar, yet is it, my challenger asks, a function of tragedy that Caesar fails to heed the words of wisdom? Caesar proceeds to his doom because he is significantly human, and it seems that Shakespeare has underscored his personal frailty. Despite the title, The Tragedy of… and both Aristotle and A.C. Bradley, Caesar’s death is the fall of a political figure whose “flaws” are both fragility and complacency rather than heroic ruthlessness. The gods are not looking down on Caesar.
The play that preceded Caesar, Henry V, is also a study of political behavior. King Henry is exclusively a public figure, everything we see is calculated to inspire or manipulate his public performance. The “tragedy” is left for the epilogue which reports that all the victories and patriotic pride achieved by King Hal would be pissed away by his son, Henry the Sixt. Caesar, in ignoring the vision of Calphurnia (don’t let the rabble claim you are hen-pecked), goes forth to an event that changed the course of history, from Republic to Empire, for reasons that seem more to do with Time than tragedy. So the great North Star falls from the sky after all.
Brutus? To be continued.
Gil
Caesarians,
My Julius Caesar challenge is to consider why three significant figures in this dramatization of Roman history rejected, ignored, or turned away from sound advice or astute observation, each with fatal—or tragic—consequence. Caesar, Cassius, and Calphurnia intuit danger, but Antony, Brutus, and then Caesar reject heeding such warning.
Randall asked if intuition matters when after Caesar observes “Yond Cassius has a lean and hungry look,/ thinks too much. Such men are dangerous,” Antony tells him to “Fear him not.” Then, after Cassius has argued that Mark Antony should not outlive Caesar, Brutus replies, “for Mark Antony, think not of him,/ For he can do no more than Caesar’s arm/ When Caesar’s head is off.” And after Calphurnia has dreamed Caesar is murdered on the steps of Pompey’s monument, she pleads with her husband and lord not to stir out of the house, yet Caesar changes his mind and leaves to visit the Senate when Decius plays on his vanity and predicts he will there be crowned. Yet, of course, to ignore all three warnings or predictions turns out to be disastrous, and the question is why the warnings are ignored.
Take Caesar first. Of the three, he is the most self-absorbed. Brutus is correct—Caesar is ambitious, and he is also vain. It is interesting that Shakespeare (or Plutarch) emphasizes his fallibility: he is deaf (“Come on my right hand [Antony], for this ear is deaf” I.ii.213), he is possibly impotent (he instructs Antony, about to run in the Lupercal fertility festival race, “To touch Calphurnia: for our elders say,/ The barren, touched in this holy chase,/ Shake off their sterile curse” (I.ii.6-8), though I’ve been told it takes two to procreate) , and he has epilepsy (“He fell down in the market-place, and foam’d at the mouth, and was speechless…’Tis very like he hath the falling sickness,” I.ii.252-54).
Cassius interprets such signs of mortality, and adds a long description of Caesar failing to swim the frozen Tiber and of when the two were in Spain: Caesar shook violently with a fever (ah, cursed Swine Flu). “[Yet]this man has now become a god” (I.ii.115-16). Admittedly both Casca, reporting the falling sickness, and Cassius, stirring up the conspirators, are bent on underscoring Caesar’s mortality, but these physical frailties are arrayed as background to the susceptibility of character which allow Decius to play on his pride, ambition and vanity, so that he goes forth to the Senate on the Ides of March to meet his death. Still, Caesar is also a fatalist: “What can be avoided/ Whose end is purpos’d by the mighty gods?” (II.ii.26-7) and more nobly “Cowards die many times before their deaths,/ The valiant never taste of death but once” (II.i.32-33), an heroic sentiment worthy of the most noble Feeble in 2 Henry IV: “A man can die but once, we owe God a death.”
So the physically fragile Caesar rejects his wife’s nightmare prophesy (as well as that of the Soothsayer), goes forth to the Senate, likens himself wonderfully to the constant, true-fix’d Northern Star, and dies on the steps of the Senate at the hands of a coven of conspirators. Dead by Act III, scene 1 of The Tragedy of Julius Caesar, yet is it, my challenger asks, a function of tragedy that Caesar fails to heed the words of wisdom? Caesar proceeds to his doom because he is significantly human, and it seems that Shakespeare has underscored his personal frailty. Despite the title, The Tragedy of… and both Aristotle and A.C. Bradley, Caesar’s death is the fall of a political figure whose “flaws” are both fragility and complacency rather than heroic ruthlessness. The gods are not looking down on Caesar.
The play that preceded Caesar, Henry V, is also a study of political behavior. King Henry is exclusively a public figure, everything we see is calculated to inspire or manipulate his public performance. The “tragedy” is left for the epilogue which reports that all the victories and patriotic pride achieved by King Hal would be pissed away by his son, Henry the Sixt. Caesar, in ignoring the vision of Calphurnia (don’t let the rabble claim you are hen-pecked), goes forth to an event that changed the course of history, from Republic to Empire, for reasons that seem more to do with Time than tragedy. So the great North Star falls from the sky after all.
Brutus? To be continued.
Gil
Sunday, August 23, 2009
RE: Julius Caesar - Is Poetry Fatal?
Mike writes:
Rereading Caesar's "I could be well moved, if I were as you" speech now, it sounds a lot like he's "the decider" ― i.e. constancy is held as a virtue in and of itself, even should the metaphor point toward massive narcissism: how many Caesars does it take to screw in a light bulb?
One.
The world revolves around him.
And as it turns out (et tu, Brute?), he was right. He had "no fellow." The end result of egotism is isolation.
Brutus, on the other hand, in his "our cause is ripe" speech, sees the world as a place of interconnected flux, where forces move that are much bigger than us, and we must catch the tide accordingly. He's the liberal, maybe, to Caesar's W. Or at least the Colin Powell. He reflects the world around him, and is perhaps ultimately presented as too reflective in a number of senses. When Cassius offers to be his "glass" and reminds Brutus that "the eye sees not itself/but by some other thing," he is tapping into Brutus as a creature of context. What Brutus perhaps forgets is the paradox embedded in the metaphor: on the one hand, the mirror never lies, while on the other, that's all it can do ― offering a two-dimensional world of complete reversals where left is right, and right is wrong.
I'd be tempted to put the two side-by-side for my students and consider how they intereact in terms of nautical navigation. The constellations and Caesar's Pole star constancy would be necessary to find one's way, yet knowledge of the currents and tides would be equally beneficial, perhaps.
Mike
Rereading Caesar's "I could be well moved, if I were as you" speech now, it sounds a lot like he's "the decider" ― i.e. constancy is held as a virtue in and of itself, even should the metaphor point toward massive narcissism: how many Caesars does it take to screw in a light bulb?
One.
The world revolves around him.
And as it turns out (et tu, Brute?), he was right. He had "no fellow." The end result of egotism is isolation.
Brutus, on the other hand, in his "our cause is ripe" speech, sees the world as a place of interconnected flux, where forces move that are much bigger than us, and we must catch the tide accordingly. He's the liberal, maybe, to Caesar's W. Or at least the Colin Powell. He reflects the world around him, and is perhaps ultimately presented as too reflective in a number of senses. When Cassius offers to be his "glass" and reminds Brutus that "the eye sees not itself/but by some other thing," he is tapping into Brutus as a creature of context. What Brutus perhaps forgets is the paradox embedded in the metaphor: on the one hand, the mirror never lies, while on the other, that's all it can do ― offering a two-dimensional world of complete reversals where left is right, and right is wrong.
I'd be tempted to put the two side-by-side for my students and consider how they intereact in terms of nautical navigation. The constellations and Caesar's Pole star constancy would be necessary to find one's way, yet knowledge of the currents and tides would be equally beneficial, perhaps.
Mike
Friday, August 21, 2009
Julius Caesar - Do the Tides of History Flow or Ebb?
Randall,
I pose two queries, but you may only respond to one:
Between about 1596 and 1599, Shakespeare wrote four English history plays: King John and the last three in the Henriad, and then, in 1599, he wrote Julius Caesar, his last play before Hamlet. Absent a possible The Long, Boring Reign of King Henry III, he had mostly exhausted the history of English monarchs, at least until he discovered a couple of lines in Holinshed recalling Cymbeline. Luckily, North published a new edition of his translation of Plutarch's Lives in 1595, including lives of Caesar, Brutus, and Antony. Eureka! More history. Superficially, Julius Caesar looks like another chronicle play; there are 39+ named characters (the three Henry VI's average 40) and it records historical time, March 44 BC to November, 42 BC, Caesar's assassination to the second Battle of Philippi.
1) But The Tragedy of Julius Caesar veers away from dramatized history into a character study of moral ambiguity in a political setting, which precipitates personal tragedy. The play's title names the tragedy of Caesar, yet he is dead by the middle of the play. Which is the most tragic among ambitious Caesar, ethical Brutus, or aristocratic Cassius? [If you are desperate for time, you can parody this question by choosing Cinna the poet―The Tragedy of Bad Verse.]
[If it is useful, Northrop Frye, Fools of Time, describes three categories of tragedy: tragedy of order (e.g., Julius Caesar), tragedy of passion (e.g., Antony and Cleopatra), and tragedy of isolation (e.g., Othello), and in each, the tragic action is played out through an order figure (here Julius Caesar), a rebel figure (Brutus), and a nemesis or avenger figure (Mark Antony).]
2) Often Shakespeare traces an evolution from "things-known-for-sure" to a complex multifaceted response to "a world-out-of-joint." Hotspur's chivalric honor to Hal's imitation of the action of the sun; Richard II's romantic delusion to Bolingbrook's political pragmatism; Claudius's decisive order to Hamlet's world out of joint. In Julius Caesar, Brutus is an anachronism, locked in a golden dream of principle while history inexorably moves forward to the passions of Antony or the rational calculations of Octavius. Brutus, responding to his understanding of Caesar's threat to the Republic, asserts the only solution, "It must be his death; and for my part,/ I know no personal cause to spurn at him,/ But for the general." (II.i.10-12). Contrast Mark Antony's funeral oration (III.ii.73-252), a marvelously orchestrated persuasive speech, with the repeated coda "For Brutus is an honorable man." But Antony, solus, prefaces this with "O pardon me, thou bleeding piece of earth,/ That I am meek and gentle with these butchers!" (III.i.254-5), and after the oration, after the Plebeians swarm away shouting "Revenge! Seek! Burn! Fire! No socialist health care! Kill! Slay!," Antony, left alone, concludes "Now let it work, Mischief, thou art afoot,/ Take thou which course thou wilt!" (III.ii.260-61).
Do you find Antony morally pragmatic, passionate, or ruthless? Yet when we first meet young Octavius, he joins with Antony in a cool and detached meeting to generate a proscription list, death by committee discussion, and at Philippi Octavius is colder than Antony: "I do not cross you; but I will do so" (V.i.20). So who best represents the mirror to the society in which we are reading this play? Or, alas, who in this tragedy is the villain (nemesis)―the passionate Antony or the calculating Octavius?
Gil
I pose two queries, but you may only respond to one:
Between about 1596 and 1599, Shakespeare wrote four English history plays: King John and the last three in the Henriad, and then, in 1599, he wrote Julius Caesar, his last play before Hamlet. Absent a possible The Long, Boring Reign of King Henry III, he had mostly exhausted the history of English monarchs, at least until he discovered a couple of lines in Holinshed recalling Cymbeline. Luckily, North published a new edition of his translation of Plutarch's Lives in 1595, including lives of Caesar, Brutus, and Antony. Eureka! More history. Superficially, Julius Caesar looks like another chronicle play; there are 39+ named characters (the three Henry VI's average 40) and it records historical time, March 44 BC to November, 42 BC, Caesar's assassination to the second Battle of Philippi.
1) But The Tragedy of Julius Caesar veers away from dramatized history into a character study of moral ambiguity in a political setting, which precipitates personal tragedy. The play's title names the tragedy of Caesar, yet he is dead by the middle of the play. Which is the most tragic among ambitious Caesar, ethical Brutus, or aristocratic Cassius? [If you are desperate for time, you can parody this question by choosing Cinna the poet―The Tragedy of Bad Verse.]
[If it is useful, Northrop Frye, Fools of Time, describes three categories of tragedy: tragedy of order (e.g., Julius Caesar), tragedy of passion (e.g., Antony and Cleopatra), and tragedy of isolation (e.g., Othello), and in each, the tragic action is played out through an order figure (here Julius Caesar), a rebel figure (Brutus), and a nemesis or avenger figure (Mark Antony).]
2) Often Shakespeare traces an evolution from "things-known-for-sure" to a complex multifaceted response to "a world-out-of-joint." Hotspur's chivalric honor to Hal's imitation of the action of the sun; Richard II's romantic delusion to Bolingbrook's political pragmatism; Claudius's decisive order to Hamlet's world out of joint. In Julius Caesar, Brutus is an anachronism, locked in a golden dream of principle while history inexorably moves forward to the passions of Antony or the rational calculations of Octavius. Brutus, responding to his understanding of Caesar's threat to the Republic, asserts the only solution, "It must be his death; and for my part,/ I know no personal cause to spurn at him,/ But for the general." (II.i.10-12). Contrast Mark Antony's funeral oration (III.ii.73-252), a marvelously orchestrated persuasive speech, with the repeated coda "For Brutus is an honorable man." But Antony, solus, prefaces this with "O pardon me, thou bleeding piece of earth,/ That I am meek and gentle with these butchers!" (III.i.254-5), and after the oration, after the Plebeians swarm away shouting "Revenge! Seek! Burn! Fire! No socialist health care! Kill! Slay!," Antony, left alone, concludes "Now let it work, Mischief, thou art afoot,/ Take thou which course thou wilt!" (III.ii.260-61).
Do you find Antony morally pragmatic, passionate, or ruthless? Yet when we first meet young Octavius, he joins with Antony in a cool and detached meeting to generate a proscription list, death by committee discussion, and at Philippi Octavius is colder than Antony: "I do not cross you; but I will do so" (V.i.20). So who best represents the mirror to the society in which we are reading this play? Or, alas, who in this tragedy is the villain (nemesis)―the passionate Antony or the calculating Octavius?
Gil
RE2: Julius Caesar - A Woman's Place
Randall writes:
I think Cindy's right on about Portia and Calpurnia (I've been spelling the latter with an 'h' because my Folger does). And I had not noticed the degree to which Shakespeare compels us to compare the two women (they both kneel in back-to-back scenes) or their two situations.
I have two thoughts I'd like to add to Cindy's response. First, in my Folger there is a stage direction after Caesar responds to Calpurnia with "Mark Antony shall say I am not well,/ And for thy humor I will stay at home": He lifts her up. Around this stage direction are the little superior half-brackets indicating that the editors have intervened, adding something not found in the first folio. The Bevington edition of The Complete Works of William Shakespeare does the same: He raises her, in brackets. Neither my Signet (Rosen) nor the Penguin (Sanders) do this. What gives?
One might argue that Caesar's response, an acquiescence to her concern, does spiritually or emotionally lift Calpurnia up, and therefore the emendation is metaphorically appropriate. But I really like Cindy's suggestion that Caesar leaves her on the ground as Decius enters, marking a clear distinction between him and Brutus. My guess is that the interventionist editors look at the next 40 lines of text, at which point Caesar asks Calpurnia to get his robe, and wonder if it's practical to leave her on her knees for that long. And directors, wary of angry actors with bruised knees, are probably glad to have the added cue.
Second, Cindy reminds me that I am sad that Portia disappears after only two scenes. Unlike Calpurnia's, Portia's presentation to her husband strikes me as laying the foundation for a rich, interesting character. She defines the bounds and expectations of marriage skillfully, personally, and she extends the possibilities of a woman's domestic role by defining "wife" as more than furniture (meal-time companion, bed-mate, occasional conversationalist). She argues that she is his unlimited self, what we might call today his better half. She perceptive and persuasive. And in her language there is an efficient lawyerliness that makes me feel she has some connection to that other Portia.
Given this as a set-up, it's disappointing when Shakespeare dismisses Portia two scenes later with "Ay me, how weak a thing/ The heart of woman is!" After her earlier discussion with Caesar, I think she's really made of sterner stuff, but because the play moves on to the Capitol (men only) and then the battlefield (men only), she's left like Hotspur's Kate forgotten on the sidelines.
Randall
Wednesday, August 19, 2009
RE: Julius Caesar - A Woman's Place
Greetings, comrades,
The female characters in Julius Caesar, unfortunately do NOT save this play from being a "boy play." I see Portia and Calpurnia as mere devices against which to reveal the characteristics of their husbands. For example, Shakespeare gives Portia stage directions:
PORTIA:
… No, my Brutus,
You have some sick offence within your mind,
Which by the right and virtue of my place
I ought to know of: and, upon my knees,
I charm you, by my once commended beauty,
By all your vows of love and that great vow
Which did incorporate and make us one,
That you unfold to me, yourself, your half,
Why you are heavy… (II.i.267-275)
Brutus, similarly has a pseudo-stage direction in telling his wife to rise:
BRUTUS:
Kneel not, gentle Portia. (II.i.278)
I can see Brutus extend his hand to help her rise. Portia seems, to me, very sincere in caring for Brutus, and wanting to understand what troubles him. Portia's efforts to get information out of her husband are not unlike any wife's attempts to get her spousal unit to talk about feelings, right gentlemen? She uses several tactics here, from reminding him of his marriage vows to perhaps dealing him the "guilt" card by suggesting she is nothing more than his harlot. (hee hee) Has she used these tactics before? hmmmm… I personally like his response to her:
BRUTUS:
You are my true and honorable wife,
As dear to me as are the ruddy drops
That visit my sad heart. (II.i.288-290)
My female students like that one too (sappy girls, we'll fall for anything!). But at least the kindness of his words, as well as his actions, show his care for his wife, making Brutus look pretty good, right? She should not be supplicating herself to him; in raising her, he acknowledges her as his partner, and indeed the other half of him. He tells her that he will tell all:
BRUTUS:
Portia, go in a while
And by and by thy bosom shall partake
The secrets of my heart.
All my engagements I will construe to thee
All the charactery of my sad brows. (II.i.304-308)
Now, Gil asserts that Brutus never gets around to telling Portia the truth. I'm not so sure. It's not necessary for Shakespeare to depict this conversation; we already know why Brutus is so troubled. Brutus might very well reveal his dilemma to his wife in the "white spaces" that we don't see. Regardless, the purpose of the scene is to peel back another layer of Brutus' character.
In contrast, we have Caesar and Calpurnia. Calpurnia beseeches her husband not to go to the capital; all the signs of impending doom are present: Calpurnia's dream in which all of nature is awry (connect to Macbeth!), the soothsayer's warning, the priests' reading of the sacrifice. Caesar's line tells us that Calpurnia, too, supplicates herself to her husband:
CAESAR:
And these does she apply for warnings and portents
And evils imminent, and on her knee
Hath begg'd that I will stay at home to-day. (II.ii.80-82)
Unlike Brutus, Caesar leaves her on her knees (according to Shakespeare's copious stage directions―just kidding), and goes on to the capital thus swayed by the weak rhetoric and flattery of Decius (sappy Caesar, he'll fall for anything). Hence we see Calpurnia as the undeveloped female character, like Portia, serving only to reveal characteristics of her husband. These are not Shakespeare's deliciously strong or richly developed women like we see elsewhere. I'm skipping the auditions.
Cindy
Tuesday, August 18, 2009
Julius Caesar - Is Ambition Bad?
John,
Brutus, in explaining his decision to put Caesar to death, uses "ambition" as a dirty word: "As he was ambitious, I slew him" (3.2.28). Antony seizes on this and uses it in his famous oration (3.2.83ff), juxtaposing the claim of Caesar's ambition with Brutus' honor. I'm wondering, do we find negative connotation in the etymology of "ambition"? Or does it come from elsewhere, somewhere cultural?
And, in a play where we are asked to mistrust a primary conspirator, Cassius, because "he thinks too much," where do Elizabethan values seem to lie? In thoughts or deeds?
Randall
(Quotes from Folger edition)
Brutus, in explaining his decision to put Caesar to death, uses "ambition" as a dirty word: "As he was ambitious, I slew him" (3.2.28). Antony seizes on this and uses it in his famous oration (3.2.83ff), juxtaposing the claim of Caesar's ambition with Brutus' honor. I'm wondering, do we find negative connotation in the etymology of "ambition"? Or does it come from elsewhere, somewhere cultural?
And, in a play where we are asked to mistrust a primary conspirator, Cassius, because "he thinks too much," where do Elizabethan values seem to lie? In thoughts or deeds?
Randall
(Quotes from Folger edition)
Julius Caesar - Does Intuition Matter?
Dad,
When Caesar sees Cassius, he tells Antony, "Yond Cassius has a lean and hungry look./ He thinks too much. Such men are dangerous" (1.2.204-205). And Antony replies: "Fear him not."
As John McLaughlin might say – Wrong!
When Cassius and Brutus are plotting against Caesar, Cassius argues that, "I think it not meet/ Mark Antony, so well beloved of Caesar,/ Should outlive Caesar. … / Let Antony and Caesar fall together" (2.1.168-170, 174). And Brutus replies, "for Mark Antony, think not of him,/ For he can do no more than Caesar's arm/ When Caesar's head is off."
Wrong!
And poor Calphurnia has had a dream in which Caesar is murdered and the Capitol and a statue of Caesar run red with blood that bathes the hands of smiling Romans. She recommends to Caesar that "You shall not stir out of your house today" (2.2.9). Caesar, after Decius suggests this is his only chance to earn a crown from the senate, says "How foolish your fears seem now, Calphurnia!/ I am ashamed I did yield to them./ Give me my robe, for I will go."
Wrong!
In all three cases, good advice is overlooked. What does this say about the characters of those who fail to heed such words of wisdom? And is it a function of tragedy that they do so? In Romeo and Juliet, such moments suggested the intercession of Fortune, Fate, or mere coincidence, but in Julius Caesar, the events that lead characters to their doom are significantly human. Has Shakespeare freed himself from concerns about Fate?
Randall
(Quotes from Folger edition)
When Caesar sees Cassius, he tells Antony, "Yond Cassius has a lean and hungry look./ He thinks too much. Such men are dangerous" (1.2.204-205). And Antony replies: "Fear him not."
As John McLaughlin might say – Wrong!
When Cassius and Brutus are plotting against Caesar, Cassius argues that, "I think it not meet/ Mark Antony, so well beloved of Caesar,/ Should outlive Caesar. … / Let Antony and Caesar fall together" (2.1.168-170, 174). And Brutus replies, "for Mark Antony, think not of him,/ For he can do no more than Caesar's arm/ When Caesar's head is off."
Wrong!
And poor Calphurnia has had a dream in which Caesar is murdered and the Capitol and a statue of Caesar run red with blood that bathes the hands of smiling Romans. She recommends to Caesar that "You shall not stir out of your house today" (2.2.9). Caesar, after Decius suggests this is his only chance to earn a crown from the senate, says "How foolish your fears seem now, Calphurnia!/ I am ashamed I did yield to them./ Give me my robe, for I will go."
Wrong!
In all three cases, good advice is overlooked. What does this say about the characters of those who fail to heed such words of wisdom? And is it a function of tragedy that they do so? In Romeo and Juliet, such moments suggested the intercession of Fortune, Fate, or mere coincidence, but in Julius Caesar, the events that lead characters to their doom are significantly human. Has Shakespeare freed himself from concerns about Fate?
Randall
(Quotes from Folger edition)
Monday, August 17, 2009
Julius Caesar - Is Poetry Fatal?
Mike,
Perhaps Caesar's most arresting speech is his response to Cassius' pleas for Publius Cimber.
CAESAR
I could be well moved, if I were as you;
If I could pray to move, prayers would move me;
But I am constant as the Northern Star,
Of whose true-fixed 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 but one in all doth hold his place.
So in the world; 'tis furnished 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,
Unshaked of motion; and that I am he. (3.1.58-70)
Quite the extended metaphor, no? What, in your opinion, does it reveal about Caesar? Is he a poet?
Here is another metaphor from nature, as Brutus discusses battle tactics with Cassius before Phillippi:
BRUTUS
Our legions are brimful, our cause is ripe.
The enemy increaseth every day;
We, at the height, are ready to decline.
There is a tide in the affairs of men
Which taken at the flood, leads on to fortune;
Omitted, all the voyage of their life
Is bound in shallows and in miseries.
On such a full sea are we now afloat,
And we must take the current when it serves,
Or lose our ventures. (4.3.214-223)
And what, in your opinion, does this tell us about Brutus, how he thinks? What differences do these "arguments" establish between Caesar and Brutus? How would you ask your students to unpack the poetry of these two passages?
Gil
(Quotes from Signet edition)
Perhaps Caesar's most arresting speech is his response to Cassius' pleas for Publius Cimber.
CAESAR
I could be well moved, if I were as you;
If I could pray to move, prayers would move me;
But I am constant as the Northern Star,
Of whose true-fixed 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 but one in all doth hold his place.
So in the world; 'tis furnished 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,
Unshaked of motion; and that I am he. (3.1.58-70)
Quite the extended metaphor, no? What, in your opinion, does it reveal about Caesar? Is he a poet?
Here is another metaphor from nature, as Brutus discusses battle tactics with Cassius before Phillippi:
BRUTUS
Our legions are brimful, our cause is ripe.
The enemy increaseth every day;
We, at the height, are ready to decline.
There is a tide in the affairs of men
Which taken at the flood, leads on to fortune;
Omitted, all the voyage of their life
Is bound in shallows and in miseries.
On such a full sea are we now afloat,
And we must take the current when it serves,
Or lose our ventures. (4.3.214-223)
And what, in your opinion, does this tell us about Brutus, how he thinks? What differences do these "arguments" establish between Caesar and Brutus? How would you ask your students to unpack the poetry of these two passages?
Gil
(Quotes from Signet edition)
Julius Caesar - Toga, or Not Toga?
Stu,
I once saw a production of Julius Caesar that emphasized its Orwellian undertones. (In Act 3, scene 1, Brutus follows the murder of Caesar with statements like "death is a benefit," and "we are Caesar's friends," and "let us bathe our hands in Caesar's blood … And, waving our red weapons o'er our heads,/ Let's all cry 'Peace' …".) So the production updated the costumes (Faux Fascism), displayed a big head of Caesar looking over the stage, and kept the lights low to create a moody and oppressive feel.
Have you ever done a production of Julius Caesar? If so, how did you approach the play's setting – traditional or adapted? Or more specifically, what are your thoughts on staging Caesar? Would you do it with togas? What effect does the Roman look have on the audience's reception of the play?
Randall
I once saw a production of Julius Caesar that emphasized its Orwellian undertones. (In Act 3, scene 1, Brutus follows the murder of Caesar with statements like "death is a benefit," and "we are Caesar's friends," and "let us bathe our hands in Caesar's blood … And, waving our red weapons o'er our heads,/ Let's all cry 'Peace' …".) So the production updated the costumes (Faux Fascism), displayed a big head of Caesar looking over the stage, and kept the lights low to create a moody and oppressive feel.
Have you ever done a production of Julius Caesar? If so, how did you approach the play's setting – traditional or adapted? Or more specifically, what are your thoughts on staging Caesar? Would you do it with togas? What effect does the Roman look have on the audience's reception of the play?
Randall
Julius Caesar - Is the Play the Thing?
Doug,
Can I use the term "metatheater" in the William Shakespeare Experience? We readers should nod when Caesar condemns Cassius:
I do not know the man I should avoid
So soon as that spare Cassius. He reads much,
He is a great observer, and he looks
Quite through the deeds of men. [But] He loves no plays,
As thou dost, Antony; he hears no music. (1.2.200-204)
And Brutus admonishes the conspirators with:
Let not our looks put on our purposes,
But bear it as our Roman actors do,
With untired spirits and formal constancy. (2.1.226-228)
Then, as Casca describes Caesar among the people as a performance – thrice refusing the crown, fainting, offering his throat for cutting, wringing "Alas, good soul" from several wenches – he concludes: "If the tag-rag people did not clasp him and hiss him, according as he pleased and displeased them, as they use to do the players in the theater, I am no true man" (1.2.258-261).
With these early references to theater, are you set up as a director to impose an overt theatrical style on the whole play or, for instance, Antony's funeral oration? Setting aside for a moment the fact that all performed plays are "theatrical," does Julius Caesar call especial attention to the theatricality of its characters' public relations?
Gil
(Quotes from Signet edition)
Can I use the term "metatheater" in the William Shakespeare Experience? We readers should nod when Caesar condemns Cassius:
I do not know the man I should avoid
So soon as that spare Cassius. He reads much,
He is a great observer, and he looks
Quite through the deeds of men. [But] He loves no plays,
As thou dost, Antony; he hears no music. (1.2.200-204)
And Brutus admonishes the conspirators with:
Let not our looks put on our purposes,
But bear it as our Roman actors do,
With untired spirits and formal constancy. (2.1.226-228)
Then, as Casca describes Caesar among the people as a performance – thrice refusing the crown, fainting, offering his throat for cutting, wringing "Alas, good soul" from several wenches – he concludes: "If the tag-rag people did not clasp him and hiss him, according as he pleased and displeased them, as they use to do the players in the theater, I am no true man" (1.2.258-261).
With these early references to theater, are you set up as a director to impose an overt theatrical style on the whole play or, for instance, Antony's funeral oration? Setting aside for a moment the fact that all performed plays are "theatrical," does Julius Caesar call especial attention to the theatricality of its characters' public relations?
Gil
(Quotes from Signet edition)
Julius Caesar - Whose Tragedy Is It Anyway?
Derek,
It says right on the cover of my Folger edition, The Tragedy of Julius Caesar. But what kind of tragedy kills off its titular tragic figure in the first lines of the third act?
You may argue that it's really Brutus' tragedy, that the title should be The Tragedy of Marcus Junius Brutus. If so, where does Brutus fall in the spectrum of tragic figures, Shakespearean or otherwise? Does he conform to the oft over-used Aristotelian definition, or Northrop Frye's sense that Shakespeare presents tragedies of character, or something else?
Is the play even a tragedy? Or a history play masquerading as tragic?
Randall
It says right on the cover of my Folger edition, The Tragedy of Julius Caesar. But what kind of tragedy kills off its titular tragic figure in the first lines of the third act?
You may argue that it's really Brutus' tragedy, that the title should be The Tragedy of Marcus Junius Brutus. If so, where does Brutus fall in the spectrum of tragic figures, Shakespearean or otherwise? Does he conform to the oft over-used Aristotelian definition, or Northrop Frye's sense that Shakespeare presents tragedies of character, or something else?
Is the play even a tragedy? Or a history play masquerading as tragic?
Randall
Julius Caesar - A Woman's Place?
Cindy,
Not to pigeon-hole you to distaff comments, but what is your reaction to Portia's concern about Brutus' failure to share his concerns with her (2.1.234-309)?
PORTIA
Within the bonds of marriage, tell me, Brutus,
Is it excepted I should know no secrets
That appertain to you? Am I your self
But, as it were, in sort or limitation,
To keep with you at meals, comfort your bed,
And talk to you sometimes? Well I but in the suburbs
Of your good pleasure? If it be no more,
Portia is Brutus' harlot, not his wife. (2.1.280-287)
Is communication what distinguishes a wife from a harlot? And how does Portia stand up to characters like Constance (Geoffrey's wife and Arthur's mother), Kate (Hotspur's wife), Portia (Bassanio's fiancée in Merchant) or Titania (Oberon's wife)? Does Portia redeem Julius Caesar from being a boy-play if you're trying to teach it?
Nota bene: If you haven't finished Julius Caesar yet, Brutus never gets around to revealing "the secrets of my heart" to Portia (2.1.306) and, alas, by 4.3.146, she is tired of waiting.
Gil
(Quotes from Signet edition)
Not to pigeon-hole you to distaff comments, but what is your reaction to Portia's concern about Brutus' failure to share his concerns with her (2.1.234-309)?
PORTIA
Within the bonds of marriage, tell me, Brutus,
Is it excepted I should know no secrets
That appertain to you? Am I your self
But, as it were, in sort or limitation,
To keep with you at meals, comfort your bed,
And talk to you sometimes? Well I but in the suburbs
Of your good pleasure? If it be no more,
Portia is Brutus' harlot, not his wife. (2.1.280-287)
Is communication what distinguishes a wife from a harlot? And how does Portia stand up to characters like Constance (Geoffrey's wife and Arthur's mother), Kate (Hotspur's wife), Portia (Bassanio's fiancée in Merchant) or Titania (Oberon's wife)? Does Portia redeem Julius Caesar from being a boy-play if you're trying to teach it?
Nota bene: If you haven't finished Julius Caesar yet, Brutus never gets around to revealing "the secrets of my heart" to Portia (2.1.306) and, alas, by 4.3.146, she is tired of waiting.
Gil
(Quotes from Signet edition)
Julius Caesar - Brutus as Malcontent?
Ernst,
You've pointed out how Jacques, Don John, and Hamlet, with his arms "encumbered," represent versions of the "Malcontent" character. In reading Julius Caesar, I came across the following passage:
PORTIA
Y'have ungently, Brutus,
Stole from my bed. And yesternight at supper
You suddenly arose and walked about,
Musing and sighing, with your arms across,
And when I asked you what the matter was,
You stared upon me with ungentle looks.
I urged you further; then you scratched your head
And too impatiently stamped with you foot.
Yet I insisted; yet you answered not,
But with an angry wafture of your hand
Gave sign for me to leave you. (2.1.257-267)
My italics ("with yours arms across"). My question: Does Brutus fit into your thesis on the development of the stage malcontent? If so, how does this stock character evolve our understanding of him? And how does he relate to others like Hamlet (tragedy) and Jacques (comedy)? If not, what accounts for this odd behavior that Portia describes, since it seems so out of character with the rest of the passages by which we come to know Brutus?
Randall
(Quote from Folger edition)
You've pointed out how Jacques, Don John, and Hamlet, with his arms "encumbered," represent versions of the "Malcontent" character. In reading Julius Caesar, I came across the following passage:
PORTIA
Y'have ungently, Brutus,
Stole from my bed. And yesternight at supper
You suddenly arose and walked about,
Musing and sighing, with your arms across,
And when I asked you what the matter was,
You stared upon me with ungentle looks.
I urged you further; then you scratched your head
And too impatiently stamped with you foot.
Yet I insisted; yet you answered not,
But with an angry wafture of your hand
Gave sign for me to leave you. (2.1.257-267)
My italics ("with yours arms across"). My question: Does Brutus fit into your thesis on the development of the stage malcontent? If so, how does this stock character evolve our understanding of him? And how does he relate to others like Hamlet (tragedy) and Jacques (comedy)? If not, what accounts for this odd behavior that Portia describes, since it seems so out of character with the rest of the passages by which we come to know Brutus?
Randall
(Quote from Folger edition)
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