Far beneath this pair are the other conspirators who rise up against the supremacy of Caesar. Among these lower natures, Cassius is undoubtedly the most imposing and most interesting. The main lines of his character are given in Caesar's masterly delineation, which follows Plutarch in regard to his spareness, but in the other particulars freely elaborates the impression that Plutarch's whole narrative produces.
Lean, gaunt, hungry, disinclined to sports and revelry, spending his time in reading, observation, and reflection-these are the first traits that we notice in him. He too, like Brutus, has learned the lessons of philosophy, and he finds in it the rule of [p. 276] life. He chides his friend for seeming to fail in the practice of it:Yond Cassius has a lean and hungry look:
He thinks too much: such men are dangerous . . .
He reads much;
He is a great observer, and he looks
Quite through the deeds of men; he loves no plays,
As thou dost, Antony; he hears no music;
Seldom he smiles, and smiles in such a sort
As if he mock'd himself and scorn'd his spirit
That could be moved to smile at anything.
Such men as he be never at heart's ease
Whiles they behold a greater than themselves,
And therefore are they very dangerous.
And even when he admits and admires Brutus' self-mastery, he attibutes it to nature, and claims as good a philosophic discipline for himself. There is, however, a difference between them even in this point. Brutus is a Platonist with a Stoic tinge; Cassius is an Epicurean. That strikes us at first as strange, that the theory which identified pleasure with virtue should be the creed of this splenetic solitary: but it is quite in character. Epicureanism appealed to some of the noblest minds of Rome, not as a cult of enjoyment, but as a doctrine that freed them from the bonds of superstition and the degrading fear of death. This was the spirit of Lucretius, the poet of the sect:Of your philosophy you make no use,
If you give place to accidental evils.
Artisand one grand motif of his poem is the thought that this death, the dread of which makes the meanness of life, is the end of all consciousness, a refuge rather than an evil: “What ails thee so, O mortal, to let thyself loose in too feeble grievings? Why weep and wail at death? . . .Why not rather make an end of life and labour?” And these are the reasons that Cassius is an Epicurean. At the end, when his philosophy breaks down, he says:
Religionum animum nodis exsolvere pergo:
He has hitherto discredited them. And we seem to hear Lucretius in his noble utterance:You know that I held Epicurus strong
And his opinion: now I change my mind,
And partly credit things that do presage.
Free from all superstitious scruples and all thought of superhuman interference in the affairs of men, he stands out bold and self-reliant, confiding in his own powers, his own will, his own management:Nor stony tower, nor walls of beaten brass,
Nor airless dungeon, nor strong links of iron,
Can be retentive to the strength of spirit: [p. 277]
But life, being weary of these worldly bars,
Never lacks power to dismiss itself.
Men at some time are masters of their fates:(I. ii. 139.) And the same attitude of mind implies that he is rid of all illusions. He is not deceived by shows. He looks quite through the deeds of men. He is not taken in by Casca's affectation of rudeness. He is not misled by Antony's apparent frivolity. He is not even dazzled by the glamour of Brutus' virtue, but notes its weak side and does not hesitate to play on it. Still less does Caesar's prestige subdue his criticism. On the contrary, with malicious contempt he recalls his want of endurance in swimming and the complaints of his sick-bed, and he keenly notes his superstitious lapses. He seldom smiles and when he does it is in scorn. We only once hear of his laughing. It is at the interposition of the poet, which rouses Brutus to indignation; but the presumptuous absurdity of it tickles Cassius' sardonic humour. For there is no doubt that he takes pleasure in detecting the weaknesses of his fellows. He has obvious relish in the thought that if he were Brutus he would not be thus cajoled, and he finds food for satisfaction in Caesar's merely physical defects. Yet there is as little of self-complacency as of hero-worship in the man. He turns his remorseless scrutiny on his own nature and his own cause, and neither maintains that the one is noble or the other honourable, nor denies the personal alloy in his motives. This is the purport of that strange [p. 278] soliloquy that at first sight seems to place Cassius in the ranks of Shakespeare's villains along with his Iagos and Richards, rather than of the mixed characters, compact of good and evil, to whom nevertheless we feel that he is akin.
The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars
But in ourselves, that we are underlings.
It frequently happens that cynics view themselves as well as others in their meaner aspects. Probably Cassius is making the worst of his own case and is indulging that vein of self-mockery and scorn that Caesar observed in him.1 But at any rate the lurking sense of unworthiness in himself and his purpose will be apt to increase in such a man his natural impatience of alleged superiority in his fellows. He is jealous of excellence, seeks to minimise it and will not tolerate it. It is on this characteristic that Shakespeare lays stress. Plutarch reports the saying “that Brutus could evill away with the tyrannie and that Cassius hated the tyranne, making many complayntes for the injuries he had done him”; and instances Caesar's appropriation of some lions that Cassius had intended for the sports, as well as the affair of the city praetorship. But in the play these specific grievances are almost effaced in the vague statement, “Caesar doth bear me hard”; which implies little more than general illwill. It is now resentment of pre-eminence that makes Cassius a malcontent. Caesar finds him “very dangerous” just because of his grudge at [p. 279] greatness; and his own avowal that he “would as lief not be as live to be in awe” of a thing like himself, merely puts a fairer colour on the same unamiable trait. He may represent republican liberty and equality, at least in the aristocratic acceptation, but it is on their less admirable side. His disposition is to level down, by repudiating the leader, not to level up, by learning from him. In the final results this would mean the triumph of the second best, a dull and uniform mediocrity in art, thought and politics, unbroken by the predominance of the man of genius and king of men. And it may be feared that this ideal, translated into the terms of democracy, is too frequent in our modern communities. But true freedom is not incompatible with the most loyal acknowledgment of the master-mind; witness the utterance of Browning's Pisan republican:Well, Brutus, thou art noble: yet, I see,
Thy honourable metal may be wrought
From that it is disposed: therefore it is meet
That noble minds keep ever with their likes:
For who so firm that cannot be seduced?
Caesar doth bear me hard: but he loves Brutus:
If I were Brutus now and he were Cassius,
He should not humour me.
The mass remains-Yet notwithstanding this taint of enviousness and spite, Cassius is far from being a despicable or even an unattractive character. He may play the Devil's Advocate in regard to individuals, but he is capable of a high enthusiasm for his cause, such as it is. We must share his calenture of excitement, as he strides about the streets in the tempest that fills Casca with superstitious dread and Cicero with discomfort at the nasty weather. His republicanism may be a narrow creed, but at least he is willing to be a martyr to it; when he hears that Caesar is to wear the crown, his resolution is prompt and Roman-like:
Keep but the model safe, new men will rise
To take its mould.
And surely at the moment of achievement, whatever was mean and sordid in the man is consumed [p. 280] in his prophetic rapture that fires the soul of Brutus and prolongs itself in his response.I know where I will wear this dagger then:
Cassius from bondage will deliver Cassius.
And even to individuals if the stand the test of his mordant criticism, he can pay homage and admiration. The perception that Brutus may be worked upon is the toll he pays to his self-love, but, that settled, he can feel deep reverence and affection for Brutus' more ideal virtue. Perhaps the best instance of it is the scene of their dispute. Brutus, as we have seen, is practically, if not theoretically, in the wrong, and certainly he is much the more violent and bitter; but Cassius submits to receive his forgiveness and to welcome his assurance that he will bear with him in future. This implies no little deference and magnanimity in one who so ill brooks a secondary role. But he does give the lead to Brutus, and in all things, even against his better judgment, yields him the primacy. And then it is impossible not to respect his [p. 281] thorough efficiency. In whatsoever concerns the management of affairs and of men, he knows the right thing to do, and, when left to himself, he does it. He sees how needful Brutus is to the cause and gains him-gains him, in part by a trickery, which Shakespeare without historical warrant ascribes to him; but the trickery succeeds because he has gauged Brutus' nature aright. He takes the correct measure of the danger from Antony, of his love for Caesar and his talents, which Brutus so contemptuously underrates. So, too, after the assassination, when Brutus says,Cassius.
How many ages hence
Shall this our lofty scene be acted over
In states unborn and accents yet unknown!
Brutus.
How many times shall Caesar bleed in sport
That now on Pompey's basis lies along
No worthier than the dust!2
I know that we shall have him well to friend;he answers,
Brutus seeks to win Antony with general considerations of right and justice, Cassius employs a more effective argument:I wish we may: but yet I have a mind
That fears him much; and my misgiving still
Falls shrewdly to the purpose.
He altogether disapproves of the permission granted to Antony to pronounce the funeral oration. He grasps the situation when the civil war breaks out much better than Brutus:Your voice shall be as strong as any man's
In the disposing of new dignities.
His plans of the campaign are better, and he has a much better notion of conducting the battle. All such shrewd sagacity is entitled to our respect. Yet even in this department Cassius is outdone by the unpractical Brutus, so soon as higher moral qualities are required, and the wisdom of the fox yields to the wisdom of the man. We have seen [p. 282] that however passionate and wrong-headed Brutus may be in their contention, he has too much sense of the becoming to wrangle in public, as Cassius begins to do. Another more conspicuous example is furnished by the way in which they bear anxiety. Shakespeare found an illustration of this in Plutarch, which he has merely dramatised.In such a time as this it is not meet
That every nice offence should bear his comment.
When Caesar came out of his litter: Popilius Laena, that had talked before with Brutus and Cassius, and had prayed the goddes they might bring this enterprise to passe, went into Caesar and kept him a long time with a talke. Caesar gave good eare unto him. Wherefore the conspirators (if so they should be called) not hearing what he sayd to Caesar, but conjecturing by that he had told them a little before, that his talke was none other but the verie discoverie of their conspiracie: they were affrayed everie man of them, and one looking in an others face, it was easie to see that they all were of a minde, that it was no tarying for them till they were apprehended, but rather that they should kill them selves with their owne handes. And when Cassius and certaine other clapped their handes on their swordes under their gownes to draw them: Brutus marking the countenaunce and gesture of Laena, and considering that he did use him selfe rather like an humble and earnest suter, then like an accuser: he sayd nothing to his companions. (bicause there were amongest them that were not of the conspiracie) but with a pleasaunt countenaunce encouraged Cassius. And immediatlie after, Laena went from Caesar, and kissed his hande; which shewed plainlie that it was for some matter concerning him selfe, that he had held him so long in talke.Shakespeare, by rejecting the reason for the dumb show, is able to present this scene in dialogue, and thus bring out the contrast more vividly. Cassius believes the worst, loses his head, now hurries on Casca, now prepares for suicide. But Brutus, the disinterested man, is less swayed by personal hopes and fears, keeps his composure, urges his friend to be constant, and can calmly judge of the situation. It is the same defect of endurance that brings about Cassius' death. Really things are shaping well for them, but he misconstrues the signs just as he has [p. 283] misconstrued the words of Lena, and kills himself owing to a mistake; as Messala points out:
This want of inward strength explains the ascendancy which Brutus with his more dutiful and therefore more steadfast nature exercises over him, though Cassius is in many ways the more capable man of the two. They both have schooled themselves in the discipline of fortitude, Brutus in Stoic renunciation, Cassius in Epicurean independence; but in the great crises where nature asserts herself, Brutus is strong and Cassius is weak. And as often happens with men, in the supreme trial their professed creeds no longer satisfy them, and they consciously abandon them. But while Cassius in his evil fortune falls back on the superstitions3 which he had ridiculed Caesar for adopting on his good fortune, Brutus falls back on his feeling of moral dignity, and gives himself the death which theoretically he disapproves. Yet, when all is said and done, what a fine figure Cassius is, and how much both of love and respect he can inspire. Plutarch's story of his death already bears witness to this, but Shakespeare with a few deeper strokes marks his own esteem.Mistrust of good success hath done this deed.
Cassius thinking in deede that Titinnius was taken of the enemies, he then spake these wordes:Desiring too much to live, I have lived to see one of my best frendes taken, for my sake, before my face. “After that, he gote into a tent where no bodie was, and tooke Pyndarus with him, one of his freed bondmen, whom he reserved ever for suche a pinche, since the cursed battell of the Parthians, when Crassus was slaine, though he notwithstanding scaped from that overthrow; but then casting his cloke over his head, and holding out his bare neck unto Pindarus, he gave him his head to be striken of. So the head was found severed from the bodie: but [p. 284] after that time Pindarus was never seene more. Whereupon some tooke occasion to say that he had slaine his master without his commaundement. By and by they knew the horsemen that came towards them, and might see Titinnius crowned with a garland of triumphe, who came before with great speede unto Cassius. But when he perceived by the cries and teares of his frends which tormented them selves the misfortune that had chaunced to his Captaine Cassius by mistaking; he drew out his sword, cursing him selfe a thousand times that he had taried so long, and so slue him selfe presentlie in the fielde. Brutus in the meane time came forward still, and understoode also that Cassius had bene over throwen: but he knew nothing of his death, till he came verie neere to his campe. So when he was come thither, after he had lamented the death of Cassius, calling him the last of all the Romanes, being impossible that Rome should ever breede againe so noble and valliant man as he: he caused his bodie to be buried, and sent it to the citie of Thassos, fearing least his funerals within the campe should cause great disorder.” In the play Pindarus is not yet enfranchised, and though he gains his freedo by the fatal stroke, would rather remain a slave than return t his native wilds at such a price. Titinius places his garland on the dead man's brow, and in fond regret slays himself, not with his own but with Cassius' sword. Brutus, with hardly a verbal change, repeats the eulogy that Plutarch puts in his mouth,
The last of all the Romans, fare thee well!But he does not stop here. Flushed with his initial success, he expects to triumph and to live, and the years to come seem darkened with grief for his “brother”:
It is impossible that ever Rome
Should breed thy fellow.
The minor conspirators, with the adherents of the cause and the humbler dependents, are of course sketched very slightly, as proportion requires, but [p. 285] they have all something to individualise them in gait or pose. Even in the crowded final act, where, as in the chronicle histories which Shakespeare was leaving behind him, a number of persons are introduced with whom we are almost or entirely unacquainted, there is no monotony in the subordinate figures. They are distinguished from or contrasted with each other in their circumstances, sentiments or fate. Thus Pindarus and Strato are both described as servants, they are both attached to their masters, they are both reluctantly compelled to assist in their masters' death. Should we have thought it possible to differentiate them in the compass of the score or so of lines at the dramatist's disposal? But Cassius' slave, who, since his capture, has been kept like a dog to do whatever his owner might bid him, will not abide the issue and uses his new liberty to flee beyond the Roman world. Strato, to whom Brutus characteristically turns because he is a “fellow of a good respect” with “some snatch of honour” in his life, claims Brutus' hand like an equal before he will hold the sword, confronts the victors with praise of the dead, hints to Messala that Brutus' course is the one to follow, and has too much self-respect to accept employment with Octavius till Messala “prefers,” that is, recommends him. So too with the three captains, all on the losing side, all devoted to their leaders. Titinius, who seems to feel that his love for Cassius exceeds that of BrutusFriends, I owe more tears
To this dead man than you shall see me pay.
I shall find time, Cassius, I shall find time.
(Brutus, come apace,will not outlive him. Lucilius is quite ready to die for his general, but spared by the generosity of Antony, survives to exult that Brutus has fulfilled his prophecy and been “like himself.” Messala, who brought word of Portia's death, must now [p. 286] tell the same tale of Cassius with the same keen sympathy for Brutus' grief; and though Strato seems to censure him for consenting to live “in bondage”, he shows no bondman's mind when he grounds his preferment of Strato to Octavius on the fact of Strato's having done “the latest service to my master.” More prominent, but still in the background, are the subaltern members of the faction in Rome. Ligarius, the best of them, with his fiery enthusiasm and personal fealty to Brutus, is an excellent counterpart to the ingratiating and plausible Decius, the least erected spirit of the group. Between them comes Casca, the only one who may claim a word or two of comment, partly because he is sketched in some detail, partly because he is practically an original creation. Plutarch has only two particulars about him, the one that he was the first to strike Caesar and struck him from behind; the other that when Caesar cried out and gripped his hand, he shouted to his brother in Greek. Shakespeare, as we have seen, summarily rejects his acquaintance with Greek, but the stab in the back sets his fancy to work, and he constructs for him a character and life-history to match. Casca is a man who shares with Cassius the jealousy of greatness-“the envious Casca,” Antony described him-but is vastly inferior to Cassius in consistency and manhood. He seems to be one of those alert, precocious natures, clever at the uptake in their youth and full of a promise that is not always fulfilled: Brutus recalls that “he was quick mettle when we went to school (I. ii. 300)”. Such sprightly youngsters, when they fail, often do so from a certain lack of moral fibre. And so with Casca. He appears before us at first as the most obsequious henchman of Caesar. When Caesar calls for Calpurnia, Casca is at his elbow: “Peace, ho! Caesar [p. 287] speaks.” When Caesar, hearing the soothsayer's shout, cries, “Ha! who calls?” Casca is again ready: “Bid every noise be still: peace yet again!” Cassius would never have condescended to that. For Casca resents the supremacy of Caesar as much as the proudest aristocrat of them all: he is only waiting an opportunity to throw off the mask. But meanwhile in his angry bitterness with himself and others he affects a cross-grained bluntness of speech, “puts on a tardy form,” as Cassius says, plays the satirist and misanthrope, as many others conscious of double dealing have done, and treats friend and foe with caustic brutality. But it is characteristic that he is panic-stricken with the terrors of the tempestuous night, which he ekes out with superstitious fancies. It illustrates his want both of inward robustness and of enlightened culture. We remember that Cicero's remark in Greek was Greek to him, and that Greek was as much the language of rationalists then, as was French of the eighteenth century Philosophes. Nor is it less characteristic that even at the assassination he apparently does not dare to face his victim. Antony describes his procedure
And see how I regarded Caius Cassius)
Yet even Casca is not without redeeming qualities. His humour, in the account he gives of the coronation fiasco, has an undeniable flavour: its very tartness, as Cassius says, is a “sauce to his good wit.” And there is a touch of nobility in his avowal:Damned Casca, like a cur, behind
Struck Caesar on the neck.
But among those little vignettes, that of Cicero is decidedly the masterpiece. For this Shakespeare [p. 288] got no assistance from any of the three Lives on which he drew for the rest of the play. Indeed the one little hint they contained he did not see fit to adopt. In the Marcus Brutus Plutarch says of the conspirators:You speak to Casca, and to such a man
That is no fleering tell-tale. Hold, my hand:
Be factious for redress of all these griefs,
And I will set this foot of mine as far
As who goes farthest.
For this cause they durst not acquaint Cicero with their conspiracie, although he was a man whome they loved dearlie and trusted best: for they were affrayed that he being a coward by nature, and age also having increased his feare, he would quite turne and alter all their purpose.In the play their reason for leaving him out is very different:
It seems to me, however, highly probable that Shakespeare had read the Life of Cicero and obtained his general impression from it, though he invents the particular traits. The irritable vanity and self-consciousness of the man, which Brutus' objection implies, are, for example, prominent features in Plutarch's portrait. So too is his aversion for Caesar and Caesarism, which makes him view the offer of the crown, abortive though it has been, as a personal offence: Brutus observes that heHe will never follow anything
That other men begin.
But he is very cautious, and even when venting his vexation in one of those biting gibes to which, by Plutarch's statement, he was too prone, he takes care to veil it in the safe obscurity of a foreign language. “He spoke Greek ... but those that understood him smiled at one another and shook their heads (I. ii. 282)”. This has sometimes been misinterpreted. Shakespeare has been taxed with the [p. 289] absurdity of making Cicero deliver a Greek speech in a popular assemblage. Surely he does nothing of the kind. It is a sally that he intends for his friends, and he takes the fit means for keeping it to them; much as St. John might talk French, if he wished to be intelligible only to those who had made the Grand Tour and so were in a manner of his own set. Plutarch lays stress on his familiarity with Greek, as also on his study of the Greek Philosophers. This may have left some trace in the description of his bearing in contrast to Casca's, when they meet in the storm. Cool and sceptical, he cannot guess the cause of Casca's alarm. Even when the horrors of earthquake, wind and lightning, are described in detail, he asks unmoved:Looks with such ferret and such fiery eyes
As we have seen him in the Capitol
Being cross'd in conference with some senators.
And after the enumeration of the portents, he critically replies:Why, saw you anything more wonderful?
And then after a passing reference4 to current affairs, he bids Casca good night. To him the moral of the whole tempest is: “This disturbed sky is not to walk in.” Opinions may differ as to this being the real Cicero; none will deny that it is a living type. Apart from the main group of personages, more or less antagonistic to Caesar, stands the brilliant figure of his friend and avenger, the eloquent Mark Antony. Shakespeare conceives him as a man of genius and feeling but not of principle, resourceful and daring, ambitious of honour and power, but unscrupulous in his methods and a voluptuary in [p. 290] his life. Caesar tells him that he is “fond of plays” and “revels long o‘ nights.” Cassius calls him a “masker and a reveller.” Brutus says that he is given “to sports, to wildness and much company.” He makes his first appearance as the tool of Caesar. With Asiatic flattery, as though in the eastern formula, to hear were to obey, he tells his master:Indeed, it is a strange-disposed time:
But men may construe things after their fashion,
Clean from the purpose of the things themselves.
He perceives his unspoken desires, his innermost wishes, and offers him the crown. It is no wonder that Brutus should regard him but as a “limb of Caesar,” or that Trebonius, considering him a mere time-server, should prophesy that he will “live and laugh” hereafter at Caesar's death. But they are wrong. They do not recognise either the genuineness of the affection that underlies his ingratiating ways, or the real genius that underlies his frivolity. Here, as everywhere, Cassius' estimate is the correct one. He fears Antony's “ingrafted love” for Caesar, and predicts that they will find in him “a shrewd contriver.” Of the love indeed there can be no question. It is proved not only by his public utterances, which might be factitious, nor by his deeds, which might serve his private purposes, but by his words, when he is alone with his patron's corpse.When Caesar says “do this,” it is perform'd.
It is worth noting the grounds that Antony in this solitary outburst alleges for his love of Caesar. He is moved not by gratitude for favours past or the [p. 291] expectation of favours to come, but solely by the supreme nobility of the dead. To the claims of nobility, in truth, Antony is always responsive and he is ready to acknowledge it in Brutus too. “This was the noblest Roman of them all” ; so he begins his heartfelt tribute to his vanquished foe. This generous sympathetic strain in his nature is one of the things that make him dangerous. He is far from acting a part in his laments for Caesar. He feels the grief that he proclaims and the greatness he extols. His emotions are easily stirred, especially by worthy objects, and he has only to give them free rein to impress other people. But along with this he has a subtle, scheming intellect; he is as much a man of policy as a man of sentiment. After the flight of Brutus and Cassius, we see him planning how he and his colleagues may cut down Caesar's bequests, of which in his speech he had made so much; how he may shift some of the odium of his proceedings on to Lepidus' back; how they may best arrange to meet the opposition. This mixture of feeling and diplomacy is especially shown in his words and deeds after the assassination. He does not shrink from any base compliance. His servant appears before the murderers, and at his bidding “kneels,” “falls down”, lies “prostrate” in token of submission, promising that his master will follow Brutus' fortunes. But even here it is on the understanding that Caesar's death shall be justified; and when he himself enters he gives his love and grief free scope.O, pardon me, thou bleeding piece of earth,
That I am meek and gentle with these butchers!
Thou art the ruins of the noblest man
That ever lived in the tide of times.
Woe to the hand that shed this costly blood!
What could be more loyal on the one hand, or more discreet on the other? For, as he is well aware, if he comes to terms with the assassins at all, he is liable to an alternative accusation. Either his love for Caesar was genuine, and then his reconciliation with the murderers implies craven fear; or, if he can freely take their part, his previous homage to Caesar was mere pretence. As he himself says:O mighty Caesar, dost thou lie so low?
Are all thy conquests, glories, triumphs, spoils,
Shrunk to this little measure? Fare thee well.
I know not, gentlemen, what you intend,
Who else must be let blood, who else is rank:
If I myself, there is no hour so fit
As Caesar's death's hour, nor no instrument
Of half that worth as those your swords, made rich [p. 292]
With the most noble blood of all this world.
I do beseech ye, if you bear me hard,
Now, whilst your purpled hands do reek and smoke,
Fulfil your pleasure. Live a thousand years,
I shall not find myself so apt to die;
No place will please me so, no mean of death,
As here by Caesar, and by you cut off,
The choice and master spirits of this age.
And what more dexterous course could he adopt than to assert his devotion to Caesar without restraint, with undiminished emphasis: and at the same time to profess his respect for the conspirators, “the choice and master spirits of this age,” and his readiness to join them if they prove that Caesar deserved to die. This honourable and reasonable attitude, which honour and reason would in reality prescribe, must especially impress Brutus, to whom Antony is careful chiefly to address himself. He enters a doubtful suppliant; at the end of the scene not only are his life and credit safe, but he has won from Brutus' magnanimity the means to overthrow him. It is characteristic of Antony that he has no scruple about using the vantage ground he has thus acquired. He immediately determines to employ the liberty of speech accorded him against the men who have granted it. To Octavius' [p. 293] servant, who enters ere he has well ended his soliloquy, he says:My credit now stands on such slippery ground,
That one of two bad ways you must conceit me,
Either a coward or a flatterer.
He does not hesitate, though this course will involve in ruin those who have generously spared him and given him the weapons against themselves. Not even for his country's sake will he pause, though, with his prescient imagination, he sees in all their lurid details the horrors of theThou shalt not back till I have borne this corse
Into the market place: there shall I try,
In my oration, how the people take
The cruel issue of these bloody men.
that must inevitably ensue. And he effects his purpose, without any other help, by his wonderful address to the citizens. Perhaps nowhere else in History or Literature do we find the procedure of the demagogue of Genius set forth with such masterly insight. For Antony shows himself a demagogue of the most profligate description, but as undeniably the very genius of the art of moving men. Consider the enormous difficulties of his position. He is speaking under limitation and by permission before a hostile audience that will barely give him a hearing, and his task is to turn them quite round, and make them adore what they hated and hate what they adored. How does he set about it? He begins with an acknowledgment and compliment to Brutus: “For Brutus' sake I am beholding to you.” He disclaims the intention of even praising the dead. He cites the charge of ambition, but not to reply to it, merely to point out that any ambition has been expiated. But then he insinuates arguments on the other side: Caesar's faithfulness and justice in friendship, the additions not to his private but to the public wealth that his victories secured, [p. 294] his pitifulness to the poor, his refusal of the crown. Really these things are no arguments at all. They have either nothing to do with the case, or are perfectly compatible with ambition, or may have been its very means or may have been meant to cloak it. Such indeed we know that in part at least they were. But that does not signify so far as Antony's purpose is concerned. They were all matters well known to the public, fit to call forth proud and grateful and pleasing reminiscences of Caesar's career. The orator has managed to praise Caesar while not professing to do so: if he does not disprove what Brutus said, yet in speaking what he does know, he manages to discredit Brutus' authority. And now these regretful associations stirred, he can at any rate ask their tears for their former favourite. Have they lost their reason that they do not at least mourn for him they once loved? And here with a rhetorical trick, which, to his facile, emotional nature, may have also been the suggestion of real feeling, his utterance fails him; he must pause, for his “heart is in the coffin there with Caesar.” We may be sure that whatever had happened to his heart his ear was intent to catch the murmurs of the crowd. They would satisfy him. Though he has not advanced one real argument, but has only played as it were on their sensations, their mood has changed. Some think Caesar has had wrong, some are convinced that he was not ambitious, all are now thoroughly favourable to Antony. He begins again. And now he strikes the note of contrast between Caesar's greatness yesterday and his impotence to-day. It is such a tragic fall as in itself might move all hearts to terror and pity. But what if the catastrophe were undeserved? Antony could prove that it was, but he will keep faith with the conspirators and refrain. Nevertheless he has the testament, though he will not read [p. 295] it, which, read, would show them that Caesar was their best friend. Compassion, curiosity, selfishness are now enlisted on his side. Cries of “The will! The will!” arise. He is quick to take advantage of these. Just as he would not praise Caesar, yet did so all the same; so he refuses to read the will, for they would rise in mutiny--this is a little preliminary hint to them--if they heard that Caesar had made them his heirs. Renewed insistence on the part of the mob, renewed coyness on the part of Antony; till at last he steps down from the pulpit, taking care to have a wide circle round him that as many as possible may see. But he does not read the will immediately. Partly with his incomparable eye to effect, partly out of the fullness of his heart (for the substance of his words is the same as in his private soliloquy), he stands rapt above the body. Caesar's mantle recalls proud memories of the glory of Caesar and of Rome, the victory over the Barbarian.5 And this mantle is pierced by the stabs of assassins, of Cassius, of Casca, of Brutus himself. He has now advanced so far that he can attack the man who was the idol of the [p. 296] mob but a few minutes before. And he makes his attack well. The very superiority of Brutus to personal claims, the very patriotism which none could appreciate better than Antony, and to which he does large justice when Brutus is no more, this very disinterestedness he turns against Brutus, and despite all he owes him, accuses him of black ingratitude. There is so much speciousness in the charge that it would be hard to rebut before a tribunal of sages: and when Antony makes his coup, withdrawing the mantle and displaying the mutilated corpse,Domestic fury and fierce civil strife
the cause of Brutus is doomed. Antony has a right to exult, and he does so. There is the triumphant pride of the artist in his art, when, on resuming, he represents Brutus as the rhetorician and himself as the unpractised speaker. He is no orator as Brutus is, and--with sublime effrontery--that was probably the reason he was permitted to address them. ButKind souls, what, weep you when you but behold
Our Caesar's vesture wounded? Look you here,
Here is himself, marr'd, as you see, with traitors:
Note the last words: for though Antony feels entitled to indulge in this farcing and enjoys it thoroughly, he does not forget the serious business. He keeps recurring more and more distinctly to the suggestion of mutiny, and for mutiny the citizens are now more than fully primed. All this, moreover, he has achieved without ever playing his trump card. They have quite forgotten about the will, and indeed it is not required. But Antony thinks it well to have them beside themselves, so he calls them back for this last maddening draught. [p. 297] And all the while, it will be observed, he has never answered Brutus' charge on which he rested his whole case, that Caesar was ambitious. Yet such is the headlong flight of his eloquence, winged by genius, by passion, by craft, that his audience never perceive this. No wonder: it is apt to escape even deliberate readers. Such a man will go fast and far. We next see him practically the ruler of Rome, swaying the triumvirate, treating Octavius as an admiring pupil whom he will tutor in the trade, ordering about or ridiculing the insignificant and imitative Lepidus.7 But he has the hybris of genius, unaccompanied by character and undermined by licence. It would be an anomaly if such an one were to be permanently successful. Shakespeare was by and by, though probably as yet he knew it not, to devote a whole play to the story of his downfall; here he contents himself with indicating his impending deposition and the agent who shall accomplish it. There is something ominous about the reticence, assurance, and calm self-assertion of the “stripling or springall of twenty years” as Plutarch calls Octavius. At the proscription Lepidus and even Antony are represented as consenting to the death of their kinsfolk: Octavius makes demands but no concessions. When Lepidus is ordered off on his errand, and Antony, secure in his superiority, explains his methods, Octavius listens silent with just a hint of dissent, but we feel that he is learning his lessons and will apply them in due time at his teacher's expense. Already he appropriates the leadership. Before Philippi, Antony assigns to him the left wing and he calmly answers:Were I Brutus
And Brutus Antony, there were an Antony
Would ruffle up your spirits and put a tongue
In every wound of Caesar, that should move
The stones of Rome to rise and mutiny.
[p. 298] All these touches are contributed by Shakespeare, but the last is especially noticeable, because, though the words and the particular turn are his own, the incident itself is narrated not of Antony and Octavius but of their opponents.Upon the right hand I, keep thou the left.
Antony.
Why do you cross me in this exigent?
Octavius.
I do not cross you: but I will do so.
Then Brutus prayed Cassius he might have the leading of the right winge, the whiche men thought was farre meeter for Cassius: both bicause he was the elder man and also for that he had the better experience. But yet Cassius gave it him.Octavius too has a higher conception of the dignity of his position. In that strange scene, another of Shakespeare's additions, when the adversaries exchange gabs, like the heroes of the old Teutonic lays or the Chansons de Gestes, it is Antony who suggests the somewhat unseemly proceeding and it is Octavius who breaks it off. And at the close he, as it were, constitutes himself the heir of Brutus' reputation, and assumes as a matter of course that he has the right and duty to provide for Brutus' followers and take order for Brutus' funeral.
For the first of these statements there is no warrant in Plutarch, and the second contradicts the impression his narrative produces; for in all the mention he makes of the final honours paid to Brutus, he gives the credit to Antony.All that served Brutus, I will entertain them . . .
According to his virtue let us use him
With all respect and rites of burial
Within my tent his bones tonight shall lie.
Antonius, having found Brutus bodie, he caused it to be wrapped up in one of the richest cote armors he had. Afterwards also, Antonius understanding that this cote armor was stollen, he put the theefe to death that had stollen it, and sent the ashes of his bodie to Servilia his mother. Marcus Brutus.[p. 299] And more explicitly in the Marcus Antonius:
(Antony) cast his coate armor (which was wonderfull rich and sumptuous) upon Brutus bodie, and gave commaundement to one of his slaves infranchised to defray the charge of his buriall.By means of these additions and displacements Shakespeare shows the young Octavius with his tenacity and self-control already superseding his older and more brilliant colleague. We see in them the beginning as well as the prophecy of the end. [p. 300]
