M. W. MacCallum, Shakespeare's Roman Plays and their Background

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Chapter 2
Shakespeare's Transmutation of his Material

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The examples given in the previous chapter may serve to show that from one point of view it is impossible to exaggerate Shakespeare's dependence on Plutarch. But this is not the only or the most important aspect of the case. He alters and adds quite as much as he gets. No slight modification of the story is implied by its mere reduction to dramatic shape, at least when the dramatiser is so consummate a playwright as Shakespeare. And it is very interesting to observe the instinctive skill with which he throws narrated episodes, like that of the death of Cassius, into the form of dialogues and scenes. But the dramatisation involves a great deal more than this. Shakespeare has to fix on what he regards as the critical points in the continuous story, to rearrange round them what else he considers of grand importance, and to bridge in some way the gaps between. These were prime essentials in all his English historical pieces. The pregnant moments have to be selected; and become so many ganglia, in which a number of filaments chronologically distinct are gathered up; yet they have to be exhibited not in isolation, but as connected with each other, and all belonging to one system. And in Julius Caesar this is the more noticeable, as it makes use [p. 188] of more sources than one. The main authority is the Life of Brutus, but the Life of Caesar also is employed very freely, and the Life of Antony to some extent. The scope and need for insight in this portion of the task are therefore proportionately great.

Thus the opening scene refers to Caesar's defeat of the sons of Pompey in Spain, for which he celebrated his triumph in October, 45 B.C. But Shakespeare dates it on the 15th February, 44 B.C., at the Lupercalian Festival.¹ Then, in the account of Caesar's chagrin at his reception, he mixes up, as Plutarch himself to some extent does, two quite distinct episodes, one of which does not belong to the Lupercalia at all.² Lastly, it was only later that the Tribunes were silenced and deprived of their offices for stripping the images, not of Caesar's “trophies,” but of “diadems,” ³ or, more specifically, of the “laurel crown” ⁴Antony had offered him.

The next group of events is clustered round the assassination, and they begin on the eve of the Ides, the 14th March. But at first we are not allowed to feel that a month has passed. By various artifices the flight of time is kept from obtruding, itself. The position of the scene with the storm, which ushers in this part of the story, as the last of the first act instead of the first of the second, of itself associates it in our minds with what has gone before. Then [p. 189] there are several little hints that we involuntarily expand in the same sense. Thus Cassius has just said:

I will this night,
In several hands, in at his windows throw,
As if they came from several citizens,
Writings all tending to the great opinion
That Rome holds of his name; wherein obscurely
Caesar's ambition shall be glanced at.

(I. ii. 319.)

And now we hear him say:

Good Cinna, take this paper,
And look you lay it in the praetor's chair,
Where Brutus may but find it: and throw this
In at his window; set this up with wax
Upon old Brutus' statue.

(I. iii. 142.)

We seem to see him carrying out the programme that he has announced for the night of the Lupercalia. Yet there are other hints,--the frequency with which Brutus has received these instigations (II. i. 49), his protracted uncertainty since Cassius first sounded him (II. i. 61), the fact that he himself has had time to approach Ligarius,--which presently make us realise that the opening scenes of the drama are left a long way behind.

And in this section, too, Shakespeare has crowded his incidents. The decisive arrangements of the conspirators, with their rejection of the oath, are dated the night before the assassination; Plutarch puts them earlier. Then, according to Plutarch, there was a senate meeting the morning after Caesar's murder; and Antony, having escaped in slave's apparel, proposed an amnesty for the perpetrators, offered his son as hostage, and persuaded them to leave the Capitol. On the following day dignities were distributed among the ringleaders and a public funeral was decreed to Caesar. Only then did the reading of the will, the speech of Antony, and the émeute of the people follow, and the reading of the will [p. 190] preceded the speech. After a while Octavius comes from Apollonia to see about his inheritance.

In the play, on the other hand, Antony's seeming agreement with the assassins is patched up a few minutes after the assassination. Octavius, summoned by the dead Caesar, is already within seven leagues of Rome. Antony at once proceeds with the corpse to the market place. He has hardly made his speech and then read the will, when, as the citizens rush off in fury, he learns that Octavius has arrived.

A lengthy interval elapses between the end of Act III. and the beginning of Act Iv., occupied, so far as Rome and Italy were concerned, with the rivalry and intrigues of Antony and Octavius, and the discomfiture of the former (partly through Cicero's exertions), till he wins the army of Lepidus and Octavius finds it expedient to join forces with him and establish the Triumvirate. But of all this not a word in Shakespeare. He dismisses it as irrelevant, and creates an illusion of speed and continuity, where there is none. The servant who announces the arrival of Octavius, tells Antony:

He and Lepidus are at Caesar's house.

(III. xi. 269.) “Bring me to Octavius,” says Antony. And the fourth act opens “at a house in Rome,” “Antony, Octavius and Lepidus seated at a table,” just finishing the lists of the proscription. The impression produced is that their conference is direct sequel to the popular outbreak and the conspirators' flight. Yet it is November, 43 B.C., and nineteen or twenty months have gone by since the Ides of March. And the progress of time is indicated as well as concealed. Antony announces as a new and alarming piece of news

And now, Octavius,
Listen great things :--Brutus and Cassius
Are levying powers.

(Iv. i. 40.)

[p. 191]

This too covers a gap in the history and hurries on the connection. The suggestion is that they are beginning operations at last, and that hitherto they have been inactive. Their various intermediate adventures and wanderings are passed over. We are carried forward to their grand effort, and are reintroduced to them only when they meet again at Sardis in the beginning of 42 B.C., just before the final movement to Philippi, where the battle was fought in October of the same year.

And this scene also is “compounded of many simples.” The dispute which the poet⁵interrupts, the difference of opinion about Pella, the appearance of the Spirit, are all located at Sardis by Plutarch, but he separates them from each other; the news of Portia's death is undated, the quarrel about money matters took place at Smyrna, and other traits are derived from various quarters. Here they are all made

To join like likes, and kiss like native things.

Then at Philippi itself, not only are some of the speeches transferred from the eve to the day of the engagement; but a whole series of operations, and two pitched battles, twenty days apart, after the first of which Cassius, and after the second of which Brutus, committed suicide, are pressed into a few hours.

It will thus be seen that though the action is spread over a period of three years, from the triumphal entry of Caesar in October, 45 B.C., till the victory of his avengers in October, 42 B.C., Shakespeare concentrates it into the story of five eventful days, which however do not correspond to the five separate acts, but by “overlapping” and other contrivances produce the effect of close sequence, [p. 192] while in point of fact, historically, they are not consecutive at all.

In the first day there is the exposition, enforcing the predominance of Caesar and the revulsion against it (Act I. i. and ii.); assigned to the 15th February, 44 B.C.

In the second day there is the assassination with its immediate preliminaries and sequels (Act I. iii., Act II., Act III.) all compressed within the twentyfour hours allowed to a French tragedy, viz. within the interval between the night before the Ides of March and the next afternoon or evening.⁶

In the third day there is the account of the Proscription in November, 43 B.C. (Act Iv. i.). In the fourth day the meeting of Brutus and Cassius, which took place early in 42 B.C., and the apparition of the boding spirit, are described (Act IV. ii. and iii.). Both these days are included in one act.

The fifth day is devoted to the final battle and its accessories, and must be placed in October, 42 B.C. (Act v.).

But the selection, assortment and filiation of the data are not more conspicuous in the construction of the plot than in the execution of the details. There will be frequent occasion to touch incidentally on these and similar processes in the discussion of other matters, but here it may be well to illustrate them separately, so far as that is possible when nearly every particular instance shows the influence of more than one of them.

Thus while Shakespeare's picture of the very perfect union of Brutus and Portia is taken almost in its entirety from Plutarch, who was himself so keenly alive to the beauty of such a wedlock, the charm of [p. 193] the traits he adopts is heightened by the absence of those he rejects. Probably indeed he did not know, for Plutarch does not mention it, that Brutus had been married before, and had got rid of his first wife by the simple and regular expedient of sending her home to her father. But he did know that Portia, too, had a first husband, Bibulus, “by whom she had also a young sonne.” The ideal beauty of their relation is unbrushed by any hint of their previous alliances.

So, too, he attributes the coolness between Brutus and Cassius at the beginning of the story merely to Brutus' inward conflicts, and to Cassius' misconstruction of his pre-occupation. In point of fact, it had a more definite and less creditable cause. According to Plutarch, they had both been strenuous rivals for the position of City Praetor, Brutus recommended by his “vertue and good name,” Cassius by his “many noble exploytes” against the Parthians. Caesar, saying “Cassius cause is juster, but Brutus must be first preferred,” had given Brutus the chief dignity and Cassius the second: therefore “they grew straunge together for the sute they had for the praetorshippe.” But it would not answer Shakespeare's purpose to show Brutus as moved by personal ambitions, or either of them as aspiring for honours that Caesar could grant.

There are few better examples of the way in which Shakespeare rearranges his material than the employment he makes of Plutarch's enumeration of the portents that preceded the assassination. It is given as immediate preface to the catastrophe of the Ides.

Certainly, destenie may easier be foreseene then avoyded; considering the straunge and wonderfull signes that were sayd to be seene before Caesars death. For touching the fires in the element, and spirites running up and downe in the night, and also these solitarie birdes to be seene at noone dayes sittinge in the great market place: are not all these signes perhappes worth the noting in such a wonderful [p. 194] chaunce as happened? But Strabo the Philosopher wryteth, that divers men were seene going up and done in fire: and furthermore, that there was a slave of the souldiers, that did cast a marvelous burning flame out of his hande, insomuch as they that saw it, thought he had been burnt, but when the fire was out, it was found he had no hurt. Caesar selfe also doing sacrifice unto the Goddes, found that one of the beastes which was sacrificed had no hart: and that was a straunge thing in nature, how a beast could live without a hart. Furthermore, there was a certain soothsayer that had geven Caesar warning long time affore, to take heede of the day of the Ides of Marche (which is the fifteenth of the moneth), for on that day he should be in great danger. That day being come, Caesar going into the Senate house, and speaking merily to the Soothsayer, tolde him, ‘ The Ides of Marche be come’ : ‘So be they’ , softly aunswered the Soothsayer, ‘but yet are they not past.’ And the very day before, Caesar supping with Marcus Lepidus, sealed certaine letters as he was wont to do at the bord: so talke falling out amongest them, reasoning what death was best: he preventing their opinions, cried out alowde, ‘Death unlooked for.’ Then going to bedde the same night as his manner was, and lying with his wife Calpurnia, all the windowes and dores of his chamber flying open, the noyse awooke him, and made him affrayed when he saw such light: but more when he heard his wife Calpurnia, being fast a sleepe weepe and sigh, and put forth many fumbling and lamentable speaches. For she dreamed that Caesar was slaine, and that she had him in her armes.

Julius Caesar

It is interesting to note how Shakespeare takes this passage to pieces and assigns those of them for which he has a place to their fitting and effective position. Plutarch's reflections on destiny and Caesar's opinions on death he leaves aside. The first warning of the soothsayer he refers back to the Lupercalia, and the second he shifts forward to its natural place. Calpurnia's outcries in her sleep and her prophetic dream, the apparition of the ghosts mentioned by her among the other prodigies, the lack of the heart in the sacrificial beast, are reserved for the scene of her expostulation with Caesar, and are dramatically distributed between the various [p. 195] speakers, Caesar, the servant, Calpurnia herself. Shakespeare relies on the fiery heavens and the firegirt shapes, the flaming hand and the boding bird for his grand effect, and puts them in a setting where they gain unspeakably in supernatural awe. Of course Shakespeare individualises Plutarch's hints and adds new touches. But the main terror is due to something else. We are made to view these portents in the reflex light of Casca's panic. He has just witnessed them, or believes that he has done so, and now breathless, staring, his naked sword in his hand, the storm raging around, he gasps out his amazement at Cicero's composure:

Are not you moved, when all the sway of earth
Shakes like a thing unfirm? Cicero,
I have seen tempests, when the scolding winds
Have rived the knotty oaks, and I have seen
The ambitious ocean swell and rage and foam,
To be exalted with the threatening clouds:
But never till to-night, never till now,
Did I go through a tempest dropping fire.
Either there is a civil strife in heaven,
Or else the world, too saucy with the gods,
Incenses them to send destruction.

Cicero.
Why, saw you anything more wonderful?

Casca.
A common slave-you know him well by sight-
Held up his left hand, which did flame and burn
Like twenty torches join'd, and yet his hand,
Not sensible of fire, remain'd unscorch'd.
Besides,--I ha‘ not since put up my sword-
Against the Capitol I met a lion,
Who glared upon me, and went surly by,
Without annoying me: and there were drawn
Upon a heap a hundred ghastly women,
Transformed with their fear; who swore they saw
Men all in fire walk up and down the streets.
And yesterday the bird of night did sit
Even at noon-day upon the market place
Hooting and shrieking. When these prodigies
Do so conjointly meet, let not men say,
‘These are their reasons: they are natural’ :
For, I believe, they are portentous things
Unto the climate that they point upon.

(I. iii. 3.)

[p. 196]

Here the superstitious thrill rises to a paroxysm of dread; but the effect of dispersing the subsidiary presages through so many scenes is to steep the whole play in an atmosphere of weird presentiment, till Caesar passes up to the very doors of the Capitol.

But besides selecting and rearranging the separate details, Shakespeare establishes an inner connection between them even when in Plutarch they are quite isolated from each other. This is well exemplified by the manner in which the biography and the drama treat the circumstance that the conspirators were not sworn to secrecy. Plutarch says:

The onlie name and great calling of Brutus did bring on the most of them to geve consent to this conspiracie. Who having never taken othes together, nor taken or geven any caution or assurance, nor binding them selves one to an other by any religious othes, they all kept the matter so secret to them selves, and could so cunninglie handle it, that notwithstanding the goddes did reveal it by manifeste signes and tokens from above, and by predictions of sacrifices, yet all this would not be believed. （Marcus Brutus.)

The drama puts it thus:

Brutus.
Give me your hands all over, one by one.

Cassius.
And let us swear our resolution.

Brutus.
No, not an oath: if not the face of men
The suffrance of our souls, the time's abuse,
If these be motives weak, break off betimes:

(ii. i. 112.) and so on through the rest of his magnificent speech that breathes the pure spirit of virtue and conviction. The nobility of Brutus that is reverenced by all, the conspiracy of Romans that is safe-guarded by no vows, move Plutarch's admiration, but he does not associate them. Shakespeare traces the one to the other and views them as cause and effect.

Shakespeare thus greatly alters the character of Plutarch's narrative by his ceaseless activity in sifting it, ordering it afresh, and reading into it an [p. 197] internal nexus that was often lacking in his authority. But this last proceeding implies that he also makes additions, and these are not only numerous and manifold, but frequently quite explicit and very far-reaching. It is important to note that Plutarch has furnished nothing more than stray hints, and often not even so much, for all the longer passages that have impressed themselves on the popular imagination. Cassius' description of the swimming match and of Caesar's fever, Brutus' soliloquy, his speech on the oath, his oration and that of Mark Antony, even, when regarded closely, his dispute with Cassius, are all virtually the inventions of Shakespeare. The only exception is the conversation with Portia, and even in it, though the climax, as we have seen, closely reproduces both Plutarch's matter and North's expression, the fine introduction is altogether Shakespearian.

But it is not the purple patches alone of which this is true. The more carefully one examines the finished fabric, the more clearly one sees that the dramatist has not merely woven and fashioned and embroidered it, but has provided most of the stuff.

Sometimes the new matter is a possible or plausible inference from the premises he found in his author.

Thus Plutarch represents the populace as on the whole favourable to Caesar, but the tribunes as antagonistic. He also records, concerning the celebration of Caesar's victory over Pompey's sons in Spain:

The triumph he made into Rome for the same did as much offend the Romanes, and more, then anything he had ever done before; bicause he had not overcome Captaines that were straungers, nor barbarous kinges, but had destroyed the sonnes of the noblest man in Rome, whom fortune had overthrowen. And bicause he had plucked up his race by the rootes men did not thinke it meete for him to triumphe so for the calamaties of his contrie.

（Julius Caesar.)

[p. 198]

This is all, but it is enough to give the foundation for the opening scene, which otherwise, both in dialogue and declamation, is an entirely free creation.

Sometimes again Shakespeare has realised the situation so vividly that he puts in some trait from the occurrences as in spirit he has witnessed them, something of the kind that may very well have happened, though there is no trace of it in the records. Thus he well knows what an unreasonable monster a street mob can be, how cruel in its gambols, how savage in its fun. So in the account of the poet Cinna's end, though the gist of the incident, the mistake in identity, the disregard of the explanation, are all given in Plutarch, Shakespeare's rioters wrest their victim's innocent avowal of celibacy to a flout at marriage, and meet his unanswerable defence, “I am Cinna the poet,” with the equally unanswerable retort, “Tear him for his bad verses.” (III. iii. 23.)

Some of these new touches do more than lend reality to the scene. Though not incompatible with Plutarch's account, they give it a turn that he might disclaim and certainly does not warrant, but that belongs to Shakespeare's conception of the case. Thus after describing the “holy course” of the Lupercal, and the superstition connected with it, Plutarch mentions that Caesar sat in state to witness the sport, and that Antony was one of the runners. There is nothing more; and Calpurnia is not even named. Shakespeare's introduction of her is therefore very curious. Whatever else it means, it shows that he imagined Caesar as desirous, certainly, of having an heir, and, inferentially, of founding a dynasty.⁷

Occasionally, however, the dramatist's insertions directly contradict the text of the Lives, if a more striking or more significant effect is to be attained, [p. 199] and if no essential fact is falsified. Thus Plutarch tells of Ligarius:

[Brutus] went to see him being sicke in his bedde, and sayed unto him : “O Ligarius, in what a time art thou sicke!” Ligarius risinge uppe in his bedde and taking him by the right hande, sayed unto him: “Brutus,” sayed he, “if thou hast any great enterprise in hande worthie of thy selfe, I am whole.” (Marcus Brutus.)

Shakespeare, keeping the phrases quoted almost literally, emphasises the effort that Ligarius makes, emphasises too the magnetic influence of Brutus, by representing the sick man as coming to his friend's house, as well as by amplifying his words:

Lucius.
Here is a sick man that would speak with you...

Brutus.
O, what a time have you chose out, brave Caius,
To wear a kerchief Would you were not sick!

Ligarius.
I am not sick, if Brutus have in hand
Any exploit worthy the name of honour . . .
By all the gods that Romans bow before
I here discard my sickness! Soul of Rome!
Brave son, derived from honourable loins!
Thou, like an exorcist, hast conjured up
My mortified spirit. Now bid me run,
And I will strive with things impossible;
Yea, get the better of them. . . .
. . . With a heart new-fired I follow you,
To do I know not what: but it sufficeth
That Brutus leads me on.

(II. i. 310.)

So too Plutarch describes the collapse of Portia in her suspense as more complete than does the play, and makes Brutus hear of it just after the critical moment when the conspirators fear that Lena has discovered their plot:

Nowe in the meane time, there came one of Brutus men post hast unto him, and tolde him his wife was a dying . . . . When Brutus heard these newes, it grieved him, as is to be presupposed: yet he left not of the care of his contrie and common wealth, neither went home to his house for any newes he heard.

In Shakespeare not only is this very effective dramatic touch omitted, but Portia sends Brutus [p. 200] an encouraging message. As her weakness increases upon her, she collects herself for a final effort and manages to give the command:

Run, Lucius, and commend me to my lord:
Say, I am merry: come to me again
And bring me word what he doth say to thee.

(II. iv. 44.)

Shakespeare may perhaps have been unwilling to introduce anything into the assassination scene that might distract attention from the decisive business on hand, but the alteration is chiefly due to another cause. These, the last words we hear Portia utter, were no doubt intended to bring out her forgetfulness of herself and her thought of Brutus even in the climax of her physical distress.

This, of course, does not affect our general estimate of Portia; but Shakespeare has no scruple about creating an entirely new character for a minor personage, and, in the process, disregarding the hints that he found and asserting quite the reverse. Thus Plutarch has not much to say about Casca, so Shakespeare feels free to sketch him after his own fancy as rude, blunt, uncultured, with so little education that, when Cicero speaks Greek, it is Greek to him. This is a libel on his up-bringing. Plutarch in one of the few details he spares to him, mentions that, when he stabbed Caesar, “they both cried out, Caesar in Latin, ‘O vile traitor, Casca, what doest thou?’ and Casca in Greek to his brother: ‘Brother, helpe me.’ ”

But some of Shakespeare's interpolations are, probably unawares to himself, of a vital and radical kind, and affect the conception of the chief characters and the whole idea of the story. Take, for example, Brutus' soliloquy, as he rids himself of his hesitations and scruples. This, from beginning to end, is the handiwork of Shakespeare:

It must be by his death: and, for my part I know no personal cause to spurn at him, [p. 201]
But for the general. He would be crown'd:
How that might change his nature, that's the question.
It is the bright day that brings forth the adder,
And that craves wary walking. Crown him?-that :--
And then, I grant, we put a sting in him,
That at his will he may do danger with.
The abuse of greatness is, when it disjoins
Remorse from power: and, to speak truth of Caesar,
I have not known when his affections sway'd
More than his reason. But ‘tis a common proof
That lowliness is young ambition's ladder,
Whereto the climber upward turns his face:
But when he once attains the topmost round,
He then unto the ladder turns his back,
Looks in the clouds, scorning the base degrees
By which he did ascend. So Caesar may;
Then lest he may, prevent. And, since the quarrel
Will bear no colour for the thing he is,
Fashion it thus; that what he is, augmented,
Would run to these and these extremities:
And therefore think him as a serpent's egg,
Which, hatch'd, would as his kind, grow mischievous,
And kill him in the shell.

(II. i. 10.)

These words are so unlike, or, rather, so opposite to all that we should have expected, that Coleridge cannot repress his amazement. He comments:

This speech is singular:--at least, I do not at present see into Shakespeare's motive, his rationale, or in what point of view he meant Brutus' character to appear. For surely . . . nothing can seem more discordant with our historical preconceptions of Brutus, or more lowering to the intellect of the Stoico-Platonic tyrannicide, than the tenets here attributed to him--to him, the stern Roman republican; namely,--that he would have no objection to a king, or to Caesar, a monarch in Rome, would Caesar but be as good a monarch as he now seems disposed to be.

（Lectures and Notes of 1818.)

And this in a way is the crucial statement of Brutus' case. Here he has tried to get rid of the assumptions that move himself and the rest, and seeks to find something that will satisfy his reason. It is thus a more intimate revelation of his deliberate principles, though not necessarily of his subconscious instincts or his untested opinions, than other utterances in [p. 202] which he lets feeling or circumstance have sway. Of these there are two that do not quite coincide with it. One of them is not very important, and in any case would not bring him nearer to the antique conception. In his plea for a pure administration of affairs, he asks Cassius:

What, shall one of us,
That struck the foremost man of all this world
But for supporting robbers, shall we now
Contaminate our fingers with base bribes?

(iv. iii. 21.)

But this, one feels, is merely an argumentum ad hominem, brought forward very much in afterthought for a particular purpose. At the time, neither in Brutus' speeches to himself or others, nor in the discussions of the conspirators, is Caesar accused of countenancing peculation, or is this made a handle against him. And if it were, it would not be incompatible with acquiescence in a royal government. ⁸ [p. 203]

The other is the exclamation with which he “pieces out” the anonymous letter that Cassius had left unfinished:

Shall Rome stand under one man's awe? What, Rome?

(II. i. 52.)

This certainly has somewhat of the republican ring. It breathes the same spirit as Cassius' own avowal:

I had as lief not be, as live to be In awe of such a thing as I myself;

(i. ii. 95.)

except that Cassius feels Caesar's predominance to be a personal affront, while Brutus characteristically extends his view to the whole community. But here Brutus is speaking under the excitement of Cassius' “instigation,” and making himself Cassius' mouthpiece to fill in the blanks. Assuredly the declaration is not on that account the less personal to himself; nevertheless in it Brutus, no longer attempting to square his action with his theory, falls back on the blind impulses of blood that he shares with the other aristocrats of Rome. And in this, the most republican and the only republican sentiment that falls from his lips, which for the rest is so little republican that it might be echoed by the loyal subject of a limited monarchy, it is only the negative aspect of the matter and the public amour propre that are considered. Of the positive essence of republicanism, of enthusiasm for a state in which all the lawful authority is derived from the whole body of fully qualified citizens, there is, despite Brutus' talk of freemen and slaves and Caesar's ambition, no trace whatever in any of his utterances from first to last. It has been said that Plutarch's Brutus could live nowhere but in a self-governing [p. 204] commonwealth; Shakespeare's Brutus would be quite at home under a constitutional king and need not have found life intolerable even in Tudor England. This indeed is an exaggeration. True, in his soliloquy he bases his whole case on the deterioration of Caesar's nature that kingship might bring about; and if it were proved, as it easily could be from instances like that of Numa, which Shakespeare and therefore Shakespeare's Brutus knew, that no such result need follow, his entire sorites would seem to snap. But though the form of his reflection is hypothetical and the hypothesis will not hold, the substance is categorical enough. Brutus has such inbred detestation of the royal power that practically he assumes it must beyond question be mischievous in its moral effects. This, however, is no reasoned conviction, though it is the starting-point for what he means to be a dispassionate argument, but a dogma of traditional passion. And even were it granted it would not make Brutus a true representative of classic republicanism. Shakespeare has so little comprehension of the antique point of view that to him a thoughtful and public-spirited citizen can find a rational apology for violent measures only by looking at Caesar's future and not at all by looking at Caesar's past. This Elizabethan Brutus sees nothing to blame in Caesar's previous career. He has not known “when his affections (i.e. passions) sway'd more than his reason,” and implies that he has not hitherto disjoined “remorse (i.e. scrupulousness) from power.” Yet as Coleridge pertinently asks, was there nothing “in Caesar's past conduct as a man” to call for Brutus' censure? “Had he not passed the Rubicon,” and the like? But such incidents receive no attention. Perhaps Shakespeare thought no more of Caesar's crossing the Rubicon to suppress Pompey and put an end to the disorders of Rome, than of Richmond's crossing [p. 205] the Channel to suppress Richard III., and put end to the Wars of the Roses. At any rate he makes no mention of these and similar grounds of offence, though all or most of them were set down in his authority.⁹

Shakespeare's position may be thus described. He read in Plutarch that Brutus, the virtuous Roman, killed Caesar, the master-spirit of his own and perhaps of any age, from a disinterested sense of duty. That was easy to understand, for Shakespeare would know, and if he did not know it from his own experience his well-conned translation of Montaigne would teach him, that the best of men are determined in their feeling of right by the preconceptions of race, class, education and the like. But he also read that Brutus was a philosophic student who would not accept or obey the current code without scrutinising it and fitting it into his theory. Of the political theory, however, which such an one would have, Shakespeare had no knowledge or appreciation. So whenever Brutus tries to harmonise his purpose with his idealist doctrine, he has to be furnished with new reasons instead of the old and obvious ones. And these are neither very clear nor very antique. They make one [p. 206] inclined to quote concerning him the words of Caesar spoken to Cicero in regard to the historical Brutus:

I knowe not what this young man woulde, but what he woulde he willeth it vehemently. (Marcus Brutus.)

For what is it that he would? The one argument with which he can excuse to his own heart the projected murder, is that the aspirant to royal power, though hitherto irreproachable, may or must become corrupted and misuse his high position. This is as different from the attitude of the ancient Roman as it well could be. It would never have occurred to the genuine republican of olden time that any justification was needed for despatching a man who sought to usurp the sovereign place; and if it had, this is certainly the last justification that would have entered his head.

But the introspection, the self-examination, the craving for an inward moral sanction that will satisfy the conscience, and the choice of the particular sanction that does so, are as typical of the modern as they are alien to the classical mind. It is clear that an addition of this kind is not merely mechanical or superficial. It affects the elements already given, and produces, as it were, a new chemical combination. And this particular instance shows how Shakespeare transforms the whole story. He reanimates Brutus by infusing into his veins a strain of present feeling that in some ways transmutes his character; and, transmuting the character in which the chief interest centres, he cannot leave the other data as they were. He can resuscitate the past in its persons, its conflicts, its palpitating vitality just because he endows it with his own life. It was an ancient belief that the shades of the departed were inarticulate or dumb till they had lapped a libation of warm blood; then they would [p. 207] speak forth their secrets. In like manner it is the life-blood of Shakespeare's own passion and thought that throbs in the pulses of these unsubstantial dead and gives them human utterance once more. This, however, has two aspects. It is the dead who speak; but they speak through the life that Shakespeare has lent them. The past is resuscitated; but it is a resuscitation, not the literal existence it had before. Nor in any other way can the phantoms of history win bodily shape and perceptible motion for the world of breathing men.

This may be illustrated by comparing Shakespeare's Julius Caesar with the Julius Caesar of Sir William Alexander, afterwards Earl of Stirling, which seems to have been written a few years later than its more illustrious namesake. Alexander was an able man and a considerable poet, from whom Shakespeare himself did not disdain to borrow hints for Prospero's famous reflections on the transitoriness of things. He used virtually the same sources as Shakespeare, like him making Plutarch his chief authority, and to supplement Plutarch, betaking himself, as Shakespeare may also have done, to the tradition set in France by Muretus, Grévin, and Garnier. So they build on much the same sites and with much the same timber. But their methods are as different as can well be imagined. Alexander is by far the more scrupulous in his reproduction of the old-world record. He adopts the Senecan type of tragedy, exaggerating its indifference to movement and fondness for lengthy harangues; and this enables him to preserve much of the narrative in its original form without thorough reduction to the category of action. This also in large measure exempts him from the need of reorganising his material: practically a single situation is given, and whatever else of the story is required, has to be conveyed in the words of the persons, who can [p. 208] repeat things just as they have been reported. And proceeding in this way Alexander can include as much as he pleases of Plutarch's abundance, a privilege of which he avails himself to the utmost. Few are the details that he must absolutely reject, for they can always be put in somebody's mouth; he is slow to tamper with Plutarch's location of them; and he never connects them more closely than Plutarch has authorised. He does not extract from his document inferences that have not already been drawn, nor falsify it with picturesque touches that have not been already supplied, and he would not dream of contradicting it in small things or great. Even Brutus' republicanism is sacred to the author of this “Monarchic Tragedy,” though he was to be Secretary of State to Charles I. and noted for his advocacy of Divine Right. He has a convenient theory to justify Brutus as much as is necessary from his point of view. He makes him explain:

If Caesar had been born or chused our prince
Then those, who durst attempt to take his life,
The world of treason justly might convince.
Let still the states, which flourish for the time,
By subjects be inviolable thought:
And those (no doubt) commit a monstrous crime,
Who lawfull soveraignty prophane in ought:
And we must think (though now thus brought to bow)
The senate, king; a subject Caesar is:
The soveraignty whom violating now
The world must damne, as having done amisse.

Brutus' motives, which Shakespeare sophisticates, can thus be left him. But does this bit of reasoning, which reads like a passage from the Leviathan, and explains why King James called Alexander “My philosophical poet,” really come nearer the historic truth than the heart- searching of Shakespeare's Brutus? And does Alexander, taking Brutus' convictions at second hand and manufacturing an apology for them, do much more to revive the real Brutus, [p. 209] than Shakespeare, whose fervid imagination drives him to realise Brutus' inmost heart, and who just for that reason

seeks into him
For that which is not in him?

Here and generally Alexander gives the exacter, if not the more faithful transcript, but the main truth, the truth of life, escapes him; and therefore, too, despite all his painstaking fidelity, he is apt to miss even the vital touches that Plutarch gives. We have seen with what reverent accuracy Shakespeare reproduces the conversation between Brutus and Portia. In a certain way Alexander is more accurate still. Portia pleads:

I was not (Brutus) match'd with thee to be
A partner onely of thy boord and bed;
Each servile whore in those might equall me,
Who but for pleasure or for wealth did wed.
No, Portia spoused thee minding to remaine
Thy fortunes partner, whether good or ill: . . .
If thus thou seek thy sorrows to conceale
Through a distrust, or a mistrust of me,
Then to the world what way can I reveale,
How great a matter I would do for thee?
And though our sexe too talkative be deem'd,
As those whose tongues import our greatest pow'rs,
For secrets still bad treasurers esteem'd,
Of others greedy, prodigall of ours:
“Good education may reforme defects,”
And this may leade me to a vertuous life,
(Whil'st such rare patterns generous worth respects)
I Cato's daughter am, and Brutus wife.
Yet would I not repose my trust in ought,
Still thinking that thy crosse was great to beare,
Till I my courage to a tryall brought,
Which suffering for thy cause can nothing feare:
For first to try how that I could comport
With sterne afflictions sprit-enfeebling blows,
Ere I would seek to vex thee in this sort,
(To whom my soule a dutious reverence owes);
Loe, here a wound which makes me not to smart,
No, I rejoyce that thus my strength is knowne;
Since thy distresse strikes deeper in my heart,
Thy griefe (lifes joy!) makes me neglect mine owne.

[p. 210] And Brutus answers:

Thou must (deare love!) that which thou sought'st, receive;
Thy heart so high a saile in stormes still beares,
That thy great courage does deserve to have
Our enterprise entrusted to thine eares.

Here, with the rhetorical amplification which was the chief and almost sole liberty that Alexander allowed himself, Plutarch's train of thought is more closely followed than by Shakespeare himself. King James's “philosophical poet” does not even suppress the tribute to education, but rather calls attention to the edifying “sentence” by the expedient less common west of the Channel than among his French masters, of placing it within inverted commas. But, besides lowering the temperature of the whole, he characteristically omits the most important passage, at least in so far as Brutus is concerned, his prayer that “he might be founde a husband, worthie of so noble a wife as Porcia.”

Suppose that a conscientious draughtsman and a painter of genius were moved to reproduce the impression that a group of antique statuary had made on them, using the level surface which alone is at their disposal. The one might choose his station, and set down with all possible precision in his black and white as much as was given him to see. The other taking into account the different conditions of the pictorial and the plastic art, might visualise what seemed to him the inmost meaning to his own mind in his own way, and represent it, the same yet not the same, in all the glory of colour. The former would deliver a version more useful to the historian of sculpture were the original to be lost, but one in which we should miss many beauties of detail, and from which the indwelling spirit would have fled. The latter would not give much help to an antiquarian knowledge of the archetype, but he might transmit its inspiration, and rouse kindred feelings [p. 211] in an even greater degree just because they were mingled with others that came from his own heart.

The analogy is, of course, an imperfect one, for the problem of rendering the solid on the flat is not on all fours with the problem of converting Plutarch's Lives to modern plays. But it applies to this extent, that in both cases the task is to interpret a subject, that has received one kind of treatment, by a treatment that is quite dissimilar. And the difference between William Alexander and William Shakespeare is very much the difference between the conscientious draughtsman and the inspired artist. [p. 212]