Climax, Fall, and Close or Catastrophe. In addition to these five parts there is frequently a sixth, the Introduction or Exposition, containing, as it were, the end or circumstance from which the action arises. In Julius Cæsar the First Scene is of an introductory nature. 1. The Opening Movement lies in the Second Scene of the First Act, in the meeting of Brutus and Cassius. 2. The Growth embraces everything between the Opening and the Climax, and includes the progress of the Conspiracy and the presentation of Cæsar's character. 3. The Climax is the death of Cæsar, and it is essential that it be made especially manifest. 4. The Fall embraces the events between the Ides of March and the battle of Philippi. The interest in the play is kept alive by the references of Octavius to the spirit of Cæsar, and by the appearance of Cæsar's ghost. 5. The Catastrophe is a consequence of the action itself. The battle of Philippi is the result of Cæsar's assassination, and the defeat of Brutus and Cassius, and their suicide have been prepared for by the development of their characters throughout the play, and by the manifestations of the Cæsarean power. The central idea of the play, considered politically, is the decay of republicanism in Rome and the rise of Cæsarism. In the First Scene the populace give unconscious evidence of the growing spirit of monarchy. This they manifest when they cry out in the Third Act: Let him be Cæsar. Cæsar's better parts The nation is calling for a representative in whom it may put supreme and unlimited confidence. Roman imperialism began under Julius Cæsar, and assumed definite form in the absolute military monarchy of his grand-nephew, Octavius Au-| gustus. "Nothing did so much to set the people in love with royalty, both name and thing, as the reflection that their beloved Cæsar, the greatest of their national heroes, the crown and consummation of Roman genius and character, had been murdered for aspiring to it. We can all now see, what he alone saw then, that the great social and political forces of the Roman world had long been moving and converging irresistibly to that end. The great danger of the time lay in struggling to keep up a republic in show, when they already had an empire in fact."—Hudson.* (b) As a Tragedy of Character The central idea of the play considered as a tragedy is that Good cannot come out of Evil. "Brutus is noble, wise, valiant, and honest," but he made shipwreck of his life by one great error. He committed a crime to prevent, as he thought, a greater crime, and by so doing he brought upon himself and his country greater evils than those he had sought to avert. "The stain of assassination adheres to Brutus, a crime which no political duty, no apposite duty whatever, can outweigh. This stain cleaves closer to the 'lover' of Cæsar than to Cæsar's personal enemy, Cassius, and to him, therefore, to Cæsar's good angel, the spirit of the murdered man subsequently appears, as his evil and revenge-announcing genius." -Gervinus.t Hudson, Henry Norman, born at Cornwall, Vermont, 1814; died 1886. An American Shakespearean scholar. † Gervinus, Georg Gottfried, born at Darmstadt, Germany, 1805; died 1871. A German critic and Shakespearean writer. IX. POINTS OF CONTRAST BETWEEN THE ENGLISH AND THE ROMAN HISTORICAL PLAYS Speaking generally, the Roman plays are more truly tragedies than are the English historical plays. They conform more closely to Aristotle's rules of dramatic art. The Roman tragedies are complete, each in itself. The English historical plays are linked together in close and exact succession so as to form one great whole. Shakespeare followed Plutarch more closely than he did Holinshed, his authority for the English plays. "The theme of the English historical plays is the success and the failure of men to achieve noble, practical ends. Success in the visible material world, the world of noble positive action, is the measure of greatness in the English historical plays. But in the tragedies, the men who fail are not necessarily less worthy of admiration than the men who succeed. Octavius is successful. Yet, we should rather fail with Brutus. Prosperity or adversity in the material world is here a secondary affair."-Dowden.* X. SOURCE OF THE PLAY Historical Authority The source from which Shakespeare derived the materials for Julius Cæsar is Sir Thomas North'st translation of Plutarch'st Lives. The first edition of North's translation appeared in 1579 and the second, in 1595. Julius Cæsar is an admirable example of Shakespeare's faculty for transforming history into drama and prose into poetry, without changing the original narrative in any important degree. The poet has adhered with wonderful fidelity to the accounts which he found in Plutarch. * Dowden, Edward, born at Cork, Ireland, 1843. A British critic and poet. "Shakespeare," says Archbishop Trench,* "has thrown a rich mantle of poetry over all, which is often wholly his own; but of the incident there is almost nothing which he does not owe to Plutarch, even as continually he owes the very wording to Sir Thomas North." Departures from Historical Fact Shakespeare's departures from Plutarch do not affect the substantial truth of the account. They fall naturally under two heads, "Departures from Historical Facts" and "Character Digressions." Of the departures from historical fact the most important only are given : 1. Cæsar's triumph in the first scene is made to take place on the same day as the festival of the Lupercalia, February 15th, 44 B. C.; in history the triumph takes place four (some historians say six) months earlier than the festival, October, 45 B. C. 2. According to Shakespeare, Cæsar is killed in the Capitol; in Plutarch the assassination takes place in Pompey's senatehouse. 3. In the play the death of Cæsar, the funeral speeches, and the arrival of Octavius in Rome all take place on the same day; in Plutarch the speech of Brutus is given on the morning after the assassination, that of Antony two days later. Octavius was in the city of Apollonia, in Illyria, when Cæsar was slain. He did not land in Italy until the following May. 4. In Shakespeare the meeting of the triumvirate takes place in Rome; according to Plutarch the triumvirs meet "by the city of Bononia, where they continue three days together." * Trench, Richard Chevenix. Born Dublin, Ireland, 1807; died 1886. An English prelate, philologist, and poet. 5. Shakespeare represents the two battles of Philippi as taking place on the same day; in Plutarch there is an interval of twenty days between them. These departures from historical fact resulted in confining the action of the play within narrower limits than historical accuracy required. By limiting to one day actions which were in reality spread over several days, Shakespeare avoided the dramatic error of scattering the events over a longer period than the time of action demanded. Narrowing the limitation of time necessarily involved the contraction of place. The scenes of the action are Rome, Sardis, Philippi. Nothing would have been gained, and something of unity would have been sacrificed, had another scene, Bononia, been introduced. Dramatic art especially requires that only the essential aspects of realities be reproduced. XI. THE TITLE OF THE PLAY It has often been asserted that this play should have been called "Brutus," and not "Julius Cæsar." The reason for this is that Cæsar appears on the stage only three times and 、 upon these occasions he does nothing worthy of a great hero. To this it may be replied: 1. Although Cæsar is not the hero of the play in the sense in which Brutus is, yet he is the moving spirit and the subject of the drama. 2. Although he is assassinated in the First Scene of the Third Act, his influence continues after his death. 3. Shakespeare never allows this influence to be lost sight of. The name of Cæsar occurs eighty-nine times after the assassination, and he reappears on the stage in the person of his ghost, which, as Dr. Dowden says, "serves as a kind of visible symbol of the vast posthumous power of the dictator." |