In a previous post, I gave the covenantal plot for Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar (1599). Here I complete an outline of that work using the biblical covenant as a model.
QUOTATIONS
Transcendence: “[K]iss dead Caesar’s wounds / And dip their napkins in his sacred blood” – Marc Antony (3.2); Antony turns Caesar into a sacrificial god.
Hierarchy: “I had as lief not be as live to be / In awe of such a thing as I myself.” – Cassius (1.2); Cassius testifies to his inability to subordinate himself to anyone.
Ethics: “Even by the rule of that philosophy
By which I did blame Cato for the death
Which he did give himself, I know not how,
But I do find it cowardly and vile,
For fear of what might fall, so to prevent
The time of life: arming myself with patience
To stay the providence of some high powers
That govern us below.” – Brutus (5.1); Brutus gives voice to the Stoic view of suicide, one which he eventually breaks.
Sanctions: “A curse shall light upon the limbs of men;
Domestic fury and fierce civil strife
Shall cumber all the parts of Italy;
Blood and destruction shall be so in use
And dreadful objects so familiar
That mothers shall but smile when they behold
Their infants quarter’d with the hands of war.” – Marc Antony (3.1); Antony pledges punishment for the men who murdered Caesar.
Succession: “How many ages hence
Shall this our lofty scene be acted over
In states unborn and accents yet unknown!” – Cassius (3.1); this prophecy literally becomes true through this play.
RHETORIC
Transcendence: Words in the form of speeches carry the day in this play. At the center of the play’s third act are two speeches, one from Brutus and another from Antony. The better speech wins the day and the play.
Hierarchy: Behind Shakespeare’s play is the account of Caesar and Brutus in Plutarch’s Lives. Many people have noted the tension in the play’s title and its focus. By sheer number of lines. BRUTUS is the play’s protagonist, yet it is Caesar who gives the play its title. This is precisely a question of authority.
Also worth noting is the verbal hijinks that start the play. The two patricians ridicule the people for praising Caesar so soon after praising the man Caesar killed. The cobbler makes jokes about mending men’s soles and souls. We only get enough of the plebians in this play to know that they’re highly emotional and capable of manufactured consent.
Ethics: More than any other single Shakespeare play, Julius Caesar ties identifiable philosophies to the its characters. You have Cicero the skeptic, Brutus the Stoic, and Cassius the Epicurean. These different religions have different codes, and none of them perfectly match the demands of Roman politics. That is, the play shows the way in which personal and political ethics can be at odds.
Generically, Shakespeare breaks protocol by having his titular character die halfway through the play. This is certainly unique in Shakespeare’s tragedies, though not necessarily in his plays (Cymbeline is a side-character in the romance named after him).
Sanctions: Shakespeare does not hide the violence of Rome in this play. Caesar is killed on stage. Cinna the poet is torn to pieces on stage. Cassius and Brutus commit suicide on stage. None of these deaths are particularly noble. Given the emphasis on honor in Roman oath-making (which is all over the play), these scenes undercut the dignified rhetoric that characters use to describe Roman action.
Succession: Shakespeare more or less gives the play a “To Be Continued…” marker at the end with the play’s final lines going to Octavius. We will see Marc Antony and Octavius when they return in Antony and Cleopatra.
KEY SYMBOLS
Transcendence: The crown (refused by Caesar three times)
Hierarchy: Blood (a visible representation of either Caesar’s sacred power or his humanity; blood is also important as many characters take heart heart in their lineage and yet fear the bloodline as a path to empire)
Ethics: The bloody swords of Rome (used to kill Caesar and paraded as signs of freedom down Rome’s streets in that murder’s aftermath)
Sanctions: Suicide (self-slaughter as self-maledictory punishment for failing to keep one’s word)
Succession: Caesar’s ghost (The spirit of Caesarism haunts the republic after his assassination both literally and figuratively; Brutus and Cassius have killed Caesar’s body but not the spirit of the Empire); Caesar’s garden (the blessing left to the people in his will)
THEMES
Transcendence: The play testifies to a spiritual connection between earth and heaven, but no one knows how to properly interpret that connection. God is not separate from creation. Rome offers a metaphysical religion, one that verges on the magical. The chain of being moves from beast to man to god. There is not a difference in being, only in kind.
Hierarchy: The thing that unites the devotees of the Republic AND the Empire? The state rules every other institution, especially family or religion. Rome is the true authority, whether ruled by many or one.
Ethics: Human philosophy cannot reconcile the tension between the one and the many, i.e. the gap between personal and public actions. Cicero, Brutus, and Cassius all pay the gap for their schizophrenic philosophies.
Sanctions: A society built on human honor as an end in itself is suicidal.
Succession: The empire threatens to introduce discontinuity into Rome’s structure. The people have no collective memory. Pompey’s dead? Serve Caesar. Caesar’s dead? Serve Brutus. Brutus’s isn’t as honor as we though? Serve the triumvirate.
Experiments in Criticism 