May 17, 2001 05:29 AM
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''Julius Caesar'' by Sir William Shakespeare is one of the greatest literary pieces of the Victorian Era. Julius Caesar's exciting plot, brilliant rhetoric, and searching characterisation have made it one of Shakespeare's most popular plays with both readers and theatre-goers. Next to ''Macbeth,'' this is Shakespeare's most violent and brutal play.
The first time I read the play in my 9th-10th Standard as a part of the ICSE curriculum, I was simply amazed at the tragedy, the omens, the speeches, the desire for power, the ironies in this play. This is Shakespearean eulogy at its best. I have been a great fan of this play ever since.
The play meanders around the central characters Julius Caesar, Anthony, Brutus and Cassius. Sincere but blind, Brutus, is motivated by the greater good of restoring the Republic to such an extent that he is willing to sacrifice even his dearest friend, Caesar, to this design. He is swayed by Cassius into joining the conspiracy to kill Caesar. Here we see in an acute form the way in which political power gets in conflict with morality and feelings. Friendship, power and betrayal are the basic subjects of this excellent piece of work.
What makes this play so phenomenal is that we can easily understand and sympathize with any of these major characters, even though they are on the opposite sides. What's left? Only chilling omens like the Soothsayer, the storm, the ghost of Caesar, etc. Only memorable passages like Mark Antony's famous 'honorable' speech.
It is not clear whether Julius Caesar is the real hero or even the main subject of this play, as the title suggests. In a sense, even though he dies early (Act III, Scene 1), his existence hovers for the rest of the play in the effects that his assassination bring about. In addition to his ghost form which appears to Brutus, Caesar also enjoys an uncanny existence to the end of the play as his name is mentioned in both dying dialogues of Brutus and Cassius. It seems as though Caesar is present throughout the whole play, it is just that in the first scene of Act Three his KIND of existence changes. I remember someone's comment on a person after he dies as being hounded by others, redefining the dead person at their will. After you are dead, other people are free to make you what they want, reinterpreting your life to fit their own understandings of the world. Caesar's body lay stabbed to death on the ground, but Antony brought it to life in another form through his rhetoric. I don't think that Caesar was seen as such a superb fellow when he was living (that's why he was murdered in fact) but after he died, Antony was able to create a new Caesar, a mythical Caesar which the mob could believe in and fill with positive attributes.
This play is filled with doom and foreboding prophecy. It's a tremendous dramatic tool that always works. To watch someone struggle against their fate is always enlightening and insightful [and satisfying :-)] to analyze. The Ides of March are of course the first prophecy. When that prophecy has been fulfilled, Antony prophecizes revenge, in fact even the wounds of Caesar themselves, which Shakespeare brings eerily to life, beg for this revenge:
like dumb mouths, do ope their ruby lips
To beg the voice and utterance of my tongue
If Caesar is not the hero of this play, then Brutus is, as we are given so much information about the inner thoughts of Brutus, insights into his motives, and we watch him as he falls tragically. He remains a bad-guesser and a bad-planner all the way through the play, and he never really gets his conscience together concerning his act of murder on Caesar. The quote by Antony at the end that Brutus is ''the noblest Roman of all'' is ironic. Was it because he meant well, didn't succeed, and admitted it in the end?
Brutus tries to convince the mob with reasons and he just ''doesn't have it'' and furthermore doesn't understand what Antony can do with his rhetoric. Antony, on the other hand, ''has it''. He can move a crowd with his words, he can be on everyone's side at once (he praises the conspirators and Caesar all in one speech); he knows how to move the opinions of the mob not with reasons but with emotion.
Like always, I did enjoy Shakespeare's picturesque language:
For he can do no more than Caesar's arm,
When Caesar's head is cut off.
That unicorns may be betry'd with trees,
And bears with glasses, elephants with holes,
Lions with toils, and men with flatterers.
I also found the Stoic view of death expressed by various characters in the play enlightening:
Cowards die many times before their deaths,
The valiant never taste of death but once:
Of all the wonders that I yet have heard,
It seems to me most strange that men should fear,
Seeing that death, a necessary end
Will come, when it will come.
Why he that cuts off twenty years of life,
Cuts off so many years of fearing death.
Unlike ''Hamlet'', ''Julius Caesar'' is more compact, less complex. The action and psychological characterisation are simpler and the language is more hard-trimmed. The tragic elements of error and chance are present throughout the play and the ending neatly combines an address of the tragic hero's principal flaw and a meting out of justice.
This play is important to read simply because of the references to it, but someone who has not read Shakespeare before should not try to read it without a reference, or they will never read Shakespeare again. The play has been used in political science classes, history classes, or rhetoric classes, but a literature class will need an excellent teacher fired up about Shakespeare and this play to bring across the deep, dark analyses that Shakespeare packed into this play.
And for those of you, who want to read it on their own, get the aids to understand the text and see what all you have been missing. Once you understand the language and the underlying shades of grey between black and white, you are simply going to love it.
Truly, a great play. Hats off to Shakespeare.
