Sunday Morning! “The Tragedy of Julius Caesar” by William Shakespeare

I talked last time about how our ambivalent feelings around ambition are a perennial theme in art and literature, focusing on the Shakespeare play that always comes first to my mind- Macbeth. However, we could have also talked about Julius Caesar, who is, after all, killed for his “ambition” in Shakespeare’s play The Tragedy of Julius Caesar. I use the irony quotes because this is the reason given by Brutus in his funeral oration.

Not that I loved Caesar less, but that I loved
Rome more. Had you rather Caesar were living and
die all slaves, than that Caesar were dead, to live
all free men? As Caesar loved me, I weep for him;
as he was fortunate, I rejoice at it; as he was
valiant, I honour him: but, as he was ambitious, I
slew him.

Not to suggest that Julius Caesar was not ambitious; it would be hard to think of a better example of unbridled ambition before Napoleon. Perhaps Alexander the Great, who was Caesar’s own role model. I think Julius Caesar actually took things further in the political realm, however; Caesar was a man who literally remade his society to revolve around himself, changing the calendar, the political structure, the “media,” the currency, and ultimately making himself perpetual dictator, triggering his downfall. He was, through all of this, beloved by the bulk of the people in Rome- a sort of “populist” before the term, and became the role model for future political leaders from good to terrible. Our world would be vastly different had he not lived, or died.

Comparisons can be stretched a bit thin, though; when a 2017 New York Shakespeare in the Park production of Julius Caesar painted Caesar a little too close to our former President, conservatives switched the focus of their perennial ire to that play and taxpayer funding of the arts for a week. It would, of course, be absurd to compare our former President to a leader who had widespread popular support when marching his men on the capital, overturning democracy, and aggrandizing himself in the name of national greatness. (At least, it was in 2017.)

However, as Shakespearean Stephen Greenblatt pointed out, the play isn’t exactly a ringing endorsement of political violence, since Caesar’s assassination basically destroys the republic it was ostensibly meant to save: “It’s weird to have that, then, be the object of this kind of hysteria,” he noted. Greenblatt is English, so he can be forgiven for finding American hysteria strange.

One of the things readers might forget if they haven’t read or viewed The Tragedy of Julius Caesar in some time is it’s not really Caesar’s tragedy; he is the focus of the play, but not the main character. His arrival is heralded at the beginning, after having killed the sons of his political rival Pompey and taking sole power. But, in the first acts, Caesar vies with the conspiracy against him for Shakespeare’s attention, is killed halfway through the play, and then the focus shifts to the conspiracy unraveling as Rome falls into civil war. So, it would probably be more accurate to call the play “The Tragedy of Marcus Junius Brutus.”

Which is the brilliance of the play. It would have been easier to depict Caesar as a power-mad tyrant, but Shakespeare shows him as almost stoically accepting his role as leader, while also suggesting this might be mere stagecraft. Brutus sees himself as having to kill his dearest friend for the good of the republic, but this might also be political deception. In politics, it’s exceedingly hard to know what anyone really wants. More likely, he’s lying to himself. Shakespeare is aware of how often we do that in life: carry out incredibly important actions, while completely deceiving ourselves about the motivations. The conspirators are “saving” the Republic, or so they claim, while also shoring up their own waning power.

Well, sometimes things have to be done, and we have to get our hands dirty.

Of course, Mark Antony sees through all of this. I’ll admit I love Marlon Brando’s *slightly* hammy version of the funeral oration:

Mark Antony is the closest we come to a selfless hero in the play. He sees what will come to Rome after its center of gravity is removed.

Cry havoc! And let slip the dogs of war.

And this, of course, is exactly what happens. Caesar’s death was coldly accepted by the Roman public, leading to a series of civil wars, and the installation of his heir Octavian, later Augustus, on the throne. Augustus promised to restore the republic; he founded the Roman Empire and became the first Emperor.

Was the “will of the people” thus betrayed, or carried out? The nicest thing we can say about the public in the play is they’re a little fickle. They side with the greatest speaker, or simply the most convincing actor, and finally it’s to their doom. It’s unsurprising that a writer with Shakespeare’s command of the language would depict this story about civil war and the death of democracy as a war of words, a story about the violence underlying political speech. Words can clarify and deceive, often at the same time. Actual violence tends to be more clarifying in the end.

But, was it then necessary to kill Julius Caesar, before the serpent’s egg of his ambition fully hatched? Would it have been better had he lived, given his noted mercy and charity? Well, it’s only been 2,067 years; it’s still too soon to tell.

And so, Friends, Romans, Ordinary Timers, what are YOU reading, watching, playing, pondering, or lending your ears to this weekend?