Sir Mungo William MacCallum

“ And all the while, it will be observed, he has never answered Brutus’ charge on which he rested his whole case, that Caesar was ambitious. Yet such is the headlong flight of his eloquence, winged by genius, by passion, by craft, that his audience never perceive this. No wonder: it is apt to escape even deliberate readers.
Such a man will go fast and far. We next see him practically the ruler of Rome, swaying the triumvirate, treating Octavius as an admiring pupil whom he will tutor in the trade, ordering about or ridiculing the insignificant and imitative Lepidus. ”

“ To Cleopatra, the lodestar, the temptress, the predestined mate of Antony, we now turn: and perhaps even Shakespeare has no more marvellous creation than she, or one in which the nature that inspires and the genius that reveals, are so fused in the ideal truth. Campbell says: “He paints her as if the gipsy herself had cast her spell over him, and given her own witchcraft to his pencil.” The witchcraft everybody feels. It is almost impossible to look at her steadily, or keep one’s head to estimate her aright. She is the incarnate poetry of life without duty, glorified by beauty and grace ”

“ He has to live up to an impossible standard, and so he must affect to be what he is not. He is the martyr of the idea that has made his fortune. He must not listen to his instincts or his misgivings; there is no room in the Caesar for timidity or mistake or fickleness. But, alas! he is only a man, and as a man he constantly gives the lie to the majesty which the spirit of Caesar enjoins. We feel all the more strongly, since we are forced to the comparison, the contrast between the shortcomings of the individual and the splendour of the ideal role he undertakes. ”

“ Reverence for greatness is the point from which he starts, reverence for greatness is the star that guides his course, and his reverence is so entire, that on the one hand he welcomes all that will help him to restore the great one in his speech and habit as he lived, and on the other, he assumes that the greatness must pervade the whole life, and that flashes of glory will be refracted from the daily talk and walk. ”

“ The plebeians are represented as fickle and violent, greedy and irrational, the dupes of dead tradition, parasites in the living present. They have shouted for Pompey, they strew flowers for Caesar: they can be tickled with talk of their ancient liberties, they can be cajoled by the tricks of shifty rhetoric: they cheer when their favourite refuses the crown, they wish to crown his “better parts” in his murderer: they will not hear a word against Brutus, they rush off to fire his house: they tear a man to pieces on account of his name, and hold Caesar beyond parallel on account of his bequest. ”

“ It is no wonder that Brutus should regard him but as a “limb of Caesar,” or that Trebonius, considering him a mere time-server, should prophesy that he will “live and laugh” hereafter at Caesar’s death. But they are wrong. They do not recognise either the genuineness of the affection that underlies his ingratiating ways, or the real genius that underlies his frivolity. Here, as everywhere, Cassius’ estimate is the correct one. He fears Antony’s “ingrafted love” for Caesar, and predicts that they will find in him “a shrewd contriver.” Of the love indeed there can be no question. ”

“ Partly, too, the inertness of Rome is a tribute to the greatness of the adversary, which is enhanced beyond the hyperboles of Plutarch, and with which to inspire them the Volscians are irresistible.
He is their god: he leads them like a thing
Made by some other deity than nature
That shapes men better: and they follow him,
Against us brats, with no less confidence
Than boys pursuing summer butterflies,
Or butchers killing flies. ”

“ Take Lartius, whom Shakespeare has drawn in a few rapid and vigorous strokes. He is old and stiff, but ready if need be to lean on one crutch and fight with the other, prompt to take a sporting wager, and, when he wins, eager to remit the stake in his admiration for the noble youngster, to whom with all his years he grants priority, whom on his supposed death he laments as an irreplaceable jewel, whom he hails as the living force that dwells within the trappings of their armament. ”

“ It is almost as fatal to this visionary to be called Brutus, as it is to the poet to be called Cinna. For a great historic name spares its bearer a narrow margin of liberty. It should be impossible for a Bourbon to be other than a legitimist; it would be impossible for a Romanoff to abandon the Orthodox Church; it is impossible for a Brutus to accept the merest show of royal power. The memory of his stock is about him. Now Cassius reminds him of his namesake who would brook the eternal devil in Rome as easily as a king ”

“ No doubt he again and again does the wrong things, or at least the things that lead to no useful result. His patron god deserts him as in Plutarch, but that god in Shakespeare is not Bacchus but Hercules, and he departs earlier than in the story and not on the last night before the end; for the withdrawal of the divine friend is now less the presage of death than the symbol of inefficacy. Antony’s insight and judgment may be failing; his flashes of power may be like his flashes of jealousy, and indicate the dissolution of his being. ”

“ In the first place, when the poet carries his privilege of independence so far, why should he not go a step further and invent his entire drama, names and all? As it is, we either know something of the real history or we do not. If we do not, what is the advantage of appealing to it? If we do, will not such lordly disregard of facts stir up the same recalcitrance as disregard of traditional character, and shall we not be rather perplexed than aided by the conflict between our reminiscences and the statements of the play? ”

“ Indeed, however much Plutarch would appeal to Shakespeare in virtue both of his subjects and his methods, it is easy to see that even as a “grave learned philosopher and historiographer” he is on the hither side of perfection. He interrupts the story with moral disquisitions, and is a little apt to preach, and often, through such intrusions and irrelevancies, or the adherence of the commonplace, his most impressive touches fail of their utmost possible effect: at least he does not always seem aware of the full value of his details, of their depth and suggestiveness when they are set aright. ”

“ For Coriolanus, with all his blind sides and rough corners, might still be the faithful and honoured champion of Rome if he were left to follow his own predestined and congenial path as military leader. In the field he can rouse the courage of the citizens and fire their enthusiasm, while on his part, when he wins their recognition and devotion, he lays aside some of his asperity to them, and is even gracious in his awkward, convincing way. They forget their hatred, he forgets his scorn. ”

“ Even in the first pang of bereavement, the one hint of grief it can extort from him is the curt retort, “No man bears sorrow better.” We might fail to recognise all that it meant for him if we did not see his misery reflected in the sympathy and consternation of other men; in the hesitating reluctance of Messala, to break, as he thinks, the news; in the dismay of Cassius and his wonder at Brutus’ self-control. ”

“ He has heard the truth about Cleopatra, and only importunes death that he may snatch that one last interview sacred to his love of her, his care for her, and to that serene, lofty dignity which now he has attained. The world seems a blank when this full life is out ”

“ 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? ”

“ With them Shakespeare is not concerned, but with the plenary inspiration of Caesar’s life, the inspiration that made him an instrument of Heaven and that was to bring peace and order to the world. So he passes over the years of effort and preparation, showing their glories but slightly and their trespasses not at all. He confines himself to the time when the summit is reached and the dream is fulfilled. Then to his mind begins the tragedy and the transfiguration.
He represents Caesar, like every truly great man, as carried away by his own conception and made a slave to it. ”

“ To the claims of nobility, in truth, Antony is always responsive and he is ready to acknowledge it in Brutus too. “This was the noblest Roman of them all”; so he begins his heartfelt tribute to his vanquished foe. This generous sympathetic strain in his nature is one of the things that make him dangerous. He is far from acting a part in his laments for Caesar. He feels the grief that he proclaims and the greatness he extols. His emotions are easily stirred, especially by worthy objects, and he has only to give them free rein to impress other people. ”

“ Brutus’ spirit is rather the spirit of loyalty to duty, which finds in him its exponent and martyr too.
He is lavishly endowed by nature with all the inward qualities that go to make the virtuous man, and these he has improved and disciplined by every means in his power. His standard is high, but he is so strenuous and sincere in living up to it, that he is recognised as no less pre-eminent in the sphere of ethics, than Caesar in the sphere of politics. Indeed their different ideals dominate and impel both men in an almost equal degree. ”

“ It does not suit him to suggest that Antony ever deviated from his passion for Cleopatra or bestowed his affection elsewhere: indeed, on the eve of his marriage, he reveals his heart and intentions clearly enough. But Shakespeare also knows that without affection to bring it out, there will be no answering affection in a woman like Octavia. She will be true to all her obligations, so long as they are obligations, but no love will be roused to make her do more than is in her bond. And of love there is in the play as little trace on her part as on Antony’s. ”

“ Men at some time are masters of their fates:
The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars
But in ourselves, that we are underlings.
(I. ii. 139.) And the same attitude of mind implies that he is rid of all illusions. He is not deceived by shows. He looks quite through the deeds of men. He is not taken in by Casca’s affectation of rudeness. He is not misled by Antony’s apparent frivolity. He is not even dazzled by the glamour of Brutus’ virtue, but notes its weak side and does not hesitate to play on it. Still less does Caesar’s prestige subdue his criticism. ”

“ For the tragedy of Enobarbus’ position lies in this: that in that evil time his reason can furnish him with no motive for his loyalty except self-interest and confidence in his leader’s capacity; or, failing these, the unsubstantial recompense of fame. He is not Antony’s man from principle, in order to uphold a great cause,—no one in the play has chosen his side on such a ground; and fidelity at all costs to a person is a forgotten phrase among the cosmopolitan materialists who are competing for the spoils of the Roman world. ”

“ The aim is profit, and profit not merely of a private kind. The profit is better secured by history than by precept, just as the living example is more effectual than the philosophic treatise. And there is more profit in Plutarch than in any other historian, not only on account of his personal qualifications, his wit, learning, and experience, but on account of his subject-matter, because he had the opportunity and insight to choose the prerogative instances in the annals of mankind. Only it should be noted that the profit is conceived in the most liberal and ideal sense. ”

“ For it is inevitable that he should proceed as he does. Yet it is not easy for him. There is a conflict in this sensitive and finely tuned spirit, which, with all his acquired fortitude, bewrays itself in his bearing to Cassius before any foreign suggestion has entered his mind, which afterwards makes him unlike himself in his behaviour to his wife, which drives sleep from his eyes for nights together, which so jars the rare harmony of his nature, in Antony’s view his chief perfection, that he seems to suffer from an insurrection within himself. ”

“ Once more we think of the words of the messenger in Antony and Cleopatra when he fears to report the worst: “The nature of bad news infects the teller”; and of Antony’s reply: “When it concerns the fool and coward.” There is beyond doubt more than a spice of folly and cowardice in the self-important quidnuncs, with their purblind temerity and shifty meanness. We are very glad to hear in the end of Brutus being mishandled by the mob and very sorry that Sicinius goes free: but at least he has had his dose of alarm and mortification, and in the future his influence will be gone; which is well. ”