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in daunger by his tyrannicall power,"1 hardly deserves the name, at least in the common acceptation. Besides Shakespeare has a large tolerance for the practical statesman when dowered with patriotism, insight, and resolution; and will not lightly condemn him because he must use sorry tools, and takes some soil from the world, and is not unmoved by personal interests. Provided that his more selfish aims coincide with the good of the whole, and that he has veracity of intellect to understand, with steadiness of will to satisfy the needs of the time, Shakespeare will vindicate for him his share of prosperity, honour, and desert. And this seems to be, in glorified version, his view of Caesar. The only serious charge he brings against him in the play, the only charge to which he recurs elsewhere, is that he was ambitious. But ambition is not wholly of sin, and brings forth good as well as evil fruit. Indeed when a man's desire for the first place merges in the desire for the fullest opportunity, and that again in the desire for the task he feels he can do best, it is distinguishable from a virtue, if at all, only by the demand that he shall be the agent. So is it, to compare celebrities of local and of universal history, with the ambitious strain in the character of Henry IV.; it is not incompatible with sterling worth that commands solid success; it spurs him to worthy deeds that redeem the offences it exacts; and these offences themselves in some sort "tend the profit of the state." No doubt with both men their ambition brings its own Nemesis, the ceaseless care of the one, the premature death of the other. But that need not prevent recognition of their high qualities, or their just claims, or their providential mandate. Such men are ministers of the Divine Purposes, as Plutarch said in regard to Caesar; and in setting forth the essential meaning of his career, Shakespeare can scorn the

1 Marcus Brutus.

base degrees by which he did ascend. Partly his less creditable doings were necessary if he was to mount at all; partly they may have seemed venial to the subject of the Tudor monarchy; at worst, when compared with the splendour of his achievement, they were spots in the sun. In any case they were not worth consideration. 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. What a thing was this idea of Empire, ✓ this "spirit of Caesar," of which he as one of earth's mortal millions was but the vehicle and the organ! He himself as a human person cannot withhold homage from himself as the incarnate Imperium. Observe how he speaks of himself habitually in the third person. Not "I do this," but "Caesar does this,' Caesar does that," alike when talking to the soothsayer, to his wife and to the senate." It is almost as though he anticipated its later use as a common noun equivalent to Emperor: for in all these passages he describes, as it were, what the Emperor's action and attitude should be. And that is the secret of the strange impression that he makes.

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1 Of course the substitution of the third for the second or first person is very noticeable all through this play, and may have been due to an idea on Shakespeare's part that such a mode of utterance suited the classical and Roman majesty of the theme. But this rather confirms than refutes the argument of the text, for the usage is exceptionally conspicuous in regard to Caesar, in whom the majesty of Rome is summed up.

It is a case, an exaggerated case, of noblesse oblige. The Caesar, the first of those Caesars who were to receive their apotheosis and be hailed as Divi Augusti, must in literal truth answer Hobbes' description of the State, and be a mortal god. He must be fearless, omniscient, infallible, without changeableness or shadow of turning: does he not represent the empire? 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. And not only that. In this assumption of the Divine, involving as it does a touch of unreality and falsehood, he has lost his old surety of vision and efficiency He tries to rise above himself, and pays the penalty by falling below himself, and rushing on the ruin which a little vulgar shrewdness would have avoided. But his mistake is due to his very greatness, and his greatness encompasses him to the last, when with no futile and undignified struggle, he wraps his face in his mantle and accepts the end. Antony does not exaggerate when he says:

in act.

O, what a fall was there, my countrymen !
Then I, and you, and all of us fell down;

(III. ii. 194.)

for it was the Empire that fell. But to rise again! For the idea of Caesarism, rid of the defects and limitations of its originator, becomes only the more invincible, and the spirit of Caesar begins its free untrammelled course.

The greatness of his genius cannot be fully

realised unless the story is carried on to the final triumph at Philippi, instead of breaking off immediately after his bodily death. It is in part Shakespeare's perception of this and not merely his general superiority of power, that makes his Caesar so much more impressive than the Caesar of contemporary dramatists that seem to keep closer to their theme.

Not only then is Julius Caesar the right name for the play, in so far as his imperialist idea dominates the whole, but a very subtle interpretation of his character is given when, as this implies, he is viewed as the exponent of Imperialism. None the less Brutus is the leading personage, if we grant precedence in accordance with the interest aroused.

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CHAPTER IV

THE EXCELLENCES AND ILLUSIONS OF BRUTUS

THUS Shakespeare has his Act of Oblivion for all that might give an unfavourable impression of Caesar's past, and presents him very much as the incarnate principle of Empire, with the splendours but also with the disabilities that must attend the individual man who feels himself the vehicle for such an inspiration.

He somewhat similarly screens from view whatever in the career of Brutus might prejudice his claims to affection and respect and carries much further a process of idealization that Plutarch had already begun. For to Plutarch Brutus is, so to speak, the model republican, the paragon of private and civic virtue. The promise to the soldiers before the second battle at Philippi of two cities to sack, calls forth the comment: "In all Brutus' life there is but this only fault to be found" and even this, as the marginal note remarks, is "wisely excused"; on the plea, namely, that after Cassius' death the difficulties were very great and the best had to be made of a bad state of things. But no other misconduct is laid to his charge: his extortionate usury and his abrupt divorce are passed over in silence. All his doings receive indulgent construction, and the narrative is often pointed with a formal éloge. In the Comparison, where of course such

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