JULIUS CESAR PERSONS REPRESENTED. OCTAVIUS CÆSAR, a triumvir (Appears) . I, 2; II, 2; III, 1. after the death of Julius Cæsar, IV, 1; V, 1, 5. MARCUS ANTONIUS, a triumvir after the death of Julius Cæsar, I, 2; II, 2; III, 1, 2; IV, 1; V, 1, 4, 5. MARCUS BRUTUS, a conspirator. I, 2; II, 1, 2; III, 1, 2; IV, 2, 3; V, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. CASSIUS, a conspirator. CASCA, a conspirator TREBONIUS, a conspirator . I, 2, 3; II, 1; III, 1, 2; IV, 2, 3; V, 1, 3. . I, 2, 3; II, 1, 2; III, 1. DECIUS BRUTUS, a conspirator. I, 2; II, 1, 2; III, 1. METELLUS CIMBER, a conspirator,II, 1, 2; III, 1. Senators, Citizens, Guards, Attendants, etc. SCENE. DURING A GREAT PART OF THE PLAY AT ROME; AFTERWARDS AT SARDIS, AND NEAR PHILIPPI. (92) NOTES.1 Julius Caesar must have been written between 1598 and 1603. Dowden assigns it to the year 1601. It was first published in the folio of 1623. The play belongs to the same period of the poet's life as Hamlet. The poet's diction at this period was simpler, his style more flowing, and to modern readers easier, than it became in the later plays, as, e.g., in Coriolanus and Cymbeline. As compared with the other great tragedies, except Macbeth, Julius Cæsar is remarkably short. The peculiarity has been conjecturally accounted for by supposing that the copy of the play which came into the hands of the editors of 1623 had been shortened for stage purposes; and there are some reasons for thinking that this shortening was done by Ben Jonson. See Fleay's Shakespeare Manual. In the text as here given no distinction is made between verbs in which the final ed counts as a syllable and those in which it does not. This is a matter in which the learner must help himself. The peculiarities of Shakespeare's syllabication, and the metric freedoms he allowed himself, are only to be learned by observation. In the reading of the verse care must be taken on the one hand to catch the rhythmic movement, and on the other, to avoid everything like formal scanning. The English blank verse is elastic, and assumes various shapes while never departing from its norm. Lines that have five equal accents occur but now and then; but with extremely few exceptions, the lines are rhythmic, in accordance with the five-accent, iambic standard. The reader must learn to reconcile the verses to this blank verse standard while at the same time reading naturally and with regard to dramatic expression. 1 The references to the other plays are always to the Globe Shakespeare, Macmillan & Co. ACT I. The subject of the play, it must be understood from the beginning, is Marcus Brutus. The idea of a conspiracy against Cæsar's life is shown in the first act as originating in the mind of Cassius on grounds of personal enmity, and as finding acceptance in the mind of Brutus on grounds of concern for the public welfare. The deliberate, conscientious meditation of Brutus on the awful step he contemplates as the means of freeing Rome from tyranny, is contrasted with the ardor and the unscrupulousness with which Cassius and Casca apply themselves to the furtherance of the plot, and chiefly to the securing of Brutus as its leader. The sum and substance of the act is expressed in the last eight lines of the last scene. Scene 1. All the actors in this scene disappear from the play with the end of the scene itself. Tribunes and commoners, they are not persona of the drama at all, but speak their brief parts as types of the social divisions and the political animosities of the Rome of Cæsar's time. What the historian would require pages to tell and explain the poet in a few lines reveals to us as picture. The commoners are nameless, as they are in the records of history, and have to be distinguished by being numbered; they are facetious, good-natured, coarse of speech, incapable of high political principle. But they represent the physical strength of Rome because they are a multitude and will follow devotedly a leader who wins them to his side. Whoever aspires to control Rome must be popular with the commons, and the commons have been won by Cæsar. The tribunes stand by the lost cause of Pompey. The tribunes represent patrician conservatism; they are imperious and full of dignity; their speech is warmed with noble sentiment; they typify Roman patriotism. 3. mechanical. To understand what, in the poet's mind, was the connotation of this word, compare the following passages: Cor. v, 3, 83; Ant. v, 2, 209; Hen. V, i, 2, 200; Mids. iii, 2, 9. He always uses the word for the sake of this implied meaning, never in its honorable modern sense. you ought not walk. Everywhere else in Shakespeare, ought is connected with its infinitive in the modern way, as in ii, 1, 270. See Paradise Lost, viii, 74. There is still another very different early construction of ought found, e.g., in Chaucer. See Legend of Good Women, Prologue, 27, and the Man of Law's Tale, 1097. This word has a most interesting history, which should be looked up in the dictionaries and historical grammars. 4. Compare laboring with growing in line 73. Do both these words belong to the same part of speech? Few things in English grammar are more puzzling than the verb-forms ending in -ing. They cannot be understood without reference to their origins. 5, Flavius and Marullus would seem in this passage, - lines 1to be enforcing a Roman law; but the existence of such a law is an invention of the poet, who perhaps transfers to Rome a usage of his own country. It must be remembered that Shakespeare got his knowledge of history from very limited reading, and had no conception of nice scholarly scruples about mingling features of ancient and modern times. It may be said, generally, that the plays give evidence of wide observation, but not of exact learning. It is worth noting that Shakespeare, who is so given to punning, nowhere uses the word pun in its modern sense. For the meaning this word had to the poet see Troil. ii, 1, 42. The serious, malevolent ambiguity of speech is described in Mac. v, 8, 20: the playful quibble in Merch. iii, 5, 74. In the speeches of the Second Commoner be sure to see and understand six pairs of equivocal meanings. 9. Broken, or partial, lines are frequent in Shakespeare's verse. These partial lines are not unmetrical, and can be scanned so far as they go. Sometimes a reason for this procedure may be surmised. See lines 53 and 67, this scene. 16. naughty; a most interesting word: Look up its derivation. See Proverbs, xx, 14; Jeremiah, xxiv, 2; Lear, ii, 4, 136, and other instances in the Bible and in Shakespeare of this word, and of naught, or nought, both as adjective and as noun. Consider how the meaning of these words has changed. 26. neat's-leather. Is the word neat yet quite obsolete? See it defined by the poet, Wint. i, 2, 124; see also 3 Hen. VI, ii, 1, 14. 27. It will be a useful lesson in etymology to investigate the three different origins of the 's in handiwork, handicraft, and handicap. commoners the Such intermixt 33. Throughout the dialogue with the speeches of the tribunes have been in verse. ure or close juxtaposition of prose and verse Shakespeare employs to enhance the distinction between a certain nobility or elevation of tone and the low level of commonplace. Note the prose of Casca's story in the next scene and that of Brutus's speech, Act iii, Sc. 2. In the latter case the use of prose is an affectation of low tone, by which Brutus aims to show himself utterly devoid of passion. With line 33 Marullus suddenly rises to a high strain of fervent indignation which overwhelms the commoners and puts an end to the dialogue. This contrast of gentles and churls is a frequent motive with Shakespeare, as it had been, two centuries before, with Chaucer. Social distinctions had not in the Tudor time begun to be obliterated by the modern democratic revolutions. The great middle class of the present day, absorbing into itself all useful elements both from above and from below, and already the governing class in all advanced nations, was then still a quantity to be neglected. 42. live-long. Consider the origin, the meaning, and the pronunciation of the expression. 46, 48. her banks. her shores. The poet uses the neuter possessive its only ten times in all his works. See this play, v, 3, |