play Cæsar himself is killed in the third act, and the play goes on without him. It is true that he remains in the mind throughout the play, but the play evidently does not concern itself chiefly with the fortunes of Cæsar. The subject is rather the fortunes of those who opposed Cæsar, and especially of Cassius and Brutus. We see the conspirators begin their plotting, carry it to success, and then fail and gradually come to disagreement, defeat, and death. But not even all the conspirators are carried through the play. At the beginning there are a number-some of them, as Casca and Decius Brutus presented to us quite clearly; some, like Cimber and Trebonius, standing in the background. After the death of Cæsar, however, we hear nothing of the rest, but of Brutus and Cassius only. Evidently the play is more a play about Brutus and Cassius than about Cæsar. Their fortune, good and bad, is the thing of interest in the play. Shakespeare must have had some reason for calling the play by the name of Cæsar, but it could hardly have been that he looked upon Cæsar as the chief character. "The Merchant of Venice" is not named after the chief character.

The conspiracy against Cæsar-this is the subject of the action of the play. We shall see the beginning, middle, and end of it. Let us see how Shakespeare presents it to us; let us get the development of the idea. We shall do well to look first at the general lines, and then at the more detailed working out.

First, then, we see that Shakespeare presents us the success and failure of the conspiracy. That is his way generally in a tragedy. He presents us the hero, the figure on whom he concentrates our attention, as at first successful and then coming to failure. So Hamlet, who seems for three acts of the great play as though he were about to come out victorious in his struggle against the usurper, but who finally fails, and has to die and leave the vindication of his name to his friend. So Romeo and Juliet, who triumph over all obstacles, until

fate at the very end brings destruction to them both. So Macbeth, who is continually successful in the most horrid wickedness, and commits murder after murder until he is come up with by the son of one victim and the father of another. In a less degree we may say the same thing of King Lear, Antony, Coriolanus, Othello. Success and failure. So with Brutus and Cassius: they conspire, and success attends them; they gain over whom they wish, they keep their secret, they kill Cæsar. But then good fortune leaves them: the populace is aroused, and they have to ride in haste out of Rome; misunderstandings creep in among them, and they begin to quarrel with each other; in the day of battle, lack of confidence and accident bring them both to death. This is in the general manner of a tragedy. A tragedy does not present us some great man doing great deeds with everincreasing success. It presents us some man of great qualities who is somehow overtaken by ill success.

succeeds; then for some reason he fails.

For a time he

It is of interest to see just how Shakespeare develops the idea in this play. What is the point of greatest success-the point to which our interest grows until we reach it? Undoubtedly, the moment when the death of Cæsar is accomplished and Brutus in the "common pulpit" is putting forth the reasons that led inevitably to such a sad necessity. Suppose the play had ended then, and we should have had continual success in the part of the conspirators. At no point afterward can we say the same thing. This may be called the climax of the play: the action rises to it, and from it descends. It is also, it may be noticed, in the very middle of the play.

What are the circumstances of the rise of the action? Cæsar has become a great figure, and in the mind of Cassius has grown up the idea that the safety of the Roman state demands his taking off. Man by man he gains adherents, but always with his mind upon the particular one man who is needed to make success certain-namely, Marcus Junius Brutus, the

descendant of that Brutus who roused Rome to expel the tyrannical Tarquins centuries before the man of highest character in the Roman world. Here the play begins. Cassius opens the matter to Brutus, and finds his idea is not wholly new to him. Brutus has thought of something of the sort before; now he begins to consider it seriously, and the conspirators have high hopes of gaining him. Such is the preparation. So begun, the play goes on rapidly. Brutus decides to join the conspiracy. All meet in his garden for the last plans, and when the final arrangement is made, no time is lost before its bloody carrying out. The conspirators go to Cæsar's house, accompany him to the Capitol, and then carry out their purpose.

Cæsar is now dead. What is to be done next? The matter is not quite clear. The question of his death is "enrolled in the Capitol." All the citizens are to have a part in the commonwealth, but precisely how matters are to be ordered is not plain, nor does it appear that Brutus, at least, had given much thought to the subject. Rome is a republic, is probably his idea; let matters go on as before. This is the last success of the conspirators. Other men of action now step in. Antony and Octavius seize upon the courses of events, and the conspirators are driven from Rome.

The remainder of the play shows their defeat and death. Now if we would appreciate this matter, we must understand the reason of it all. We must ask ourselves why all this takes place as it does. What is the sense of it? Why failure after success? Why do we have a tragic ending? Does Shakespeare present us with merely a sort of see-saw, now one up, now the other? Such a matter would hardly be subject for a great play. Does Shakespeare make us glad at Brutus' success merely to grieve us at his failure? Such is not Shakespeare's way, nor that of any great writer. To study the action in more than a formal way we must see the reason and the right of it all.

When we read Shakespeare we are led to think that if there is evil in the world it is because it is the necessary outcome of weakness or folly, or disobedience to the laws of right and justice. Thus Macbeth is unsuccessful because he has broken the laws which govern the world; he has sought to raise himself by treachery and murder. Hamlet is unsuccessful, not because he is wicked, but because he is so constituted that he can never act strongly and actively, and to the full advantage that his powerful mind points out to him. So it is with Brutus and the conspirators. With the others we need not occupy ourselves; they seem, most of them, to have been impelled by private jealousy of Cæsar. Brutus, however, was unselfish in his aims. Why, then, should he not have succeeded? We must seek the answer in the play. The highest point of the action, we said, is the end of Brutus' speech; then it is that the turn comes; and if we ask the immediate cause of the turn, we say at once that it is the speech of Antony. Let us follow this matter out point by point. How is it that Antony happens to speak? It is because Brutus allows him to. Cassius advises against it, but is overruled (III., i., 232-243). Much the same thing has happened before. The conspirators consider whether Antony shall not be killed as well as Cæsar (II., i., 154-189). Brutus here also practically decides, in spite of Cassius, that he shall be spared.

The action of the play, therefore, shows us Brutus undone by himself. As Macbeth falls in expiation of his crimes, as Hamlet falls in expiation of his weakness (for the world will not tolerate wicked men or weak men), so Brutus falls, by what at first seems merely a political mistake, because he will not let the others kill Antony as well as Cæsar. For this is the mistake which robs the conspirators of success.

Now we may well ask whether it is a crime or a piece of weakness to spare another. Is Brutus to die himself, merely because he was too merciful to another-too kind-hearted, too good, in short?

It is, of course, not a crime nor a weakness to spare another, and we cannot suppose that Shakespeare would have made a play upon any such subject. In itself Brutus' motive in sparing Antony was right and high-minded. He is so firm in his sense of the necessity of taking Cæsar off, that he cannot bear that the action shall be marred or mingled by anything of less worthy motive. If Cæsar only be killed every one will recognize the justice, the necessity of the act; for Cæsar is evidently a tyrant who is crushing the liberties of Rome. But if Antony be murdered it will clearly be for the safety of the conspirators, who will thereby seem mere butchers. Brutus spares Antony because he is high-minded, and thinks everybody else as high-minded as himself.

And is it, then, because he is high-minded that he fails? Is this the moral that Shakespeare manages to get into the play? Does the conspiracy fail because Brutus is high-minded, and would it have succeeded if Cassius, who was not, had been allowed to murder Antony as well as Cæsar?

It is not probable that Shakespeare would have made a play upon any such idea. It is far too simply cynical for him. The small man, after a few disappointments, says: "Oh, yes; you never get a chance in this world if you try merely to be good." But Shakespeare is not a small man: he sees things largely. He does not think that the good will go to the wall in this world merely because it is good. It is true that Hamlet fails quite as seriously as Macbeth. But it is not merely because of his good characteristics; it is because of the weakness mixed in with the good.

Hamlet, for instance, is a thinker, and so far that is well; but he thinks too much, and cannot act upon his thought. Now the world, as Shakespeare knows, needs not empty thought, but action; and so Hamlet, who cannot bring himself into accord with this law of the world, comes to failure. Brutus was conceived by Shakespeare at about the same time that Hamlet was, and he is something like him. As Hamlet