Shakespeare's Julius Caesar, Act 1.3*
* Verses numbered following RSC Edition (2007).
Our Scene opens with Cicero’s elliptical reference to a common good1 and the present possibility of bringing Caesar home. Cicero will move on to object to Casca that “men may construe things after their fashion / Clean from the purpose of the things themselves” (1.3.33-36).2 “Indeed, it is a strange-disposed time”. Accordingly, Casca stands for “portentous things” that are not “natural” (30). Cicero’s allusion invites that thought that the trouble at hand—the relativism of the times—is retraceable to a disjuncture between heaven and earth, or between the divine and the human (cf. 10-13).
Upon entering the scene, Cassius indicates that the heavens reflect earthly faults, or dishonesty (46-48). He defies nature, altogether (53-56). There is no natural or divine standard of right and wrong. Casca, on the other hand, supposes that man must remain in “fear and trembl[ing]” before dei ex machina (56-59), gods cut off from nature. Peace would be thenbought at the price of irrational submission. Cassius rejects such a peace as a womanish illusion (87). Casca responds by conceding that Caesar’s title may be unnatural (89-91). Authority is an imposition upon our spirit. Once we understand this, even if we are weak, we can use the gods to strengthen our spirit (94-98). Even the weak can become strong by delivering themselves from fear of gods; by knowing that gods are but masks for tyrants (93-101). Cassius’s worldly knowledge (101) allows him to shake off fear to pursue pleasure (102-03). Fear is “that part of tyranny that I do bear” and that masks my own hedonistic spirit. Casca concurs (104): he, too, “can” trade fear for pleasure or the pursuit thereof, assuming that every “bondman,” every slave, has “the power to cancel his captivity” (105-06). Cassius has apparently convinced him that all kings are tyrants (89, 107-15, where 115 anticipates 122) to be overturned by violent artifice (118), though Casca might underestimate the extent to which Cassius’s arms coincide with “the noblest-minded Romans” that the hedonist can make use of to dethrone kings (127). Casca intends to use the “noblest-minded” or those who believe to be noble, or who live as if they were noble, for an “honourable dangerous cause” (129). The cause, not the means, isnoble; the artificial end, rather than the natural means (134-35). Casca’s earlier dream is exposed as intimating a revolution, an upheaval whereby men shed fear in the name of a freedom inspired by a hedonist (compare the “streets” of 25 and those of 132).
Cinna enters the scene as a friend of Cassius’s with respect to “gait” or behavior (137). Evidently Cinna is not a true friend in classical terms. Unlike Cassius, Casca and Cinna have both had fearful visions of revolution (142-43), though all three men are as one body in their “attempts” (140-41). The three form one “party” that still needs to “win the noble Brutus” (147), for he is a “praetor” (159). What Cassius, Casca and Cinna need is a favorable public judgment (163), to be won by a theatrical artifice (148, 151, 158). The three conspirators are to be the “content” of old judgment in a new setting (reading Cassius’s “be you content” as a pun clarified by “this paper” and “upon old Brutus’s statue”—148, 152). The three conspirators “will yet ere day / See Brutus at his house” (160-61), rather than in public. What they need to do is distract Brutus from intimate, “womanish” (as per Cassius—86-87) influences, so that judgment may serve a new, revolutionary, violent cause. Brutus must be cut off from nature and so from the old distinction between king and tyrant. The goal is to see Brutus before day to convert by nocturnal “richest alchemy” (165) his old judgment into an asset valuable for revolutionaries (166).
The completion of the day must be defined by revolution—the new day, the future. The past must be transformed into a means to establish the future. The present is the place wherein such a transformation is to take place secretively, in darkness. All three elements (past, future, present) must be one in Brutus in the respect that judgment is to reflect the radical transformation of nobility into an unnatural pretense thereof; a mere facade found in conceited ends cut off from means. Brutus’s facade must be seen as a needful ideal to murder for (167-68). Its content coincides with the “three parts” (160s—or the “party” of three) that are to make up Brutus insofar as he is to be alienated from his private life, represented most notably by his wife, Portia. “Three parts of him / Is ours already” (160-61)—says Cassius, whose singular “is” is justified by what he means. At present, in the present nocturnal conspiracy, we find the single content that coincides with three men (“Casca, you and I”—159), recalling Cassius’s earlier “that part of tyranny that I do bear” (102). Each conspirator represents fear to be converted into a new freedom cut off from nature. The conspirators’s goal is to win “the man entire,” or to reduce the form of judgment to serve a revolutionary content. It is in revolution, in the future, in the new day, that “the man entire” (whose form “sits high in all the people’s hearts”—163) is to be severed, once and for all, from old nature. Only thus could the people at large be won for the conspirators’ revolutionary cause. The three moments of the revolutionary process are hiding at present in the night. The new day must establish the three moments or parts as “the man entire,” or the man entirely cut off from old nature. Thereupon a new humanity will belong entirely to the conspirators, or to a New Age of Conspiracy.
Moral of the Story:
In the modern world, law is to be converted into the plaything of hedonists; a form animated by a hedonistic spirit; an instrument by which noble royalty is to be publicly despised as the illegitimate mask of tyranny. Shakespeare’s Jules Caesar exposes the limits of the modern project, inviting a “mending” of kings’ bad souls, as preemptive strike against the rise of a tyranny fostered de facto by the modern, hedonistic revolution.
Recommended Readings:
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FOOTNOTES
1Reading Cicero’s “Good even” as a pun alluding to the philosopher’s communis utilitas, or “common good”.
2 Cicero goes on to ask about Caesar coming to the Capital, tomorrow. Our Scene will show us the importance of returning home (not merely one’s formal house) prior to presenting oneself in public. For a complete exposition of the problem at hand, see my five part study of the Julius Caesar at https://voegelinview.com/tag/julius-caesar/.
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