in Rome, bartering away his own uncle, to glut his revenge with the blood of Cicero; though even here his revenge was less hideous than the cold-blooded policy of young Octavius. Yet Antony has in the play, as he had in fact, some right noble streaks in him; for his character was a very mixed one; and there was to the last a fierce war of good and evil within him. Especially he had an eye to see, a heart to feel, and a soul to honor the superb structure of manhood which Rome possessed in Julius Cæsar, who stood to him, indeed, as a kind of superior nature, to raise him above himself. He "fear'd Cæsar, honour'd him, and lov'd him"; and with the murdered Cæsar for his theme, he was for once inspired and kindled to a rapture of the truest, noblest, most overwhelming eloquence. Noteworthy also is the grateful remembrance at last of his obligations to Brutus for having saved him from the daggers of the conspirators. liii liii The People The People That many-headed, but withal big-souled creature, the multitude, is charmingly characterized in Julius Cæsar. The common people, it is true, are rather easily swayed hither and thither by the contagion of sympathy and of persuasive speech; yet their feelings are in the main right, and even their judgment in the long run is better than that of the pampered Roman aristocracy, inasmuch as it proceeds more from the instincts of manhood. Shakespeare evidently loved to play with the natural, unsophisticated, though somewhat childish heart of the people; but his playing is always genial and human-hearted, with a certain angelic humor in it that seldom fails to warm us towards the subject. On the whole, he understood the people well, and they have well repaid him in understanding him better than the critics have often done. The cobbler's droll humor, at the opening of this play, followed as it is by a strain of the loftiest poetry, is aptly noted by Campbell as showing that the dramatist, "even in dealing with classical subjects, laughed at the classic fear of putting the ludicrous and sublime into juxtaposition." IX. GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS As a whole, Julius Cæsar is inferior to Coriolanus, but it abounds in scenes and passages fraught, with the highest virtue of Shakespeare's genius.
Prev.
Back
Top