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REVIEW
- Traversi, Derek. "Julius Caesar." Shakespeare: The Roman
Plays.
- Stanford, Calif.: Stanford UP, 1963. 21-75.
Thesis: In the general introduction to his book, Traversi
describes Julius Caesar as "a play in which dramatic suspense
is supported by a keen and detached insight into human motives" (12),
and his chapter on the play is a persuasive and detailed examination
of the motives of the four most substantial characters—Brutus,
Cassius, Caesar, and Antony. Traversi goes through the play from
beginning to end, showing how each of these four have mixed motives.
Cassius feels genuine respect and friendship for Brutus, and also a
sense of cunning superiority. Brutus is both virtuous and
self-righteous, both compassionate and coldly idealistic. Caesar's
confidence in his own greatness is often defensive. Antony's grief
for Caesar's death is deeply felt, but he puts it to good use for his
own political purposes.
Throughout the chapter,
Traversi displays a subtle appreciation of Shakespeare's
understanding of the workings of the human mind. Following is an
example of Traversi's close reading, from his examination of Brutus'
soliloquy which begins "It must be by his death":
The argument . . . is pressed home with less than
complete conviction. 'How that might change his nature,
there's the question,' Brutus urges upon himself, in a strangely
tentative attitude, only to recognize in a later outburst of honesty
that
the
quarrel
will bear no colour for the thing he is; [II.i.28.]
but, since a contrary necessity of his nature urges him to overrule
these doubts, calls upon him to assert a certainty which he is far
from feeling, emphasis must be laid on a possible, an unproven
danger:
Fashion it thus; that what he is, augmented,
Would run to these
and these extremities. [II.i.30]
The vagueness, the readiness to 'fashion it thus' in accordance with
preconceptions in which observed reality has little part to play, is
highly symptomatic. Brutus, precisely because the vacillation which
has characterized his reactions since the beginning of the play
covers deep inner uncertainty, speaks to himself evasively in terms
of specious 'philosophical' commonplace—
lowliness is young ambition's
ladder . . .
The abuse of greatness is when it
disjoins
Remorse from power— [II.i.22,18.]
and takes refuge in an imposed ruthlessness: (43)
think
him as a serpent's egg
Which hatch'd would in his kind grow
mischievous,
And kill him in the shell [II.i.32.]
The tendency to cover lack of intimate consistency with a show of
impersonal brutality belongs to Brutus' particular brand of
theoretical idealism. It is part of the presentation of human
contradiction whose exposure is so close to the spirit of this play;
the whole speech may be read as an early effort to follow thought in
the clarifying of its uncertain ideas, and not a few of its phrases
anticipate later Shakesperian presentations of the tragic
implications of moral choice. When Brutus affirms that Caesar 'would
be crown'd', it is as though we heard, but to another end, the voice
of Lady Macbeth meditating on her husband's indecision; and when the
serpent is conjured into the sunlight—
It is the bright day that brings forth the adder;
And that craves
wary walking— [II.i.14.]
or when the speaker reflects upon the temptations which accompany the
exercise of authority we seem to be hearing intimations of the
greater tragedy. Brutus seeks at this moment to resolve an intimate,
tragic disharmony through an act of decision foreign to his nature;
the confusion revealed in his own motives, and in his attitude to the
world of external realities around him, is one which will follow him
through the contradictions of his career to the final resolution of
suicide. (34-5)
Bottom Line: Very worthwhile.
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