Following in the intellectual tradition of Howard White, Michael Platt, and Allan Bloom, in his fourth essay published in Shakespeare and the Good Life entitled “Julius Caesar,” David Lowenthal argues the Shakespeare’s vision of Julius Caesar, imprudent of his own greatness, (and notably distinct in certain respects from Plutarch’s biography of Julius Caesar), Caesar did not seek to merely become king of Rome, but rather he sought a far more expansive personal ambition. Lowenthal claims that out of Shakespeare’s thirty-seven plays, only Julius Caesar presents a “historical figure of the first rank” (109). Coriolanus, Antony, and Henry V were all of lesser rank, and Macbeth, King Lear, and Hamlet would have been entirely lost to historical obscurity if not for Shakespeare. But Julius Caesar boasts “unrivaled glory” on his own merits.
The rise of Caesar in Rome signifies the “ruin of the old republic and the establishment of the empire.” In Caesar, “republicans see a prodigious tyrant deserving assassination, and in the conspirators, mighty heroes even as they go down in defeat,” but among his partisans, Caesar is hailed as a “great king –perhaps the greatest of all—whose prominent abilities alone could preserve justice, order, peace, civilization in a period of republican decay” (110). Shakespeare carefully displays both of these perspectives in the play, giving us a tempering awareness of the complexity within the figure of Caesar –it goes without saying that Julius Caesar is not a mere polemic treatise. However, does it strike not us as significant that a play ostensibly about Julius Caesar proceeds long after the death of Caesar? Why does Shakespeare continue the play with two additional Acts following Caesar’s death?
In order to address this question, we must first take a look at the character of Caesar. The image we receive is somewhat convoluted and nuanced, complicated by “indirect impressions from commoners, tribunes, conspirators, a sophist and a soothsayer… the resulting portrait is well-nigh incomprehensible. Caesar seems imperious, superstitious, overconfident, inconstant, vainglorious and –above all—imprudent. He gives orders like an oriental potentate, credulously accepts old religious ceremonies, refuses to heed Calpurnia’s and his own apprehensions of danger, bows to Decius’s subtle flattery, boasts of his own superlative constancy to the senate, and is easily murdered… And here, at the height of his career, we watch him commit blunder after blunder, allowing a handful of conspirators to accomplish what whole armies, native as well as foreign, could not” (110-111). In spite of his hubris and many failings, Caesar prospers in death at least as much as in life. Here, he bears at least some partial comparison to Christ, though he does not seek martyrdom for universalist love like Jesus, but rather of himself in establishing a worldly kingdom whose glory and duration have never been exceeded in the West. In this way, Caesar marks the height of pagan heroism, while Christ represents a distinctly modern myth premised on an otherworldly kingdom, a new kind of hero for the masses, or at least for those who can persuade themselves of such things.
In spite of claiming to be a defender of the common people, “Caesar’s main –perhaps his sole—interest is himself” and Lowenthal argues that in Caesar’s limitless pride, he essentially arranges for his own assassination, martyrdom, and subsequent deification in many respects. Caesar exploits the steady decay of the republic even as internal forces have sought to entrust rule with one man –“Shakespeare makes it clear that the republic has lost its inner vitality in other ways as well. Over a long period of time the people have slowly changed from citizens into subjects: they glory in Caesar’s rule, have utterly no desire to participate in politics or war, and no longer regard themselves as needing the protection of elected tribunes” (129). Caesar sees this downfall and recognizes his own political opportunity –the physical “fall” of Caesar, whether by “falling sickness or assassination, actually represents the rise of a ferocious new regime in his name.
By the end of the play, the conspirators, particularly Brutus and Cassius, are shown to be heroic in their tragic efforts to reverse the republic’s decline. Yet Shakespeare makes great efforts to not portray Caesar as entirely morally repulsive, though it would be easy to do so, nor does he seem to despise the republicanism of Rome. Quite the contrary, Shakespeare remains fascinated with classical republics, especially the ways in which they rise and fall. In this case, the destruction of Rome, if not brought about entirely by Caesar, is at least strongly spurred on by Caesar’s ambition, whose personal plot leads to the most “corrupt and barbarous rule the world has ever seen” (146).
Lowenthal, David. Shakespeare and the Good Life. Rowan & Littlefield Publishers, Inc. Lanham, Maryland (1997).