Текст книги "Asimov’s Guide To Shakespear. Volume 1"

Автор книги: Isaac Asimov

сообщить о нарушении

Текущая страница: 19 (всего у книги 46 страниц)

And yet the Roman tribunes in their harangue to the populace bring up Pompey, reproachfully, in connection with this last triumph of Caesar, and Marullus says to the gathered people:

 
And do you now put on your best attire?
And do you now cull out a holiday?
And do you now strew flowers in his way
That comes in triumph over Pompey's blood?
 

—Act I, scene i, lines 51-54

By "Pompey's blood" is not meant Pompey's death in defeat, as might seem, but Pompey's kinsmen.

Pompey had two sons, the elder of whom shared his father's name and was Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus also. We can call him Gnaeus Pompeius to differentiate him from his father, whom we can still call simply Pompey.

Gnaeus Pompeius remained with the senatorial party after his father's death. He had a fleet in his charge and he brought it to Africa (where the modern nation of Tunis exists), putting it at the service of the largest remaining senatorial army. When Caesar defeated it in April 47 b.c., Gnaeus Pompeius escaped to Spain.

After the quadruple triumph, only Spam was left in opposition. Caesar took his legions there and in March 45 b.c. a battle took place at Munda in southern Spain.

The senatorial army fought remarkably well and Caesar's forces were driven back. For a time, indeed, Caesar must have thought that years of invariable victory were going to be brought to ruin in one last battle (as had been the case of Hannibal of Carthage a century and a half earlier). So desperate was he that he seized a shield and sword himself, rushed into battle (he was fifty-five years old then), and shouted to his retreating men, "Are you going to let your general be delivered up to the enemy?"

Stung into action, the retiring legions lunged forward once more and carried the day. The last senatorial army was wiped out. Gnaeus Pompeius escaped from the field of battle, but was pursued, caught, and killed. (Pompey's younger son escaped and lived to play a part in the events that took place some six years later, and in another of Shakespeare's plays, Antony and Cleopatra.)

Now, returning from Spain, Caesar was celebrating Ms victory over Gnaeus Pompeius and it was in this sense that he came in "triumph over Pompey's blood."

 
… the feast of Lupercal
 

The populace disbands and leaves the stage, presumably returning to their houses in guilt. The tribune, Flavius, then suggests that they tear down the decorations intended for the triumph. Marullus hesitates, for it may be sacrilege. He says:

 
May we do so?
You know it is the feast of Lupercal.
 

—Act I, scene i, lines 69-70

The Lupercalian festival was an ancient fertility rite whose origins are lost in antiquity and probably predate civilization. It involved the ritual sacrifice of goats, which were noted for being ruttish animals.

Strips of the skin of the sacrificed goats were cut off by the priests in charge. They then ran about the Palatine Hill, striking out with those thongs. Anyone struck would be rendered fertile, supposedly, and sterile women therefore so placed themselves at the rites as to make sure they would be struck.

The "feast of Lupercal" was held each year on February 15 and this was not the day of Caesar's last triumph at all (as would appear from the play), but four months later. Shakespeare, however, commonly compresses time in his historical plays (a compression that is a dramatic necessity, and even a dramatic virtue), and here he lets the four months pass between the driving off of the populace and the next speech of the tribunes. There is no further talk of the triumph.

One would suppose from this first scene that the triumph was somehow aborted and never took place. It did take place, of course. The chief point of the scene is to show that there is opposition to Caesar.

 
… in servile fearfulness
 

Flavius shrugs off the possibility of sacrilege. It is more important to resist Caesar's pretensions. He says:

 
These growing feathers plucked from Caesar's wing
Will make him fly an ordinary pitch,
Who else would soar above the view of men
And keep us all in servile fearfulness.
 

—Act I, scene i, lines 75-78

The battle in Caesar's time did not really involve liberty in our modern sense. On the one hand was a time-honored but distorted and corrupt senatorial government, inefficient and dying. On the other was the one-man dictatorship of Julius Caesar, intent on fundamental reform and a centralized government.

There would have been no freedom for the common people anywhere, even in Rome, under either form of government. Under Caesar, however, the government would certainly have been more efficient and the realm more prosperous. That this is so is demonstrated by the fact that when Caesar's heir and successor founded a Caesar-type government (the Roman Empire), it led to two centuries of unbroken peace and prosperity.

During that peaceful tune, however, literary men had leisure to look back on the decades before the establishment of the Empire and to regret the hurly-burly of politics and the active drama of contending personalities. It seemed to them that they and their senatorial patrons lived in a gilded prison (and indeed the senators sometimes suffered, when suspicious emperors suspected treason among them). It became fashionable to look back with nostalgic sadness to the days of the Roman Republic.

The senatorial party of Caesar's time then came to be called "Republicans" and to be viewed as exponents of "liberty." They were entirely idealized and in this fashion were passed on to Shakespeare and to us. We need not be deluded, however. The senatorial notion of "liberty" was the liberty of a small group of venal aristocrats to plunder the state unchecked.

 
Calphurnia
 

The scene shifts now to another part of Rome, where Caesar and many with him are on their way to attend the Lupercalian rites. Caesar's first word in the play is to call his wife:

 
Calphurnia!
 

—Act I, scene ii, line 1

Caesar had three wives altogether. He married his first wife in 83 b.c. when he was not yet seventeen. She was the daughter of a radical antisena-torial politician, and it was from this connection, probably, that Caesar began to get his own antisenatorial philosophy. When Caesar's father-in-law was killed and the conservatives gamed control and initiated a blood-bath (the radicals had had their turn previously), Caesar was ordered to divorce his wife. He refused! It might have then gone hard with him as a result, but the young man's aristocratic connections saved his life.

Caesar's first wife died in 67 b.c. and he made a politically convenient second marriage, taking as wife Pompeia, the daughter of Pompey, who was then at the height of his career.

In 62 b.c. a certain young scapegrace named Publius Clodius (called "Pulcher" or "good-looking") played a rather foolish practical joke. He dressed himself in women's clothing and got himself into Caesar's house at a time when a religious festival was in process which only women could attend.

He was caught and it was a great scandal. Many whispered that it could not have been done without the co-operation of Pompeia and even wondered if Clodius might not be Pompeia's lover. Pompeia was almost certainly innocent, but Caesar divorced her at once with the famous remark that "Caesar's wife must be above suspicion." Actually, he was probably tired of her and was glad of a face-saving excuse for the divorce.

After Caesar had formed the triumvirate with Pompey and Crassus, he married again, for the third and last tune, to Calpurnia (or Calphurnia, as Shakespeare calls her). She was a daughter of one of Pompey's friends, and it was therefore, in a sense, another political marriage.

 
… in Antonius' way Caesar has a simple direction for Calphurnia:
Stand you directly in Antonius' way When he doth run his course.
 

—Act I, scene ii, lines 3-4

Antonius, it seems, will be one of those who will race along wielding the goat-hide thongs at the Lupercalian festival. Since Calphurnia has had no children, and Caesar would like a direct heir, it will be useful for her to be struck.

The Antonius referred to is Marcus Antonius, far better known, in English, as Mark Antony. He was born in 83 b.c. and was thirty-eight years old at the time of this Lupercalian festival. He was related to Julius Caesar on his mother's side and had joined the general while he was in Gaul. He had remained loyally pro-Caesar ever since.

Mark Antony had been tribune in 49 b.c. when Pompey and the Senate were trying to force Julius Caesar to come to Italy without his army. Mark Antony and his fellow tribune did what they could to block senatorial action, then fled to Caesar's army, claiming they were in danger of their lives. Since tribunes were inviolate and might not be harmed, Caesar had the excuse he needed to cross the Rubicon with his army.

While Caesar was in Greece and Egypt fighting the civil war, Mark Antony held the fort in Rome itself and didn't do a very good job of it.

Caesar continued to value him for his absolute loyalty, however, and they remained together to the end.

 
… the ides of March
 

And then a voice calls Caesar's name. It is a soothsayer, a man who foresees the future. This time his message is a simple one:

 
Beware the ides of March.
 

—Act I, scene ii, line 18

To understand the matter of "the ides" we must consider the Roman calendar, which must set some sort of record for inconvenience.

Each of the Roman months has three key dates and the other days are defined as "so many days before the such-and-such key date." Nor are the key dates regularly spaced or quite the same from month to month.

The first day of each month is the "calends" of that month.

Not long after the calends come the "nones." The nones fall on the fifth day of January, February, April, June, August, September, November, and December, and on the seventh day of March, May, July, and October.

The word "nones" means "nine" because it falls nine days before the third key date, the "ides," where the nine days count the day of the ides itself. The ides, therefore, fall on the fifteenth day of March, May, July, and October, and on the thirteenth day of the other months.

From all this we gather that the "ides of March" is what we could call March 15 today. The Lupercalian festival, which falls on February 15, is not, however, on the "ides of February," for that date would be what we now call February 13.

 
I am not gamesome…
 

Calmly, Caesar ignores the mystic warning and passes on to the festival. The incident of the soothsayer is not a Shakespearean invention, but is referred to in Plutarch.

That, of course, does not necessarily make it authentic. The event of the ides of March was so dramatic and so clearly a turning point of history that numerous fables arose afterward of all sorts of supernatural omens and forebodings preceding it. The incident of the soothsayer is only the most restrained and dramatically satisfying one of them.

After Caesar and his party pass on, two men remain behind: Brutus and Cassius. Cassius asks if Brutus intends to watch the festival and Brutus says he won't, for:

 
/ am not gamesome: I do lack some part
Of that quick spirit that is in Antony.
 

—Act I, scene ii, lines 28-29

No, he is not gamesome (that is, "merry" or "gay"). The Romans, somehow, usually aren't in literature. They are generally presented as grave, portentous, dignified men, given to declamations in high-sounding phrases, and that is exactly how Brutus is presented.

He is Marcus Junius Brutus, born in 85 b.c., and therefore just past forty at this time.

Brutus was the "Republican" most idealized by later historians, but he was by no means an admirable character in real life.

To begin with, he was a nephew of Cato, one of Caesar's most obdurate and steadfast enemies. It is not surprising, then, that Brutus was also an enemy of Caesar's to begin with. Indeed, he fought on Pompey's side in Greece and was taken prisoner when Pompey was defeated.

Caesar, however, followed a consistent policy of leniency toward his enemies, feeling, perhaps, that in this way he converted them to friends and healed the wounds inflicted by civil war. So Brutus was pardoned and set free.

The policy seemed to have worked in Brutus' case, for he behaved as though he were converted from a Pompeian into a sincere Caesarian. When Caesar went to Africa to take care of the senatorial armies there, those had, as one of their most important leaders, Cato, who was Brutus' uncle. And yet Brutus remained one of Caesar's lieutenants and served him loyally in the province of Cisalpine Gaul (in what is now northern Italy).

Later on, crucially and fatally, he abandoned Caesar once again. The later idealization of Brutus has him acting out of conviction and principle, but a glance at his career before the opening scenes of Julius Caesar would make it seem that he was, rather, a self-serving turncoat.

 
… Cassias.. .
 

Brutus is unwilling that his lack of gamesomeness should interfere with Cassius' pleasures. He says:

 
Let me not hinder, Cassius, your desires;
I'll leave you.
 

—Act I, scene ii, lines 30-31

Cassius' full name is Gaius (or Caius) Cassius Longinus, and he is a capable soldier. He went with Crassus to the East as second-in-command. After the disastrous defeat which almost destroyed the Roman army, thanks in good part to Crassus' incapacity, Cassius took over and brought what was left of the army safely back to Roman territory.

He was also with Pompey at first, but after Pompey's defeat he reassessed the situation. He had not been captured, but it seemed to him that Caesar was sure to win, and Cassius intended to be on the winning side. He followed Caesar into Asia Minor and threw himself on the conqueror's mercy. Caesar pardoned him and let him serve under him.

Cassius married Junia, the sister of Brutus, and was, therefore, Brutus' brother-in-law.

 
Your hidden worthiness…
 

But now that Brutus makes ready to leave Cassius, Cassius gently restrains him. He has a use for Brutus and to serve that use he begins, carefully, to seduce him with praise. He tells Brutus that he is too modest and does not sufficiently value himself, saying:

 
… it is very much lamented, Brutus,
That you have no such mirrors as will turn
Your hidden worthiness into your eye,
That you might see your shadow.
 

—Act I, scene ii, lines 35-38

Somehow the general idealization of Brutus is such that most of those who read or see this play imagine that Brutus is presented in heroic colors; and, indeed, the play is often produced with Brutus as the hero. Yet a close reading seems to show that Shakespeare is utterly out of sympathy with Brutus and makes him rather a despicable character.

Cassius bemoans Brutus' modesty, but there is no modesty in Brutus as portrayed by Shakespeare. Brutus always listens complacently to those who praise him, and praises himself often enough. Nor does Cassius for a moment really believe that Brutus is modest, for in the rest of the scene his attempt to win over Brutus to a desired line of action is pitched entirely to Brutus' overweening vanity.

 
… Caesar for their king
 

Cassius' smoothly scheming flattery is interrupted by the sound of shouting in the distance, and Brutus cries out:

 
What means this shouting? I do fear the people
Choose Caesar for their king.
 

—Act I, scene ii, lines 79-80

The word "king" had a dread sound to Romans throughout their great days, a dread that dated back to the hated Tarquin (see page I-211). The tale of Tarquin was a heritage of every Roman schoolboy, as the tale of George III is of every American schoolboy, and a stanch republicanism was inculcated in the former case as it is in the latter.

Then too, in the two centuries preceding Julius Caesar's period of power, Rome had been more or less continuously at war with the various Hellenistic nations of the eastern Mediterranean, all of which were ruled by kings. Kings were the enemy and were therefore hated; and the kings were always defeated by the Roman republicans, so that the institution of monarchy had the aura of defeat about it.

Consequently, Caesar was in a dilemma when he took power over Rome. He simply had to reform the government, which had come to be utterly stagnant and unworkable, but he could not do so by ordinary legal means. That would require working through the Senate, and the Senate was hostile and obstructionist. Hence, he had to rule dictatorially, by decree.

The Roman system of government allowed for rule by decree under certain conditions. A special official could be elected for six months who would have the power to rule by decree. He was a "dictator" (from a Latin word meaning "to say," because what he said became law without further ado). A famous early (and legendary) dictator was Cincinnatus, who in 458 b.c. held the dictatorship for only a few days to meet an emergency.

In later times the device was broadened. In 81 b.c. the Roman general Lucius Cornelius Sulla made himself dictator and held the post for two years. This was with the connivance of the Senate, whose cause Sulla favored.

Caesar took advantage of the broadening and turned it against the Senate. He had taken the power of a dictator during the civil war and at the time of the quadruple triumph had had himself declared dictator for a term of ten years. After the Spanish triumph, which opens this play, he was made dictator for life.

He used the dictatorship to bring about his program of reform. He tried to reform the Senate by wrenching it out of the hands of the few oligarchs who monopolized it and allowing the entry of important families from the provinces. He broadened the base of citizenship, revised the taxation procedure, reconstructed cities, improved trade, passed laws designed to strengthen the moral structure of society, and reformed the calendar so that it was almost the one we use today. He even established the first public library.

Yet although he was dictator for life, Caesar felt it was not enough. As merely dictator, his death would be the sign for a new struggle for power, and all his reforms would be undone. That placed a premium on his death and made his opponents eager for an assassination. If he were king, however, Ms power would merely descend to his nearest heir upon his death, and there would be far less point to killing him.

It was this desire of Caesar to make himself king-a desire imputed to him by the senatorial conservatives, and probably justly so-that was the chief weapon against him. The conservatives, who hated him and his reforms, emphasized his ambition for the kingship, hoping that the hated word would turn the populace against Caesar.

On the other hand, the conservatives also feared that the popularity of his reforms might more than make up for the fearsomeness of the word, and that the infatuated populace, caught up on the occasion of some holiday such as the present Lupercalian festival, would be stampeded into declaring him king and that the Senate would then be forced, much against its will, to go along. Once that was done, it would be too late to expect to turn back the tide of reform.

It was exactly this that Brutus feared when he heard the shouting.

 
… the waves of Tiber
 

Brutus' outspoken fear of Caesar as king heartens Cassius. He plays on that fear by describing the indignity of having to bow down to one who after all is but a man and perhaps not even as good a man as oneself. To make his point, he tells a tale of a contest between himself and Caesar.

One cold day Caesar challenged Cassius to swim across the river. Caesar wearied first and cried out for help. Cassius says:

 
I, as Aeneas, our great ancestor,
Did from the flames of Troy upon his shoulder
The old Anchises bear, so from the waves of Tiber
Did I the tired Caesar.
 

—Act I, scene ii, lines 112-15

The Tiber River is 252 miles long and is the second longest river in Italy. It would bear little distinction as a river were it not that, like some other short rivers, such as the Thames, the Seine, and the Spree, a great capital was located on its banks. The city of Rome was founded twenty miles upstream from its mouth.

Here again there is a reference to Aeneas as the ancestor of the Romans (see page I-20).

Like a Colossus.. . In all Cassius' clever speaking, he doesn't once accuse Caesar of tyrannical behavior or of cruelty; he doesn't say his reforms are wicked or evil.

He concentrates entirely on Caesar's physical weakness and poor health, for he is endeavoring to show Brutus that Caesar is inferior, hoping that Brutus' inordinate vanity would then rebel at bowing down to such a ruler.

He labors to find a way to describe the greatness of Caesar and the comparative littleness of Brutus in such a way as to force Brutus to rebel. Cassius says:

 
Why, man, he doth bestride the narrow world
Like a Colossus, and we petty men
Walk under his huge legs and peep about
To find ourselves dishonorable graves.
 

—Act I, scene ii, lines 135-38

The Colossus is a statue of the sun god built in the island of Rhodes in 280 b.c. to commemorate the successful defense against a siege by a Macedonian general, Demetrius. Why the name "colossus" was applied to a huge statue is unknown, but this Rhodian statue, the largest in the Greco-Roman world, 105 feet tall, was the Colossus of Rhodes. It was considered one of the Seven Wonders of the ancient world.

It did not, however, remain long to gladden the eyes of those who value size in art. In 224 b.c., little more than half a century after it had been built, it was toppled by an earthquake.

Once it was gone, the description of what it had looked like while it was standing gradually grew more grandiose, until finally the tale arose that it had straddled Rhodes' harbor and that ships had sailed between its legs in and out of that harbor. This is, of course, quite impossible, for the ancient Greeks had lacked the materials and technique to build a statue so large in a position that would place so much strain on the legs.

The picture is nevertheless a dramatic one, and Cassius, by whose time the statue had been out of existence for nearly two centuries, uses it to fire up Brutus' vanity and envy.

 
… a Brutus once…
 

Cassius plays on Brutus' pride of ancestry too, saying:

 
There was a Brutus once that would have brooked
Th'eternal devil to keep his state in Rome
As easily as a king.
 

—Act I, scene ii, lines 159-61

Brutus considers himself to be descended from Lucius Junius Brutus, who, according to legend, helped overthrow King Tarquin and set up the Roman Republic (see page I-211).

 
… and Cicero
 

Brutus' vanity is not proof against Cassius' skilful seduction, and he admits that he resents Rome's present situation.

Before matters can go further, though, Caesar comes back onstage, returning from the festival with others crowding around him.

Caesar is clearly angry and those about him look perturbed. Brutus, surprised at this, says to Cassius:

 
Calphurnia's cheek is pale, and Cicero
Looks with such ferret and such fiery eyes
As we have seen him in the Capitol,
Being crossed in conference by some senators.
 

—Act I, scene ii, lines 185-88

Marcus Tullius Cicero, though he plays only a small part in this play, was actually the most important man in Rome in Caesar's time, next to Caesar himself.

He was born in 106 b.c. of middle-class family and received an excellent education in Greece. He returned to Rome in 77 b.c. and quickly became Rome's outstanding lawyer and orator (the two went together). He made himself famous by prosecuting one of the particularly crooked Roman provincial governors of the time, Gaius Verres, in 74 b.c.

In 63 b.c. he reached the pinnacle of his career when, as consul, he scotched a dangerous conspiracy against the Roman government by a debt-ridden nobleman, Lucius Sergius Catilina (known in English as Catiline), and had its leaders executed.

He never reached such heights again. He was not brave enough or skillful enough to be an effective opponent of Caesar. In fact, Caesar had his lackey, Publius Clodius (the same who invaded the women's religious festival and made it possible for Caesar to divorce his second wife), to so vilify and harass Cicero as to drive the latter out of Italy altogether in 59 b.c.

Mark Antony had an undying hatred for Cicero, since Antony's foster father had been an associate of Catiline and had been among those executed at the instigation of Cicero. Cicero returned the hatred.

Cicero was a friend of Pompey, who, he thought, would be able to dominate Rome and defeat Caesar. When Pompey found he could not retain Italy and fled to Greece, Cicero, greatly disconcerted, left Italy with him. Cicero grew more and more disturbed at developments among the Pompeian forces and after the Battle of Pharsalia returned to Italy, determined to take a chance on Caesar's mercy rather than fight on with the remnants of a doomed cause. Caesar did not disappoint him; he pardoned Cicero and treated him kindly. Thereafter, Cicero displayed a wary neutrality, neither opposing Caesar's reforms openly nor supporting them, either.

Cicero was a debater rather than a warrior, and he was at home in the battle of words in the Senate rather than in the battle of swords on the field. Hence his angry red eyes (a ferret's eyes are red) reminded Brutus of his appearance when he was opposed in senatorial debate.

 
… always I am Caesar
 

But even while Brutus and Cassius observe Caesar and his company in astonishment, Caesar is observing them as well. He remarks upon Cassius, particularly, to Antony, in a famous and much quoted passage:

 
Yond Cassius has a lean and hungry look;
He thinks too much: such men are dangerous.
 

—Act I, scene ii, lines 194-95

But after elaborating on Cassius' gravity and on his inability to have fun and thus allow his possible feelings of envy to evaporate in pleasure, Caesar adds hastily:

 
I rather tell thee what is to be feared
Than what I /ear; for always I am Caesar.
 

—Act I, scene ii, lines 211-12

Caesar, as portrayed by Shakespeare, strikes wooden poses constantly. He is like a speaking statue, rather than a human being.

This is not and cannot be historical. All our sources seem to unite in assuring us that Caesar had infinite charm and could win over almost anyone, given half a chance. He was second only to Cicero as an orator and his surviving Commentaries, in which he describes his wars in Gaul and the civil war, are ample evidence of his ability as a writer.

He was a remarkably witty and intelligent man; a most human man. He was miles removed from the cardboard strutter in Shakespeare and was in real life much more like George Bernard Shaw's portrayal of him in Caesar and Cleopatra.

Why does Shakespeare portray him so woodenly then? Unfortunately, it was the fashion to describe ancient Romans like that. This fashion stems from the plays of the Roman philosopher Lucius Annaeus Seneca, who wrote about a century after Caesar's death. His are among the most fustian plays ever written, full of emotional sound and fury, blood and horror, and empty, high-sounding speeches.

The general public loved them so that they survived to be copied, alas, by playwrights in early modern times. Shakespeare himself wrote tragedies after the style of Seneca, notably Titus Andronicus (see page I-391).

A French poet, Marc Antoine Muret, wrote a tragedy entitled Julius Caesar in Latin in 1553. He followed the style of Seneca and made Caesar into a wooden poseur. This was popular too, and one theory is that when Shakespeare wrote his tragedy, he had to keep Caesar in this form because the audience expected it and would not accept any other version.

We might imagine that Shakespeare did so against his will, for he follows Caesar's pompous claim to fearlessness with an immediate confession of weakness on the part of the great man. Caesar goes on to say to Mark Antony:

 
Come on my right hand, for this ear is deaf,
And tell me truly what thou think'st of him.
 

—Act I, scene ii, lines 213-14

 
… a crown offered him…
 

Caesar and his followers leave again, but one remains behind, held back by Brutus. The man stopped is Casca, who is pictured by Shakespeare as a rough, coarse individual, the kind who has no "book learning" and is proud of it. He is Publius Servilius Casca in full, and his only mark in history is his participation in the conspiracy which Cassius is now working up.

Casca is asked as to the events at the festival that caused Caesar to look so put out. Casca says:

 
Why, there was a crown offered him; and being offered him,
he put it by with the back of his hand, thus;
and then the people fell a-shouting.
 

—Act I, scene ii, lines 220-22

Apparently Mark Antony took the occasion of the festival, when public spirits were high, and enthusiasm for Dictator Julius was loud, to offer him a linen headband wreathed in laurel. The laurel wreath was well within the Roman tradition. It was a symbol of victory, borrowed from the Greek custom of crowning the victors of the Olympian games in laurel wreaths.

The linen headband was, however, a "diadem," the symbol of monarchy among the kings of the East. For Caesar to put on this particular laurel wreath was tantamount to claiming the position of king. (In later times, gold replaced linen and it was a gold circlet, or crown, that became the symbol of royalty. Shakespeare transmutes the diadem into a crown so that the audience might understand.)

Caesar's stratagem seems obvious. The diadem is made to look as harmless and as Roman as possible by means of the laurel decoration. Ostentatiously, he refuses it, hoping that the crowd, in its enthusiasm, will demand that he accept it. Caesar would then graciously accede to their clamor and become king by the will of the people.

Unfortunately, the crowd did not react this way. Instead of demanding he accept the diadem, they cheered him for refusing it. Twice more Mark Antony tried, and twice more the crowd cheered the refusal. No wonder Caesar had looked angry. His stratagem had failed and he had come close to making a fool of himself.

To Cassius and others of his mind, the intention behind the stratagem is obvious. Caesar wanted to be king and if the trick today had failed, another tomorrow might not-and this must be stopped at all costs.