1. Historic time. Cæsar's triumph over the sons of Pompey was celebrated in October, b.c. 45. Shakespeare makes this coincident with "the feast of Lupercal" on February 15, b.c. 44. In the play Antony delivers his funeral oration immediately after Cæsar's death; historically, there was an interval of days. Octavius did not reach Rome until upwards of two months after the assassination; in III, ii, 261, Antony is told by his servant immediately after the funeral oration that "Octavius is already come to Rome." In November, b.c. 43, the triumvirs met to make up their bloody proscription, and in the autumn of the following year were fought the two battles of Philippi, separated historically by twenty days, but represented by Shakespeare as taking place on the same day.
2. Dramatic Time. Historical happenings that extended over nearly three years are represented in the stage action as the occurrences of six days, distributed over the acts and scenes as follows:
Day 1.—I, i, ii.
Interval.
Day 2.—I, iii.
Day 3.—II, III.
Interval.
Day 4.—IV, i.
Interval.
Day 5.—IV, ii, iii.
Interval.
Day 6.—V.
This compression for the purposes of dramatic unity results in action that is swift and throbbing with human and ethical interest.
3. Place. Up to the second scene of the fourth act Rome is the natural place of action. The second and third scenes of the fourth act are at Sardis in Asia Minor; the last act shifts to Philippi in Macedonia. The only noteworthy deviation from historical accuracy is in making the conference of the triumvirs take place at Rome and not at Bononia. See note, p. 116. But there is peculiar dramatic effectiveness in placing this fateful colloquy in the city that was the center of the political unrest of the time.
VII. VERSIFICATION AND DICTION
Blank Verse
The characteristics of Shakespeare's blank verse—the rhymeless, iambic five-stress (decasyllabic) verse, or iambic pentameter, introduced into England by Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey, about 1540—and its proportion to rhyme and to prose have been much used in recent years to determine the chronological order of the plays and the development of the poet's art. In blank verse as used by Shakespeare we have really an epitome of the development of the measure in connection with the English drama. In his earlier plays the blank verse is often similar to that of Gorboduc, the first English tragedy. The tendency is to adhere to the syllable-counting principle, to make the line the unit, the sentence and phrase coinciding with the line (end-stopped verse), and to use five perfect iambic feet to the line. In plays of the middle period, such as The Merchant of Venice and As You Like It, written between 1596 and 1600, the blank verse is more like that of Kyd and Marlowe, with less monotonous regularity in the structure and an increasing tendency to carry on the sense from one line to another without a syntactical or rhetorical pause at the end of the line (run-on verse, enjambement). Redundant syllables now abound and the melody is richer and fuller. In Shakespeare's later plays the blank verse breaks away from all bondage to formal line limits, and the organic continuity is found in a succession of great metrical periods.
The verse of Julius Cæsar is less monotonously regular than that of the earlier plays; it is more flexible and varied, more musical and sonorous, but it lacks the superb movement of the verse in Othello, The Winter's Tale, and The Tempest. End-stopped, normally regular iambic pentameter lines often occur (as, for instance, I, i, 37, 41, 44, 62, 76), but everywhere are variations and deviations from the norm, and there is an unusual number of short lines and interjectional lines of two or three stresses. See Abbott's A Shakespearian Grammar, §§ 511, 512.
Rhyme
Apart from the use of rhyme in songs, lyrics, and portions of masques (as in The Tempest, IV, i, 60–138), a progress from more to less rhyme is a sure index to Shakespeare's development as a dramatist and a master of expression. In the early Love's Labour's Lost are more than one thousand rhyming five-stress iambic lines; in The Tempest are only two; in The Winter's Tale not one. In Julius Cæsar are found only thirty-four rhyming lines.
Prose
If "of the soule the bodie forme doth take," it is small wonder that attempts have been made to explain Shakespeare's distinctive use of verse and prose. Of recent years there have been interesting discussions of the question "whether we are justified in supposing that Shakespeare was guided by any fixed principle in his employment of verse and prose, or whether he merely employed them, as fancy suggested, for the sake of variety and relief."[22] It is a significant fact that in many of Shakespeare's earlier plays there is little or no prose, and that the proportion of prose to blank verse increases with the decrease of rhyme. In Julius Cæsar three kinds of prose may be distinguished: (1) The prose of homely dialogue, as in the talk of the common people in I, i, and III, iii. (2) The prose of serious information as to the nature of a situation, as in Casca's description of the offer of the crown to Cæsar. This kind of prose reaches its highest development in Brutus's famous speech, III, ii, with its dignified defense and laconic exposition of his honesty of purpose. (3) The prose of formal documents, as in the letter of Artemidorus, II, iii, 1–8.
VIII. THE CHARACTERS
Julius Cæsar
The characterization of this drama in some of the parts is not a little perplexing. Hardly one of the speeches put into Cæsar's mouth can be regarded as historically characteristic; taken all together, they seem little short of a caricature. As here represented, Cæsar appears little better than a braggart; and when he speaks, it is in the style of a glorious vapourer, full of lofty airs and mock thunder. Nothing could be further from the truth of the man, whose character, even in his faults, was as compact and solid as adamant, and at the same time as limber and ductile as the finest gold. Certain critics have seized and worked upon this, as proving Shakespeare's lack of classical knowledge, or carelessness in the use of his authorities. It proves neither the one nor the other.
It is true, Cæsar's ambition was gigantic, but none too much so for the mind it dwelt in; for his character in all its features was gigantic. And no man ever framed his ambition more in sympathy with the great forces of nature, or built it upon a deeper foundation of political wisdom and insight. Now this "last infirmity of noble minds" is the only part of him that the play really sets before us; and even this we do not see as it was, because it is here severed from the constitutional peerage of his gifts and virtues; all those transcendent qualities which placed him at the summit of Roman intellect and manhood being either withheld from the scene or thrown so far into the background that the proper effect of them is lost.
Yet we have ample proof that Shakespeare understood Cæsar thoroughly, and that he regarded him as "the noblest man that ever lived in the tide of times." For example, in Hamlet, he makes Horatio, who is one of his calmest and most right-thinking characters, speak of him as "the mightiest Julius." In Antony and Cleopatra, again, the heroine is made to describe him as "broad-fronted Cæsar"; and in King Richard the Third the young Prince utters these lines:
That Julius Cæsar was a famous man:
With what his valour did enrich his wit,
His wit set down to make his valour live:
Death makes no conquest of this conqueror.
[III, i, 84–87.]
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