Episode 241 - Transcript
So the following here is a GUIDE…for someone that’s wanting to know more about the philosophy that’s written into The Tragedy of Julius Caesar…a PLAY written by William Shakespeare.
Cause there’s a lot he wanted to SAY in this play,
about political violence…about the irony of LIVING your life based on a moral ideal…about the importance of actually asking the CORRECT questions when it comes to rhetoric and its impact on mass psychology.
And out of respect to your time, I just want to get RIGHT into the story today…and talk about how Shakespeare makes a DRAMA, or a tragic PLAY, out of the actual assassination of Julius Caesar that occurred in the real world.
Should be said: there’s certainly plenty ABOUT this play that’s NOT historically accurate… but look, it IS… TRULY impressive, how much Shakespeare works in REAL PEOPLE and events that were CLOSE to Julius Caesar when he was killed. All of this Shakespeare takes mostly from the historian Plutarch, for whatever it’s worth, and his DESCRIPTION of what happened in Rome all those years ago.
Anyway, ALL of these characters are going to be CRITICAL for understanding what he was going for. And we’ll understand it by the end of this episode.
The play begins, the curtain opens, and the FIRST thing we see is a giant, PARTY…that’s going on in the STREETS of Rome. A mass of people have taken to the streets, and are cheering and celebrating the return of Julius Caesar… and his army.
See, Rome’s a society at this point that’s… in a pretty messy situation, internally. In the decades leading UP to this moment, Rome has had a few civil wars, tyrants have ascended to power, then have been overthrown by other tyrants, there’s a lot of INfighting about what the DIRECTION is that the country should be GOING in.
But in the CURRENT moment though… Rome is a republic, at least for now. And the whole POINT of a republic to Rome… is that no ONE person…is gonna run everything. POWER is something that gets spread OUT across many different offices and councils… and the PEOPLE of a republic, are supposed to show up and argue on behalf of what they think is best for the city.
In other words despite whatever REAL, FUNDAMENTAL DIFFERENCES may exist between the citizens…there is importantly, ALWAYS in a republic, an agreement among them that they want to find a way to work TOGETHER on it.
But when Caesar’s returning with his ARMY here… and people are in the streets CELEBRATING it…the play begins with two elected officials, that are WATCHING this PARTY going on… and they’re commenting on how DANGEROUS this all seems to BE to the health of the republic.
Look at how FICKLE and easily INFLUENCED the CROWD is they say. Look at the way they’re CELEBRATING this guy, chanting his name. I mean honestly, this DOESN’T really look like the behavior of people in a republic at ALL, they say. What this is STARTING to look like…is crowd behavior you would typical see in a MONARCHY, or a TYRANNY.
Keep in mind by the way that this BATTLE, that Caesar just returned from…this WASN’T him FIGHTING against some outside enemy that wanted to do harm to the people of ROME…no, Caesar just beat someone, who was a fellow Roman citizen. It was a guy named Pompey and all of his sons…these were people who were FELLOW ROMANS to Caesar, rival GENERALS, they just had their OWN armies fighting for THEM.
Point is these two officials are looking out at this crowd…and they’re asking: what kind of crowd…CELEBRATES the defeat of their fellow Romans and neighbors so much? Again, this DOESN’T look like people that are part of a republic anymore.
And it’s clear that the PEOPLE…are hitching their wagons to the person that’s about to be IN CHARGE NEXT…that if you want to be on the right SIDE of things…you gotta be on TEAM CAESAR right now and go and HAIL to this man in the streets a little bit.
The two officials talking about how scary this all is…start TEARING DOWN pictures of CAESAR that are up all over the walls of the city. ALL of this they think is DANGEROUSLY stoking people’s EMOTIONS…in ways that are going to SPIRAL into Caesar being crowned as the KING of Rome.
In fact… as Caesar parades into the city, and then into the public square with his entourage, and then he gets on stage with people gathered there to HONOR him…he’s offered the CROWN, they try to place it on his head for him to BECOME the king of Rome, but he refuses it.
The crowd goes wild. TWO more TIMES the crown is OFFERED to him in this ceremony. He refuses both times. People are like SEE! He doesn’t even WANT to be king! All the more reason to LOVE HIM and try to MAKE him KING!
As Caesar’s on stage the crowd gets quiet for a moment…and a mysterious person calls OUT to Caesar from the back of the crowd. He’s like Caesar…BEWARE the ides of MARCH!
The ides of march being just another way of saying the 15th of March, right in the middle of the month. Coming UP in just a few DAYS for them!
Caesar HEARS this guy tell him to BEWARE of something…and with the CROWD around he kind of laughs it off. I’ll have what THAT guy’s having. The whole crowd laughs. It’s a jolly day for everyone.
But we smash cut to two members of Caesar’s entourage that are having a conversation after the ceremony…and these two people…are gonna become the main characters in the STORY that Shakespeare’s about to tell.
Their names are Cassius and Brutus…and to put it simply: they’re having VERY DIFFERENT REACTIONS…to all this CAESAR business going down where the crowd’s starting to get BEHIND him.
Cassius LOOKS at Brutus, who’s pacing, clearly deep in thought, and he says I can tell you’re a bit stressed about all this Brutus.
To which Brutus says YEAH, I’m ABSOLUTELY stressed about it. LOOK at what’s going ON. We’re both senators that have a DUTY to protect the republic of Rome…and here’s this GUY, CAESAR, who I’VE never had any problem with…he’s CERTAINLY never done anything to ME and he hasn’t made a move for the crown YET…but still the whole AURA here that you can CLEARLY see from the CROWD…it DOES make me feel like we’re about to lose the republic. What do we DO?
See Brutus’s character represents STOICISM as a philosophical approach in the play…and this is very DELIBERATE by William Shakespeare. He’s married to the daughter of Cato the younger, famous Stoic. He represents a type of Stoicism talked about by Cicero… where there’s more of an emphasis placed on service to your country, rather than just personal moral development.
Anyway Brutus is in one of these CLASSIC, Stoic moments, where he’s FEELING CONFLICTED…between the RATIONAL, moral duty that he has to Rome and its ideals…and his personal loyalty to Caesar as just a fellow person, and maybe even someone he considers a friend.
Cassius on the other hand has a very DIFFERENT monologue going on inside of him.
See, he’s LONG BEEN… a political RIVAL of Julius Caesar…he’s SAID some stuff in PUBLIC about this guy, that’s pretty mean…and look, the last thing he wants in the entire WORLD is for Julius Caesar to have MONARCH level CONTROL over the political process.
So for very PERSONAL reasons… Cassius has a plan where he wants to KILL Caesar before he can ever get into power…but he KNOWS that if he just DOES it…EVEN if he does it with the help of a couple other lowly senators…he KNOWS the optics of it all… is going to make him look like an assassin that was just bloodthirsty, or make him look like he just wants to be king HIMSELF. He CAN’T just come out and DO it.
His plan then becomes…to recruit BRUTUS into the plot to kill him…because he KNOWS that Brutus is SEEN by the people as a very moral, stoic, senator that LOVES Rome, and the people think that he would NEVER do anything if it wasn’t what’s best for ROME! He KNOWS Brutus’s involvement is going to make things look a lot better for him.
So he starts to FLATTER Brutus a bit in this conversation.
He tells Brutus he’s incredible. He REMINDS Brutus that it was HIS ANCESTOR…that overthrew the FIRST king of Rome for going against the PRINCIPLES of Rome.
He STARTS to question Brutus’s HONOR…and this is SOMETHING that really starts to GET to him. What, you’re conflicted about your loyalty to CAESAR as an individual…but WHAT about your honor for ROME and the common GOOD? Are you NOT a man of HONOR?
Brutus says look I get your point. And I AM honorable by the way…papa Brutus is still here don’t you worry. But it’s just I’m not CERTAIN, that KILLING Caesar is what’s gonna be best for ROME. And if I had THAT kind of assurace…then there’s NO QUESTION I’d live up to my honor here and do what’s necessary.
So Cassius, HEARING this from Brutus…has somebody write up a bunch of fake letters, addressed TO Brutus, that are supposedly Roman citizens that he represents that are CALLING upon him to SAVE ROME by doing away with CAESAR.
And it’s this FAKE PICTURE, that Cassius MANUFACTURES of what’s going ON in the world, this BECOMES the thing that CONVINCES Brutus…that he needs to JOIN the plot…in the name of SAVING the republic.
The play goes on… there’s several other senators that are PART of this conspiracy. One of them even flatters and persuades Caesar to come to the government building on the ides of March.
And on that day… the conspirators all ESCORT Caesar… to the government hall where they sit around and discuss policy.
And as one of the conspirators, is asking Caesar to pardon his BROTHER, who had been BANISHED from the city BEFORE that and then Caesar says NO…as he’s distracted, Casca, one of the killers, pulls out a knife…and he says Speak hands FOR me, as he STABS Julius Caesar, signaling the other conspirators to move. Then EACH of them, in turn, stab him repeatedly, one by one, the LAST of which to DO the stabbing… is Brutus…who Caesar looks at as he’s stabbing him…and here he says the famous line from the play Et tu, Brute? Or essentially you too, Brutus? Then fall Caesar…as he collapses onto the ground, completely lifeless, the conspirators standing around him. The plot to KILL Julius Caesar, SEEMS to them to have been SUCCESSFUL up until this moment.
Now first things first: there are SEVERAL, different messages that Shakespeare wanted to get across in the story so far…MANY of which are him wanting to highlight the ambiguity of how these sorts of events play out.
Remember this is a tragedy, in the ancient Greek sense…so this is not gonna be like a modern movie where there’s a clear good guy and a bad guy…you know, part of what the audience is called to DO here in a tragedy…is to consider the situation when we DON’T idealize or demonize things.
But that said: one of the more critical messages he intended that’s REALLY important to START OUT with here…is that he wanted to show how POLITICAL violence like this…is almost always pretty NAIVE about how political reality works…and that this almost never ACCOMPLISHES, what the person COMMITTING the violence INTENDED for it to.
To put it in a slightly different way: the whole PREMISE, of POLITICAL violence is pretty OFF when it goes on in a republic.
First of all…go through history for a second, and count up the number of times that in a republic, somebody thinks someone is a PROBLEM for them politically…so they ASSASSINATE them…and then the whole world just moves on. Well, I guess THAT person’s dead. What are we gonna do NEXT guys?
No the REALITY of the world… never happens like that.
Political violence will almost ALWAYS…futher anger and embolden the people that were behind that person in the first place…they also often TURN that person into a symbol for a CAUSE… that’s much GREATER than simply the one person. So violence in practice, OFTEN becomes something that STRENGTHENS the cause of the person they’re against.
And Shakespeare’s saying that just strictly when it comes to tactics…political violence is pretty STUPID when it goes on in a republic like this. POLITICAL violence is also pretty filled with HYPOCRISY. At LEAST in the way it’s being done by the conspirators in the play we’re discussing.
The argument here reminds me of the way Albert Camus opposes the death penalty, in his famous essay reflections on the guillotine.
Where part of his point is that if somebody does something HORRIFIC, and violent, to INNOCENT people, and VIOLATES their lives in ways that are UNFORGIVABLE…and if your kneejerk reaction to that is that in the NAME of the sanctity of LIFE…we need to KILL this person and take THEIR life. And anyone who disagrees with that is just secretly on the side of MURDERERS!
Camus would say not ONLY is this one of the most CLEAR examples of hypocrisy you can find, but that most people who talk this way… have NO IDEA how much the thing they’re supporting there…is ERODING the very IDEALS that they claim to care so MUCH about. To LIVE in a society that openly VIOLATES the sanctity of life so easily…is PART of what ends up making it so, not SACRED to people.
Well in a SIMILAR way…for Brutus and Cassius…to say that in the NAME of preserving the REPUBLIC and ALL that it stands for I need to KILL this person I think is dangerous…this is the DEFINITION, of stepping OUTSIDE of a peaceful way of working through political differences, to supposedly PRESERVE the sanctity of the peaceful political setup. This is HYPOCRISY, in other words, CLEAR AS DAY.
ANOTHER thing Shakespeare wants to do here…is to point out how: EVEN if Brutus and Cassius SAY they’re killing this guy to preserve the sanctity of the REPUBLIC…what republic EXACTLY…are they PRESERVING there?
They’re LOOKING back at their history. They have this nostalgic memory of some IDEALIZED REPUBLIC… where everybody apparently worked together and the rivers ran with chocolate syrup as far as the eye can see…but it’s like, did that republic ever really EXIST in the first place?
The point is: often times when people commit political violence like this…they’re doing so to stop the world from changing into something, that in many ways it already IS, and has always BEEN.
I mean Rome by this point had been going through DECADES of civil wars and inner conflict.
It’s always easy to look at the problems of right now, think back to some distant moment in the past where you didn’t seem to HAVE any problems, and then try to MAKE the world FIT this nostalgic fantasy of yours. You can do this with your childhood. You can do this with romantic relationships. And it’s in this sense that Brutus and Cassius KILLED a person…in the name of SAVING a rome, that never really existed.
Now again, part of what Shakespeare is trying to do in this play…is to get the audience to consider the complexities that LED to the whole political assasination in the first place. And another ANGLE to all this he does a great job at illustrating…is how if someone thinks of themselves as having a lot of HONOR… this is a virtue that, in practice, makes someone pretty easy to manipulate if a bad actor ever WANTED to.
BRUTUS is of course the character he uses to SHOW this point. And Cassius is the one who manipulates him.
You know, it’s funny. If you asked 100 people what the top five most important virtues are…it wouldn’t be SHOCKING if a lot of them included HONOR, on that list. But this is what I love about Shakespeare in this play: what EXACTLY does it mean to have honor?
I mean, really, try to come up with a definition on your own right now. There haven’t been a TON of philosophers over the years who have really done a deep dive into HONOR and all that it can mean.
Turns out…its a surprisingly open ended virtue, honor. First of all, because HONOR… always means you’re adhering to some kind of a CODE…and because that code… isn’t necessarily fixed to ANYTHING really…different people, can think of themselves as HONORABLE…and it manifests, in EXTREMELY different behaviors we call HONORABLE in the real world.
You know, ONE person may say you never rat on your friends. That’s a matter of honor, you keep your mouth SHUT. That’s the CODE. ANOTHER person might say if your friend’s about to drive drunk…you TELL the bartender they’re drunk to have them take their keys, because true honor is looking OUT for your friends when they’re about to HURT themselves.
See, when you CONSIDER the fact that that CODE, someone’s HONORING…is ALWAYS something they’ve received from other PEOPLE. And when you consider that it’s your public reputation…that IS where your honor usually LIES…well, this EXTERNALIZES, the moral process in a way…that takes people OUT of internal deliberation about what the right thing to DO is…and TURNS their decision making into something very simple.
I mean if moral choices OTHERWISE…ARE difficult. If someone like Brutus…finds himself morally CONFLICTED, and “at war within himself” he says when he ACTUALLY makes the effort to try to CONSIDER all the factors involved in killing Caesar…well all it takes is CASSIUS, coming along, QUESTIONING whether he’s HONORING the code he’s sworn to protect…that’s all it takes for Brutus to ABANDON, ANY kind of deliberation he’s been doing, and snap back into being a loyalist.
And when LOYALISTS…and HONOR to a pre-established code…REPLACES people who actually show up and try to weigh the moral complexity of big decisions…well Shakespeare’s point is that this can turn catastrophic in a republic. ESPECIALLY when it allows people to sidestep the deeper conversations with themselves…of WHY they’re doing ANYTHING in the FIRST place.
CONSIDER the fact that someone can be DOING something…and they can SAY this is for the GOOD of the SPECIES, you know, not unlike BRUTUS who says he’s saving the republic. But if somebody can always hide behind this HONOR…SAY things like I’m doing this all for the GREATER GOOD…that is someone who can also ignore… a lot of TWISTED reasons why they might be driven to do any of these things, and they can avoid considering the negative EFFECTS of what they’re doing…and LATER just call the bodies in the streets, oh those were just unintended consequences.
You know Friedrich Nietzsche talked about this point, among other people…and by the way Nietzsche thought this play was the GREATEST thing that Shakespeare ever wrote, for whatever it’s worth.
But he talks right along these same lines when he says a real danger, when people just conform their behavior to an IDEAL or live by honor to a CODE… is that when they abandon the work, of truly considering all their inner drives and all the external factors that go into a decision that affects other people… they become someone who’s FAR more easily manipulated… by anyone that’s persuasive enough… to convince them that what they want them to DO…is exactly what their code demands of them.
It becomes far EASIER for someone like Brutus…to become a fanatic INSTRUMENT for CASSIUS…when he’s not considering how the RHETORIC being USED by Cassius…is SWITCHING the interpretation of the CODE he’s already committed himself to.
This is one of the most IMPORTANT points Shakespeare’s aiming at in the play…and lets bring in a few more events from the story to build on this idea more.
Because after Caesar gets murdered, IN that governing hall, and ALL the conspirators are standing around him lifeless, knives in their hands.
As soon as it happens…PANDEMONIUM…starts to break out, all around them. People start screaming…running away. Some of the conspirators start shouting TYRANNY IS DEAD! The Republic is SAVED! Hooray for US and what we’ve DONE!
Brutus even thinks its a good idea at this point… for all of them to BATHE in the blood of CAESAR up to their elbows…I’m serious about that. The THINKING is look: hundreds of years from now when the history books are written…US BATHING in the blood of a tyrant…this is definitely gonna be one of those strong VISUALS people love…where they MARK this as the moment that the republic was saved. Yet another kind of nostalgia for a world that never existed.
After their communal bath ceremony…uh, part of the PLOT of the conspirators, so that they could get to a place where they could actually STAB Caesar…was they made sure BEFOREHAND to separate him from his close friend and the person most likely to intervene, a guy named Marc Antony.
Marc Antony…HEARS about what happened. He sends a messenger to tell the conspirators that he is calm… he has NO desire to hurt any of them… and that he just wants to go back and collect Caesar’s body… and perhaps ask them some questions about WHY exactly Julius Caesar needed to be MURDERED…as opposed to any OTHER option they could’ve chosen.
When he gets there Brutus explains HIS whole side of wanting to save the republic. And after hearing his story…Marc Antony… gets an idea.
He shakes Brutus’s hand, as well as the bloody hands of ALL the conspirators…and he says okay guys I’m done here, but I DO have one request though if I may…I’d really like to TAKE Caesar’s body, OUT to the public forum, stand up in front of everyone and give a speech, sort of eulogize the guy…look I’m just trying to give the people of Rome some CLARITY about all that’s gone down here today.
To which Brutus says thats a GREAT idea! I LIKE that plan! But listen, Marc Antony, the WHOLE POINT of all this is to preserve the republic and keep things STABLE…and if you DO this… you CAN’T go out there and just start trashing me and all the conspirators in front of the crowd…and you know just to be EXTRA safe: I, Brutus, am going to go out there BEFORE you give YOUR speech…and I’m gonna address the crowd myself.
What follows from here is nothing short of a MASTERPIECE of rhetoric…as Shakespeare WRITES BOTH the arguments given to the crowd by Brutus and Marc Antony.
Brutus goes up first. He starts his speech with Romans, countrymen and lovers…HEAR me for my cause. He then proceeds to give a rational, articulate, intelligent speech, about the ethics of why Caesar just had to go. It’s not that I did not LOVE Caesar he says…but that I LOVED Rome MORE. Brutus talks about the insane AMBITION of Julius Caesar, and how it was INCOMPATIBLE with the experiment that Rome is running…and by the end of him talking,,, that VERY SAME FICKLE CROWD, that was HAILING Caesar in the STREETS at the BEGINNING of the play…the crowd that EARLIER in that SAME DAY, would’ve MADE Caesar KING if only he had AGREED to it…they have now been convinced by the force of reason…that Brutus and the conspirators is the side that Rome needs to BE on.
Thunderous applause. Nice job Brutus, what a guy! Maybe we should let HIM be CAESAR one of them says.
And then Marc Antony gives his speech. He starts with one of the most famous lines in all of literature. Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your EARS. I come to bury Caesar not to praise him.
See already in the first LINE there…he’s posturing himself in a very unassuming way…to set the tone that will allow for him to deliver a DEATH blow to all the conspirators.
Because Marc Antony when he gives this speech…he DOESN’T prioritize RATIONAL arguments for the crowd. Marc Antony…appeals to their emotions. He gives them a speech that makes them feel FEAR…and ENVY…and DISGUST for some of their fellow people. He keeps referring to all the conspirators… as “honorable” people. Where the more he says the word “honorable”, and then he talks about what they’ve done to Caesar a bit more, and then keeps coming BACK to that word “honorable”...the crowd… starts to realize this is sarcasm…and the SAME crowd that earlier in the day was a fan of caesar, that ten minutes ago was a fan of Brutus…through the rhetorical skill of Marc Antony, he DRIVES the crowd into a frenzy. To the point that Brutus, Cassius and all the rest of the other conspirators…have to FLEE Rome just to continue fighting for their own LIVES.
Now, the importance of RHETORIC… ESPECIALLY in a republic…is one of the biggest points that Shakespeare wanted to put on display here.
You know it’s interesting to consider that under a monarchy…if you’re just an ordinary person, living your life, and you happen to be really great at rhetoric and persuasion. That is likely…NOT going to TRANSLATE into much political power for you at ALL in that society. It’s FAR more likely it’s gonna be something that gets you into trouble at some point. And it’s MOST likely the only time you’ll ever USE that skill…is when you’re being super duper persuasive, to the parking enforcement person trying to give you a TICKET. That’s ABOUT all it does for you.
But ONE of Shakespeare’s points here is that WHEN a society turns into a republic…where again, now it’s about people educating themselves and ARGUING for what they think is BEST for a society…all of a sudden in THAT world…somebody who’s really talented at RHETORIC…becomes potentially…one of the most politically powerful people in the whole country.
They KNOW how to PHRASE things in a way that really RESONATES with people. They know how to play on people’s emotions. They know how to speak to different crowds and be selective, and EXCLUDE CERTAIN pieces of what’s going on, to make THIS picture of reality seem like the obvious TRUTH.
And great rhetoricians like this often get hired by people that already HAVE political power… because people in power generally KNOW how important it is to have someone like this FRAMING things in the most favorable way for them.
Point is: in a republic. THIS IS, ACTUALLY where the battle for political power is won and lost. It’s at the level of rhetoric. When Marc Antony says friends, romans, countrymen, lend me your ears…that LEND me your EARS part…is HIGHLY symbolic for Shakespeare of HOW and WHERE people seize political POWER in a republican system.
And MORE than that whoever wins or LOSES here…doesn’t even necessarily need to represent, a full PICTURE of what's actually going ON in the world. Facts start to matter LESS in a republic… than how much the narrative IMPACTS someone.
Remember Cassius…FORGES the fake LETTERS of concerned citizens CALLING on Brutus to save the republic. Does that REMIND you of anything that’s going on TODAY?
And remember it was THOSE FAKE LETTERS…that were the THING that shook Brutus OUT of that place of moral deliberation…and then made him go ALL IN on killing Julius CAESAR.
ALL it takes in a republic, for an otherwise serious person, to give UP their moral responsibility…is a FRAGMENT of information about something going on in the world…and then rhetoric persuasive enough to CONVINCE them this is the whole truth.
Now don’t TAKE this as Shakespeare saying that we shouldn’t have REPUBLICS…this is MORE him CALLING upon people…to understand the responsibility we have to ask the right questions of the people that give us our information about the world.
Consider the fact: that neither Marc Antony or Brutus are just, straight shooters, in these speeches, where they’re innocently trying to deliver the unbiased TRUTH to people.
And in a republic, especially in the post-truth age we LIVE in when it comes to media… we need to understand how this applies to everyone we get our information from.
Political power is ALWAYS hanging in the balance…and we can’t be so NAIVE to think…that the biggest issue we FACE as LISTENERS…is just figuring out what the TRUTH is from all the different sources out there. No, the DEEPER concern is… for us to become students of the rhetoric…that manufactures what we collectively CONSIDER to be the truth, in any given MOMENT.
In fact, this WHOLE play of The Tragedy of Julius Caesar…is often thought by SCHOLARS to be Shakespeare giving an extensive TOUR…of FOUR different kinds of RHETORIC that he sees captivating people.
And depending on the kind of rhetoric that resonates with you PERSONALLY…that will OFTEN determine the kind of people you listen to.
Brutus thinks of rhetoric as the skill of creating rational narratives about the world. Marc Antony uses rhetoric as a weapon or an instrument of power. Cassius uses rhetoric in a private, almost machiavellian sense where the ends always justify the means to him. And Caesar uses rhetoric as a way to command people’s actions in the most effective way.
See Brutus made a big mistake when he goes out into the forum and gives a totally rational speech to the people in that crowd. That crowd was NOT filled with people that loved reason and the republic as much as Brutus did. The people were angry… and when their emotions were already elevated in the crazy spot Rome was IN at the time…APPEALING to those emotions… just became a MUCH more POTENT form of rhetoric, REGARDLESS of whatever the truth was.
So in a world, again, where THIS is where political power is won and lost…it’s the quality of the LISTENER…that DETERMINES a lot of what actually goes ON. Of who can ASCEND to power through a narrative…and who can MAINTAIN that power by CONTROLLING the narrative.
Shakespeare seems to want us to understand that it’s only us as listeners… that have the power to verify the QUALITY of any of these stories we’re given. And if the world’s made up MOSTLY of people that AREN’T aware that this is ultimately the game that’s being played…if most people REALLY think that what they’re doing is just FIGURING out the TRUTH…instead of studying how that truth is constructed through rhetoric…then to Shakespeare they are AS susceptible to rhetoric as BRUTUS was…where he gets manipulated by Cassius privately, and then destroyed by Marc Antony publicly.
Now AFTER this scene… where Marc Antony gives his speech and the conspirators have to flee Rome…the rest of the play is pretty brutal for Cassius and Brutus. A civil WAR breaks out in Rome after the assassination…FAR from the outcome they PLANNED on when they decided it was the right thing to do in their infinite wisdom.
The two of them get into a heated argument. They almost have a falling out, eventually they make up.
Shortly after Brutus’ wife kills herself…by swallowing hot coals. Ow. Brutus tries to hold himself together despite trying to maintain his public, Stoic leader persona.
But eventually the two of them have to fight on the battlefield in this civil war that their actions have started. Cassius, in the middle of a battle, asks a friend to kill him because he thinks he’s about to LOSE the battle. Turns out he just misread the situation, but he’s dead ANYWAY after that choice.
Brutus on the other hand WINS his FIRST battle against Marc Antony and company. But then in a follow up battle gets crushed, and takes his own life instead of facing the consequences of what he’s done.
At the end of the play…Marc Antony gives a speech talking kindly about Brutus…and he famously refers to Brutus as the noblest Roman of them all. A man who, unlike all the other conspirators, joined the assasination plot not out of envy of Caesar, but out of an honest thought for the common good of Rome.
The play then ends HEAVILY implying that now that the battles are over…Octavius, Caesar’s nephew, is going to RULE over Rome as a monarch, and that the republic has now come to an end.
Some important things to consider about this play now that we’re at the end of it. Scholars have pretty much agreed for HUNDREDS of years now that the main tragic, HERO of this play is NOT Julius Caesar…but Brutus. So if you’re watching the play or reading it…be sure to keep an eye on HIM and his own personal transformation.
He’s an INTERESTING kind of tragic hero…because in MANY tragedies, you usually see characters have some kind of a downfall, because of their own PRIDE or LUST or WHATEVER it is. But with Brutus HIS downfall…is REALLY connected to him OVERESTIMATING how much GOOD he can do.
As for all the death and self-harm towards the end of the play…this is sometimes thought of as Shakespeare giving Brutus the Stoic death that he deserved. As many out there may know: there’s PARTS of Stoic ethics that say taking your own life can be a rational choice, SHOULD the circumstances make it IMPOSSIBLE to continue living rationally. Which to be clear here is a VERY extreme circumstance for them.
But one very interesting line of thinking I’ve seen on this comes from a professor named Patrick Gray…who makes the case about Brutus…that this whole TENSION…that we’ve SEEN in him from the very START of the play…this war within himself between loyalty to the humanity of caesar…and the duty he has to honor Rome itself.
You know, when he’s STILL morally conflicted, and Brutus SCOFFS at himself for how much COMPASSION he’s having for someone like Caesar…Patrick Gray says this COULD be Shakespeare using Brutus as a stage…to play out the tensions between a disciplined, Stoic moral approach…and a proto-Christian moral approach that more values mercy and human dignity.
That the TWO of these when they coexist INSIDE someone…will often create TENSIONS if someone tries to live by both of them simultaneously. And in Gray’s reading, Brutus taking his own life at the end of the play…this isn’t some sign from Shakespeare that Stoicism finally WON OUT inside of Brutus…to HIM this is the tragic end of a person, who never really becomes the emotionless Stoic sage he wants to be, and never quite finds a way to live at peace with the compassion that keeps disrupting the Stoic ideal he’s trying to live by.
Anyway I hope this guide was HELPFUL if you’re ever reading or seeing this play. As always can’t wait for the discussion in the comment section on Patreon. Let me know if you would like more guides on the major works of Shakespeare. Love giving you all what you want. My daughter was born on Monday this last week. So apologies for any limitations I had this time around. Thank you for listening. Talk to you next time.
