Edinburgh University Press
Chapter Title: ‘Where’s Antony?’
Book Title: Julius Caesar
Book Subtitle: The People's Dictator
Book Author(s): Luciano Canfora
Published by: Edinburgh University Press. (2007)
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.3366/j.ctt1r26rr.45
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CHAPTER 40
‘Where’s Antony?’
‘Where’s Antony?’
– Fled to his house amazed.
Shakespeare, Julius Caesar
This exchange between Caesar and Trebonius, in Act III, Scene 1, of
Julius Caesar, follows immediately after the fatal dagger-blows
which end the dictator’s life. Shakespeare was a diligent reader of
the ancient sources, and had culled from them and exploited a
crucial and awkward point: the panic to which Antony gave way,
having been detained by Trebonius outside Pompey’s Curia while
the assassination was taking place inside; and a little later Antony’s
attempt to reach an understanding with the assassins, with particular attention to the inner feelings of Brutus, the more moderate of
the leading conspirators, who brandished their ‘red weapons’ while
crying ‘Peace! freedom! and liberty!’ rather than ‘freedom and
liberty’ (Act III, Scene 1, line 110). As we know from Cicero, some
months earlier, while Caesar was in difficulty in Spain, Trebonius
had been in contact with Antony – a fact which was potentially
embarrassing to both parties, and for this reason Trebonius now had
the task of keeping Antony away from the scene. To enter upon the
minefield of conjecture would be futile, but it is very difficult to
imagine a politician and man of action as experienced and circumspect as Antony suspecting nothing at all: it was far from normal for
him to be stopped on some pretext on his way into the Senate,
least of all on a day of great tension when Caesar himself, usually so
contemptuous of superstition, had seemed reluctant to enter the
Senate.
Shortly after the murder, with the conspirators still in the Curia,
Antony sends a message of conciliation and political understanding:
Mark Antony shall not love Caesar dead
So well as Brutus living; but will follow
The fortunes and affairs of noble Brutus
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‘Where’s Antony?’
335
Through the hazards of this untrod state
With all true faith.
(Act III, Scene 1, lines 133–7).
Shakespeare plays skilfully on two possible readings of the lines he
gives to Antony in this scene: on the one hand Antony is truly
‘amazed’, as Trebonius puts it after seeing him slip away as soon as
word comes that the plotters have achieved success, and prepared to
make common cause with the new conquerors; on the other, by his
strategy of accommodation with Brutus and the others he is already
planning his own coup. In a sense the words which best reveal the
ambiguity of his position are those he utters at the end of this long
scene to the servant of young Octavius:
Yet stay awhile;
Thou shalt not back till I have borne this corse
Into the market-place: there shall I try,
In my oration, how the people take
The cruel issue of these bloody men.
Yet the words with which he approaches the assassins and achieves
his wish – to have a public commemoration for the dead man – are
conciliatory: ‘Friends am I with you all, and love you all’ (Act III,
Scene 1, line 220), the same words with which Cicero expresses to
Minucius Basilus his joy at the success of the conspiracy: ‘Tibi gratulor, mihi gaudeo. Te amo, tua tueor’ (‘Congratulations. I am delighted
on my own account. Be sure of my affection and active concern for
your interests’) (Letters to his friends 6.15). Shakespeare’s Antony is
not feigning willingness to co-operate; he really is prepared for
genuine co-operation if public reaction to the coup is favourable.
The scene in which Antony speaks to the assassins while Caesar’s
body lies beside them on the floor is an invention, of course.
Shakespeare, who relied mainly on Appian,1 knew full well that after
the murder the assassins took refuge on the Capitol and that only
some time later could Antony reach agreement with them not to
launch criminal proceedings, in the name of public order (Civil Wars
2.124.520). This scene is of pivotal importance in the play: it sets the
scene for Antony’s speech to the people, a speech which resolves a
situation of extreme uncertainty and prepares the downfall of the liberators. It is a key moment, but a totally invented one, or rather, one
which goes beyond what the sources say, making subjective use of the
evidence. Here the playwright hits the mark by placing his focus on
the ambivalence of Antony’s position, imagining his words and
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Julius Caesar: The People’s Dictator
336
actions in the hours following the assassination. ‘For your part, / To
you our swords have leaden points’, says Brutus to him amiably. And
Brutus cannot be called naïve.
Shakespeare presents Antony immediately after the Ides of March
as one who is almost sympathetic – whether sincere or not – to the
conspirators. The playwright thus displays the same historical intuition as may be seen in Antony.
The sources provide no shortage of indications of Antony’s careful
tactics. These lead one to surmise that, after the Ides of March or the
hours immediately after the coup, Antony feared that the plotters
were fully in control, and therefore gave them to understand that he
was on their side and grateful that they had spared him. But in the
hours that followed he realised that the situation was still fluid and
did not seem to favour the ‘liberators’.2 At that point he decided to
put himself forward as leader of the party of Caesar.
Notes
1 Plutarch in his Caesar says nothing about what Antony said or did immediately after the assassination.
2 On this see M. A. Levi, Ottaviano capoparte, vol. 1 (Florence 1933),
pp. 1–17.
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