“Honourable Mettle May Be Wrought”: Brutus vis-à-vis Cassius
Jay Farness, Northern Arizona University
Cassius, a false friend, misleads Brutus into bad behavior. In the manner of Aristotelian
tragedy, Julius Caesar spotlights Brutus’ error in judgment, which in the end he to an extent
comes to recognize, in part in the displaced form of a ghostly projection of his murder victim.
Acknowledging and accepting the consequences of his actions, a chastened—and tragically
sublimed—Brutus dies the Roman death and is appropriately eulogized by Antony.
There are problems with this synopsis for second-guessers. I want to focus on secondthoughts about the Cassius-Brutus friendship. For example, Brutus appears to cloud his
climactic Act Five moment of clarity with this assertion: “My heart doth joy that yet in all my
life/ I found no man but he was true to me” (5.5.34-35). This rendering of Plutarch sharpens
Brutus’ claim of personal loyalty of those that surround him.1 What, then, do we think of the
play’s even sharper earlier rendering of Cassius’ Act One duplicities toward Brutus?
I wish to explore a seemingly extravagant remedy—the possibility that Brutus is
complicit in Cassius’ manipulations of him, so that Brutus’ dying words, in a strict sense, at least
report a truth not a blind spot about their friendship. Or maybe this vision of a weird dance, a
duet, of inexplicit complicities is not so extravagant for a playwright who has recently shown us
Richard II choreographing his own hagiography by way of Bullingbroke, Falstaff weirdly
achieving a similar effect by way of Prince Hal, and of Antonio attempting something like this by
way of Shylock. These are intentional, not necessarily deliberate, actions on the part of the
apparent victims: these stories do not need a character’s elaborate forethought or clear
visualization of a goal in order to count as intentional. In Merchant, Antonio has not
deliberately planned for his ships to wreck, yet he has intended a melodramatic self-sacrificial
display for Bassanio’s benefit from the inception of negotiations with Shylock, and so he’s
surprisingly ready when the ships do wreck. In questions of motivation in Shakespeare, as we
know, the deliberating mind can be a source of disinformation as well as of insight. Brutus does
not plan out his demise, but Antony’s ringing eulogy of the good Brutus exactly fits Brutus’
intention expressed in his early vow to raise up his honor on his death—most notably, at the
end of his public self-defense in Act Three. In this way Brutus holds his own against a challenge
posed for him both by Caesar and by his own storied ancestor.
In my recent study of Julius Caesar, I have been exploring three dimensions of this
characterization of Brutus. (1) There is the dramatically compelling scene two verbal dance
between Cassius and Brutus, one man loquacious to the point of verbosity, the other terse,
cryptic, vaguely teasing. This scene will be the main focus of my paper. Two other dimensions I
will here sketch out more quickly but not elaborate very much in this paper.
(2) One takeaway from scene two is the displacement of political considerations by
personal regards. Julius Caesar focuses on a conflict of personalities, not on ideas. One looks in
vain for consistent expressions of Roman patriotism, republican values, or even senatorial
solidarity. If there are ideals, these struggle with their embodiment in Brutus or Caesar. This is
in part the gist of Jan Blits’s persuasive critique of the play’s political dimension, which is
supplanted, under the cover of Roman morality, by an unprecedented egoism: “Far from
representing the principles of republican Rome, Brutus’ celebrated virtue is, on the contrary, at
once a reflection of and a reaction to the rise of Imperial Rome” (Blits 43, my emphasis). Blits
discusses this “virtue” as Brutus’ construal of Stoicism, an “ethics of intention,” narrowing “his
vision to a purely personal concern,” valuing “the purity of his soul above the welfare of his
country” (56). This egoism reflects and parallels a more obvious self-glorification of Caesar,
which (according to Blits’s provocative contention) culminates in an intentional martyrdom
(“Caesar, having assured his preeminence among his rivals, has little to live for but much to die
for”—90). But Brutus also reacts against historical change: his ethics “is essentially a sign of
deep disenchantment. It marks a world in which political action and victory have lost their
noble quality . . . “ (56).
(3) The Roman art of dying, though it is repeatedly alluded to, becomes an unsettled
thing, in part because it is so theatricalized, a form of self-aggrandizement rather than the
expression of more self-limiting, duty-bound Romanitas (the more modest act that Brutus
alludes to—theatrically, grandiloquently—at the end of his Act Three apologia). Shakespeare’s
theater is only too willing to bring out this theatrical melodrama, so that, in the play, the
pervasive rhetoric of sacrifice and death-defiance crests, first, in Cassius’ negative example,
then in Marcus Cato’s exemplary, old-style fall (which Lucillius briefly emulates in Brutus’
name), and finally in Brutus’ drawn-out, well-composed counter to Cassius’ hapless end. (Blits
16-19) Brutus’ death with its aftermath, like Casesar’s, is fraught with ironies for an audience
attuned to Christian martyrology. In retrospect, the conspiracy that looked at first like a
pragmatic political action has only supplied both Caesar and Brutus with similar storylines for
their fantasies of self-transcendence, and neither the play’s denouement nor history has
disappointed them.
To recur to my beginning: does Cassius seduce Brutus into a bad choice? In a play that
foregrounds Roman arts of forensic rhetoric, there is a conspicuous absence of effective
persuasion. For Brutus, it’s not clear that he ever rationally alters a position in discussion or
debate with other Romans.2 The play instead repeatedly shows Brutus as deaf to cogent
arguments for alternatives, alternatives that promise more rational, even common-sensical
courses of action. In particular, political or philosophical ideas in the end appear to have limited
purchase on his behavior. (Reflecting on ancient philosophical biases, Blits attributes this to a
“purity of soul” that will not stoop to such pragmatism.) But consider two possible exceptions
to this generalization concerning an unmovable Brutus. One of these—the case of Portia—I’ll
relegate to a long footnote in this paper (feel free to skip these long notes): Brutus says that
Portia deserves to “partake/ The secrets of my heart,” but only in a sweet “by and by” that, in
my opinion, never comes (2.1.304-305).3
The other possible exception to Brutus’ “true fixed and resting quality” (3.1.61) is
Cassius’ elaborate “seduction,” which appears to persuade Brutus to join the conspiracy. I don’t
believe that there is clear demonstration of Cassius’ success in his effort, since Cassius—the
actual catspaw—is leading where Brutus is already going.4 Still, in the early scenes, we do see
Brutus engage in discussion and take positions prompted by discussion. What these positions
have in common is some degree of antithetical relationship to an idea, suggestion, or thesis
offered by Cassius. The consistency of Brutus’ adversarial stances toward Cassius suggests that
his are primarily dissents of ethos, not of logos, even when accompanied by logical supports.
My misgivings about the effectiveness of forensic persuasion in Shakespeare’s Rome
draw me back to Cassius’ first approach to Brutus, often referenced as the scene of Brutus’
seduction, notably by Cassius himself (1.2.305). It might indeed help if one models this on a
scene of seduction, but only if one can imagine a seducee who is several steps ahead of the
seducer, a seducee who is in a way seducing the seducer into an attempted seduction.
(Remember that imputing obscure intention to the seducee is in fact the typical manner of the
love lyric, in which a seducer’s blindness is also often on display.)
When everyone else follows in the train of Caesar, Cassius and Brutus linger on stage.
How do we choreograph this?5 Something certainly precedes Cassius’ first words. Is Brutus
aware he is being watched? Is he making his standoffishness conspicuous? Does his manner
invite approach? Cassius twice tests Brutus’ intention and extracts this explanation:
I am not gamesome; I do lack some part
Of that quick spirit that is in Antony.
Let me not hinder, Cassius, your desires.
I’ll leave you. (1.2.30-330
Brutus’ first words sound like emulation (2.3.13), an instance of the culture of envy and rivalry
that saturates this play’s Roman discourses (and Réné Girard’s not irrelevant assessment of
their pervasiveness6). So first thing, we might wonder whether the noble, high-minded,
idealistic Brutus really does soar above overcurious mean-mindedness (compare similarly
slighting comments at 1.2.184-189.) And more: Brutus’ clipped terms don’t wish to give any
generous benefit of a doubt to Antony’s participation in an old Roman tradition, which is not at
all the frivolous game with which he is elsewhere associated. Perhaps Brutus is rather
remembering and disdaining Antony’s initial fawning manner toward Caesar. Whatever its
immediate spark, Brutus’ snide reply is music to Cassius’ ears, exactly not hindering his desires.
And then Brutus doesn’t leave.
So Cassius tries this: “Brutus, don’t you love me anymore?” But he formulates his
complaint as an observation about Brutus’ look, which scans as “stubborn” and “strange,” not
gentle and showing love. Cassius also broaches my theme: whether intentions and appearances
are matching up here. Is Brutus matching his behavior to his inner disposition (are we supposed
to distinguish a “show of love” in line 36 from love?)? Is Cassius reading Brutus’ behavior—or
disposition—correctly? Are we?
Cassius,
Be not deceived. If I have veiled my look,
I turn the trouble of my countenance
Merely upon myself. Vexed I am
Of late with passions of some difference,
Conceptions only proper to myself,
Which give some soil, perhaps, to my behaviours.
But let not therefore my good friends be grieved—
Among which number, Cassius, be you one—
Nor construe any further my neglect
Than that poor Brutus, with himself at war,
Forgets the shows of love to other men.
(38-49)
Can one imagine a less effective way of saying “Mind your own business”? It’s at myself that I’m
looking so cross-eyed, says Brutus, weirdly implying that he does see his own critical, troubled
look,7 and then he speaks mysteriously about deep mixed feelings, as if to say, “But don’t
worry about poor Brutus, your friend, who is with himself at war.” His imperatives both instruct
Cassius in how to interpret his veiled look and invite further discourse.8
Cassius resumes, admitting to misreading Brutus (“mistook your passion”) and
confessing that he, too, has struggled with self-conflict, repressing thoughts he wants to share
with his friend. Then follows an astonishing question that is figuratively tied to the preceding
conversation but that seems rhetorically and semantically absurd: “Tell me, good Brutus, can
you see your face?” I guess one might construe it as a Socratic non-sequitur, in view of the
midwifery that follows, as Cassius labors to bring Brutus’ “hidden worthiness into your eye.”
But Cassius’ question also scans as an overture to the kind of lover’s flattery that paints a coy
beloved’s beauties into acquiescence (as in “Your words say one thing, your looks another . . .
“). Can one imagine Brutus demurely batting his eyelashes in reply, “Into what dangers would
you lead me, Cassius,/ That you would have me seek into myself/ For that which is not in me?”
You naughty boy, you! I’m not that kind of girl. Cassius goes on to profess himself no ordinary
lover (70-80): his are “modest” discoveries that should incite no “jealous” refusal; he is not one
To stale with ordinary oaths my love
To every new protester; if you know
That I do fawn on men and hug them hard,
And after scandal them; or if you know
That I profess myself in banqueting
To all the rout; then hold me dangerous. (75-80)
That is (among other things) my love is refined and discreet; I am not one to love and leave or
kiss and tell.
In this sweet-talk, Cassius offers—much more effectually than he knows, as it turns
out—to become Brutus’ mirror, such “as will turn/ Your hidden worthiness into your eye,/ That
you might see your shadow” (58-60) And then again: “since you cannot see yourself/ So well as
by reflection, I your glass/ Will modestly discover to yourself/ That of yourself which you yet
know not of” (69-72) Cassius doesn’t know it yet, but his words do: he is volunteering to be
Brutus’ foil when he has been planning to make Brutus his foil. And neither Roman might know
it yet, but their words also evoke Cassius as the picture or shadow of an inner Brutus that
Brutus won’t or can’t acknowledge—the Brutus, to put it bluntly, who is to some extent like
Cassius in his envy, vanity, moodiness, melodrama, and despair. These are the symptoms for
“deep disenchantment” (Blits 69) for those bereft of the discarded image of the good, old
Rome, the mirror in which they can no longer see themselves. As things develop, starting right
here, these disenchanted qualities seem almost negligible in Brutus when Cassius is around to
displace or eclipse them. The play’s honorable Brutus, the sublime Brutus, is not his own person
so much as a makeshift supplement that Cassius can alchemically enable. As a mirror image,
Cassius both intimates to Brutus “that of yourself which you yet know not of” (Brutus’ “hidden
worthiness,” but not in a good sense of worth) and offers him a palliative for what lurks there.
This is the subtler Brutus that is (let’s say) intuitively seducing Cassius. “In I.ii, Brutus meets
Cassius more than half-way and, after offering him a broad hint about the nature of his
vexatious passions (lines 79-80), Brutus almost commands Cassius to become that looking glass.
In this scene, which is characterized as much by what is left unsaid as by the vigor of what is
said, Brutus anticipates Cassius's proposal and seems to see in it a means for his own selfdefinition” (O’Dair 294).
The sequence is interrupted by a flourish and shout, which Brutus is quick to
(mis)interpret as the people’s making Caesar king. This gives Cassius’ insinuations an overt hold
and invites a less oily approach than his previous amorous innuendoes: Brutus, he learns, would
not support Caesar’s elevation. The first lines seem guarded, politically prudent, but the last
lines declare someone ready to wager all in.
I would not, Cassius; yet I love him well.
But wherefore do you hold me here so long?
What is it that you would impart to me?
If it be aught toward the general good,
Set honour in one eye and death I’ th’ other,
And I will look on both indifferently;
For let the gods so speed me as I love
The name of honour more than I fear death. (84-91)
It’s impossible to distinguish genuine feeling from self-conscious interpersonal theater in such
an utterance. As with Caesar elsewhere, Brutus reaches into a book of commonplaces for his
pithy declamations. In fact, the motto of the last two lines of this passage does not easily sort
with the motto of the previous three lines, despite the logical connector “for.” One needs a
learned footnote to clarify a distinction between two senses of “honour” (the first level with
death, the second above it—citation temporarily misplaced, alas!). And while the footnoter is
on the phone, let’s also ask, what’s in a “name”? What does “the name of honour” contribute
to this attempt at ringing affirmation? In both sets of lines—the three and the two—there is to
my ears an effect of letdown rather than of climax (e.g, building to “indifferently” in one case or
diluting an emphasis with “The name of” in the other). The words here make Brutus’ profession
of his integrity harder to process than it needs to be.
This is one of many apparently death-defying professions of honor in the play. We hear
similar sentiments often enough to recognize them as elements of a Roman discourse shared
among the senatorial class. With Cassius this way of speaking might even be played as
affectation in the stagey, melodramatic ways that he impersonates this discourse to draw
Brutus and Casca into his fantasy (“but for my single self,/ I had as lief not be . . .,” 1.2.96-97).
On the other side, Brutus’ share in this way of talking looks more genuine by contrast to
Cassius’ cynical uses of it, and what we see of this contrast in scene two, Brutus himself seems
mindful of: Cassius’ busy machinations and half-hidden agenda highlight Brutus’ apparent
innocence, his honesty. Cassius’ soliloquy that concludes the scene nails down his version—a
smug, self-congratulating interpretation—of this contrast. Of course, Cassius’ interpretation,
that Brutus’ “honourable mettle may be wrought/ From that it is disposed” (1.2.303-304)
proves wrong in the obvious sense that Cassius intends, right in another. Since, without a
touchstone, it’s impossible with these Romans to distinguish genuine feeling from theatricality
(Drakakis 69-73), there are forceful theatrical motives for keeping Cassius around and for
keeping around Cassius: he can help “wright” a wrong and convey an effect of “honourable
mettle,” an effect of Brutus’ genuineness (when there’s no certainty of “hidden worthiness” to
cause it). And this is not just for others’ sake, but maybe especially for Brutus’ own as well.
What David Lucking says of a soliloquizing Brutus in Act Two might also fit here: “What we
seem to be witnessing are the thrashings of ‘a divided self, or self-experiencing ego’ [quoting
David Wilbern], a self-estranged mind half-consciously using language not to think through a
problem but to deceive itself” (Lucking 127).
Brutus is unable to make a good direct accounting of himself, either to himself in
soliloquy or to Portia in private. But give him a Cassius to dissent from, and he comes alive. No
sooner does he embrace the conspiracy in 2.1 than he becomes a fountain of high-minded
eloquence, showcasing his superiority in response to practical suggestions that colleagues offer
up for his happy, magisterial demolition.9 This logic of virtue-in-contrast even informs the
rhetorical manner of Brutus’ declamations, plush with antithetical ideas, structures, and figures,
notably the memorable sequence of vivid dueling captions that he offers up in his “pictures of
an assassination” speech: “Let’s be sacrificers, but not butchers” of Caesar, who will become
thereby “a dish fit for the gods,” not “a carcass fit for hounds,” and so on (2.1.165,178,179).
Brutus is not, it would seem, quite blind to what he’s fervently repressing. And so Antony,
against the better judgment of Cassius, lives and, later, moves the crowd at Caesar’s funeral to
use all the alternate, antithetical captions.
Flash forward to Act Four, where Cassius and Brutus dominate the stage in the stunning
argument waged in Brutus’ tent. This is not a scene of friendship in any exemplary way, but it
does bring out anew the self-regard of Brutus’ relationship with Cassius. If they took the poet’s
advice, Brutus and Cassius would rise above this quarrel, which Brutus’ recriminations have
provoked, but they don’t rise above it. If the play were trying to ennoble Brutus for us, for an
audience, this argument shouldn’t be here the way it is. If Brutus were trying to ennoble Brutus
in Brutus’ own eyes, the scene makes sense. We can observe how Cassius, the true, promised
mirror, makes Brutus look good to himself by reflection. And as a result, neither man comes
across very well in the mirror of this marriage quarrel that the stage is holding up for audience
inspection. Cassius, like Portia earlier, approaches Brutus with a grievance, but unlike with
Portia, Brutus is only too happy to speak, repeatedly seizing the high ground. Brutus’
enumeration of Cassius’ sins—“all his faults observed,/ Set in a notebook, learned and conned
by rote,/ To cast into my teeth” (4.2.150-153)—is accompanied by unpleasant condescension,
hectoring, and caviling on Brutus’ part. Here while the play is quite unkind to both, Brutus is
clearly exalted in his own eyes by a very pleasurable self-righteousness that might make an
onlooker cringe. (Blits 7-8) And it matters that the effort to hide this sequence from the armies
is so conspicuous (Brutus insistence on private “audience” might imply his intention to create a
scene with Cassius and at least shows the usual awareness of public-private duplicities). In
lording it over Cassius, Brutus presumably chooses not to see problems that we might notice:
for instance, that he blames Cassius both for extorting money—a misdemeanor of which Brutus
is jealously, technically innocent—and for not sharing the fruits of extortion with him. Similarly,
from this angle, Brutus’ repeated uses of Portia’s death to demonstrate—theatrically—his stoic
self-control are plain distasteful.
The play’s conclusion shows the effect of all this—again, an effect that is intentional on
Brutus’ part, if not exactly deliberate. It’s the sequel and culmination of letting Cassius make
him look good, in their dying as well as in life. Caesar and, especially, Antony acknowledge
Brutus’ difference from his colleagues as “noblest Roman,” and theirs becomes history’s
verdict;
All the conspirators save only he
Did that they did in envy of great Caesar.
He only in a general honest thought
And common good to all made one of them. (5.5. 67-71)
Even such a eulogy weirdly circulates envy and emulation in making Brutus a kind of winner—
“noblest”—while (enviously?) stigmatizing his comrades. Again, the antithesis, the principle of
contrast, helps Brutus simulate the honesty and suppress the envy that characterizes every
politician in Shakespeare’s Rome.
Antony and Caesar more straightforwardly appropriate a rival than does Brutus.
Whether their tributes are emotionally genuine or politically theatrical doesn’t matter to
history. Brutus is glorified in defeat, maybe especially in defeat, as a token of an old republican
virtue subsumed by the dueling cynicisms of Antony and Octavius and the historical
developments in the Empire that they represent. Throughout the play, Brutus’ answer to this
more explicit cynicism is a performance of idealism tinged with its own cynical self-calculations
in a much bigger theater than his rivals in the end envision.10 In a way, a beatified Brutus does
have more glory “than Octavius and Mark Antony/ By this vile conquest shall attain unto”
(5.5.37-38), a claim that Cleopatra will later also make. Alternatively, we could accept Cassius’
initial estimate of Brutus as his patsy in the Act One soliloquy that wonders, what is Brutus
doing hanging out with me?!—“If I were Brutus now, . . . / He should not humour me” (1.2.304305, 308-309). Instead, I have been wondering how a lone wolf who “looks/ Quite through the
deeds of men” might want to revise this early, hasty judgment of the relationship he became.
1
This also follows the sequence in which three lieutenants refuse Brutus’ request for assistance
in his suicide, showing them “true” to Brutus one way, in another way not.
2
In contrast, we find Caesar notably yielding to circumstance, if not directly to well-reasoned
argument. The cheers of the commons persuade him to refuse Antony’s offer of a crown,
Calpurnia and others persuade him to respect his misgivings and keep at home, and Decius
shames him into leaving home.
3
It might appear that Portia has convinced Brutus to share with her information about the
conspiracy. This is the subject of her spirited, eloquent discourse in her private scene with
Brutus, prior to the conspirators’ arrival in 2.1. Just before Portia exits, Brutus makes this
promise:
Portia, go in a while,
And by and by thy bosom shall partake
The secrets of my heart.
All my engagements I will construe to thee,
All the character of my sad brows.
Leave me with haste.
(2.1.303-308)
Scene four stages the sequel. There the extent of her knowledge of Brutus’ business is not at all
clear, in part because she speaks evasively to Lucius, her messenger. “Brutus hath a suit/ That
Caesar will not grant,” she concludes (to herself? 2.4.33-34). Is this euphemism, like
“enterprise” (line 43)? Is this what Brutus has somehow literally told her? Commentators on
this scene differ on these questions, wrestling with the practical fact that, in Shakespeare’s
much-compressed plotting of events, there has been no occasion for further communication
between Brutus and Portia. Plutarch emphasizes Portia’s hysteria on the (much later) day of
assassination, not so much her awareness (“Brutus,” chapter 11). In Plutarch, she does know
that Brutus packs a dagger (chapter 10), but his narrative leaves us to surmise her complicity
from the extremity of her impatience, which might, after all, be only a reflection of her
husband’s unusual agitation (agitation that has already induced Portia to punish her thigh to
prove her sympathy at a distance). One’s choice here might come down to either simpler, more
transparent characters and relationships (a weak-willed woman whom Brutus was correct to
stand aloof from) or more obscure characters and relationships. What’s the point of building up
Portia’s ethical credibility and her self-possession in scene one (where she’s the “man” to
Brutus’ “woman”), only to turn around scant hours later (in the clock-time of Shakespeare’s
fiction) to show that Portia can’t handle the truth? Portia’s isolation and exclusion from men’s
affairs and her lack of information about the impending assassination, to my current thinking,
better match the unexpected, even hysterical agitation on display in scene four. Plus, such
uncertainty and exclusion later frame her reported suicide, and besides, despite Plutarch’s
narrative, what would be the sense of dispatching the hapless Lucius unawares to a possibly
chaotic scene of insurrection? “Remember that Brutus did not return to her, but left his house
when he took Ligarius to Caesar and she knows no more than she knew when we last saw her.
This left her to her apprehension, and it is that apprehension that has been working upon her
ever since, and this has been a worse torment than fact. Her resourcefulness, her thorough grip
of facts so completely manifested in her last scene have completely disappeared. . . . She works
the scene up to a point of delirium and this moment is gently taken, sustained and cleverly
modified by the ominous, visionary Soothsayer walking slowly . . . . His character maintains the
drama of the scene in his declaration of the future, adding a quiet confirmation to the fearful
hazardings of Portia” (Skillan 41). Similarly, Blits 15.
4
The soliloquizing that opens Act Two is vacillating and inconclusive (“O Rome, I make thee
promise,/ If the redress will follow, thou receivest/ Thy full petition at the hand of Brutus,” ll.
56-58) Then the subsequent moment of Brutus’ concession to Cassius’ persuasion—his
agreement to participate—is curiously sequestered. After he welcomes and meets the
shrouded conspirators, Cassius spirits him aside:
CASSIUS
This, Caska. This, Cinna. And this, Metellus Cimber.
BRUTUS
They are all welcome.
What watchful cares do interpose themselves
Betwixt your eyes and night?
CASSIUS
Shall I entreat a word?
(2.1.96-99)
After one last moment of playing dumb—“What watchful cares?”—Brutus is drawn aside by
Cassius, leaving the others famously to try to orient themselves to the daybreak and the
Capitol. When Brutus and Cassius return, Brutus states, “Give me your hands all over, one by
one” (2.1.111). During the brief 12-line sunrise interlude, we are to imagine that Cassius’
“word”—whatever it is—has gained Brutus’ explicit consent to participate. This would be the
moment when persuasion, employing “available means” hidden from us, accomplished its end
(Aristotle, Rhetoric 1355b). The play makes this moment and these means intriguingly
mysterious. Not to mention unlikely: when would an interval of 12-lines’ duration ever
accommodate Cassius’ indirect, chatty, insinuating rhetoric?
5
I am encouraged in some of the following observations by astute comments on this scene in
O’Dair.
6
Girard’s description of the mimetic crisis building in the play focuses on the rivalry of Brutus
with Caesar, in which “Brutus resembles his model more and more” (189). But undifferentiation
is already more general than this. Caesar’s early description of Cassius to Antony, for instance,
exhibits traits in Caesar similar to those he sees in Cassius. And if an idealizing vanity in Brutus
aspires to become a Caesar without political ambition, Brutus’ less desirable doubling of Cassius
is also discernible.
7
Lines 39-41 are “a tacit admission of consummate acting” (Drakakis 69).
8
David Lucking, rising to Brutus’ challenge, very astutely explores the possibilities of this
unknown Brutus veiled from characters (including himself) and audience alike.
9
There is a brief, curious exception to this pattern in Brutus’ envious comments on Cicero,
when he predicates of Cicero what he is himself at that moment doing. It is as if Brutus and
Cicero have learned the same practice of eloquent, self-centered contrariness as the
simulacrum of virtue.
10
“But in Julius Caesar history is conceived a priori in theatrical terms, by actors who recognize
its perspectival malleability” and try to shape it (Kezar 38). The play’s conclusion, it seems to
me, parts company with Kezar’s next sentence: “It is Brutus’ presumed dramatic control over
the action and evaluation of the history in which he participates that signals his hybris.” The
ending, Antony’s eulogy, for instance, effaces this hybris or, at worst, assimilates it to the
personal glory that also marked Caesar. On the other hand, Kezar persuasively argues for the
openness permitted audience response in the theaters of Julius Caesar. Still, doesn’t the play’s
design tilt the weight of this response toward Brutus, who, like Richard II, has exercised
surprising “dramatic control over the action and evaluation of the history”?
Works Cited
Blits, Jan. The End of the Ancient Republic. Durham: Carolina Academic Press, 1982.
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