The King's New Grammar School in Stratford upon Avon...
where over 400 years ago a young lad named William Shakespeare...
poured over his classical literature and history...
and began to learn about the great names and events that had shaped the world.
Today, Stratford has changed.
It's still the cozy market town of Shakespeare's day...
but it has also become the epicenter of the 'Shakespeare World'.
The Royal Shakespeare Company, the Shakespeare Center...
and the Shakespeare Institute are all based here...
offering unique facilities where Shakespeare's life, times and works...
can be seen, heard and studied.
The play, Julius Caesar...
relates the rise and fall of a man whose ambition increased the power...
and influence of the mighty Roman Empire...
but it was an all consuming ambition...
one that drove Caesar to become Emperor and dictator...
and which ultimately caused friends to desert him and to loathe him...
and, finally, to murder him.
Brutus is often considered to be the man...
whose character undergoes the greatest moral shift in the play.
As an actor, charged with thejob of finding the motivation of the man...
during rehearsal and in performance...
I am in the happy position of being able to ask questions...
which are of personal interest to me.
How could we do better then, than turn at the outset...
to Dr. Robert Smallwood of the Shakespeare Center...
and Professor Stanley Wells of the Shakespeare Institute...
to shed light on the main themes of this play...
which those of us with even a passing knowledge of politics...
will recognize as one which still fits so easily...
into the experience of our modern world.
- Calpurnia - Peace, ho! Caesar speaks.
- Calpurnia. - Here, my lord.
Stand you directly in Antonio's way when he doth run his course.
Antonio.
Caesar, my lord.
Forget not in your speed, Antonio, to touch Calpurnia...
for our elders say...
The barren touched in this holy chase, Shake off their curse.
I shall remember: When Caesar says "Do this", it is performed.
Set on, and leave no ceremony out.
Julius Caesar is of course a history play.
It is related to what actually happened in Ancient Rome.
Shakespeare read about that particularly in a great book...
that he made a lot of use of 'The Lives of the Emperors'...
by the Greek historian Plutarc...
which exists in a wonderful translation by Sir Thomas North.
I say a wonderful translation because Shakespeare saw that himself too.
He not only read it, he paraphrased it, he borrowed bits from it...
he uses and incorporates phrases from it into his verses in plays.
He clearly enjoyed that.
Now the fact that this was an historical story meant a lot to Shakespeare.
Julius Caesar was a very important figure, I mean so important...
he actually conquered England, which means he was a very great man indeed.
He was a very well known figure and I think this helped Shakespeare...
to the extent he didn't have to...
portray Caesar's greatness as much as he would have done...
if Caesar hadn't been such a well-known figure.
The play is concerned very much with itself as a piece of history making.
Shakespeare is dramatizing...
one of the most famous political assassinations of all time...
the single most often treated episode from history...
in all 16th and 17th Century writing...
and when the conspirators have succeeded in their first aim of killing Caesar...
they have that extraordinary ritual moment when they see themselves...
making history.
Caesar!
Who calls?
Bid ever noise be still. Peace yet again.
Who is it in the press that calls on me?
I hear a tongue shiller than all the music. Cry "Caesar!"
Speak. Caesar is turned to hear.
Beware the ides of March.
What man is that?
A soothsayer bids you beware the ides of March.
Set him before me; let me see his face.
Fellow, come from the throng.
Look upon Caesar.
What sayest thou to me now?
Beware the ides of March
He is a dreamer. Let us leave him. Pass!
At its most basic level Julius Caesar is a story, an historical story.
It tells the story about people who existed.
Of course Shakespeare doesn't follow history exactly...
he reshapes it for its dramatic ends.
So one appeal of the play for later ages...
has been the sheer narrative of the play...
but of course it has also gone on appealing, because people...
have found that the play embodies ideas or what we tend to call themes.
One theme of Julius Caesar if you like, is politics.
It's a play about ruling a country.
It's a play about usurpation, about dictatorship...
about the fact that in politics somebody may...
assume so much power that it begins to corrupt them.
Now this is a universal theme...
we have found it all over our century...
Romania, Germany, Russia...
even one might suggest in England.
The corruption of politics is a frequent theme...
and it is very much present in this play, I think.
Will you go see the order of the course?
- Not I. - I pray you, do.
I am not gamesome: I do lack some part of that quick spirit that is in Antony.
Let me not hinder, Cassius, you desires: I'll leave you.
Brutus...
I do observe you now.
Tell me, good Brutus...
can you see your face?
No; for the eye sees not itself but by reflection...
by some other things.
'Tisjust...
And it is very much lamented, Brutus, that you have so such mirrors...
as will turn your hidden worthiness into you eye...
that you might see your shadow.
I have heard...
where many of the best respect in Rome...
except immortal Caesar...
speaking of Brutus, and groaning underneath this age's yoke...
have wished that noble Brutus had his eyes.
Into what dangers would you lead me, Cassius...
that you would have me seek into myself for that which is not in me?
Therefore, good Brutus, be prepared to hear.
And since you know 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.
What motivates Cassius?
In contrast to Brutus, his brother-in-law...
Caius Cassius, ostensibly has very clear cut reasons...
for wishing Caesar assassinated. Or does he?
His relationship with the emperor is an unhappy one...
but it is not easy to separate his personal enmity...
from his deep founded belief in republican sentiments.
So what is his motivation for the murder?
Cassius is the prime mover of events...
and the investigation of his character...
is essential to the understanding of why Caesar was destined to die.
I think Cassius is a very passionate man actually.
Much less of a man of principle...
than Brutus is or thinks he is anyway.
'Caesar loves Brutus', says Cassius at the end of his attempts...
to bring Brutus into the conspiracy.
'Caesar loves Brutus...
if he were Cassius now and I were Brutus...
he would not humor me'.
If he were loved by Caesar...
I don't think Cassius would be talking Republicanism.
Cassius is an emotive figure.
He is somebody who gets things going.
He is more active than Brutus. Brutus has to be acted upon...
Cassius acts but whether he acts for good motives is more disputable.
Cassius is more obviously a self-seeking figure.
He is more obviously ambitious to be in with the main party.
So I feel that Cassius acts more out of...
the desire for self aggrandizement than Brutus does for example.
I do fear the people chose Caesar for their king.
Ay, do you fear it?
Then must I think you would not have it so.
I would not; yet I love him well.
But wherefore do you hold me? 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 the love of gods so speed me...
as I do love the name of honour more than I fear death.
I know that virtue to be in you, Brutus...
as well as I do know your outward favour.
I was born free as Caesar, so were you:
We both have fed as well...
and we can both endure the Winter's cold as well as he.
Once, upon a raw and gusty day...
the troubled Tiber chafing with her shores...
Said Caesar to me...
'Dar'st thou, Cassius...
now leap in with me into this angry flood...
and swim to yonder point? '
Upon the word, accoutred as I was...
I plunged in and bade him follow.
So indeed he did.
The torrent roared, and we did buffet it with lusty sinews...
throwing it aside spinning with hearts of controversy.
But ere we could arrive the point proposed...
Caesar cried, 'Help me, Cassius, or I sink! '
I, as Aeneas, our great ancestor...
did from the Flames of Troy, upon his shoulder...
the old Anchyses beare, so, from the waves of Tyber...
Did I the tired Caesar.
And this man...
is now become a god...
And Cassius...
is a wretched creature, and must bend his body...
if Caesar carelessly but nod on him.
The play focuses upon thejudicial magistrate Marcus Brutus...
and it is through him that Shakespeare explores thejourney of a man...
who becomes the victim of his own idealism.
Does that idealism make him a noble or simply one open to self delusion?
It is an issue which is shared by others...
and it is central to the inner conflicts which wrack...
'... the noblest Roman of them all', as Mark Antony describes him.
Brutus of course is a noble man in private life.
His life was gentle and the elements so mixed in him...
that nature might stand up and say to all the world...
this was a man from his enemy. Of course it is easy to be nice...
about people when you havejust bumped them off...
but I think we need to take that at its face value...
as a description of a man who has lived well, presumably...
before the play began, who has...
admirable personal relationships with the people around...
he is immensely admired...
but who when he moves into the public arena of politics...
is utterly hopeless.
There is a sense in which Brutus is the main character of the play.
It is an odd thing about this play that it has the title of Julius Caesar...
it's called the "Tragedy of Julius Caesar" indeed...
and yet Julius Caesar is killed half way through the play...
and Brutus remains the focus of attention...
from very early on in the play until the very end.
And many people in the play regard Brutus as a very good man...
and his reputation for goodness, I think, is one of the reasons...
why the other conspirators want him at the center of the conspiracy.
They feel that if he is known to be supporting the conspiracy...
then this would give validity to their actions...
it would help tojustify what they are doing...
in the eyes of the people of Rome.
Do we trouble you?
I have been up this hour, awake all night.
Know I these men that come along with you?
Yes, every man of them:
and no man here but honours you...
and every one doth wish you had but that opinion of yourself...
which every noble Roman bears of you.
- This is Trebonius. - He is welcome hither.
- This, Decius Brutus. - He is welcome too.
This, Cascar Cinna, this:
- and this, Metellus Cimber. - They are all welcome.
Give me your hands all over, one by one.
- And let us swear our resolution. - No, not an oath.
If these, as I am sure they do...
bear fire enough to kindle cowards...
and to steel with valour the melting spirits of women...
then, countrymen. What need we any spur but our own cause...
to prick us to redress?
Do not stain the even virtue of our enterprise...
nor th' insuppressive mettle of our spirits...
To think that or our cause or our performance did need an oath...
when every drop of blood that every Roman bears...
and nobly bears. Is guilty of a several bastardy...
if he betrayal the smallest particle...
of any promise that hath passed from him.
Shall no man else be touched, but only Casear?
Decius, well urged.
I think it is not meet Mark Antony, so well beloved of Caesar.
Should outlive Caesar. We shall find of him a shrewd contriver.
Let Antony and Caesar fall together.
Our course will seem too bloody, Caius Cassius...
to cut the head off and then hack the limbs...
like wrath in death and envy afterwards...
for Antony is but a limb of Caesar's.
Let's be sacrificers, but not butchers, Caius.
We all stand up against the spirit of Caesar.
But in men's spirit there is no blood.
O, that we then could come by Caesar's spirits...
and not dismember Caesar!
But alas, Caesar must bleed for it.
And, gentle friends, let's kill him boldly, but not wrathfully.
Let's carve him as a dish fit for the gods...
Not hew him as a carcass fit for hounds.
We shall be called purgers, not murderers.
And for Mark Antony, think not of him...
For he is no more than Caesar's arm when Caesar's head is off.
Yet I fear him.
For in the engrafted love...
Alas, good Cassius, do not think of him.
If he love Caesar, all that he can do is to himself...
take thought, and die for Caesar.
And for that much he should...
for he is given to sports, to wildness, and much company.
There is no fear in him. Let him not die...
For he will live, and laugh at this hereafter.
Peace, count the clock.
- The clock hath stricken three. - Tis time to part.
But it is doubtful yet. Whether Caesar will come forth today or no;
For he is superstitious grown of late...
it may be these apparent prodigies...
the unaccussomed terror of this night...
and the persuasion of his augurers may hold him from the Capitol today.
Never fear that. If he be so resolved...
I shall o'ersway him; Let me work...
for I shall give his humour the true bent...
and I will bring him to the Capitol.
Nay...
we will all of us be there to fetch him.
The morning comes upon's.
We'll leave you, Brutus. And, friends...
disperse yourselves but all remember what you have said...
- and show yourselves true Romans. - Good gentlemen, look fresh and merrily.
Let not our looks put on our purposes;
But bear it as our Roman actors do...
with untired spirits and formal constancy.
And so good morrow to you every one.
Brutus tries to turn a murder into an elegant sacrifice.
'Let's carve him as a dish fit for the gods...
not as a carcass fit for hounds'.
You can't do that when you have got somebody...
to kill with energy and ferocity.
The image later in the play is of the conspirators as hounds around Caesar.
'Here wast thou bade brave heart...
here didst thou fall', says Antony.
The image of the stag hunting with the hounds round the bloody corpse.
That seems to me to be a piece of serious self-delusion on Brutus' part.
Also he tries after the killing...
when the blood is running on the floor of the stage...
again to create ritual out of it.
'Stoop Roman stoop and dip your hands in Caesar's blood'.
Brutus is forced into...
justifying the murder of Caesar not because of what Caesar has done...
because of what he might do.
Now this is pretty dicey, isn't it? To kill somebody...
in case they do something that you fear that they might do.
What if they wouldn't have done that you have to say...
is pretty hard luck on anybody: to be assassinated...
on the grounds that they might possibly become...
the sort of person Brutus fears Caesar will become.
I wish your enterprise today may thrive.
What enterprise, Popillius?
Fare you well.
What said Popillius Laena?
He wished today our enterprise might thrive.
I fear our purpose is discovered.
Look how he makes to Caesar. Mark him.
Casca, be sudden, for we fear prevention.
Brutus, what shall be done?
If this be known, Cassius or Caesar never shall turn back...
- for I will slay myself. - Cassius, be constant.
Popillius Laena speaks not of our purposes, for look...
he smiles, and Caesar doth not change.
Trebonius knows his time, look you, Brutus...
He draws Mark Antony out of the way.
Where is Metellus Cimber?
Let him go.
And presently prefer his suit to Caesar.
He is addressed. Press near, and second him.
Are we all ready?
What is now amiss that Caesar and his Senate must redress?
Most high, most mighty, and most puissant Caesar...
Metellus Cimber casts before thy seat...
an humble heart.
I must prevent thee, Cimber.
Be not fond to think that Caesar bears such rebel blood...
that will thawed from the true quality with that which melteth fools:
I mean sweet words. Low-crooked curtsies...
and base spaniel fawning.
Thy brother by decree was banished.
If thou dost bend and pray and fawn for him...
I spurn thee like a cur out of my way.
Know Caesar both not wrong but with just cause.
Nor without cause will he be satisfied.
Is there no voice more worthy than my own...
to sound more sweetly in great Caesar's ear...
for repealing of my banished brother?
I kiss thy hand, but not in flattery, Caesar...
desiring thee that Publius Cimber may have immediate freedom of repeal...
- What? Brutus... - Pardon, Caesar;
Caesar, pardon.
As low as to thy foot doth Cassius fall...
to beg enfranchisement for Publius Cimber.
I could be well moved, if I were as you:
If I could pray to move, prayers would move me.
But I am Constant as the Northern Star...
of whose true fixed and resting quality there is no fellow in the firmament.
But I was constant Cimber should be banished...
and constant do remain to keep him so.
- O Caesar. - Hence!
- Wilt thou lift up Olympus? - Great Caesar...
Doth not Brutus bootless kneel?
Speak, hands for me!
Et Tu, Brute? Then fall Caesar.
Liberty! Freedom!
Tyranny is dead!
At the very heart, at the very center of the play...
is the killing of the head of the state...
but the killing of an older man, by eight younger men.
The extraordinary mutilation in the play...
their daggers hacking each other in the sides of Caesar...
the blades of the daggers are actually scraping against each other...
while they are inside Caesar's body.
That's the central episode of the play...
but it's also a political act of far reaching consequences.
Immediately it's over, they try to ritualize it.
The stage is running with blood, it's got to be...
they bathe their hands in it and then talk of ages hence...
this moment being re-enacted as a piece of theatre...
and it has been for us with Shakespeare's play...
but also this is an archetypal political assassination.
We will solve a political problem by killing the head of state.
Just as we feel that justice has been done...
Shakespeare presents the audience with another dilemma.
The crowd sways one way by Brutus, then violently the other by Antony.
If you were listening to the great oratory of Brutus and Mark Antony...
following the murder of Caesar, which would you believe?
Are these rhetorical speeches effective?
I think the rhetoric is at the heart of Julius Caesar.
It is terribly important the fact that not only the crowd...
but the audience too are swayed by the rhetoric...
that to some extent Brutus but to a greater extent Mark Antony employed.
Now Shakespeare is clever about this...
he gives Brutus the speech to the crowd after Julius Caesar's death...
he gives him the first speech. It's a good speech...
but it's a prose speech rather than a verse one.
It sways the crowds for a while...
but Shakespeare himself keeps in reserve Mark Antony.
One of the greatest mistakes that Brutus makes in the play...
is to allow Mark Antony to speak after Brutus.
Brutus ought to have let Mark Antony speak first...
and then he would have known what he had to get...
to stand up against, what he had to compete with.
Now Antony is an absolutely brilliant speaker...
which is another way of saying that Shakespeare...
is an absolutely brilliant creator of rhetoric and of rhetorical speeches...
and it always seems to me that the most attractive...
the most theatrically and dramatically effective...
aspects of this play are the scene in which Mark Antony sways the crowd...
and brings them round to oppose Brutus...
by appealing to their sentiments about the dead Caesar.
Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears.
I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him.
The evil that men do lives after them; Good is oft interred with their bones.
So let it be with Caesar.
The noble Brutus hath told you Caesar was ambitious.
If it were so, it was a grievous fault...
and grievously hath Caesar answered it.
Here, under leave of Brutus and rest for Brutus is an honourable man.
So are they all, all honourable man...
Come I to speak in Caesar's funeral.
He was my friend...
faithful and just to me.
But Brutus says he was ambitious...
and Brutus is an honourable man.
He hath brought many captives home to Rome...
whose ransoms did the general coffers fill.
Did this in Caesar seem ambitious?
When that the poor have cried, Caesar hath wept.
Ambition should be made of sterner stuff.
Yet Brutus says he was ambitious, and Brutus is an honourable man.
You all did see...
that on the Lupercal I thrice presented him a kingly crown...
which he did thrice refuse. Was this ambition?
Yet Brutus says he was ambitious, and sure he is an honourable man.
I speak not to disprove what Brutus spoke...
but here I am to speak what I do know.
You all did love him once, not without cause.
What cause withholds you then to mourn for him?
O judgement, thou art fled to brutish beasts...
and men have lost their reason!
Brutus, when they are planning the murder...
talks about coming by Caesar's spirit...
'oh that we could come by Caesar's spirit...
without killing him but alas Caesar must bleed for it'.
He would like to kill Caesar's spirit but let his body live on.
In fact precisely the reverse happens...
and they kill Caesar's body and his spirit lives on.
Antony from the very corpse after the assassination releases the spirit...
Caesar's the spirit thirsting for revenge with Arty by his side.
He is released to haunt the core of the Republic.
Good boy, good night.
Let me see. Let me see.
Is not the leaf turned down where I left reading?
Here it is, I think.
How ill this taper burns!
Ha! Who comes here?
I think it is the weakness in my eyes that shapes this monstrous apparition.
It comes upon me.
Art thou any thing? Art thou some god, some angel...
or some devil, that mak'st my blood cold and my hair to stare?
- Speak to me what thou art. - Thy evil spirit, Brutus.
- Why com'st thou? - Thou shalt see me at Philippi.
Well; then I shall see thee again?
Ay, at Philippi.
Why, I will see thee at Philippi then.
Now I have made my heart strong, thou vanishest...
I'll spirit, I would hold more words with thee.
Julius Caesar is a play about Roman history...
just as the English history plays are about the history of England.
But of course, the play ends as some of the English history plays do...
in multiple deaths.
To that extent it is a tragic play. It isn't a single tragedy...
it isn't a one man tragedy as one might say Macbeth is, or King Lear is...
or Hamlet, but nevertheless...
if one had to choose a single figure of the play as a tragic hero...
it certainly wouldn't be Caesar. Caesar is...
the center of the play up until the end of Act III...
but the figure whose story runs through the play...
and whose death is the real emotional climax of the play is Brutus.
So if this is a tragedy, it is not tragedy of Julius Caesar...
it is of Marcus Brutus.
O conspiracy...
seeks thou to hide thy dangers brow by night when the evils are most free.
O' then by day...
when are they find the cabin dark enough to mask this monsterous visage.