styrt2015

8/20/2019 styrt2015

1/23

Shakespeare Quarterly, Volume 66, Number 3, Fall 2015, pp. 286-307

(Article)

DOI: 10.1353/shq.2015.0045

For additional information about this article

Access provided by University of York (21 Feb 2016 18:31 GMT)

http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/shq/summary/v066/66.3.styrt.html

http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/shq/summary/v066/66.3.styrt.htmlhttp://muse.jhu.edu/journals/shq/summary/v066/66.3.styrt.html

8/20/2019 styrt2015

2/23

“Continuall Factions”:Politics, Friendship, and History in Julius Caesar

P H I L I P G O L D F A R B S T Y R T

W I L L I A M SH A K E S P E A R E ’ S J U L I U S CA E S A R is set in Rome at the timeof Julius Caesar. Put so directly, this seems obvious, even tautological.But I suggest that this basic fact has broad implications. By writing a play about

Julius Caesar set in Caesarean Rome, Shakespeare ensured that his audiencewould bring with them certain preconceptions and understandings of the situ-ation surrounding the play’s events—preconceptions and understandings heused in shaping the drama and its effects.

In particular, I suggest, Shakespeare drew on his audience’s understanding of the political structure of Rome around the time of Caesar. Warped by theevents of the civil wars in the generation before Caesar’s rise to power, theRoman political structure had turned away from the individualized politics of the early Republic that Shakespeare would later dramatize in Coriolanus—with

its emphasis on the individual senator and his opinions—toward a kind of institutionalized factionalism in which the workings of the state were depend-ent on developed, well-known political associations. The leaders of these fac-tions controlled access to power and authority, although they themselves mightor might not hold major political office at any given time. Political infighting,which often took the form of actual military combat, was between factions, notindividuals. The interplay of these factions was a major part of the early modernEnglish understanding of the Roman civil wars, and, as I will show, Julius Caesar assumes this political situation as the basis for its exploration of Caesar’s Rome.In particular, I argue that the play identifies Caesar and his allies with a specificfaction ultimately derived from Marius that was opposed to another factionultimately derived from Sulla.1 Politics in Julius Caesar is not merely a matter of individual interactions but of the interplay between the factions with whichindividuals are associated. These factions are clearly identified in the play by theword “friend.” Used primarily in a political sense, “friend” becomes largelydivorced from its affective meaning, which is displaced onto the word “lover.”This distinction between friends and lovers makes plain the difference between

1 Lucius Cornelius Sulla was often referred to as “Sylla” or “Silla” in the early modern period;I will refer to him as Sulla except where quoting from an early modern source.

8/20/2019 styrt2015

3/23

personal connection and political affiliation and provides a clear window intothe factional politics of the play.

These factional politics are best understood in conjunction with earlymodern English accounts of Caesar’s time—both Shakespeare’s direct narrativesources and others circulating in the same literary culture. The consistentemphasis in these accounts on the importance of factions to the period and ontheir specific composition helps us to identify the ways in which Shakespeare’splay highlights factionalism for its audience. The primary direct source for JuliusCaesar is Thomas North’s translation of Plutarch’s Lives of the Noble Greciansand Romanes.2 Multiple Lives within Plutarch’s text treat the events surround-ing Shakespeare’s play: not only the Life of Caesar , of course, but also those of

Caius Marius, Sulla, Crassus, Pompey, Marc Antony, Brutus, and Cicero.Together, they tell a consistent story about the events of the Roman civil wars,the importance of faction to those wars, and the nature of those factions.3

The chronology of the civil wars themselves is not my focus, so for the sakeof the following discussion I will briefly summarize the sequence of eventsassumed by the relevant Lives in Plutarch’s work.4 The civil wars began with thefeud between Caius Marius and Lucius Cornelius Sulla, whose factions battledfor control of Rome a generation before the events of Julius Caesar . By 80 BCE,Sulla and his allies, including Crassus and Pompey, were victorious. They killed

Marius, his son, and many others, and drove the Marians underground. Among those forced out of Rome at this time was Julius Caesar. After Sulla’s death in 78BCE, Pompey and Crassus became dominant in Rome, dividing Sulla’s factionbetween them in the 60s. During this period, Caesar returned to Rome and ush-ered in a resurgence of the Marians. Pompey, Crassus, and Caesar partitionedRome between their parties in the first triumvirate in 61 BCE. After Crassus’sdeath in 53 BCE, this arrangement fell apart, and the allies of Pompey andCaesar began to quarrel openly. Eventually, Caesar invaded Italy from Gaul withan army, famously crossing the Rubicon in 49 BCE, and Pompey and the major-

ity of the senators withdrew from Rome. Pompey and Caesar led armies against

“CONTINUALL FACTIONS” 287

2 Vivian Thomas, Shakespeare’s Roman Worlds (London: Routledge, 1989), 2; and GeoffreyBullough, ed., Narrative and Dramatic Sources of Shakespeare (London: Routledge and KeganPaul, 1964), 5:4.

3 For the commonalities between these various Lives, see C. B. R. Pelling, “Plutarch’s Methodof Work in the Roman Lives,” The Journal of Hellenic Studies 99 (1979): 74–96, esp. 75, 83.

4 Plutarch, The Lives of the Noble Grecians and Romanes, trans. Thomas North (London:Thomas Vatroullier and Iohn VVright, 1579). The references for the various Lives within this

translation are as follows: Caius Marius, 451–79; Sylla, 499–525; Marcus Crassus, 600–22;Pompey, 678–718; Julius Caesar , 763–96; Marcus Tullius Cicero, 912–37; Marcus Antonius,970–1010; and Marcus Brutus, 1055–80. Hereafter cited as “North” with the name of the Lifegiven parenthetically, when applicable.

8/20/2019 styrt2015

4/23

each other in the eastern Mediterranean while Pompey’s sons and Caesar’s alliesbattled in the western. Pompey’s army was defeated in 48 BCE, and he fled to

Egypt, where he was killed and his head was presented to Caesar. His sonsfought on in Spain until Caesar and his army arrived to defeat them, after whichCaesar held a triumph in 45 BCE. This triumph begins Julius Caesar .

Within that narrative, which is told with minimal variations in each of theabove Lives, North’s translation of Plutarch strongly emphasizes the factionalnature of the wars. His emphasis takes two forms: he focuses on the importanceof faction in the period, and he describes the continuity of those factionsthroughout the period. North uses the term “faction” whenever Plutarch stepsback from the details of an individual biography either to examine Rome as a

whole or to set the stage for the next part of a Life.5

In this way, he casts factionsas the basic unit of Roman political life by means of which individual momentsand lives should be understood. These factions are not only important but alsocontinuous, lasting long after their founders’ deaths. The best example of thiscontinuity comes from the Life of Caesar , in which Sulla responds to his advi-sors’ recommendation that he spare Julius Caesar by telling them “that they didnot consider that there were many Marians in that young boy.”6 Because Caesarwas Marius’s nephew, he was a potential leader of the Marians and thereforecontained “many Marians”; even though Marius himself was already dead, his

faction could live on through Caesar. Sulla’s faction likewise persisted after hisdeath. His lieutenants included “Pompeius, Crassus, Metellus, and Seruilius,” and,as already noted, Pompey and Crassus remained in power after Sulla’s death,later splitting power with Caesar’s Marians.7 After Crassus’s death, the divisionwas simply between Caesar and Pompey. Although some of Crassus’s followersmay have joined Caesar, the continuity remains clear between the Sulla-Pompey and Marius-Caesar factions. In turn, Cassius and Brutus are identifiedas members of Pompey’s faction pardoned by Caesar after his victory, extending the factions into the period depicted in Julius Caesar .8

Although these factions proved persistent, they were actually a new featureof late republican Rome. The Life of Cicero notes the “chaunge and alteracion of gouernment, the which Sylla brought in.”9 This “chaunge” is the institution of the spoils system, whereby members of the victorious faction were rewardedwith the positions and wealth of the defeated, and the latter were excluded from

288 SHAKESPEARE QUARTERLY

5 See North, 501 (Marius), 506, 522 (Sylla), 604 (Crassus), 685 (Pompey), 765 (Caesar ), 972(Antony), 1056 (Brutus).

6 North, 763 (Caesar ).7 North, 519 (Sylla), 604 (Crassus).8 North, 790 (Caesar ).9 North, 917 (Cicero).

8/20/2019 styrt2015

5/23

office. As North puts it, “Sylla had by his ordinaunces deposed [the Marians]from their dignities and offices in Rome.”10 Shakespeare’s Cassius makes a ref-

erence to this sort of system when he tries to bribe Antony by giving him a voice“In the disposing of new dignities” (3.1.178), which appears to have been a rec-ognized part of the system of faction.11 In the Life of Cicero, we can see the waythat the civil wars are viewed in North’s Plutarch as a whole: as a time when fac-tions arose and began to be entrenched in the Roman political structure.

Of course, North’s Plutarch was far from the only early modern English textto treat the theme of factionalism during the Roman civil wars. I could, forinstance, have written this entire section by drawing on the work of just oneauthor, Lodowick Lloyd, who between 1590 and 1607 published five books

that touched on the Roman civil wars and the significance of faction.12

Lloydwas an avid reader of Roman history, including Plutarch, Suetonius, andEutropius, as his numerous marginal and in-line citations witness.13 His per-spective on the period is perhaps best summarized in The Practice of Policy:

. . . in the time of Sylla and Marius, factions began so to multiply in Rome,as it did in Greece, that likewise it brake out into ciuill warres, which contin-ued from Sillaes time, vnto the last ouerthrow of Mar. Antonius, welnighfourty yeeres, to the destruction of the whole Empire, some following the furyof Marius, as Sertorius, Cynna, Carbo: and others followers of Sylla, as Metellus,

Pompey, and others, that none might dwell in Rome, but those that eythershould bee on Marius side, or on Syllaes.Thus was the Empire deuided by factions, from Sylla to Caesar , from Caesar

to Augustus, sometime running from Caesar to Pompey, and from Pompey toCaesar , vntill they and their factions were slayn by the sword, and their coun-trey welnigh destroyed.14

This view is precisely what we would expect from a careful reader of Plutarchand other ancient historians. It is also worth noting that although Lloyd namesthe factions by their leaders, he does not see the existence of the factions as

dependent on the eponymous leaders. In The Stratagems of Jerusalem, he refers


10 North, 918 (Cicero).11 Unless otherwise noted, all citations from the play are from Julius Caesar , ed. David

Daniell, Arden3 Series (Walton-on-Thames, UK: Thomas Nelson and Sons, 1998), citedparenthetically.

12 They are Lodovvik Lloid, The consent of time (London, 1590); Lodowick Lloid, The First part of the Diall of Daies (London, 1590); Lodowick Lloyd, The stratagems of Ierusalem(London, 1602); Lodowike Lloyd, The practice of policy (London, 1604); and Lodowik Lloid,

The tragicocomedie of Serpents (London, 1607).13 See among many others, Lloid, The tragicocomedie of Serpents, 16; Lloid, The consent of time, 528; and Lloid, The First part of the Diall of Daies, 84.

14 Lloyd, The practice of policy, 35.

8/20/2019 styrt2015

6/23

to “Carbo, the head and chiefe of all Marius faction, the onely enemie of Sylla,”making it clear that the Marian faction survived Marius’s death.15

Lloyd was merely the most prolific early modern English interpreter andrecapitulator of the Roman civil wars and the Caesar story. Other writers simi-larly engaged with these topics in translations, histories, commentaries, essays,and advice books.16 These books cited (or failed to cite) a variety of sources,used the Roman stories for a variety of purposes, and couched their commen-tary in a variety of terms. Yet two common themes run through them all, as theydo through North’s translation and Lloyd’s various works: the importance of “faccious dealyng” in the period and the continuity of the wars from “Marius andSilla” to “Pompeius and Caesar ” and on through “the Triumvirate of Octavius,

Antonius, and Lepidus, against Cassius and Brutus.”17

The political world of Julius Caesar is grounded in this view of the factionaldivisions of late republican Rome. In order to properly appreciate the play andits events, we must explore the nature of the factional politics of the play andthe characters’ various understandings of this factionalism. In doing so, wemust see Rome as the early modern English typically understood it: not merely“without Caesar . . . a city divided,” but a city divided during his life, the scene


15 Lloyd, The stratagems of Ierusalem, 263.16 For translations, see T. Livivs [Livy], The Romane historie, trans. Philemon Holland

(London: Adam Islip, 1600), 1248–59; Suetonius, The historie of tvvelve Caesars, trans.Philemon Holland (London: H. Lownes and G. Snowdon for Matthew Lownes, 1606), STC23422, sigs. G4v, 15; Cornelivs Tacitvs, The annales, trans. Richard Grenewey (London: Arn.Hatfield for Bonham and Iohn Norton, 1598), 1; Appian, An Auncient Historie and exquisiteChronicle of the Romanes warres, trans. W. B. (London: Henrie Bynniman, 1578), STC 712.5,158; Eutropius, A briefe chronicle, trans. Nicolas Havvard (London: Thomas Marshe, 1564),fols. 53, 68; and [Lucan], Lvcans first booke, trans. Chr[istopher] Marlovv[e] (London: P. Shortand Walter Burre, 1600), STC 16883.5, sig. E1r. For histories see, William Fulbecke, An his-toricall collection of the continvall factions, tvmults, and Massacres of the Romans and Italians

(London: VVilliam Ponsonby, 1601); Richard Reynoldes, A Chronicle of all the noble Emperoursof the Romaines (London: Thomas Marshe, 1571), sig. A1v; Thomas Churchyard, A generallrehearsall of warres, called Churchyardes choise (London: Edward White, 1579), sig. O2v; and E.L., Romes Monarchie (London: The Widdow Orwin for Matthew Lawe, 1596), sig. G1v. Forcommentaries, see Clement Edmvnds, Observations vpon the five first bookes of Caesars commen-taries (London: Peter Short, 1600), 123; and Avgvstine, Of the citie of God, trans. I. H. (London:George Eld, 1610), 36. For essays, see William Corne-waleys [Cornwallis], Essayes (London:Edmund Mattes, 1600), sig. Cc3r–v; and Thomas Digges, Foure Paradoxes (London: H.Lownes for Clement Knight, 1604), 71. For advice books, see VV. Auerell, A Dyall for daintyDarlings (London: Thomas Hackette, 1584), sig. B4v; Peter de la Primavdaye, The FrenchAcademie, trans. T. B. (London: Edmund Bollisant for G. Bishop and Ralph Newbery, 1586),

217, 342, 709; and Innocent Gentillet, A discovrse vpon the meanes of vvel governing and main-taining in good peace, a kingdome, or other principalitie , trans. Simon Patericke (London: AdamIslip, 1602), 154.

17 Churchyard, Churchyards Choise, sig. O2v; and Gentillet, Discovrse, 154.

8/20/2019 styrt2015

7/23

of “the struggle between two warring ‘noble’ factions.”18 We must also under-stand the degree to which this factional division was believed to be intimately

tied to the destruction of the Roman Republic. It was no accident that the titleof William Fulbecke’s history of the period yoked together “continuall factions,tumults, and massacres,” or that Lloyd spoke of the civil wars continuing until“their factions were slayn by the sword, and their countrey welnighdestroyed.”19 “Faction” was not a positive, or even a neutral, term in earlymodern England.20 It was something to be avoided, something that at its bestrepresented uncivil dissension and at its worst would tear a country apart. Yetat the same time, it was also “the dominant form of political organization”under Elizabeth I.21 This tension between philosophical distrust of faction and

practical experience of it would have primed Elizabethan audiences to look forfactional elements in Julius Caesar , particularly as the Roman Republic wasseen as the classic example of the dangers of faction. Factionalism was knownto be a fact of political life in the late Republic, but it was also believed to bethe root of the Republic’s destruction. What had been a rugged, individualis-tic government in the early Republic had decayed into factional decadence andthen destroyed itself.

Julius Caesar exists in this fallen, factional world. Even in the first scene, thetribunes who break up the plebeians’ celebrations for Caesar remind them, and

us, of the civil wars, asking the crowd, “Knew you not Pompey?” (1.1.38).Although addressed to the plebeians, the question might equally apply to theaudience, for whom a knowledge of Pompey would indeed be useful. The trib-unes then reject the plebeians’ celebrations as inappropriate because they comeas a result not of a foreign victory but of a domestic, factional one: “you nowstrew flowers in his way, / That comes in triumph over Pompey’s blood” (ll.51–52). By extolling the memory of Pompey to the plebeians and rejecting, inPompey’s name, Caesar’s celebrations, the tribunes immediately recall for us thefactional history of Rome and its relevance to the play.


18 Robert S. Miola, Shakespeare’s Rome (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1983), 101; andTimothy Hampton, Writing from History: The Rhetoric of Exemplarity in Renaissance Literature(Ithaca, NY: Cornell UP, 1990), 211.

19 Fulbecke, An historicall collection (see n. 16 above); and Lloid, The practice of policy, 35 (seen. 12 above).

20 For more on Shakespeare’s contemporaries and the use of “faction,” see Simon Adams,“Faction, Clientage and Party English Politics, 1550–1603,” History Today 32.12 (1982):33–39.

21

Robert Shephard, “Court Factions in Early Modern England,” The Journal of ModernHistory 64.4 (1992): 721–45, esp. 721. For more on the tensions between the policy and prac-tice of factionalism, see Eric S. Mallin, “Emulous Factions and the Collapse of Chivalry: Troilusand Cressida,” Representations 29 (1990): 145–79, esp. 146–47.

8/20/2019 styrt2015

8/23

Having brought up this factional history, Julius Caesar does not allow us toforget it. Caesar’s entrance brings the appearance of harmony and triumph, but

his exit leaves Cassius and Brutus onstage. They immediately rehearse thedisharmony underlying the state, through both the content of their conversa-tion and their refusal (like that of the tribunes) to join in the general festivities.It is quickly clear that Cassius is already working against Caesar and awaitsBrutus’s participation to continue that work in earnest. Nor does he waitpatiently, testing the waters repeatedly. By the end of the long scene, Cassius hastold the audience that he plans to push Brutus even further by delivering lettersthat continue to direct Brutus toward Cassius’s opinion:

I will this night

In several hands in at his windows throw,As if they came from several citizens,Writings all tending to the great opinionThat Rome holds of his name—wherein obscurelyCaesar’s ambition shall be glanced at.

(1.2.314–19)

The picture we are left with is one of Cassius urging forcefully to create a con-spiracy against Caesar.

Brutus is not the only target of Cassius’s intrigues. We see him bring Caska

into the fold, who begs him to “Be factious for redress of all these griefs”(1.3.118)—that is, to form a faction. In response, Cassius informs him that thefaction already exists:

I have moved alreadySome certain of the noblest-minded RomansTo undergo with me an enterpriseOf honourable dangerous consequence.

(ll. 121–24)

This is news to Caska; it is also news to the audience who has previously seenCassius individually recruit only Brutus and Caska. Cinna’s entrance confirmsCassius’s statement, as we suddenly discover in a few lines the other membersof the faction: “Cinna,” “Metellus Cimber,” and “Decius Brutus and Trebonius”(ll. 133, 134, 148). We realize that we are not witnessing the beginning of a“conspiracy” but the last stages of its formation. These previously unknown men“are the faction” (2.1.77), as Brutus says, and they are joined together before weeven know it.

The opposing faction is equally predetermined. Shortly after Caesar’s death

in Act 3, scene 1, we see Mark Antony speak to Octavius Caesar’s servant;Octavius himself arrives in Rome in the next scene. After only one intervening scene, Antony, Octavius, and the previously unmentioned Lepidus are already


8/20/2019 styrt2015

9/23

selecting who in Rome “shall die” (4.1.1) by proscription. Some of this sequenc-ing is Shakespeare’s usual compression of time, but some of it also reflects that

these three men are clearly all “members of Caesar’s party,” a group whose exis-tence precedes and shapes their association.22 Antony is not “the leader of a newrebellion,” as Robert Miola suggests, but the leader of an already preexisting fac-tion that has sprung into action.23 The triumvirs can move so swiftly becausethey are already allies, and they step smoothly into power after Caesar’s death.Brutus spared Antony because he believed him “but a limb of Caesar” (2.1.164).However, it would be closer to the truth to say they were both “limbs” of some-thing larger that did not die with Caesar, but lived on through Antony and hisfellow triumvirs. This is the faction of Caesar, and of Marius before him, just as

Cassius’s faction is that of Pompey and Sulla. It is no accident that Antony goesto meet his fellow triumvirs “at Caesar’s house” (3.2.254) any more than that theconspirators await Cassius “In Pompey’s Porch” (1.3.126). Contrary to whatsome critics have held, in this play there can be no “state of uncertainty aboutthe precise nature of the constitutional position in Rome,” no “political vacuum,”except in a purely academic sense; it is clear that the fundamental political unitsof Rome are the two contesting factions.24 It is from them that the “fierce civilstrife” (3.1.263) that Antony predicts will emerge. Their presence is palpablethroughout the play.

This division is felt in the play’s language as well as in its action. Consistently,those who share a faction are referred to as “friends,” while those who are linkedonly by ties of affection, personal attachment, or what we would traditionallycall friendship are referred to as “lovers.” Two men can be both “lovers” and“friends,” as Cassius and Brutus or Caesar and Antony are. However, the twowords represent distinct relationships. This distinction is made by all of thecharacters in the play except Caesar—a point to which I will later return.

Shakespeare’s treatment of the words “friend” and “lover” corresponds to thedifference between two uses of the term “friend” prevalent in both early modern

England and the classical past. The first is the standard meaning that “friend”still has in the modern world: a person to whom someone feels tied by bonds of love and loyalty. This meaning was not only current in early modern Englandbut also common. As a generation of recent scholarship has shown, affectivefriendship, especially among males, was “an almost ubiquitous presence” in early


22 Hugh Grady, “Moral Agency and Its Problems in Julius Caesar : Political Power, Choice,and History,” in Shakespeare and Moral Agency, ed. Michael D. Bristol (London: Continuum,

2010), 15–28, esp. 21.23 Miola, Shakespeare’s Rome, 102.24 Thomas, Shakespeare’s Roman Worlds, 69; and Alexander Leggatt, Shakespeare’s Political

Drama: The History Plays and the Roman Plays (London: Routledge, 1988), 140.

8/20/2019 styrt2015

10/23

modern England, where it was raised to “doctrinal status” and considered “themost important thing in the world.”25 This emphasis was largely derived from

early modern readings of Cicero’s De Amicitia (Of Friendship), “a key plank inthe intellectual culture of sixteenth-century Europe,” that extolled the impor-tance of close personal friendship.26 In centering friendship on personal affec-tive connections, then, the early modern English saw themselves as imitating theRomans of Cicero’s time, the time depicted in Julius Caesar .

But there was always another side to friendship, even for the early modernEnglish. This is what Tom MacFaul calls the “specialized meaning in a politi-cal context” of the word “friend” in which, “stripped of its affective component,”the term “simply refers to allies and supporters.”27 From this denotation of

“friend” comes the long-standing, though now generally rejected, view thatclassical friendship meant only political alliance: that “the old Roman substi-tute for party is amicitia, friendship” and that “amicitia was a weapon of poli-tics, not a sentiment based on congeniality.”28 While this politically totalizing interpretation of classical friendship is now largely discredited, it retains akernel of truth; even in Cicero, “purely political connections have their place” inthe understanding of “friend.”29 Shakespeare himself employs this meaning inhis earlier Roman play Titus Andronicus, especially in the first scene in whichboth Bassianus and Marcus Andronicus signify political followers through

“friends” as well as “faction.”30


25 Stella Achilleos, “Friendship and Good Counsel: The Discourses of Friendship andParrhesia in Francis Bacon’s The Essayes or Counsels, Civill and Morall,” in Friendship in theMiddle Ages and Early Modern Age: Explorations of a Fundamental Ethical Discourse , ed.Albrecht Classen and Marilyn Sandidge (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2010), 643–74, esp. 648; LaurieShannon, Sovereign Amity: Figures of Friendship in Shakespearean Contexts (Chicago: U of Chicago P, 2002), 5; and Tom MacFaul, Male Friendship in Shakespeare and His Contemporaries(Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2007), 1.

26

Andrew Hadfield, Shakespeare and Republicanism (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2005),170.27 MacFaul, Male Friendship, 116.28 Lily Ross Taylor, Party Politics in the Age of Caesar (Berkeley: U of California P, 1949), 7;

and Ronald Syme, The Roman Revolution (Oxford: Oxford UP, 1939), 12. Shakespeare doesnot, of course, derive his definition of “friendship” from these much later sources, but ratherreacts in a similar manner to certain strains in the classical sources.

29 P. A. Brunt, The Fall of the Roman Republic and Related Essays (Oxford: Clarendon Press,1988), 381. For analysis of why amicitia must have a broader meaning, see Brunt, RomanRepublic, 351–81, 443–502; and David Konstan, Friendship in the Classical World (Cambridge:Cambridge UP, 1997), 122–48.

30

Titus Andronicus, ed. Katharine Eisaman Maus, in The Norton Shakespeare, Based on theOxford Edition, gen. ed. Stephen Greenblatt (New York: W. W. Norton, 1997), 1.1.9, 18, 53,214. Unlike Julius Caesar , however, Titus Andronicus also uses “friend” in its more affectivemeaning.

8/20/2019 styrt2015

11/23

I believe it is precisely because the exclusively political resonance of “friend”is so important to Julius Caesar —and so rare in the period—that the play

makes such liberal use of “love” and “lover.” The root of amicitia is, after all,amor : love. Shakespeare displaces the affective content of “friend” onto “lover” inorder to free “friend” for the other, narrower use and to distinguish between thetwo types of relationship. Ciceronian—and early modern—friendship is notabsent from the play; it is simply called by another name. A brief examinationof the language of association in the play reveals these overlapping but distinctuses of “love” or “lover” and “friend” or “friendship.” The conspirators are allfriends: Cassius tells Caska that Cinna is “a friend” (1.3.133) in order to iden-tify him as a member of their faction, and during their meeting they are all

“gentle friends” (2.1.170). Even their departure is couched in friendship:“friends, disperse yourselves” (l. 221). When they seek to woo Antony to theirside after the assassination, Brutus confidently claims, “I know that we shallhave him well to friend” (3.1.143), and Cassius plainly asks Antony, “Will yoube pricked in number of our friends” (l. 216). Antony appropriates this themeand convinces the conspirators to let him speak at the funeral first by pretend-ing that “Friends am I with you all” (l. 220) and then by asking to speak “asbecomes a friend” (l. 229)—purposely leaving it ambiguous as to whether hewould do so as their friend or as Caesar’s.

Antony’s quick adoption of this terminology may be related to his own fac-tion’s use of it. When he, Octavius, and Lepidus join to attack the conspiratorsafter Caesar’s death, they agree to “let our alliance be combined, / Our bestfriends made” (4.1.43–44). Friendship and alliance are synonymous; by “making friends,” the triumvirs mean rallying their faction to the cause. This manner of speaking extends down to the foot soldiers in their army. When one of histroops presents Antony with Lucilius, thinking him to be Brutus, Antonyassures the man that “This is not Brutus, friend” (5.4.26). This soldier, who hasnever appeared before in the play, does not even have a name. Antony calls him

“friend” not because they are close but because they share a side in the factionalcivil war.

The bond of affection signified by “love” and its attendant terms also appearsfrequently in the play, occurring both between and within factions. Cassiusknows that Caesar “loves Brutus” (1.2.312) and that Antony has an “ingraftedlove” (2.1.183) for Caesar. Brutus, although he would not have Caesar becomeking, insists “yet I love him well” (1.2.82). When trying to warn Caesar aboutthe conspirators, Artemidorus writes to him as “Thy lover ” (2.3.9). In signing hisletter “Thy lover ” rather than “Thy friend,” Artemidorus signals that his actionderives from admiration of Caesar’s “virtue” (l. 12). He will not benefit politi-cally from Caesar’s survival, for he is not of Caesar’s faction. Indeed, this makes


8/20/2019 styrt2015

12/23

Artemidorus’s failed effort to save Caesar’s life all the more tragic. In all of thesecases, it is the affective relationship that Shakespeare emphasizes, not the polit-

ical. The lover bears the beloved in his heart but does not express a politicalposition by admitting love.In the immediate wake of Caesar’s death, soon after Artemidorus’s

attempted intervention, Shakespeare underscores the significance of the dis-tinction between friendship and love in the contrasting speeches that Brutusand Antony deliver at the funeral. Both Brutus and Antony deploy the lan-guages of love and friendship to work the crowd, but Antony co-opts the crowdmore effectively, turning it into a mob that aligns with his faction and goes outto destroy his political opponents. The key differences between the two

speeches occur in their respective first lines. Brutus begins “Romans, country-men and lovers” (3.2.13), while Antony instead opens with “Friends, Romans,countrymen” (l. 74). These lines differ in two ways: the change from “lovers” to“Friends” and the reordering of the terms. These changes produce speeches thatpoint to drastically different ends.

Brutus’s speech is intended to calm the crowd and to explain the conspira-tors’ actions by claiming that they acted in order to preserve and restore Rome.Thus, he identifies his audience as Romans first, then calls them his country-men (identifying himself as Roman too), and finally expresses his desired rela-

tion to them as a “lover.” When Brutus first entered the square, he called thepeople “friends” (l. 2) because he believed that they were on his side. But whenit comes time to address them formally, he no longer speaks to their politicalleanings. Instead, he wishes them to be his “lovers,” that is to think well of himand to wish him well. His introduction could be said to summarize his speech;he wants the people to excuse Caesar’s murder and love him (and the rest of theconspirators) because of their identity as Romans and their belief that he too isa Roman, acting in the best interests of Rome. He has no future plans to mobi-lize the people politically as friends.

Antony’s speech, by contrast, is intended to convince the crowd to act on hisside against Brutus and the conspirators. He cunningly begins by assuming suc-cess, calling the people his “friends” before he has convinced them to be so. At thispoint, the crowd has already taken Brutus’s side; only Brutus’s request that he beallowed to “depart alone” (l. 56) and that they listen to Antony has stopped thecrowd from “bring[ing] him to his house with shouts and clamours” (l. 53). It istherefore a risk for Antony to open by terming the people “friends.” But it is a cal-culated risk. He will sway them to his side in large part by treating them as if theywere already there. Only after he has claimed them as “Friends” does Antony goon to “Romans, countrymen,” situating himself and the crowd relative to Rome

just as Brutus has. This secondary move empowers the irony of his later praise


8/20/2019 styrt2015

13/23

of Brutus and the conspirators. By initially positioning himself like Brutus,Antony occupies ground from which he can later pass judgment on Brutus. As

with Brutus’s speech, Antony’s first lines are a microcosm of the whole. Yet unlikeBrutus, Antony has crammed two distinct messages into a single line.The speeches that follow these first lines make heavy use of the distinction

between friendship and love. Brutus speaks of his “love to Caesar” (l. 19),including the famous line “not that I loved Caesar less, but that I loved Romemore” (ll. 21–22). He promises “tears, for his love [ . . .] and death, for his ambi-tion” (ll. 27–28). But his only reference to friendship emphasizes that he is notCaesar’s friend: “If there be any in this assembly, any dear friend of Caesar’s, tohim I say, that Brutus’ love to Caesar was no less than his” (ll. 17–19). Here

Brutus envisions someone who is connected to Caesar in multiple senses—a“dear friend,” introducing an affective term alongside the political “friend.” Hespeaks to that man of his love for Caesar and imagines him sharing his experi-ence of that love. But only that man, and not Brutus, can call Caesar “friend.”Brutus’s “love” cannot participate in the political sense of friendship, or else hewould not have murdered Caesar.

Martha Nussbaum claims that in this speech Brutus is “suspicious of anyparticularistic attachment” and speaks only of “a rather abstract love of countryand hatred of oppression.”31 But as we have seen, Brutus speaks freely of, and

claims to participate in, both love of Caesar and love of country. Indeed, it iscrucial for him that they are not different feelings, one particular and oneabstract, but the same feeling. They are both love. Brutus’s love of Rome is notan “abstract emotion,” unless all love is. 32 He certainly feels it concretely, sincehe kills Caesar for it. Love, as distinguished from friendship in this play, is aquestion of affect, of Brutus’s own emotional state, and by this measure theforce of Brutus’s love for Rome cannot be denied.

In conveying this love of Rome, Brutus emphasizes an aspect of love thatmakes it fundamentally distinct from friendship: its comparability. Political

friendship is binary; one man is or is not another’s friend. Love, however, exists indegrees. Brutus tells his hypothetical dear friend of Caesar’s that “Brutus’ love toCaesar was no less than his” and justifies himself by explaining “not that I lovedCaesar less, but that I loved Rome more.” In this moment, the ability to compareloves turns into the necessity of ranking them because loves inevitably come intoconflict. By contrast, friendship, representing factional affiliation, not only cannot


31 Martha C. Nussbaum, “‘Romans, Countrymen, and Lovers:’ Political Love and the Rule of

Law in Julius Caesar ,” in Shakespeare and the Law: A Conversation among Disciplines andProfessions, ed. Bradin Cormack, Martha C. Nussbaum, and Richard Strier (Chicago: U of Chicago P, 2013), 256–81, esp. 256, 262.

32 Nussbaum, “‘Romans, Countrymen, and Lovers,’” 257.

8/20/2019 styrt2015

14/23

be compared because it is either present or absent, but also need not be comparedbecause one’s friends are also friends with each other due to the nature of faction.

Brutus’s love for Caesar, while “no less” than that of the dearest of friends, is aninsufficient guard for Caesar’s life because it must compete with Brutus’s love forRome. Friendship would have brought Caesar safety from Brutus; love bringsonly “tears”—and “death.” Antony will echo this thought when he shows thepeople the hole that “the well-beloved Brutus” (l. 174) made in Caesar’s breast.

Like Brutus, Antony underscores his love of Caesar, but unlike Brutus hecombines that love with an emphasis on political friendship that quicklybecomes his primary focus. He says that Caesar “was my friend, faithful and justto me” (l. 86) and calls himself one “That love[s] my friend” (l. 212), in both

cases joining his affective connection to Caesar with his political one. He repeat-edly invokes love, but only love for Caesar, reminding the people that “You alldid love him once” (l. 103) and telling them that “Caesar thus deserved yourloves” (l. 229). He structures his own relation to the people around friendship,not love; the people loved Caesar, but they will be Antony’s “gentle friends,”“Good friends, sweet friends,” and “friends” (ll. 141, 203, 228). The repeatedword stresses the relation between Caesar, Antony, and the crowd that Antonywants them to have in mind: that their love for Caesar should motivate them tobe Antony’s friends. They are brought into his faction, made not “bondsmen to

Antony’s political tyranny”33 but partners in his political future.Antony refers to the plebeians as “friends” four times in his speech. We have

already examined the first line in which he employs “friends” proleptically, con-ditioning his audience to think of themselves in that way. The other three occa-sions are equally meaningful and work together to bring the plebeians to thefever pitch of riot they reach at the end of Antony’s speech. The second useappears in the context of Caesar’s will when Antony refuses to read it and callsthe people “gentle friends.” The third instance occurs after he shows themCaesar’s wounds, and, like his first use of “friends,” the word is yoked with a ref-

erence to the people as “countrymen.” He asks them to “Stay, countrymen” (l.200) before calling them “Good friends, sweet friends.” The fourth examplecombines both of these approaches. He bids the audience to “hear me, country-men” (l. 226) before switching to “friends” and proceeding to read the will.Through this process, Antony connects his friendship with the plebeians to twopowerful emotional triggers: their Roman identities and their love of Caesar.The will itself brings these two triggers together, as Caesar has “deserved yourloves” by making “every Roman citizen” (l. 234) his heir. By carefully connecting


33 Thomas Betteridge, Shakespearean Fantasy and Politics (Hatfield, UK: U of HertfordshireP, 2005), 119.

8/20/2019 styrt2015

15/23

their friendship with him to both their Roman identity and their love of Caesar,Antony is able to ensure that when the plebeians finally erupt into violence they

do so not only as Caesar’s avengers but also as Antony’s partisans.Before we turn to the civil war that follows Antony’s speech, we must con-sider further the nature of the Rome in which that speech is made. Antony’s fac-tion is Caesar’s faction, but Caesar himself threatens the factional order in twodifferent but related ways. Caesar believes that he has transcended factions andbrought peace to the civil wars, that there is no distinction between those whoare his friends and those who love him. This is the Ciceronian ideal, but it is amiscalculation within the far from ideal political world of the play. The con-spirators, on the other hand, fear that his victory has broken the factional order

that had existed previously, and seek by killing him to restore Rome—thoughthey do not all agree on exactly how the assassination will restore Rome, orwhat Rome it will restore.

Caesar is the only character in the play who refers to his lovers as his friends,confusing the two categories and opening himself up to the conspiracy. DeciusBrutus, in luring Caesar to the Senate, speaks of his “dear, dear love” (2.2.102)for Caesar and tells him in his explanation of Calphurnia’s dream that “reasonto my love is liable” (l. 104). He is careful not to speak of friendship. Treboniusdoes invoke friendship in the same scene, but only in an aside admitting that

Caesar’s “best friends shall wish I had been further” (l. 125) from Caesar’s side.Caesar, however, includes them all in his vision of friendship: “Good friends, goin, and taste some wine with me, / And we, like friends, will straightway gotogether” (ll. 126–27).

There is strong dramatic irony in these lines no matter how we take the word“friend.” But it is crucial, I think, that this is the only time when “friend” isapplied to someone clearly of the other party without irony or falsehood on thespeaker’s part.34 In Caesar’s misapplication of the term, I suggest, we see himclaiming to be beyond the merely factional use of the term by his fellows. He

can call all men friends, and make them friends, despite the fact that they werenot his friends but those of Pompey and Cassius. He, and he alone, can remakemen’s allegiances linguistically, because he has transcended faction. This side of Caesar, the side that considers himself as beyond his fellow men, is much com-mented on. For Ernest Schanzer, Caesar is “strenuously engaged in the creationof the legendary figure” that he wishes to be, while Michael Platt reads him as


34 We have already seen Antony’s self-preserving lies to the conspirators. Brutus jokes that

the conspirators have become “Caesar’s friends” by having “abridged / His time of fearing death”(3.1.104–5) after the murder. I take this latter use to be saying (with intentional irony) that,having done Caesar a good turn by shortening “His time of fearing death,” the conspirators mustnaturally be his allies, not his enemies.

8/20/2019 styrt2015

16/23

“a man who knows he will be immortal.”35 I build on these readings by seeing this will to immortality manifesting itself not only in Caesar’s image of himself

as a god but also in his practical relation to the politics of the play. Caesarwrongly believes he has transcended faction as well as humanity.Caesar’s conviction that he is above faction does not mean that he is com-

pletely insensible to political danger. He points Cassius out to Antony for spe-cial attention as a potential threat. But his reasons for distrusting Cassius arepersonal, not factional: Cassius’s “lean and hungry look” (1.2.193) and thethought that “Such men as he be never at heart’s ease / Whiles they behold agreater than themselves” (ll. 207–8). Caesar has no thought that Cassius mightbe part of a larger faction against him; he is merely an individual, “the man I

should avoid” (l. 199). It is Cassius’s personal ambition that Caesar distrusts,not his presence in an opposing faction. Ultimately, he downplays even thatthreat because of his belief in his own transcendence: “I rather tell thee what isto be feared / Than what I fear: for always I am Caesar” (ll. 210–11). This is thesame overconfidence in the strength of his position that we witness in hisrefusal to read Artemidorus’s letter. Believing himself to be beyond the factionalinfighting from which his power emerged, Caesar no longer takes the precau-tions other, lesser men might need.

Caesar is not the only one who thinks that his rise to power has overturned

the factional order. His opponents believe it too, but unlike him they fear it.They see in Caesar the end of the political order they are used to inhabiting, andthe beginning of something new and dreadful. They figure this threat in termsof a change in the political structure of the state: the threat of Caesar as king.For them, the dissolution of faction becomes the dissolution of the Republicitself. Until after Caesar’s death, the only characters who speak of Caesar’spotential kingship are conspirators: Brutus, Cassius, Caska, and Decius Brutus.Cassius and Brutus express dismay at the idea of Caesar as king; Caska reportsthat Antony offered Caesar a crown and worries that the Senate means to

appoint him king; and Decius Brutus tells Caesar that the Senate will crownhim. It is only after Caesar’s death that anyone else mentions kingship. Antonyconfirms a version of Caska’s story: “I thrice presented him a kingly crown, /Which he did thrice refuse” (3.2.97–98). All of the other references in the playto kingship are in the mouths of the conspirators.

Shakespeare creates this effect here by significantly altering his sources. InNorth’s Plutarch, the “couetous desire he had to be called king” is Caesar’s pri-


35 Ernest Schanzer, The Problem Plays of Shakespeare (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul,1963), 29; and Michael Platt, Rome and Romans According to Shakespeare (Salzburg, At.:Institut Für Englische Sprache und Literatur, 1976), 197.

8/20/2019 styrt2015

17/23

mary vice, the reason why the plebeians turn against him.36 Plutarch’s Caesarhad a series of events staged to test the waters around his potential kingship. He

was met by emissaries from the city of Alba who “called him king,” to which heresponded that “he was not called king, but Caesar .”37 He then had Antony offerhim “a Diadeame wreathed about with laurell,” which he twice (not thrice)refused, and then, “hauing made this proofe, and found that the people did notlike of it,” sent the crown to be placed on the statue of Jupiter in the Capitol.38

Shakespeare retains elements of both these episodes. His Caesar calls him-self Caesar incessantly, almost to the point of self-parody: “Caesar constantlyinsists: he is Caesar,” “speaks of himself in the third person habitually,” and“talks like the statue in Don Giovanni.”39 Shakespeare also includes the presen-

tation of the crown, as I have mentioned. But in both cases Shakespeare makesa crucial change: he obscures any direct connection between Caesar himself and kingship. He does not incorporate the incident with the greetings fromAlba, merely taking Caesar’s odd verbal tic from that exchange, and the pres-entation of the crown takes place entirely offstage. Shakespeare makes hisaudience learn of it secondhand and after-the-fact. Only the cheers thataccompany Caesar’s refusal of the crown are audible in the appropriate scene,and they are misinterpreted: Brutus “fear[s] the people / Choose Caesar fortheir king” (1.2.79–80) and “do[es] believe that these applauses are / For some

new honours that are heaped on Caesar” (ll. 132–33).40 Like Brutus, the audi-ence hears of the events from Caska only afterward. By refusing to show thismoment, and instead placing the story of the crown in Caska’s mouth,Shakespeare sets up a strange situation in which our only knowledge of Caesar’s desire for kingship comes from Caska. A natural skepticism about theaccuracy of this account of Caesar’s motivations sets in when Cassius makessure that Brutus will “pluck Caska by the sleeve” (l. 178), and no one else, tolearn what has happened. Where Plutarch presents an explicit account of Caesar’s desire to be king, Shakespeare positions his audience to see that desire

only through the lens of the conspirators’ ill will. In Julius Caesar , Caesar’sdesire for kingship is less a reality and more a rhetorical position.


36 North, 791.37 North, 791.38 North, 792.39 Platt, Rome and Romans, 203; Grady, “Moral Agency,” 22; and Reuben A. Brower, Hero and

Saint: Shakespeare and the Graeco-Roman Heroic Tradition (New York: Oxford UP, 1971), 229.40 There is some confusion in the text about how many shouts there are. The stage directions

for the shouts occur only twice, after line 78 and in the middle of line 131. However, Cassiuslater says, “They shouted thrice” (l. 225), and Antony later confirms that he offered the crown“thrice” (3.2.97). It would seem that there is simply a shout missing from the stage directions,but Shakespeare’s Plutarchan source has only two shouts, as in the stage directions.

8/20/2019 styrt2015

18/23

This does not mean that Shakespeare’s Caesar does not desire to be king. Wehave already seen his own belief that he stands above the factions, and he did

have Antony offer him the crown. But Shakespeare’s alterations to the circum-stances surrounding that desire suggest that Caesar’s ambition to be king is lessof a publicly acknowledged fact in Julius Caesar than it is in Plutarch, whichimplies in turn that concern about Caesar’s ambition separates the conspiratorsfrom the plebeians they claim to represent, rather than uniting them as it does inPlutarch’s narrative. It seems reasonable, then, to investigate what the conspira-tors mean when they worry about Caesar becoming, or desiring to become, king.

Significantly, Brutus interprets kingship and its consequences differentlyfrom his allies. For Cassius and the other conspirators, Caesar’s potential king-

ship must be destroyed so that the factional system can continue. We can seethis in their treatment of Antony after Caesar’s murder. Cassius suggests killing Antony because

We shall find of himA shrewd contriver. And you know his meansIf he improve them may well stretch so farAs to annoy us all.

(2.1.156–59)

Cassius here imagines exactly what does in fact occur after Caesar’s death:Antony taking over Caesar’s faction and destroying the conspirators. This fearresults from both Cassius’s understanding of the factional politics in which heoperates and his awareness that while destroying Caesar may eliminate Caesar’spotential kingship, it will not eliminate his faction.

Brutus, however, views kingship as a different matter from factionalismentirely. Like Cassius, he sees kingship as separating the king from all menbelow him—having climbed the ladder of ambition, “He then unto the ladderturns his back, / Looks in the clouds, scorning the base degrees / By which he

did ascend” (ll. 25–27). But unlike Cassius, he does not see this in terms of thefactional system but in general terms relative to Rome as a whole. He thinks of himself as acting for “the general good” (1.2.85) and “for the general” (2.1.12).He takes the ambiguous paper that Cassius has thrown into his window, whichsays “‘Shall Rome, et cetera’” (l. 47), and reads it as “Shall Rome stand under oneman’s awe” (l. 52). He then apostrophizes Rome in his answer: “O Rome, I makethee promise” (l. 56). Brutus imagines himself delivering a single unified Romefrom the threat of Caesar, not a factionally divided one. This difference in imag-ination feeds Brutus’s refusal to kill Antony. It is only because he sees Caesar as

a single man standing above the whole of Rome that he can miss or ignore theidea that Antony will lead Caesar’s faction after his death. For Antony to be “buta limb of Caesar,” who “can do no more than Caesar’s arm / When Caesar’s head


8/20/2019 styrt2015

19/23

is off ” (ll. 181–82), Brutus must imagine him not as a member of a faction butas a toady to a king. From a factional perspective, Brutus makes the same mis-

take Sulla’s advisors made: there are many Caesareans in that Antony.Brutus’s failure to engage properly with the factional structure of Rome isthe Achilles’ heel of the conspiracy. We have seen how this belief leads him toveto the murder of Antony, thus allowing a dangerous enemy to survive. Wehave also seen how his speech to the people after the assassination fails toengage effectively with factional difference and is outshone by Antony’s morecompelling use of the rhetoric of friendship. It is worth noting too that Antonyhas the opportunity to make that speech only because of Brutus’s rejection of factional difference. After the conspirators have attempted to subvert Antony to

their side, Cassius begs Brutus, “Do not consent / That Antony speak in hisfuneral” (3.1.232–33). Brutus overrules him, because he believes that giving Caesar “all true rites and lawful ceremonies” (l. 241) will “advantage more thando us wrong” (l. 242). This belief can be held only by someone, like Brutus, whoimagines a Rome unified against Caesar’s spirit. Cassius and Antony bothunderstand that the factional division of the city is too explosive for this courseof action to be safe for the conspirators, but all Cassius can do is grumble that“I know not what may fall. I like it not” (l. 243). Brutus’s inability to see that thefactional divisions are still present and important blinds him to the danger

Antony’s speech poses, and exposes the conspirators to destruction.That destruction is hastened by the swift action of the other faction. Here

Shakespeare again modifies his sources to heighten the effect. In Plutarch’s ver-sion of the story, there was a short period after the death of Caesar in whichOctavius and Antony were enemies, even fighting a battle against each other.41

This altercation is eliminated from Shakespeare’s version of the story. InOctavius’s first scene, separated from the funeral only by the murder of Cinnathe poet, we observe the triumvirate already proscribing those in Rome they havecondemned to die. In Plutarch, this took three days and substantial negotiation;

in Shakespeare it does not last ten lines (4.1.1–6).42 That does not mean that themoment is not important to Shakespeare’s version of the story. Rather, the swift-ness of the proscriptions joins with the elimination of the dissension betweenAntony and Octavius to depict a Caesarean faction that has not merely survivedthe loss of its leader but emerged fully functional and ready to act. Caesar dies,is mourned, and is replaced in the space of a single, fast-paced act.

Cassius predicted this outcome earlier in the play. One effect of reading Julius Caesar in the light of faction is that we come to understand the degree to


41 North, 977–78, 1067.42 North, 978.

8/20/2019 styrt2015

20/23

which Cassius truly understands Rome. He knows how the factional politicswill play out; it is Brutus, disregarding Cassius’s warnings, who causes the assas-

sination to fall short of its political goals. In this reading, Cassius is a tragicfigure. “Cassius needs Brutus more than Brutus needs Cassius,”43 but even as hecannot live without him, he cannot live with him. Cassius’s correct politicalinstincts must give way, because of his need, to Brutus’s incorrect ones.

This need is personal as well as political. Cassius and Brutus are the primeexamples in the play of characters who are both friends and lovers, both politi-cally aligned and personally close. But their relationship demonstrates the diffi-culty of keeping both of those bonds tight at once. As early as their first scenetogether, Cassius reveals that he is willing to deceive Brutus for political ends,

writing “in several hands” in order to pretend his messages come “from severalcitizens.” He plays upon Brutus’s knowledge that they are both friends andlovers—that he is, as he tells Brutus, “your friend, that loves you” (1.2.36)—towork upon him, in order that Brutus’s “honourable mettle may be wrought /From that it is disposed” (ll. 308–9). In this moment, we see one of the twobonds between them come before the other: lovers do not lie to lovers, butfriends may do so for political ends.

After the assassination, the tension between the bonds of friendship and lovedevelops further. Cassius and Brutus have a falling out, one which seems caused

partially by the expectations of their alliance and partially by the expectationsof their love. Indeed, the terms for the two mix together. Lucilius tells Brutusthat Cassius received him “With courtesy and with respect enough” (4.2.15),that is, with the proper political forms of friendship, but nothing more: “notwith such familiar instances / Nor with such free and friendly conference / Ashe hath used of old” (ll. 16–18). He mingles the expectations of affection andfaction, attaching an affective meaning to “friendly” by associating it with “famil-iar” and “free.” Brutus’s response combines the two discourses even more explic-itly; he calls Cassius “A hot friend, cooling” (l. 19) and warns Lucilius of what

happens “When love begins to sicken and decay” (l. 20). Brutus shows the dif-ficulty of keeping two bonds with the same man separate. Cassius was notmerely a “friend,” but a “hot friend,” a man tied to Brutus by both the bond of friendship and the heat of love. The two relationships are still distinct; a hotfriend cooled is still a friend, if not a lover, and Cassius still used Luciliusrespectfully, if not familiarly. But changes in one relationship imply the possi-bility of changes in the other.

This possibility becomes explicit in the following scene when Cassius andBrutus confront each other. Their quarrel stems from different expectations of


43 Platt, Rome and Romans, 187.

8/20/2019 styrt2015

21/23

how their love and their political alliance should interact. Cassius hopesBrutus’s love will soften his attitude toward Cassius’s officers; he remonstrates

with Brutus about the case of Lucius Pella: “Wherein my letters, praying on hisside / Because I knew the man, was slighted off ” (4.3.4–5). But Brutus consid-ers that he has already expressed his love by restraining himself from attacking Cassius directly for the fault: “The name of Cassius honours this corruption, /And chastisement doth therefore hide his head” (ll. 15–16). Cassius thinks thatlove functions in the interaction between the lovers and will allow him to con-vince Brutus by his letters; Brutus believes that it functions internally withinhimself, as a restraint against his chastisement of Cassius. Because they havedifferent expectations, they are each disappointed. Brutus is surprised that

Cassius would try to write to change his mind, and Cassius feels that Brutus’spersonal restraint is insufficient. Each works from the premise that love andpolitical alliance interact, but they cannot agree on how.

The quarrel that follows stems directly from this disagreement about theboundaries between the political and the personal. According to Brutus,Cassius refused to give Brutus money to pay his soldiers; Brutus treats this notas a political decision but as a personal one: “was that done like Cassius? /Should I have answered Caius Cassius so?” (ll. 77–78). Cassius denies thecharge, and in the process breaks down the last barrier between “friend” and

“lover.” He says, “A friend should bear his friend’s infirmities, / But Brutusmakes mine greater than they are” (ll. 85–86). He then accuses him directly andpersonally: “You love me not” (l. 88). Cassius here subsumes the political mean-ing of “friend” into the more general, Ciceronian sense. He believes that “Afriendly eye could never see such faults” (l. 89) and that he himself is “Hated byone he loves [. . .] / [. . .] all his faults observed” (ll. 95–96). In this moment,Cassius offers to let Brutus kill him: “Strike as thou didst at Caesar: for I know,/ When thou didst hate him worst, thou lov’dst him better / Than ever thoulov’dst Cassius” (ll. 104–6). Here we see the comparability of love raise its head

again; because Brutus and Cassius are speaking of love and not merely friend-ship, the issue of degrees of love inevitably arises. Just as inevitably, Caesar isagain the subject. But in making this comparison, Cassius sidesteps the obviouspoint that Caesar was not Brutus’s friend and that it was this lack of friendshipthat brought Brutus to kill him.

Brutus, of course, refuses to kill Cassius and steps back from the brink of thequarrel. Notably, the resolution of the spat comes with the reassertion of theseparation of the two terms, possibly because of the reminder Cassius has justprovided that both halves of the relationship are necessary. Cassius and Brutusswear their “love” (l. 118), but they are not the only parties present to the end of the argument. Their lieutenants and a Poet break in on them, and the Poet


8/20/2019 styrt2015

22/23

admonishes “you generals” (l. 128) to both “Love and be friends” (l. 129). Brutusand Cassius do not directly acknowledge this dual demand, but this interrup-

tion takes them from discussing their love alone to directing troop movements:“Lucilius and Titinius, bid the commanders / Prepare to lodge their companiestonight” (ll. 137–38). They then proceed to discuss the approach of Octaviusand Antony and their response to it, and in the process use the term “friend”once more in a completely political sense: “we have tried the utmost of ourfriends, / Our legions are brimful, our cause is ripe. / The enemy increasethevery day” (ll. 212–14). In the aftermath of their confrontation, they are back todistinguishing between love and politics.

But the earlier breakdown of that distinction is important. It shows the diffi-

culty of holding separate two distinct bonds with a single person. When they areboth “ill-tempered” (ll. 114, 115) neither Brutus nor Cassius can refrain from col-lapsing the distinction between their friendship and their love. Yet for their part-nership to function properly, the two relationships must remain distinct; theycannot afford to take each other’s political decisions personally. By demonstrat-ing what happens when Brutus and Cassius blur the line between these twotypes of bonds, Shakespeare shows us how the two ought to be kept separate if one wants to function in this political world. Antony and the two Caesars, afterall, have no such problems. The personal and political—the lover and the

friend—may overlap, but they cannot be the same, even when they apply to thesame person. It may be attractive to unite them, but it is also dangerous.

Shakespeare gives over the majority of Acts 4 and 5 to the interplay betweenBrutus and Cassius in order to emphasize the shadow that the early Republic hascast upon the conspirators and, by extension, upon Rome. It is clear in the worldof the play that it is dangerous to make politics too personal—to confuse one’sfriends and one’s lovers. But we have already seen that Brutus still yearns for theearlier world, and I suggest that these scenes confirm that Cassius does too.Neither one of them believes that the world they now live in is that world. But

each of them is sufficiently attracted to the idea of personal, factionless politicsthat they seek to live out something of that fantasy in their own relationship,even as their attempt results in the disharmony that we witness between them.While both Brutus and Cassius participate in this fantasy, it is Brutus’s moreexplicit adherence to that sort of belief that allows Antony to call Brutus “thenoblest Roman of them all” (5.5.68) after his death. Antony sees that “All theconspirators save only he / Did that they did in envy of great Caesar” (ll.69–70)—all of the other conspirators wished to bring down the man who haddestroyed their faction. Brutus instead killed Caesar “in a general honest thought/ And common good to all” (ll. 71–72). Antony, a supreme political actor who ishighly sensitive to faction, admires the opposite political instincts in Brutus. But


8/20/2019 styrt2015

23/23

it is a wholly personal admiration, an admiration for “His life” (l. 73), not for hisaction. In this, Antony (and Octavius) seem to mirror somewhat Caesar’s reac-

tion to the dead Pompey, when he took Pompey’s head “and beholding it, wept.”44

Indeed, the end of Julius Caesar has much in common with the aftermath of Caesar’s defeat of Pompey. Like Caesar, Antony and Octavius take on the atten-dants of their enemy. We have seen that Caesar “curteously vsed all Pompeysfriends . . . and wanne them all to be at his commaundement,” and particularlypreferred “Cassius and Brutus.”45 In a similar manner, Antony, on finding Lucilius mistaken for Brutus, tells his soldiers to “Keep this man safe; / Givehim all kindness. I had rather have / Such men my friends than enemies”(5.4.27–29). Likewise, Messala (himself formerly one of Brutus’s men) com-

mends Strato to Octavius: “take him to follow thee, / That did the latest serviceto my master” (5.5.66–67). As Caesar did, the victors adopt their enemy’s fol-lowers and attempt to make friends of them. I believe we see Antony not onlytaking Lucilius into his service (as will become apparent in their next entrancetogether) but also preparing for a future in which there is no Brutus faction andLucilius can truly be Antony’s “friend.” Something similar is happening withMessala, Strato, and Octavius as well.

These changes of allegiance also occur in Plutarch’s Lives, but Shakespearecompresses the action. Plutarch placed the change of allegiance well after the

battle. Yet in Shakespeare, Messala and Lucilius enter with their new mastersbefore they have even found Brutus’s body, and Strato is preferred to Octaviusimmediately (l. 51.1 sd).46 This altered timeline integrates the change of alle-giance with the events of the play in a way that Plutarch’s does not. Plutarch’sAntony and Octavius take time to judge their new companions; Shakespeare’s,like Caesar, rush headlong into forgiveness and acceptance. By mirroring Caesar’smagnanimity, Antony and Octavius might seem to be attempting to usher in anew period of calm and peace. But with the factional prehistory of the play inmind, it is difficult not to see in this an image of the future conflict that will arise.

Shakespeare’s audience could not help but know that Octavius would becomethe emperor Augustus and that his war with Antony would once again tear theRoman world along factional lines. If we are inclined to draw lessons from this,as many early modern English writers were, it would be hard not to concludethat even the most seemingly harmless factional alignments lead to disastrousconsequences. It is on this alarming certainty that Julius Caesar ends, a note thatis only audible when we listen with an ear to the play’s factional political world.


44 North, 786.45 North, 786, 790.46 North, 1079–80.

Documents

styrt2015