THE OTHER CHARACTERS

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I

There is little in Pescetti’s presentation of the figure of Cassius suggestive of the splendidly drawn portrait in “Julius Caesar.” Pescetti found it a difficult matter to differentiate between Brutus and Cassius; much that the latter says or does throughout might with equal propriety have been assigned to his fellow conspirator. Both seem to be of one mind in most matters; only in the two important scenes already noted[120] does Cassius seem possessed of any distinct individuality. In one his caution is emphasized, in the other his rashness in the face of danger.

II

Pescetti was little more fortunate in his characterization of Antony. He is hardly more than a puppet who acts the part of an echo to Caesar in the dialogue before mentioned, indulges in a soliloquy, and then vanishes from the scene. Obviously Pescetti intended him to play the part of the tried friend and counsellor, but there is nothing resembling individuality in his speeches. He talks like a book, and has about at much true vitality as an automaton. Possibly the soliloquy was introduced to contrast his ideas on dominion with those of Calpurnia on the same subject, and to lend force to the dictum contained in the concluding passage of the play:

Che questo mondo È una perpetua guerra,
Ove l’un l’altro atterra,
E si tosto, ch’un manca
Rinasce un’ altro, e ’l mondo si rinfranca.”—Ces., p. 149.

This is not a bad dramatic device, but the progress of the plot is so obstructed by the mass of needless declamation, that long before the end, all thought of Antony as a possible successor to Caesar has escaped the reader. In Antony’s recital of his secret longings, he reveals traits which justify us in classifying his utterances as those appropriate to a crafty opportunist. Pescetti could describe his characters acceptably enough, either in their own words, or in those of others, but he could not exhibit them successfully in action; hence, this soliloquy, while ineffective in his own drama, could readily furnish hints which a better dramatic artist could use to advantage. To this Antony, nothing is dearer than dominion; for him there is no bliss comparable to the “sweet fruition of an earthly crown.”

. . . . . . . Ma sperar tanto
Non oso. Pur chi sÀ quel, ch’ordinato
Sia nel celeste regno? A me medesmo
Di non mancar deliberato sono,
Se mi presenta occasione il cielo,
E mi mostra la via di conseguire
Quel, che puÒ farmi un’ altro Giove in terra,
A pormi in man dell’ universo il freno.
In tanto io cercherÒ per ogni via,
D’accattar appo il popolo favore,
E di farmi benevoli i soldati,
AcciÒ, mancando Cesare per morte
O naturale, Ò violenta, i possa
Col mezzo lor por sÙ quel grado il piede,
Ov’ hÀ condutto lui benigna Stella.”—P. 72.

Antony disappears after this scene, and no mention is made of him again till near the end of the tragedy, where he is described as having fled to his house after the murder. Unfortunately, Pescetti fails to give Antony an opportunity to realize his ambition, but he provides material for the delineation of a counter player who would have delighted the Elizabethan dramatists. Pescetti certainly was not amiss in his estimate of the character, but it remained for a greater dramatist to exhibit him in action.

Antony does not appear in the fifth act of “Cesare,” but there is between several of his statements in Shakespeare, and those contained in Pescetti, a marked similarity in style and sentiment. Some of these have already been indicated. Among others, Antony over Caesar’s body, exclaims,

“Pardon me, Julius! Here was’t thou bay’d, brave hart;
Here didst thou fall, and here thy hunters stand,
Sign’d in they spoil and crimson’d in thy lethe.
. . . . .
How like a deer strucken by many princes
Dost thou here lie!”—III., 1, 205.

It must be remembered that Antony’s “credit stands on slippery grounds,” and it is hardly to be expected that he would use, at this critical moment, the simile employed by the Messenger in Pescetti as he laments the murder:

Non fu mai fatto si crudele strazio
Di mansueto agnello
Da un gregge di rabbiosi
E famelici lupi,
Com’ han del Signor mio quest’ empi fatto.
Parean cani bramosi
D’insanguinar l’acuto
Dente, e l’avide labbia
Nella giÀ morta fiera.”—P. 120.

There seems in Antony’s lament, an echo of Mars’ threats in the Prologue to “Cesare.”

Ant.
“ . . . . .
A curse shall light upon the limbs of men;
Domestic fury and fierce civil strife
Shall cumber all the parts of Italy;
Blood and destruction shall be so in use,
And dreadful objects so familiar,
That mothers shall but smile when they behold
Their infants quartered with the hands of war:
All pity choked with custom of fell deeds:
And Caesar’s spirit ranging for revenge,
With Ate by his side come hot from hell,
Shall in these confines with a monarch’s voice
Cry ‘Havoc’, and let slip the dogs of war;
That this foul deed shall smell above the earth
With carrion men, groaning for burial.” (III., 1, 263).
Marte.
Strage orribil vedrai; dell’ empio sangue
Correranno le strade, e quai torrenti
Porteran l’arme, e i corpi morti al mare.
Fin di quÌ n’ udirai lo scoppio, e ’l grido.
”—P. 6.

Jove commands Mars:

Mescola sdegni, odi, discordie, versa
Sopra il popol Roman furor, disio
Di sangue, di vendetta, ond’ alla fine
Tutti gli empi dal mondo il ferro tolga.”—P. 11.

The idea of civil strife is found all through the last act of Pescetti, and is probably due to the influence of Appian, who details the horrors following the proscription.

III

Historically and critically, the Brutus-Portia scenes in “Cesare” are of prime importance: historically, because here for the first time in any play on this subject does Portia figure among the actors; critically, because the Italian dramatist avails himself of the same episode chosen from the same source and treated broadly along the same lines later followed by Shakespeare.

Pescetti, of all the dramatists of Caesar’s fortunes, seems to have been the first to realize the dramatic value of the Brutus-Portia scenes.[121] Like Shakespeare, he found his material in Plutarch, and while he does not adhere as faithfully to the Plutarchian sequence, the correspondence in the motifs he employs is so close as to render the presentation of parallels peculiar alone to the two dramatists, a matter of extreme difficulty, and in most instances, of doubtful value. With perhaps two exceptions, to be noted later, there are no hints in Shakespeare’s treatment which he could not have derived from Plutarch, a fact, however, which in no way invalidates the hypothesis herein advanced that Pescetti’s inclusion of Portia influenced Shakespeare to introduce her in his drama. “Julius Caesar” without her would have lost nothing in technical completeness, whatever it might have forfeited in human interest. Voltaire, with Shakespeare’s example before him, excluded Portia from his drama on the ground that the introduction of a love element would detract from the high seriousness he considered proper to his tragic hero. Technically, his drama is sufficiently satisfactory, but like in Muretus and in GrÉvin, her exclusion injures the fullness of his characterization of Brutus, and robs his tragedy of a character which, skilfully handled, would greatly have enhanced its popular appeal.

Shakespeare’s Portia is a character with which we would grudgingly part. Beautiful in herself, her presence serves to bring the softer side of Brutus into relief, while after her husband’s departure on his fateful mission, her mental anguish serves admirably to increase in the mind of the spectator the presentiment of impending disaster.

Pescetti, like Shakespeare, makes Portia occupy a relatively small part in the action, perhaps for the same reason that prompted the greater dramatist. We are irresistibly attracted to the latter’s Portia, and her persistence in the action would inevitably have led to a divided interest. Possibly Pescetti was dramatist enough to realize this and acted accordingly. His Portia, like Shakespeare’s, serves further to broaden our conception of her husband’s character, while in herself, she is portrayed with power sufficient to revive, at her appearance, the flagging interest of the modern reader, even though she seems at times a Brutus in female attire, and shows a fondness for dialectic more appropriate to the schoolman than to the Roman matron.

From the evidence presented in Pescetti’s handling of this theme little is adducible in support of the hypothesis advanced above; its probability must rest upon the cumulative evidence favoring Shakespeare’s knowledge of “Cesare” presented in the course of this work.

Yet, while these scenes offer little of value for our purpose, their historical significance, and the fact that, as far as can be determined, this is the first time that the matter has been dwelt upon in the literature of the subject,[122] must excuse the expository character of much that follows.

In Pescetti, Portia appears three times: once in the first act in the scene immediately following that between Brutus and Cassius; in the second act with Brutus alone; and lastly, in the same act in a scene wherein both overhear Calpurnia’s lament to her Nurse. In the first scene Brutus has little to say. The dialogue is carried on mainly with Cassius. On her first appearance Portia indulges in a soliloquy:

Non senza gran cagion stamane uscito
Si per tempo di casa È il mio consorte:
Gran cose ei tratta certo, e se non erra
Il mio pensier, egli apparecchia il giusto
Premio al Tiranno ingiusto, se pur giusto
PuÒ darsi premio ad huom si ingiusto, et empio.
Ah perchÈ il sesso mio non mi permette
Vestir gonne maschili, e ne’ consigli
Mescolarmi de gli huomini, e le cose
Trattar della Republica, e di duro
Acciar gravando il corpo in prÒ di quella
L’asta, e la spada oprar?”—P. 28.

She longs to dye her sword in the tyrant’s blood. This is a Portia, more like the Roman matrons who could calmly watch the bloody shows in the amphitheatre than resembling the idealized portrait of Shakespeare. Yet, considering her terrible suicide,[123] perhaps Pescetti had the truer conception of her real character. That, in spite of her martial bearing, he appreciated her more womanly traits, is evident from the tenor of Cassius’ address, even though it does reflect the attitude of the Renaissance courtier:

Molto per tempo esci di casa, Ò Porzia,
Porzia, di pudicizia raro esempio,
E della matronal prudenza chiaro,
E purissimo specchio, viva imago
Di quel saggio; appo cui fu stolto quale
PiÙ saggio ebbe la Grecia; alla cui morte
MorÌ la libertade, e nello stesso
Sepolcro a canto a lui volle esser posta,
Qual facenda a quest’ora, oltra l’usato
Tuo, quÀ ti mena? Senza gran cagione
Non È ciÒ fermamente, che non suoli
Tu, se non per gravissime, e importanti
Cagioni uscir in pubblico; ma come
A grave, e saggia femmina conviensi
Dentro a muri domestici in onesti
Studi passar il tempo, riputando
Degna d’eterna lode quella donna,
La cui bellezza a pochi, ma la fama
È nota a molti, che non fa del corpo
Nelle pubbliche piazze, e ne’ teatri
A cupid’ occhi, ma alle caste menti
Fa di sua pudicizia altiera mostra.”—Pp. 29–30.

To Cassius’ compliments, and his inquiry as to her early rising, she replies that the love she bears her country demands that she be made a party to their plans. It is in vain that they withhold secrets from a loving woman. Cassius assures her that no one doubts her worth and constancy, but the matters they contemplate are such that it would be unwise to risk their discovery. Yet, since she longs to know, he will tell her.

Noi trattiam di trarre
Di sotto al giogo Roma, e di riporla
Nello stato, ond’ altrui spietata, e ingorda
Voglia di dominar la trasse a forza.”—Ces., p. 31.

He asks her to aid the cause with her prayers. This is not much to her liking; she would rather draw a sword against the tyrant. Cassius assures her that the prayers of woman have often had greater force than that of arms. Her reply is one of Pescetti’s unconscious gems of humor:

Io dunque, poich’ À me stringer non lice
Contra il Tiranno il ferro, con la lingua
Gli farÒ cruda, e dispietata guerra.”—P. 32.

Towards the end of the scene Brutus indulges in an exultant outburst. He seems already to hear the paeans of joy resounding throughout Rome at the news of the Dictator’s death. The scene concludes as Portia invokes Heaven’s blessing on the conspirators’ enterprise. She announces her readiness to die, if failure attend their efforts, for the love she bears her husband is such that she cannot live without him.

We get a nearer approach to Shakespeare’s treatment in Portia’s dialogue with Brutus. This is opened by Brutus, who perceiving that Portia has wounded herself, and thinking that she had sustained the injury in the discharge of some household duty, reproves her for turning her hands to the lowly tools of the housewife. She replies:

HÒ voluto far prova, s’in me tanto
Regni animo, et ardir, che darmi possa
Di mia man morte, occasion venendo,
Ch’il morir bello, Ò necessario sia.”—P. 49.

Brutus admires her courage, and inquires the reason for her fears. She assures him that often fortune opposes merit, and she fears for his safety. He loftily replies that fortune can no more prevail against the virtue of his enterprise than the raging sea against the immovable rocks. At this, Portia, in spite of her martial bearing heretofore, begins to exhibit the same vacillation as Shakespeare’s Portia. Fears for her husband now dominate; the Amazon is lost in the wife. She replies:

Tuttavia, benche lei[124] non vinca mai,
Impedisce sovente i suoi disegni;
Et io, s’avvien (che no ’l consenta il cielo)
Che ciÒ, che tenti, abbia infelice effetto,
E dove pensi dar, riceva morte,
HÒ stabilito di tenerti dietro.
”—Pp. 49–50.
Bru.
Lodo, Porzia, et ammiro la grandezza,
E generositÀ della tua mente
Sprezzatrice del fato, e della morte,
E sopra modo pregiomi, et altiero
VÒ di consorte tal.

Yet he does not approve of her design, and conjures her, by the love she bears him, to refrain from all thoughts of self-destruction. Portia replies that she cannot live if he die;

Porzia di Bruto moglie, e di Catone
Figlia? soffrir il volto del Tiranno,
Onde sia giunto a crudel morte il padre
Et il marito, potrÀ Porzia? O Bruto
Quanto piÙ ti stimava accorto, e saggio?
Dunque in tant’ anni, che vissuto hai meco
Non hai l’animo mio compreso appieno?
Dell’ amor, ch’io ti porto, ancor potuto
Non ho farti ben chiaro? E tu mi stimi
Si poco amante, ch’io potessi senza
TÈ star un’ ora in vita? Bru. Io sÒ, che m’ami:
Ma sÒ dall’ altra parte, che non meno
Saggia, che amante se’.”—P. 50.

The scene is now spun out to include a series of mutual protestations of love. It concludes as Calpurnia is seen coming out of the temple, whereupon Brutus and Portia descend from amatory dialogue to vulgar eavesdropping.

Plutarch relates that when Portia showed Brutus the wound in her thigh, “he was amazed to hear what she said to him, and lifting up his hands to heaven, he besought the gods to give him the grace he might bring his enterprise in so good pass, that he might be found a husband worthy of so noble a wife as Portia: so then he did comfort her the best he could.”[125] Pescetti does not rest Brutus’ appreciation of his wife on this basis; he rejoices in the possession of a wife so spirited. Shakespeare idealizes the situation in Brutus’ exclamation:

“O ye gods!
Render me worthy of this noble wife.”

Near the end of the third scene in which Portia figures, and wherein she and her husband overhear Calpurnia’s determination to prevent her husband from attending the session of the Senate, Brutus advises her to go home while he goes to join the conspirators. The scene concludes as she speeds him with her blessing.

Throughout these scenes Pescetti utilizes many of the motifs derived from Plutarch, which Shakespeare afterwards included in his treatment. But the emphasis upon several of them has been shifted; the similarity in parts between the two authors is due mainly to this common source. There are but two points of importance wherein distinctly individual resemblance is noticeable. Both in Pescetti and in Shakespeare, as has previously been pointed out, Portia enters the scene under practically the same attendant circumstances. In both dramas she appears immediately after the completion of the details of the assassination. Brutus says to Cassius:

Ma giamo ad informar del tutto gli altri,
AcciÒ gli spirti destino, e le forze,
Et apparecchin l’arme all’ alta impresa.
Cas.
Aspetta, ch’esce fuor di casa Porzia.”—P. 28.

Hereupon Portia enters.

Shakespeare has:

Cas.
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.
Bru.
And, 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.
Exeunt. Brutus remains. Act II., 1.

Immediately after the few lines to Lucius, Portia enters. While it may be simply a coincidence, it is worth remarking that in both dramas Portia arises in the early morning to seek her husband. There is no warrant for this in Plutarch. That Pescetti should have the conspirators perfecting their plans in the early morning may be regarded as a necessity of his dramatic form. Plutarch does not suggest this touch. Possibly Shakespeare considered it a gain in dramatic effectiveness to have the conspiracy confirmed during the tempestuous night. Perhaps Pescetti’s treatment influenced him. In both dramas the interrogator comments upon Portia’s early rising.

Cassius
Molto per tempo esci di casa, Ò Porzia.—Ces., p. 29.
Brutus
Portia, what mean you? Wherefore rise you now?
It is not for your health thus to commit
Your weak condition to the raw, cold morning.

Portia in soliloquy says:

Non senza gran cagion stamane uscito
Si per tempo di casa È il mio consorte.—Ces., p. 28.

In Shakespeare we read:

Portia
... You’ve ungently, Brutus,
Stole from my bed.

Plutarch says: “So when the day was come, Brutus went out of his house with a dagger by his side under his long gown, that nobody saw nor knew but his wife only.” (Marcus Brutus, p. 116.) Thus, according to the biographer, the conspiracy had been perfected days before and Portia by this time evidently knew of it.

Neither is there any warrant in the histories for Portia’s prayer for Brutus:

“O Brutus,
The heavens speed thee in thine enterprise!”—Act II., Sc. IV.

Similarly, in Pescetti, Portia’s last words are a blessing on Brutus:

VÀ, che ti scorga, e ti difenda Giove.”—P. 58.

Even closer is her prayer at the conclusion of Brutus’ rapturous outburst in her scene with Cassius:

Ite, Ò forti, ite Ò saggi, ite Ò de gli alti
Legnaggi, onde scendete, degni; il Cielo
Secondi i desir vostri.”—P. 33.

These coincidences may be simply accidental, but taken in connection with many other points of contact between the two dramas, they assume greater significance, and lend strength to the hypothesis herein advanced: that Shakespeare was influenced by Pescetti’s treatment to include the Brutus-Portia scenes in his own drama.

IV

Pescetti’s other principal feminine character is the conventional lay figure of the drama of his time: a lifeless automaton who seems to exist solely for the purpose of indulging in intolerably wordy lamentations.[126] Yet Pescetti has put in the mouth of this lachrymose puppet a few lines which form the closest parallel to be found between the two plays.

D. Brutus thus replies to Caesar’s depreciation of his flattery:

D. B.
Non È lingua mortal per pronta, e scaltra
Che sia, non È di dir si ricca vena,
NÈ si divino ingegno, che, non dico
Degnamente lodar, ma narrar possa
Le sopr’umane eroiche tue prove.
E se vivesse il grande Omero, altrove
Certo non volgeria l’alto suo stile,
Che a cantar i tuoi fatti eccelsi, e magni,
E tema vil reputaria lo sdegno
D’Achille, e i lunghi error del saggio Ulisse.

Hereupon Calpurnia exclaims:

Ahi pur, ch’anzi a gli Euripidi non porga
Materia, onde risuonino i teatri
Ne’secoli avvenir le sue sventure.

This outburst is entirely lost on Caesar, who says:

A parlar d’altro omai volgiamo i nostri
Ragionamenti;” . . . .—Ces., pp. 105–106.

Calpurnia’s prophetic doubt is placed in such a setting that its dramatic effect is lost. This, it seems, was too tempting a morsel for Shakespeare’s keen sense of dramatic fitness to overlook, and at the moment when the conspirators have reached the climax of their success, we find him assigning Calpurnia’s speech to the exultant Cassius, to stir the audience with its theatrical effect and to bewilder generations of future critics.

Cas.
“How many ages hence
Shall this our lofty scene be acted over,
In states unborn and accents yet unknown!”
Bru.
“How many times shall Caesar bleed in sport,
That now on Pompey’s basis lies along
No worthier than the dust.”[127] (III, 1, 112.)

I regard this as the most remarkable parallel between the work of Pescetti and that of Shakespeare. It is entirely too close in word and content to be fortuitous. The dramatic effect of Cassius’ outburst is undeniable; yet its dramatic truth is questionable. All the more so since the speech of Cassius immediately following,

“. . . . . . . So oft as that shall be,
So often shall the knot of us be call’d
The men that gave their country liberty,”

has always impressed me as an anticlimax. This, both in word and in thought, coming so soon after his noble speech, produces the same unpleasant effect as,

“O world, thou wast the forest to this hart,
And this, indeed, O world, the heart of thee,”

which, intruded into Antony’s lament, has caused many critics to regard these lines as interpolations. Nor does Cassius’ first exalted outburst seem in keeping with his character. Of all the conspirators he is the last whom we would expect to find indulging in raptures at such a critical moment. Far more in keeping are his next words,

“Ay, every man away:
Brutus shall lead, and we will grace his heels
With the most boldest and best hearts of Rome.”

This indeed is Cassius; every man on the alert, and every energy bent to insure the successful conclusion of their enterprise.

But, whatever its fitness to the character, Shakespeare, from the point of view of effect, certainly could have found no better place for its introduction. Doubtless, in his day the gentry clenched their pipes, while the gaping groundlings clutched their greasy jerkins, both animated by the same feeling that oversways the modern audience at these ringing prophetic phrases. And then the simple stage direction, “Enter a servant:” the beginning of the end! For sheer dramatic effect few passages in Shakespeare surpass it.

V

The other persons in “Cesare” may be dismissed in a few words. The Nurse and the Priest are simply the conventional lay figures of the drama of the time, while Decimus Brutus seems to have been included because he happened to be in the histories. Neither he nor Lenate possesses any individuality, and considered solely in themselves, contribute nothing of value to this investigation.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                           

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