Summary of the play continues: Julius Caesar — By William Shakespeare

21 Dec, 2014 - 00:12 0 Views

The Sunday News

IN the last article we talked about the crowds of commoners not at work but all out in the streets and according to the Cobbler they made a holiday to see Caesar and rejoice in his triumph. By doing that they drew the ire of the tribunes. From their utterances, the tribunes show that they represent elements in Rome that fear Caesar’s popularity. More will be discussed when we meet the conspirators.

One of the tribunes, Marullus, has no kind words for the commoners. When he hears that the crowd is out to celebrate Caesar’s triumph, he rudely asks: “Wherefore rejoice? What conquest brings he home? What tributaries follow him to Rome to grace in captive bonds his chariot wheels?” Then he goes wild and insolent.

He says: “You blocks, you stones, you worse than senseless things! O you hard hearts, you cruel men of Rome. Knew you not Pompey? Many a time and oft have you climb’d up to walls and battlements, to towers and windows, yea, to chimney-tops, your infants in your arms, and there have sat the lively day, with patient expectation, to see great Pompey pass the streets of Rome . . .”

He goes on to encourage the commoners to run to their houses, fall on their knees, pray to the gods to intermit the plague that needs must light on this ingratitude. Flavius adds on: “Go, go, good countrymen, and for this fault assemble all the poor men of your sort: Draw them to Tiber banks; weep your tears into the channel, till the lowest stream do kiss the most exalted shores of them all.”

The commoners or the citizens crest fallen vanish from the streets. Flavius says they vanish tongue-tied in their guilt. Meanwhile, the two tribunes decide to remove decorations from Caesar’s statue. Last week I had commented on the behaviour of the crowd. The mob or the commoners are revealed as fickle minded, thoughtless, and easily manipulated by emotional appeal. From what Marullus says, the mob quickly forgets Pompey who has been their favourite hero.

The mob quickly switches allegiance and is ready to cheer Caesar home. When Marullus scolds them, they depart emotionally shaken. This fickleness of the crowd will be seen later on just before Caesar’s funeral. Brutus, one of the conspirators, wins them over to their side. Brutus makes the crowd see that Caesar deserved to die and they are so emotionally charged and appear threatening to anyone who will speak ill of the conspirators.

But soon after Brutus has left having instructed them to listen to Mark Antony’s address they are soon moved to violence against the conspirators. They rise and mutiny and run after the conspirators, burning everything in their way. To prove that the mob is thoughtless they murder Cinna the poet yet the intended target was Cinna the conspirator. Another point which needs to be made clear here is that Marullus doubts whether it is legal to disrobe those images on the Feast of the Lupercalia.

However, Flavius reassures him pointing out that if such steps are not taken Caesar will soon have them all living “in servile fearfulness.” Students need to understand Lupercal. Lupercal was the festival devoted to the god of fertility. People ran naked through the streets striking people with goat thongs on their way. Anyone struck was believed to be saved from barrenness. Caesar’s wife, Calpurnia, is barren, and he hopes she is cured by this divine touch, and he has an heir.

Caesar made sure that his wife would be touched by instructing Antony to make that he touched her while he ran. This also proves that Julius Caesar is superstitious. We cannot leave out characterisation aspects as this is vital in understanding a text. There is harmony between characters and events, therefore things happen as they do because the characters are what they are,

How may characters should be analysed? Mankind or human beings reveal themselves by what they say, by their manner of saying it, by their silence or failure to say anything under given circumstances. We can also learn about people by their actions, and even by their failure to act on occasions. We also know them, from what others say about them in statements and they are revealed to us by the device of contrasting them with others.

The last device will come in handy when we discuss the characters of Cassius and Brutus mainly. Getting back to the business of the day, before the tribunes have hardly set off on their task of disrobing Caesar’s images, there is a general shout and the flourishing of trumpets which heralds the approach of Caesar who enters in procession followed by a large crowd among them a soothsayer, who calls upon Caesar to beware the Ides of March. But Caesar dismisses him as a dreamer.

We pick it up from here next week. For views link up with [email protected] <mailto:[email protected]> or sms only to 0772113207.

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