The Sunday News
Charles Dube
WE have considered quite a number of characters in this play mainly Julius Caesar, Brutus and Cassius. There are some who cannot just be ignored. In this vein we have the likes of, “the envious Casca”, Octavius Caesar, Portia and others.
Casca shares with Cassius the jealousy of greatness. Though he first appears as Caesar’s henchman, he resents Caesar’s supremacy and is only awaiting an opportunity to throw off that mask which is covering his true self. In his angry bitterness with himself, he assumes a bluntness of speech. All this is evident when he speaks to Brutus and Cassius when the Lupercalia festivities are over.
Brutus and Cassius ask him what happened at the festival and Casca through his fiery fashion explains that the shouting was due to Caesar being offered the crown three times by Mark Antony, but each time Caesar refused it, realising that the crowd did not wish him to accept it. Casca shows his jealousy by telling Brutus and Cassius that it was not even a crown. Caesar had an epileptic fit caused by having to refuse such an honour.
Casca says when Caesar came to himself he apologised to the multitude for anything he might have said while the fit was on him. Casca is angry that the people forgave Caesar and he described how he could not even open his mouth because he did not want to inhale foul air from the crowd. From the account he gives of the coronation fiasco we see that, even though Casca is envious, he has this redeeming quality of humour. It is characteristic that he is panic-stricken by the terrors of the tempestuous night, which he lives through in superstitious fancies. Even at the assassination he does not dare to face his victim. He stabs Caesar from the back.
Casca has no mind of his own and can be taken advantage of easily by people like Cassius, who he holds in high esteem due to his superior intellect. Cassius chooses him to strike the first blow, knowing that he would obey. Yet on the same incident, it is clear that Cassius is a coward and cannot strike Caesar from the front: “Damned Casca, like a cur, behind struck Caesar on the neck. This deficiency in intellect presents Casca in sharp contrast to Cicero, who is abler to deduce things, is not scared or overawed by the horrid sights that have been seen on the night preceding Caesar’s death.
Casca is depicted as an uneducated, rude, lacking in kindness and refinement such that Brutus remarks about him: “What a blunt fellow is this grown to be! He was quick mettle when he went to school.” In simpler terms Brutus is saying, what a blunt fellow Casca has grown up to be! During his school days had a sharp intelligence. Cassius, however, is of the view that Casca is sharp even now in carrying out a noble enterprise, though he shows dullness in his character. Cassius is confident that he can easily win Casca over to join the conspiracy.
Octavius Caesar is Caesar’s nephew. He only speaks 30 lines in the play. We meet him first with Antony and Lepidus as he watches them prick the names of their friends and kinsmen. They are marking these friends and kinsmen to die with all Caesar’s enemies. When Antony left alone with him, proposes to “double-cross” Lepidus, his answer is that Lepidus is a good soldier. Antony had suggested that they use Lepidus for their own ends thereafter discard him.
Antony says of Lepidus: “His is a slight unmeritable man fit to be sent on small errands . . .” There is a suggestion that if things turn differently, Antony must remember that he (Octavius) never approved of such treatment. When they approach the conspirators Octavius becomes impatient with the childish name-calling which ensues and speaks out to some purpose (Come, come, the cause; if arguing makes us sweat, the proof of it will turn to redder drops”)
Portia — a softened reflection of Brutus. Portia infected by her Brutus and her father’s stoicism likes to think of herself as a strong and steadfast woman and aware that she is nothing of the sort, excuses her weakness by imputing it to her womanhood, which is not her own fault, and counts her virtues as something she has herself achieved. But Portia can endure pain not suspense. She inflicted a wound on herself to prove to Brutus that she could keep a secret. She failed to endure suspense by giving away to Lucius what her husband and other conspirators where up to at the Senate House.
Cicero — the conspirators want him to join the conspiracy because he is old. He is grey-haired and because of that the conspirators believe that when people see that they would think their cause was driven by mature people therefore just. Even then Brutus has reservations about him. Brutus’s speech about Cicero implies his irritable vanity and self-consciousness when he declares: “He will never follow anything that other men begin”.
Cicero is unmoved by Casca’s alarm over the horrors of the earthquake, wind, and lightning. To him, the moral of the whole tempest is: “This disturbed sky is not to walk in.” He is unlike Casca and Cassius who believe that the adverse weather conditions signify that one man has become too powerful and that man is Caesar. Cassius seizes the opportunity to introduce the subject of conspiracy to whoever mentions the tempest.
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