His are among the most fustian plays ever written, full of emotional sound and fury, blood and horror, and empty, high-sounding speeches.
The general public loved them so that they survived to be copied, alas, by playwrights in early modern times. Shakespeare himself wrote tragedies after the style of Seneca, notably Titus Andronicus (see page I-391).
A French poet, Marc Antoine Muret, wrote a tragedy entitled Julius Caesar in Latin in 1553. He followed the style of Seneca and made Caesar into a wooden poseur. This was popular too, and one theory is that when Shakespeare wrote his tragedy, he had to keep Caesar in this form because the audience expected it and would not accept any other version.
We might imagine that Shakespeare did so against his will, for he follows Caesar's pompous claim to fearlessness with an immediate confession of weakness on the part of the great man. Caesar goes on to say to Mark Antony:
Come on my right hand, for this ear is deaf,
And tell me truly what thou think'st of him.
- Act I, scene ii, lines 213-14
... a crown offered him...
Caesar and his followers leave again, but one remains behind, held back by Brutus. The man stopped is Casca, who is pictured by Shakespeare as a rough, coarse individual, the kind who has no "book learning" and is proud of it. He is Publius Servilius Casca in full, and his only mark in history is his participation in the conspiracy which Cassius is now working up.
Casca is asked as to the events at the festival that caused Caesar to look so put out. Casca says:
Why, there was a crown offered him; and being offered him,
he put it by with the back of his hand, thus;
and then the people fell a-shouting.
- Act I, scene ii, lines 220-22
Apparently Mark Antony took the occasion of the festival, when public spirits were high, and enthusiasm for Dictator Julius was loud, to offer him a linen headband wreathed in laurel. The laurel wreath was well within the Roman tradition. It was a symbol of victory, borrowed from the Greek custom of crowning the victors of the Olympian games in laurel wreaths.
The linen headband was, however, a "diadem," the symbol of monarchy among the kings of the East. For Caesar to put on this particular laurel wreath was tantamount to claiming the position of king. (In later times, gold replaced linen and it was a gold circlet, or crown, that became the symbol of royalty. Shakespeare transmutes the diadem into a crown so that the audience might understand.)
Caesar's stratagem seems obvious. The diadem is made to look as harmless and as Roman as possible by means of the laurel decoration. Ostentatiously, he refuses it, hoping that the crowd, in its enthusiasm, will demand that he accept it. Caesar would then graciously accede to their clamor and become king by the will of the people.
Unfortunately, the crowd did not react this way. Instead of demanding he accept the diadem, they cheered him for refusing it. Twice more Mark Antony tried, and twice more the crowd cheered the refusal. No wonder Caesar had looked angry. His stratagem had failed and he had come close to making a fool of himself.
To Cassius and others of his mind, the intention behind the stratagem is obvious. Caesar wanted to be king and if the trick today had failed, another tomorrow might not-and this must be stopped at all costs.
... foamed at mouth. ..
Caesar's anger and disappointment are described most graphically by Casca. He relates that after the third refusal, Caesar:
... fell down in the market place, and foamed at mouth,
and was speechless.
- Act I, scene ii, lines 252-53
In short, he had had an epileptic fit. The tale that Caesar was an epileptic may not be a reliable one, however. The Roman historian Gaius Suetonius Tranquillus wrote a scandal-filled set of biographies of the early Roman emperors a century and a half after Caesar's time, and he said that Caesar had twice had "the falling sickness" in the time of battle. It is always doubtful how far one can believe Suetonius, however.
Shakespeare has Casca make another notable comment, meant literally, which has become a very byword in the language. Asked if Cicero said anything, he answered that Cicero had spoken in Greek:
... those that understood him smiled at one another
and shook their heads; but for mine own part, it was