The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 18.0082 Thursday, 1 February 2007
[1] From: Steve Sohmer <
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Date: Monday, 29 Jan 2007 13:36:32 EST
Subj: Re: SHK 18.0064 Understanding Antony
[2] From: Edmund Taft <
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Date: Monday, 29 Jan 2007 13:58:57 -0500
Subj: Understanding Antony
[3] From: John W. Kennedy <
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Date: Monday, 29 Jan 2007 14:23:31 -0500
Subj: Re: SHK 18.0064 Understanding Antony
[4] From: Judy Lewis <
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Date: Tuesday, 30 Jan 2007 08:39:44 +1300
Subj: Re: SHK 18.0064 Understanding Antony
[5] From: Arthur Lindley <
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Date: Monday, 29 Jan 2007 21:08:52 +0000
Subj: Re: SHK 18.0064 Understanding Antony
[6] From: Peter Groves <
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Date: Tuesday, 30 Jan 2007 08:44:42 +1100
Subj: RE: SHK 18.0064 Understanding Antony
[7] From: Donald Bloom <
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Date: Tuesday, 30 Jan 2007 13:45:22 -0600
Subj: RE: SHK 18.0064 Understanding Antony
[1]-----------------------------------------------------------------
From: Steve Sohmer <
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Date: Monday, 29 Jan 2007 13:36:32 EST
Subject: 18.0064 Understanding Antony
Comment: Re: SHK 18.0064 Understanding Antony
Dear Louis,
The truth about Antony is rather more complex than an actor can play, I
think . . . unless the audience comprises students of Roman history (or
very careful listeners).
Antony's forum speech is a passel of lies. Antony was not with Caesar's
army when he overcame the Nervii. And Antony wasn't present during
Caesar's murder and, therefore, could hardly know which holes each of
the conspirators made in Caesar's mantle (and body). An actor playing
Antony should think deeply about these lies; they provide a key to his
character, as does his chilling demeanor during the death-list scene
with Octavius and Lepidus.
Hope this helps.
Steve
By the way, Antony was a priest-and I like to think that when he fled to
his home he changed his senatorial toga for his priestly robes before
meeting the conspirators and delivering his address over Caesar's
corpse. This, I think, is why Brutus greets him with "reverence" among
other felicitations.
[2]-------------------------------------------------------------
From: Edmund Taft <
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Date: Monday, 29 Jan 2007 13:58:57 -0500
Subject: Understanding Antony
Louis Swilley's questions about Antony and Caesar underscore the fact
that _JC_ really is a more complicated play than is generally thought. I
think that Antony's praise for Caesar stems in part form the fact that
Caesar acted like a father to the younger man. Most of this occurs
offstage or before the play begins, but it can be inferred from the
text. The more interesting question is Antony's transformation. It's a
matter of interpretation, but I see Shakespeare as indicating that raw
political/Machiavellian talent is mostly inborn. Some of us have it
(Antony), and some of usdon't. (Brutus) This view is buttressed by the
character of Hal in _1H4_, whose political savvy seems to spring, fully
developed, from nowhere at the start of the play!
Ed Taft
[3]-------------------------------------------------------------
From: John W. Kennedy <
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Date: Monday, 29 Jan 2007 14:23:31 -0500
Subject: 18.0064 Understanding Antony
Comment: Re: SHK 18.0064 Understanding Antony
Louis Swilley <
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>Does Antony see Caesar as Shakespeare has shown him to us,
>a pompous, power-greedy person?
That seems to me to be starting out with a dubious assumption -- at
least, an assumption that, if taken wholeheartedly by the actor playing
Caesar, would be likely to wreck the play. It certainly is not in
keeping with everything that Shakespeare has to say about Caesar outside
of this one text, and, while it is true that "Julius Caesar" shows
Caesar as succumbing to hubris at the peak of his career, he has more to
say for himself than the "northern star" speech and the like:
Cowards dye many times before their deaths,
The valiant neuer taste of death but once:
Of all the Wonders that I yet haue heard,
It seemes to me most strange that men should feare,
Seeing that death, a necessary end
Will come, when it will come.
. . . almost a rough draft of Hamlet's approach to the subject.
(Incidentally, after just Googling, I suspect the above speech may be
the most commonly and variously misquoted in all Shakespeare.)
In "Julius Caesar", as in all his Roman plays, Shakespeare tends to
accept Roman values, and, by Roman standards, Caesar is surely a great
man; if the measures that he took led to the collapse of the Republic in
all but legal fiction, we must remember that his assassination was, as
history worked out, the actual proximate cause, and he, himself, had
behaved better in his dictatorship than either Marius or Sulla had.
To return, then, to the question of Antony, I think he believes
throughout the play that Caesar was a giant, brought down by curs. It is
true that he speaks well of Brutus, but only when Brutus is safely dead,
and he explicitly distinguishes Brutus, too, from the rest of the
tyrannycides.
[4]-------------------------------------------------------------
From: Judy Lewis <
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Date: Tuesday, 30 Jan 2007 08:39:44 +1300
Subject: 18.0064 Understanding Antony
Comment: Re: SHK 18.0064 Understanding Antony
Louis Swilley writes: Does Antony see Caesar as Shakespeare has shown
him to us, a pompous, power-greedy person? If he does, how can we
account for Antony's praising soliloquy over the corpse? (Does Antony
admire Caesar and lament his death as a Mafioso might admire a murdered,
murderous godfather?) If he doesn't, should we assume that the
practical, hard-nosed Antony ("This many then shall die, etc.") has
awakened to the *real* Caesar sometime between his lament for the dead
Caesar he has mistakenly respected and his later, heartless capitalizing
on the power vacuum Caesar's death has created? If we say that Antony
has admired Caesar but at some time sees him what he was, at what point
in the Antony's speeches could his "awakening" be made clear? (The
problem is particularly critical for the director of the play and the
actor who is to play Antony.)
This assumes that Antony's eulogy is sincere. I have always read it as
a cynical piece of oratory, deliberately structured to rouse the
citizens against Brutus et al.
Antony is grabbing his chance for power.
Judy Lewis
[5]-------------------------------------------------------------
From: Arthur Lindley <
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Date: Monday, 29 Jan 2007 21:08:52 +0000
Subject: 18.0064 Understanding Antony
Comment: Re: SHK 18.0064 Understanding Antony
Why not assume that Antony is making a political speech (of the sort
usually instigated in our own time by Karl Rove) and that his personal
feelings about Caesar are beside the point?
Arthur Lindley
[6]-------------------------------------------------------------
From: Peter Groves <
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Date: Tuesday, 30 Jan 2007 08:44:42 +1100
Subject: 18.0064 Understanding Antony
Comment: RE: SHK 18.0064 Understanding Antony
Louis Swilley asks "Does Antony see Caesar as Shakespeare has shown him
to us, a pompous, power-greedy person? If he does, how can we account
for Antony's praising soliloquy over the corpse?"
Antony's eulogy is, of course, a textbook instance of political rhetoric
(full of the necessary tropes and figures): language, that is, designed
not to reveal the speaker's feelings and beliefs but to produce effects
by working upon the audience -- the first effect being the 'tearing' of
Cinna the poet. Antony, in other words, is simulating such feelings and
beliefs, and what the actor has to do is to act acting, which is simpler
than it sounds.
Peter Groves
[7]-------------------------------------------------------------
From: Donald Bloom <
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Date: Tuesday, 30 Jan 2007 13:45:22 -0600
Subject: 18.0064 Understanding Antony
Comment: RE: SHK 18.0064 Understanding Antony
Louis Swilley asks,
>"Does Antony see Caesar as Shakespeare has shown him to us, a pompous,
>power-greedy person? If he does, how can we account for Antony's
>praising soliloquy over the corpse?"
I think we tend to misapply contemporary ideals to Shakespeare and his
perception of historical figures, including Julius Caesar. In
particular, I think we forget the assumed and acknowledged greatness of
Caesar against which Shakespeare shows the "pompous and power-greedy"
private man.
As to the second epithet, I can only say, "Of course he was
power-greedy. How could he not be and still be a successful politician?"
The first is subtler matter. My own feeling is that the pomposity is
there to show his humanity. He is not merely a legend, one of the Nine
Worthies, but a real man with real human failings, one of which is that
of taking himself too seriously. I am not claiming that Shakespeare
admired Caesar, merely that he sought to make him human. (We might
contrast him with Tamburlaine in that regard.)
For the view of Caesar that Shakespeare is trying to expand on (or
correct) we might try Brutus, ex-friend and co-murderer:
Remember March, the Ides of March reme[m]ber:
Did not great Iulius bleede for Iustice sake?
What Villaine touch'd his body, that did stab,
And not for Iustice? What? Shall one of Vs,
That strucke the Formost man of all this World,
But for supporting Robbers: shall we now,
Contaminate our fingers, with base Bribes?
That Caesar is great is stated clearly; that he is flawed-ditto.
Anthony thus does not have to change his view. For him, the greatness
far outweighs the flaws, for the murderers it did not.
The question of who is right remains quite complex-as it also does in
most of the Chronicle plays. A large part of the dramatic intensity lies
in that question, which is lost if Caesar is presented as some
banana-republic dictator (as I have seen it done).
Cheers,
don
P.S. Is this a case of "presentism?" I perceive a tendency of 20th
century readers to associate Caesar with Hitler, Stalin and their whole
murderous ilk up through Milosevic and Saddam Hussein. Reading back into
Caesar their hatred of such figures, they assume that Shakespeare judged
him with the same hatred, and that his admirable characters must do so
likewise. Or is it historicism? Or both? Or neither?
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