paper-5

Assignment Paper: - 5

Topic                     : - The role of Brutus

Student’s name    : - Makwana jayshri D

Roll no                 :- 26

URL                      :-makwanajayshri261011.blogspot.com

Semester               :- 1

Batch                    :- 2010-11

                                                   Submitted to,

                                                  Mr. Jay Mehta.

                                                 Department of English

                                                 Bhavnagar University.

Introduction:-

                    William Shakespeare was an English poet, and playwright, widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language. And the world’s pre –eminent dramatist. He is often called England’s national poet, and the  ‘Bard of avon’. Shakespeare produced most of his known work between 1559 and 1613.   

His early plays were mainly Comedies and Histories and he then wrote mainly Tragedies until about 1608 including,                                                       Hamlet,                                                                                          King Lear,                                                                                       Othello,                                                                                  Macbeth, etc……….

v Julius Caesar:-

Shakespeare has written, besides ‘Julius Caesar’, two other Roman plays named ‘Antony and Cleopatra’ and ‘Coriolanus’. All the three Roman plays of Shakespeare are tragedies, and the materials are drawn from Plutarch’s Lives and in regard to the treatment of materials are drawn from Plutrach, in every case the same principles of compression of facts and dramatic amplification of situations have been followed as in the case of “Julius Caesar”. But “Julius Caesar” is the three Roman plays in regard to construction, structure and concentration of dramatic effect.

Ø Four major character in the play, Julius Caesar

   Julius Caesar

   Marcus Brutus

  Mark Antony

  Cassius  

v Character sketch of Marcus Brutus

Brutus is the most complex of the character in this play. He is preeminently a man of principle. Plato is his favourite teacher; and he has studiously framed his life and tuned his thought to the grand and pure conceptions won from that all but divine source. Personal considerations have no weight- indeed , no place- in the motives of a man of  this type. Ideals dominate over him. His spirit is the spirit of loyalty to duty, which finds in him its exponent and martyr. The irony of situation is that a Platonic theorist has got to ride the whirlwind of war! An idealist, a moralist, Brutus does not know, cannot know that a man cannot make omelettes without breaking eggs.

“Ignorance of human nature together with the disinterestedness of his patriotism is the cause of his failure.”

He denies to Antony powers of mischief because his life is loose. He judges men and things by a severe moral code, regardless of the fact that in this work-a-day world all people are not animated by high principles. He leans to the murder of Caesar as a political duty but forgets, or is made to forget by the more traditional obligations to state, class and house, that his noting but a murderer. Brutus appears throughout just as humanly noble as Cassius is politically superior. A worshipper of dreams, ideals and memories- Brutus is a man of noble soul and moral nature drawn by his political ideal into a position that overstrains his strength. Brutus fails but is not necessarily less worthy of admiration than those who succeed. Octavius is a successful. Yet we should rather fall with Brutus than succeed with Antony and Octavius.

v The following are the distinctive features of his characters:-

A. Patriotism:- 

                                          Brutus was a staunch lover of the liberty of Rome. He loved Caesar, his personal friend, dearly enough, but he loved Rome even more

                     “Not that I loved Caesar less but

      I loved Rome more”        (III.ii.22) 

Expresses correctly the warmth and intensity of his love of Rome. He could not imagine that there was in Rome any one who was

                          “so vile that will not love his country” (III.ii.34)

We have an enemy’s testimony to the patriotism of Brutus in the following words of Antony spoken over his dead body at the end of the play

      “All the conspirators, save only he,

        Did that they did in envy of great Caesar;

        He only, in a general honest thought.

        And common good to all, made one of them.” (V.v.69)

B. Idealism:-

                                    Brutus was an airy dreamer, and abstract philosopher, cherishing ideas and sentiments, that had no foundation in the world of reality. He fancied that his fellow – conspirators were actuated by the disinterested patriotism that had prompted him to join the conspiracy. He had no idea that some of them might have been actuated by base, personal envy. He would 

                      “Come by Caesar’s spirit and no dismember Caesar”

Kill his spirit and spare his bodies, if that were possible. He would not take Cassius’s suggestion that the members of conspiracy should be bound down by an oath for he believed that their word of honour was enough to ensure their cause. The Idealism of Brutus led him into several practical blunders which brought about the ruin of his cause.

1.   He did not agree that Antony should be slain with Caesar.

2.   He agreed that Antony should speak at Caesar’s funeral.

3.   Against Cassius’s better judgement, he decided to stake their all on the chance of a single combat.

            C. Intellectuality:-

                                    Brutus had an intensely intellectual temperament. He believed in reason and was never swayed by passion or emotion. Before joing the conspiracy he had reasoned the pros and cons of the situation coolly within his mind and then concluded:    “it must be by his death”    Between, the acting of the deed and the first thought of it in his mind, the interval was a period of intense conflict violently tossing and swaying his mind. Brutus felt that there were good reasons for the killing of Caesar and that is why after the murder he boldly faced the people and assured them that public reasons should be rendered of Caesar’s death. Brutus felt sure that these reasons were only to convince them of the justness of their act. His cold intellectuality found expression of the speech which he delivered after the murder of Caesar. He spoke in a cold, unemotional manner and the result was that his speech made no impression upon were carried away afterwards by the emotional speech of Antony.

            D. Staunch Republicanism:-

                     In regard to his political opinion, Brutus was a staunch Republican. Like his great ancestor who

    “Did from the streets of Rome the Tarquin drive,

         When he was called a king.”  

Brutus too could not endure the name of the king in Rome. He joined the conspiracy against Caesar not as a result of the investigation of Cassius but out of his own inner convinction that the liberty of Rome demanded the sacrifice of the life of Caesar. So deep-rooted was his hatred of tyranny that he did not hesitate to murder Caesar, although Caesar was his personal friend, in order to prevent the possibility of Caesar’s tyranny. As yet Caesar had done nothing tyrannical but his ways threatened to develop into tyranny, he had grown extremely threatened to develop into tyranny. As yet, Caesar had done noting tyrannical but his ways threatened to develop into tyranny, he had grown extremely arrogant and oppressive in his manner, he was craving for the crown, and Brutus thought it was safe to kill the serpent in the shell.

          E. Stoicism:-  

              Brutus was a stoic philosopher entirely indifferent to pain and pleasure and capable of enduring the hardest trials of life with the utmost calmness and patience. But the circumstances into which he finds himself thrown in the play disturb even his stoical mind now and then; for example:-

 While meditating within himself if he should join the conspiracy against his dear friend Caesar or not he loses something of his customary calmness, and cannot conceal his anxiety from his wife.

 We see him lose his usual serenity of mind in his quarrel with Cassius when we find him peevish, petulant and subject to fits of ill temper. He confesses he is                                            “sick of many griefs”      upon which Cassius remarks

         “Of your philosophy you make no use,

          If you give place to accidental evil.”      (IV.iii.145) 

But the fact was that Brutus had just received the news of the death of his dear wife Portia, and it was that which had disturbed the balance of his mind. When Cassius came to know it, he was filled with wonder at the thought that Brutus had not shown even greater violence of temper and that he had escaped being killed at the hands of Brutus in the quarrel. Brutus’s stoical philosophy had taught him to hate the idea of flying away from the trials of life by suicide, but after his defeat at the battle of Philippi and the loss of his dear comrade, Cassius, the thought of being carried to Rome, a captive in chains was too much for him to endure, and forsaking the principles of his philosophy he committed suicide. This occasional departures of Brutus from the rules of his philosophy, under the stress of exceptional circumstances do not take away from but only serve to humanize his character all the more.

            F. Domestic affection and tenderness:- 

                            Brutus was a loving husband. His attachment to his noble wife, Portia was of an exceptional kind. It was love mingled with respect. At first he kept back the secret about the conspiracy from her, but when she stood on her rights as a wife to share in all that belonged to her husband, his troubles as well as his pleasures, he confided the secret to her and exclaimed:

                        “O ye gods,

          Render me worthy of this noble wife”   (II.i.303-304)

He was deeply moved by the news of the death of his wife, and although ordinarily he was absolutely calm in temper, he became extremely petulant and ill-tempered in his quarrel with his friend and colleague, Cassius, immediately after he had received the news of the death of his wife. The shock that the news had given him shook off his lifelong philosophy of life, - the philosophy of stoical endurance.

                  He was exceptionally kind and tender to his domentic attendants. He apologized to his boy-servants Lucius, for keeping him awake to attend him till late at night. On the eve of the battle he does not forget that his attendants, Varro and Claudius, require sleep at night and insists that they small lie down in his tent on cushion. He shows almost a womanly tenderness to his sleeping boy, Lucius.

    Dr. Dowden aptly remarks, 

                            “Brutus, who at the call of duty and honour could plunge his dagger into Caesar, cannot wake a sleeping boy. Brutus gently disengages the instrument from the hand of the sleeping boy.”

            G. Love of study and music:-    

         Like a cultured person of taste Brutus had a love of study and of music, as we find illustrated in his asking his boy, Lucius, on the night before the battle of Philippi, to give him a book to read and to play some music.

           H. Absolute purity of motive and ultimate moral triumph:-    

       To Brutus the killing of Caesar was not an act of crime, it was not a murder but an act of holy sacrifice on the altar of the literley of Rome. That it was a genuine convinction of his mind is proved by the bold and unconcerned manner in which he faced the people of Rome after the act was done. While in the midst of his fellow- conspirators, he stood equally unconcerned, being perfectly assured of the purity of his motives. He will not allow the conspirators to be bound by oath.

       “Sweeper priests and cowards and men cautelous.”  

  He hates the idea of their having to appear in marks.

    “o, conspiracy

Sham’st thou to show thy dangerous brow by night,

When evils are most free? O, then, by day-

Where wilt thou find a cavern dark enough

To mask thy monstrous visage?”

Although in the end, he is defeated in the worldly sense, the moral triumph is his.

             As Dr. Dowden aptly remarks, the life of Brutus, as the lives of such men must be, was a good life, in spite of its disastrous fortunes. The idealist was predestined to failure in the positive world. But for him the true failure would have been disloyalty to his ideals. Of such failure, he suffered none. Octavius and Mark Antony remained victors at Philippi. Yet the purest wreath of the victory rests on the forehead of the defeated conspirator. Antony rightly sums up his character when he says of him:-

          “His life was gentle, and the elements

          So mix’ed in him, that nature might stand up

          And say to all the world, ‘this was a man’.”

  How is it that Brutus persuades himself to murder Caesar?

Brutus is a man of noble soul and moral nature. Morality is the guiding principle of his character. Two sets of moral forces are at strife in his heart.

  There are the more personal sentiments of love and reverence for Caesar and of detestation for the crime, he contemplates.

  On the other side are the more traditional and ethical obligations to state, class, house.

It is impossible for a Brutus to accept the merest show of royal power. The memory of the stock is about him. Brutus is the hero of great traditions and their responsibilities, which he fulfils to the smallest jot and title- The heir also of inevitable preoccupations.

        In addition to Brutus’s individual morality and inherited ethics there is superimposed upon him the conscious philosophic theory with which his actions must be squared. He must determine his conduct by impersonal unprejudiced reason. In his strange soliloquy  (Act II, sc. I)  he discusses his difficulty quite as an abstract problem of right and wrong. He sees that if the persona rule of Caesar is to be averted, half measures will not do.

                “It must be by his death”

that Caesar’s supremacy is to be prevented. Is his death permissible? Brutus himself acquits Caesar of all blame. There is no sophistication of the facts in the interest of his own party. But there is a sophistication of the inference. Caesar is to be killed not for what he has  done but for what he may do. If Caesar is made receive arbitrary he must abuse it. A man of ambition affects humility as a means to attain power, and, when his end is gained, he must exercise that power arbitrarily Caesar is aiming at power and his humility in refusing the crown offered to him is but affected to gain his end. Caesar is like a serpent’s egg, which, when, hatched, would, as his kind, grow mischievous and therefore should be killed in the shell, Brutus thus justifies the murder of Caesar not on the ground of what he is in his present state but on the ground of what he may become in future when he attains power. Brutus who acts on more suppositions from May to Must is but a short step. Caesar is to be killed for what he must do. Montaigne tells us that the best of men are determined in their feeing of right by the preconceptions of race, class, education and the like. Brutus has imbred detestation of the royal power that practically he assumes that it must beyond question be mischievous in its moral effects. This is, however, no reasoned conviction but a dogma of traditional passion.

       Thus, we find that Brutus though a man of noble soul and moral nature, persuaded himself to murder Caesar.

Conclusion:-

                 “This was the noblest Roman of them all”

Brutus, the hero of Julius Caesar, is a noble selfless patriot. Brutus was a philosopher rather than a man of action, a good theorist, but a bad conspirators. We shall find that he fails because his unselfishness, his genuine patriotism, his conscientiousness are combined with a want of judgement, an ignorance of men, a want of insight in affairs which utterly unfits him for leadership. He should have realized at the outset that if the murder of Caesar was right, then the other methods of violence and injustcer which that murder necessarily entailed would be justifiable. Instead of this, he tries to act with a strict and scrupulous observance of equity and fairness. The murder of Caesar is a moral shock to the world and it is impossible to conduct an immoral conspiracy on moral principles. The enterprise is doomed to failure because of the very nobility and ideal of Brutus.