[In the following lecture, Jump compares Julius Caesar with Shakespeare's English history plays, arguing that in none of these plays does Shakespeare question the "Tudor myth," which justified Queen Elizabeth I's right to the throne.]

I first read Julius Caesar at the age of fourteen or fifteen. Even then I was surprised to find that the character who gave his name to the play was killed early in Act III, that is, before the play was half over. Was Shakespeare playing fair when he called it The Tragedy of Julius Caesar?

Granted, he gives us a memorable portrait of an ailing dictator. Caesar has been an able and courageous soldier and is evidently an able and courageous political leader. But he has serious weaknesses. We do not depend upon the malice of Cassius for our knowledge of these; nor am I thinking merely of physical disabilities.

Caesar is arrogant. He prides himself on being quite distinct from 'ordinary men' (III.i.37); he asserts that unlike them he is 'constant as the northern star' (III.i.60); and he claims uniqueness in that he 'unassailable holds on his rank,/Unshaked of motion' (III.i.69-70). At the same time, he is vain and susceptible to flattery. Shakespeare exposes this weakness in an especially damaging way. When the conspirators foregather, there is some doubt whether Caesar will attend the meeting at which they mean to assassinate him. Decius undertakes to get him there by flattery, which Caesar says he hates. Then, in the following scene, Decius flatters him and duly gets him there. Clearly, Caesar's arrogance, vanity, and self-deception both isolate him and render him vulnerable.

A character as admirable and as flawed as this could make a tragic hero of the neo-Aristotelian kind. But does he have a chance of becoming anything of the sort when he lives through little more than two of the five acts? When I asked this question years ago I was assured that Caesar, though dead, continues to dominate the play. His spirit lives on in the minds of his friends and foes, and twice it appears visibly to Brutus. I must confess that this justification of the title The Tragedy of Julius Caesar satisfied me at the time. Unfortunately, my doubts gradually revived.

When this happened, I began to think of the play as The Tragedy of Brutus, a tragedy to which an artistically irresponsible Shakespeare had given a title with a stronger box-office appeal. A good case can be made for Brutus as the tragic protagonist. To begin with, he speaks more lines than anyone else. In addition, he survives until the final minutes of the play; and Antony and Octavius round it off with his obituary.

Brutus is a sincere, benevolent, and idealistic republican. But his doctrinaire convictions are too little qualified by any habit of direct fellow-feeling with individual fellow-men. In the service of his creed, he is willing to murder his friend, and to do so not for what he thinks that friend is but for what he thinks that friend may become. Sometimes the doctrine inspires a more benevolent course of action, as when he allows Antony to survive Caesar's death and then permits him to speak in Caesar's funeral. But even here Brutus' behaviour betrays his failure to see individual fellow-men as they are.

In short, he is in danger of growing hardened in political conceit. Certainly he goes far enough in this direction to dictate tactics to a more experienced soldier and to demand from Cassius funds raised by methods which Brutus thinks himself too noble to employ. His political conceit and self-righteousness show him to harbour within himself a potential Robespierre. Roberspierre, after all, was a disciple of the benevolent Jean-Jacques Rousseau.

Fortunately, this potentiality remains unrealized. There is a true nobility in Brutus' dissuasion of the conspirators from staining the 'even virtue' of their 'enterprise' (II.i.133) by an oath. There is equally a true nobility, a fidelity to his high principles, in his unrealistic toleration of Antony. He shows other amiable attributes, too: for example, his tenderness towards Lucius; his deep, undemonstrative affection for Portia; and his friendship with Cassius—despite his bitterness early in the quarrel scene.

Even his enemies pay tribute to him in their concluding speeches. Antony says:

This was the noblest Roman of them all:
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.
His life was gentle, and the elements
So mixed in him that Nature might stand up
And say to all the world 'This was a man!'
                                       (V.v. 68-75)

—and Octavius completes the play with a further six lines in a similar vein.

Can we really describe Julius Caesar as the tragedy of this misguided idealist, Brutus? We may admit that the play includes such a tragedy. But it includes also a number of matters more fully developed than is needed for The Tragedy of Brutus. Does that tragedy require a full-length portrait of Cassius, the envious, restless realist who allies himself with an idealist in order to act out his envy and grows to love the idealist as that more self-centred individual can never love him? Does it require a full-length portrait of Antony, the handsome and talented good-timer, devoted to Caesar, effortlessly able to command popularity, skilled in rabble-rousing, politically unscrupulous, but capable of appreciating an enemy's nobility? Does it even require so complex a portrait of Caesar himself?

In no other of Shakespeare's tragedies do we find as many as four of the dramatis personae who are so nearly equal in importance. So close to equality do they come that some years ago a single film of the play could give us four top-ranking actors in these four parts, Louis Calhern as Caesar, James Mason as Brutus, John Gielgud as Cassius, and Marlon Brando as Antony. This characteristic makes it difficult to describe Julius Caesar either as the tragedy of Caesar or as the tragedy of Brutus. What is it?

I suggest that we try thinking of it as a history play, though one concerned with Roman, not English, history. Shakespeare's English history plays take their titles from the names of the monarchs whose reigns they represent. These monarchs are naturally important in their plays; but they are not necessarily the most important characters in them. While Richard III and Henry V dominate their plays, Henry VI is subordinate dramatically to Duke Humphrey of Gloucester in Part I and to other characters in Parts II and III, King John is subordinate dramatically to the Bastard Faulcon-bridge, and Henry IV attracts less of our attention than does Prince Hal or Harry Hotspur or Sir John Falstaff.

Shakespeare evidently wished to stage an historical pageant in which the monarch would play a more or less active, more or less dominant, part from reign to reign. In Julius Caesar, I suggest, he planned a play on similar lines about Roman history and named it accordingly after the man whom he recognized as exercising virtually monarchial power. But this likeness is merely superficial. Does the resemblance go any deeper?

We must ask what Shakespeare is doing in his English history plays.

If we exclude the outliers, King John and Henry VIII, we have eight plays that form a continuous historical sequence. Shakespeare did not write these in the chronological order of the historical events they stage. He first wrote the four that deal with the later events—Henry VI, Parts I, II, and III, and Richard III— and then went on to write the four that deal with the earlier events—Richard II, Henry IV, Parts I and II, and Henry V. Collectively, they survey English history over practically a century, from the reign of Richard II late in the fourteenth century to the death of Richard III and the accession of Henry VII late in the fifteenth.

To Shakespeare and his contemporaries, this was the recent past, the past out of which had grown the immediate present which they knew at first hand. It occupied much the same place in their imaginations as is occupied today in the imaginations of vast numbers of English men and women by a recent past composed of a triumphant Victorian age, two world wars, the rise of organized labour, and the loss of Empire. In the imaginations of Shakespeare and his contemporaries, Richard III and Henry V had much the same prominence as have Stalin, Hitler, and Churchill in our imaginations today. In staging the deposition of Richard II, the victories of Henry V, the rivalry of York and Lancaster, the Wars of the Roses, the tyranny of Richard III, and the establishment of the Tudor dynasty by Henry VII, Shakespeare was presenting a version of what was fairly common knowledge.

But in presenting it Shakespeare had to do more than respect a series of historical facts with which the audience would have some prior acquaintance. He had also to respect a particular interpretation of those facts. This interpretation justified the reigning Tudor dynasty; it was promulgated by official historians and propagandists such as Hall and Holinshed; the public accepted it with virtual unanimity; and Shakespeare himself shows no sign of questioning it. Modern writers refer to it as the Tudor myth.

This presented the Tudors—the dynasty to which Elizabeth I, the reigning queen, belonged—as the monarchs who had brought England peace and happiness after a century of troubles. It traced the troubles back to the dethronement and murder of the legitimate, anointed king, Richard II, in 1399. The penitence of the perjured Henry IV, who supplanted him, could not prevent his rule from being uneasy, his power challenged by rebellion. But his son, Henry V, who succeeded him in 1413, was brave and pious, an admirable king. During his reign, the inevitable punishment of the ruling family and the nation for the dethronement and murder of Richard II was deferred. Only for the duration of his splendid reign, however. On his death in 1422, his infant son became Henry VI. The new reign was nothing less than calamitous; England lost her French possessions and was torn apart by the Wars of the Roses. The king and his people were suffering for the crimes of Henry IV.

These three Henries belonged to the house of Lancaster. The house of York had a better title to the throne; but its members were guilty of perjury and murder. By their agency, Henry VI was dethroned and killed in 1471, and the Yorkist Edward IV became king. His brother, Richard III, who succeeded him in 1483, was the evil counterpart of the virtuous Henry V. 'There could not be,' says Hall, 'a more crueller tyrant appointed to achieve a more abominable enterprise.' The nation could not enjoy peace and security until Henry, Earl of Richmond, the founder of the Tudor dynasty, defeated Richard III in battle in 1485. Ascending the throne as Henry VII, he healed all discord by his marriage with a Yorkist princess. Their son was to become Henry VIII, one of their grand-daughters Elizabeth I.

By speaking of this as a myth, I do not mean to imply that it is simply untrue. It is neither more nor less untrue than the British myth of Dunkirk, the Russian myth of the October Revolution, or the American myth of the Revolution which gave the colonists their freedom. In each instance, a compound of selected facts and apt fictions sustains an interpretation which a society finds acceptable, even inspiring, perhaps necessary. So it was with the Tudor myth. It had a considerable factual basis. At the same time, we may doubt, for example, whether Richard III was quite the monster the myth made him. But the myth needed a monster at this climax in its unfolding, a monster who would be defeated and slain by the heaven-sent founder of the new dynasty. Richard III had to take on the part and was made up accordingly.

In the eyes of those who accepted the myth, rebellion was always wrong. It was especially wrong when directed against the legitimate king, Richard II; but it was also wrong when directed against the anointed usurper, Henry IV, or against his anointed grandson, Henry VI. This is all very well, but was not Henry, Earl of Richmond, a rebel against the tyrannical but anointed Richard III? An orthodox political theorist would have replied that this is the exception that proves the rule. When a patently heaven-sent deliverer destroys a patently diabolical tyrant, we are witnessing divine intervention, not rebellion.

When I speak of 'the inevitable punishment of the ruling family and the nation' for their offences against Richard II, and when I speak of Henry VII as 'heavensent', I am acknowledging that the Tudor myth exemplifies the providential theory of history. This Christian conception derives ultimately from Augustine and Orosius. It sees all past events as contributing to the unfolding of God's plan, and it sees all men and nations as subject to the working of divine retributive justice. The particular respects in which the Tudor myth exemplified the theory hardly need specifying now.

Theoretically distinct from this Christian conception was another conception of history current in the age of Shakespeare. This was the classical conception derived from the historians, philosophers, and rhetoricians of pagan antiquity. Those who held it sought to trace historical happenings to human and political causes. Instead of invoking divine providence and justice, they explained things in a worldly way in terms of human character and of political and military facts. Among the leading exponents of this humanist theory were the Italians Machiavelli and Guicciardini.

Though I have described the two conceptions as theoretically distinct, we find in practice that providentialists sometimes offer humanist explanations, and humanists sometimes offer providential explanations. Evidently the two conceptions could at this date still achieve a peaceful coexistence in one and the same skull. Religious men of scientific bent could believe that God fulfilled his providential purpose, and enacted his justice, through second causes such as the humanists chose to investigate.

Where does Shakespeare stand?

As I have already suggested, he shows no sign of questioning or challenging the Tudor myth. He depicts the deposition and murder of Richard II as a horrible crime and sin. The usurper, Henry IV, endures a troubled and frustrated reign, not the least of his burdens being the apparent delinquency of his son and heir, Prince Hal. This prince develops in due course into the ideal warrior-king, Henry V. He lives piously and grieves at his father's offence; he remembers it, for example, on the eve of his glorious victory at Agin-court. When he is succeeded by his infant son, Henry VI, however, calamities overwhelm the family and the nation. The French possessions are lost, law and order are subverted by the murder of the just counsellor Humphrey of Gloucester, the Yorkist faction among the nobility challenges the ascendancy of the house of Lancaster, and the Wars of the Roses ravage the country. Henry VI, saintly but ineffective in his kingly office, is overthrown and killed. Two Yorkist brothers occupy the throne in turn: the self-indulgent perjurer Edward IV, and the ruthless monster Richard III. Only a deliverer chosen by God himself can heal division and restore peace and prosperity.

This is the interpretation we find in the eight English history plays upon which I am concentrating. Nowhere does it conflict with the Tudor myth as already out-lined. This fact has encouraged some critics to represent Shakespeare as simply a loyal retailer of official propaganda.

I have two observations to make on this view. Firstly, it was at that time hardly possible, and certainly not safe, for a man of the theatre openly to oppose the political authorities. Chapman and Jonson went to gaol for jokes in Eastward Ho! about the dispersion of the Scots and the cash price of the knighthoods conferred by a newly crowned Scottish king of England; for a time they were in danger of having their noses slit and their ears cut off. Middleton's A Game at Chess attacked the same monarch's pro-Spanish foreign policy. The performance of the play was prohibited, and the incident may well have hastened the termination of Middleton's dramatic career. Clearly, it was prudent to leave the political establishment alone.

But would Shakespeare have wished to challenge it in any case? He developed as a playwright during the decade or so following the defeat of the Spanish Armada (1588). Only a radically disaffected Englishman could have escaped the euphoria of the nation during these years. A queen who had passed the age of child-bearing, and who was therefore necessarily the last of her line, had crowned the century of internal peace which her dynasty had given the country by leading her people to repel their main external foe; and, it seemed, God had demonstrated his approval by sending the storm which scattered and wrecked the defeated Spanish fleet. Some scholars today incline to believe that Shakespeare invented the English history play as we know it. He may have done so, or he may have taken over the invention of other men. But he certainly wrote most of his English history plays while the country was enjoying a mood of extraordinary elation and confidence. We need hardly be surprised that a man writing on such subjects at such a time found it easy and natural to accept the Tudor myth as truth.

Not, however, as the whole truth. Just as the historians had recourse both to providential and to humanist explanations of events, so Shakespeare enriched and transformed his received material by explaining the providential sequence in terms of human character and the realities of political and military life. No doubt Richard III was a scourge of God sent to chastise a factious nation; he was also a natural product of the preceding decades of violence and turpitude. No doubt he fell before a heaven-sent deliverer; he was also the victim of an overwhelming natural revulsion which caused humanity to rise and crush him. His fate as the victim of such a natural revulsion anticipates that of Shakespeare's Macbeth.

Not only in Richard II but also throughout the English history plays, Shakespeare provides natural explanations of events which could also be seen as contributing to a divine plan. Richard II is not merely a royal victim. He is a sentimentalist whose self-centredness makes him callous to the sufferings of others and at the same time temptingly vulnerable; he almost invites deposition. Henry IV is not simply an efficient usurper. He is an opportunist who, finding himself drawn into a power-vacuum, makes himself to the best of his ability a conscientious monarch.

Shakespeare's exploration of human causes goes along with an exploration of human consequences. Recent productions of these plays at Stratford-upon-Avon, on television, and elsewhere have brought home to us what should already have been very evident—namely, that from beginning to end they chronicle deeds of the basest treachery and the most sickening violence. History in them does indeed seem what Gibbon called it: 'little more than the register of the crimes, follies, and misfortunes of mankind'. The death of Richard Plantagenet, Duke of York, the pretender to the throne, may here stand for a whole series of atrocities. His captors place him on a molehill, put a paper crown on his head, mock him, give him to wipe away his tears a napkin stained with the blood of his young son whom they have murdered, and finally stab him to death and decapitate his corpse.

Later in the same play, Henry VI, Part III, Shakespeare voices the pity of it all in what is perhaps the finest scene in the trilogy. The battle of Towton is being fought. Henry VI, sad, devout, almost saintly, sits helplessly nearby. Soliloquizing, he grieves deeply at the sufferings which he is incapable of alleviating but which a better king might have prevented. He wishes he had been born 'a homely swain'(II.v.22), free to work, rest, and pray in quiet seclusion. There enter in succession two soldiers, each with the body of a man whom he has killed and means to rob. The first discovers with horror and anguish that his victim is his own father. 'O piteous spectacle!' exclaims the king.

  O bloody times!
Whiles lions war and battle for their dens,
Poor harmless lambs abide their enmity.
                                     (II.v.73-5)

The second soldier discovers with equal horror and anguish that his victim is his own son. The king grieves and prays:

Woe above woe! grief more than common
 grief!
O that my death would stay these ruthful
 deeds!
O pity, pity, gentle heaven pity!
                                    (II.v.94-6)

This scene is far from naturalistic. The grieving king, the anguished son, and the anguished father do not act in the least as we should expect such people to act in real life; and together they form a group such as we should hardly expect to encounter in actuality. Even within the conventions of poetic drama, Shakespeare could at a later date offer a much closer imitation of life than this: for example, Hamlet's learning that his father was murdered. But the artificiality of the present scene permits it to achieve a comprehensive expression of the sorrows both of a country torn by 'civil fury and domestic strife' and of its well-meaning and compassionate but impotent monarch. The expression is direct, formal, ceremonial; the three persons speak as representative figures, not as unique individuals. The scene has a quite exceptional range and power of suggestion. It reminds us of morality-drama.

Shakespeare's feeling of the pity of it all finds expression also in more individual terms. The young princes who are to be killed in the Tower by order of their uncle, Richard III, behave in a way that quickly wins our affection. The elder speaks with a grave consciousness of his seniority and higher rank, the younger with a mischievous wit. They are affectionate and spirited boys. Even their murderers, 'fleshed villains, bloody dogs' (IV.iii.6), weep to tell of their deaths.

So Shakespeare humanizes the official providential sequence by showing how individual human beings contribute to the course of events and how these events impinge upon individual human existences. In most of his history plays the result is that the providential scheme is not exactly forced upon us. It is present, of course. But what holds our attention from scene to scene is human action and human suffering.

In two plays, however, Shakespeare was obliged to give special prominence to the official myth. Richard III had to end with a St. George slaying a dragon. Shakespeare makes the entire play a most elaborate study of retributive justice. Henry V had to present an ideal hero-king. This man had to exercise great power with complete rectitude and without losing the common touch; and he had to achieve a miraculous victory against the French.

In Henry IV, Shakespeare had already shown him, as Prince Hal, winning the regard of men of all sorts. In particular, he was a member of Falstaff's circle. But he never involved himself in anything really shameful. He stood always a little apart from his squalid companions, friendly, but slightly mocking. Naturally, we could not wish the heir-apparent to disgrace himself. But his ability to mingle with the riff-raff without being of it, and even in a famous soliloquy to assure us that he knew what he was doing and that everything was under control, chilled us slightly. He really was admirable: a loyal, honourable, and patriotic young man. But was he perhaps a irifle too cool?

We continue to ask the question after he becomes king. Yet his conduct as a monarch can hardly be faulted. He satisfies himself that he has just cause for a war against France, he wages that war as humanely as possible, his own conduct during the compaign shows his courage and piety, and on the eve of Agincourt he proves that he does indeed possess the ability to communicate with all sorts among his subjects. Why, then, the reservations that haunt so many students of the play? Why, for instance, should a critic who is far from unsympathetic describe him as too coldly official? Is it perhaps that he is too briskly and efficiently exemplary? Even in the wooing scene, where he exhibits a notable inaptitude for the business he is about, his tone of frank and hearty good-fellowship is well adapted to gratify English theatregoers and readers—and it does, after all, win him the lady! His all-round competence and almost effortless superiority evoke admiration but tend to inhibit any warmer regard.

Some critics have been more severe and have tried to represent him as a brutal militarist. They question his sincerity when he asks his counsellors whether he has just cause for a war against France; and they regard his speech to the Governor of Harfleur as a tissue of violent threats. But the fact that his counsellors had selfish motives for the advice they gave does not prove him insincere in inviting and acting on that advice; and what he says to the Governor of Harfleur is not a tissue of threats but a grim and realistic prediction. If the Governor does not now surrender the city, the calamity that Henry describes will befall it in full accordance with the contemporary laws of war, and the king will be powerless to prevent it.

For a play celebrating a famous victory, Henry V is remarkably free from thoughtless sabre-rattling. We are not shown merely the pride, pomp, and circumstance of glorious war. Shakespeare juxtaposes the mean and absurd incidents involving Pistol, Bardolph, and Nym with the stirring military achievements; he balances the four worthy captains, Gower, Fluellen, Macmorris, and Jamy, with the honest grousers, Bates and Williams; he has Henry tell us of the horrors of war; and he has Burgundy tell us of the unnatural waste and wildness it promotes.

So neither the king nor the play can be fairly described as simply glorifying war. The play celebrates national unity under the wise and dedicated leadership of a truly popular monarch. The celebration is eloquent and judicious. The king speaks and acts admirably in a wide variety of situations; he can be humorous or earnest, down-to-earth or inspiring, as each particular situation requires. Yet we have rarely any intimate sense of the man behind this stirring performance, this dazzling and resourceful rhetoric. Is this why so many who enjoy and admire the play cannot dispel the stubborn reservations which I have mentioned?

I wish now to speculate groundlessly. I can produce no hard evidence in favour of the guesses I am about to make, but I shall employ them only as a convenient way of introducing the critical judgments with which I mean to close.

Let us suppose that Shakespeare had an uncomfortable awareness of the reservations of which I have spoken. He had written a brilliant play that was to enjoy great success in the theatre. But the subject of that play was one concerning which there was an official view and a complementary popular expectation that were irresistible. He had handled the subject with the utmost permissible freedom and flexibility. He had shown the hideous cruelty and wastefulness of war, and the seamy side of military life, while also acknowledging the courage and loyalty of many of those involved; he had exposed unscrupulous scheming, and even treacherous conspiracy, in high places, while also revealing the patriotism and integrity of numerous men of all ranks. At the centre, he had portrayed an ideal hero-king, as required by the national myth. He had made him manly, versatile, and dazzlingly articulate. But when Shakespeare came to review his finished creation—remember that I am developing a baseless speculation—he must have perceived that his Henry was a beautifully integrated assembly of external attitudes rather than a man moving and speaking from a single independent centre of vitality.

The play had evidently interested Shakespeare greatly; its very dialogue has a zest which there is no mistaking. So what could be more natural than that he should decide to write another history play? But this time he wanted a freer hand. He would choose a subject that was unburdened by providential interpretation in favour of the Tudors. The story of the death of Julius Caesar occurred to him. It was well-known—Polonius, for example, was later to claim to have performed in a version of it during his university days—but the remoteness of its subject from contemporary England left an artist at liberty to interpret its persons and their deeds as seemed just to him. Rebellion, for example, was not necessarily as reprehensible as it would have been had Julius Caesar been an anointed Christian king. I do not wish to imply that Shakespeare was writing against the grain in his English history plays. On the contrary, there is every indication that he wrote them as a sincere supporter of the Tudor establishment. But I am suggesting that when he turned to Julius Caesar, apparently within a year of finishing Henry V, he wished to give his historical and political imagination more scope than it had previously known.

Julius Caesar, I am arguing, is the work that crowns Shakespeare's progress through the long line of English history plays. In it he chronicles the affairs of a society in transition from a republican to a monarchist political system. The spirit of Caesar dominates the play in that Caesarism, or monarchy, is in the ascendant. The populace desires it and is ready to support a Pompey, a Caesar, an Octavius. When the republican Brutus pleases the plebeians, one of them cries out, with unintentional irony, 'Let him be Caesar' (III.ii.51).

Shakespeare explores the varieties of political behaviour found in such circumstances. Brutus is a political idealist trying to preserve the dying republican institutions and resorting to political murder for this purpose.

Cassius and, even more strikingly, Casca act with him out of envy of the likely monarch. Antony, devoted to the murdered man, nevertheless takes ruthless advantage of his opportunities. Octavius is a cool, deliberate politician, Lepidus a mere political stooge or 'front man'. The play as a whole records the developing strength of Caesarism or monarchy.

The qualities which came together in the hero-king Henry V are here parcelled out among various characters. Brutus has the idealism, Antony the high spirit, Octavius the ability to calculate and to take the long view. None of these characters is totally admirable. The quality by which I have distinguished Octavius is one that Shakespeare had felt obliged to allow Henry both before and after his coronation. It distinguished him as Prince Hal from the romantic egoist Harry Hotspur and from the self-indulgent egoist Falstaff. At the same time, it was a quality that we sometimes found a little chilling. In Octavius it is so developed to the exclusion of Henry's other qualities that the future emperor impresses us as a frigid boy of daunting strength of will. But to say this is to look forward to Antony and Cleopatra; and that is another story.