SOURCE: "Caska: Stoic, Cynic, 'Christian'," in Literature & Theology, Vol. 8, No. 2, June, 1994, pp. 140-56.

[In the following essay, Bradley characterizes Caska (or Casca) as a hypocritical Cynic whose role in the play is nevertheless to expose the weaknesses of Brutus's Stoicism and Cassius's Epicureanism and to point toward the emergence of Christianity.]

Who is Caska?

The Tragedie of Julius Caesar of Shakespeare proceeds rather remarkably. Historical figures dominate the play. Representative men such as Caesar, Brutus, and Cassius tower over the majority of others. Even when such powerful figures do not dominate the stage, there is present one such as Cicero to represent classical Rome and high Stoicism in one of its most refined persons.

The presence of such monumental figures, of course, makes this play irresistible to historical curiosity; and compared with these figures any of the more obviously 'artificial' characters would seem far less worthy of interest. Such would appear to be the case regarding Caska, an obviously more contrived character, present almost only in name in Plutarch's The Lives of the Noble Grecians and Romans, that which appears to have been one of Shakespeare's primary resources for the historical, ethical and cosmological elements of the age depicted in The Tragedie of Julius Caesar.¹

While Caska is not of obvious historical note, as drawn by the bard he is no merely accidental character. Indeed, on the whole, Caska has two vital functions in the play.

First, Caska nearly single-handedly moves the action of the play in its crucially important first quarter. As Julius Caesar's closest bondman, he provides the background of the problematic nature of Caesar by his 'report' of Caesar's epileptic fits and alleged repudiation of the crown. In so doing, Caska serves as a link between Caesar, that would-be "Genius", or "god", and the greater body of conspirators.

Secondly, and ultimately more important for the revelation of the greater moral of the drama behind the action, it is Caska alone who has, as a more fictive foil, the sufficient distance to call into question the other 'ideologies' of the age, Stoic and Epicurean, vital to the drama. To the extent to which The Tragedie of Julius Caesar is also a problem play, that is, in this case a problem play in systematically philosophical terms, it is Caska who reveals, albeit only negatively, the limitations of the dominant cosmological-political-ethical systems of the age, namely Stoicism and Epicureanism, the principles of which determine the motives and actions of the principals of the play. It is Caska alone, outside of these cosmologies qua Cynic, though also with his (poetically anachronistic) 'Christian' (especially Pauline) language, who can call the claims of these systems into question and reveal their limitations. Thus Caska's ultimate function: that of posing in word, and revealing as far as possible within the setting, the limitations of the cosmological-political-ethical systems of the age. Caska, the apparent Cynic, is the figure with one foot in the miasma of the moment and one, at least in word, in the world-historical movement set to supersede this moment, namely, Christianity.

Given Caska's historical insignificance, the subtle, acute and economical Shakespeare has Caska all but announce his more fictive bearing. Caska gives of himself a most apt description, which self-description comes in his 'report' of Caesar's apparently epileptic 'fall'; which 'fall' occurred while Caesar was being offered and 'refused' the crown. Caska, through the playwright, portrays this fall (suggesting something of a play within a play behind the scenes) in the very terms of the theatrical. Of Caesar's bizarre and sensational public appearance, Caska says:

If the tag-ragge people did not clap him, and hisse him, according as he pleas'd, and displeas'd them, as they vse to doe the Players in the Theatre, I am no true man.²

As the drama on the whole proceeds it becomes painfully evident that the utmost line from this passage may be taken in many ways. Caska is "no true man" in almost every sense of these words.

It is of note that the first word Caska speaks is "Peace". Caska even calls twice for peace, "Peace yet again" for Caesar. Yet, Caska eventually reveals himself to be opposed to any true peace for this problematic 'god', being in time the first conspirator to stab his lord. The deceiving Caska, further, is not without disdain, a fundamental characteristic of the Cynic as classically described.³ When he reports to Brutus Caesar's refusal of the crown, he recounts how thereupon "mine honest neighbors shouted". These words quickly sum up Caska's status as both a Cynic and a problematic proto-Christian. Caska, qua Cynic, in the lineage of Diogenes Laertius, would prefer "honesty" above all virtues.⁴ Yet, he is so problematically Cynical he even makes a reference to his own cardinal virtue by way of sarcasm. Further, the problematic proto-Christian certainly shows no manifest love of neighbor. Caska is not only offended by Caesar's apparently dishonest entertainment of donning a crown, he is even more offended by his "honest neighbors", deriding them for their superfícial embrace of Caesar, that is, for their embrace of one who might perpetuate their essential slavery by the grossest dishonesty.

Caska's problematic character shows itself every time he speaks; but it is especially evident in his utterly confounding report of Caesar's allegedly epileptic 'fall'. This report is thoroughly duplicitous. In depicting Caesar's refusal of the crown, Caska claims, "—yet 'twas not a Crowne neyther, 'twas one of these Coronets". What is one to believe from Caska?⁵ Was it a crown or a coronet? If it was a crown, then Caesar might have been assuming absolute power in that very moment. If it was a coronet, then Caesar might have been assuming only a provisional, conditional ascent to absolute power. The difference between a crown and a coronet is no insignificant difference.

Then Caska continues even more problematically:

and as I told you, hee put it by once: but for all that, to my thinking, he would faine haue had it. Then hee offered it to him againe: then hee put it by againe.⁶

Again Caska is completely duplicitous. What "it" is, crown (?) or coronet (?) is altogether unclear. Yet, Caska goes on to say further that Caesar would "faine" have had "it"; that is, by virtue of the pun (as Caska's 'report' is obviously oral), the question becomes: would Caesar have "faine", that is, "willingly", had "it", or would he 'feign', that is 'fakingly' have had "it"? Caska, in his utter duplicity, leaves a completely confused picture; and his next words are of no aid to clarity: "but to my thinking, he was very loath to lay his fingers off it".⁷ Caska compounds the confusion with yet another duplicity. Caesar was "loath", to lay his fingers off "it", (whatever "it" is). Thus the further question: was Caesar "loathe", that is, 'strongly disinclined', to lay his fingers off the "crown", because of his desire for it and absolute power? Or did Caesar "loathe" laying his fingers off the coronet, knowing that if he assumed the crown he would be assuming a position of utmost responsibility?

Caska's gross duplicities leave an utterly confusing impression. Even as he continues, to the point of reporting Caesar's apparently epileptic 'fall', he leaves the impression that Caesar himself was both 'false' and 'loathsome' in that moment; that Caesar was indeed play-acting throughout, even faking his "falling sickness". For when Caesar refused the crown (or coronet?) for the third time, the crowd roared:

and threw vppe their sweatie Night-cappes, and vttered such a deale of stinking breath, because Caesar refus'd the Crowne, that it had (almost) choaked Caesar: for hee swoonded, and fell downe at it.⁸

Hereupon Caska employs yet another duplicity:

And for mine owne part, I durst not laugh, for fears of opening my Lippes, and receyuing the bad Ayre.⁹

Caska paints a thoroughly disgusting, as well as thoroughly complicated, picture. The "bad Ayre" which Caska did not want to take in may refer to the 'bad air' wafting off the revolting masses; or, it may refer to the 'bad air', the poor acting, which Caesar put on in his refusal of the "crown" (or coronet?). The greater implication, of course, is that Caesar was 'faking' his falling sickness. So Caska says:

I can as well bee hang'd as tell the manner of it:
It was meere Foolerie, I did not marke it.

¹⁰

Here Caska approaches something of an 'apology' for his utterly confusing report. He argues that, in essence, he is forced into a position of having to describe something which was itself utterly confounding, un-'mark'-able, inherently problematic. He could be "hang'd" if he attempted to tell the manner of it, where "hang'd" itself must be heard in two senses. For in 'reporting' that perplexing scene Caska could not help but be "hang'd", that is, tangled up, in the duplicities inherent in it. Moreover, if indeed Caesar (with the aid of Mark Antony) was play-acting in this moment so as to win the crowd to his side, Caska would be 'hanged' for revealing the entire episode, that is, for telling the manner of it as a charade on Caesar's part by which to confuse, terrify, and yet also win the sympathy of, the masses.

Yet, there is every reason to think that this "honest" Cynic is himself as dishonest as the feigning Caesar. For, to make matters even more complicated, Caska's temporal references at this point are also perplexing. That is, he appears to 'correct' his story somewhat. First, he leaves the impression that Caesar fell down immediately after the crowd shouted at his third refusal of the crown. However, as Caska goes on with his report, he states that Caesar did not fall down immediately thereafter; rather, Caska says that between the crowd's shouting and Caesar's 'fall', Caesar first had Caska open his robe, the better to let the crowd see that Caesar himself was offering up the possibility of the cutting of their sovereign's throat. So says the duplicitous Caska:

Marry, before he fell downe, when he perceiu'd the common Heard was glad he refus'd the Crowne, he pluckt me ope his Doublet, and offer'd them his Throat to cut.¹¹

The anachronistic use of the term "doublet" allows the bard to emphasize the thoroughgoing 'duplicity' in Caska's character, especially as this bears on his 'report' of Caesar's epileptic 'fall'. Here Caska's words might mean that Caesar 'plucked' him to 'ope' his doublet, where 'oping' a 'doublet' could also have two meanings: 1) 'opening his cloak,' ('oping his doublet') so as to threaten to cut the throat of Caesar; and/or 2) 'revealing his duplicity', ('oping his doublet') that is, revealing that Caesar's 'fall' and volunteering to be a sacrificial victim constitute but an 'air' perpetrated to dupe the crowd and win their sympathy. Caesar challenged Caska to reveal his duplicity in his apparent feigning of epilepsy. (In putting on an 'air' in the crown scene, especially by way of his "falling sickness", Caesar could be regarded as playing the classical actor. By his gyrating fall, he cast fear in the crowd on the one hand while even thereby casting pity into them as well.) More particularly, the play-acting, the "air" of Caesar, offering the crowd his throat and then at once 'falling' must have left the impression that precisely then and there the crowd did, in effect, cut his throat, leaving them to feel sorry for him as their own sacrificial victim, and therefore to deem themselves indebted to him. If this deceit, this theatrical duplicity, were the 'doublet' Caska had 'oped', that is, revealed, he would have been hanged indeed. Caska, here the Cynic as the political-theatre critic, so near this "bad air", was at a loss as to how to change this acting in its course by himself. It would be his "honest" Cynical pleasure later, however, to stab Caesar first, in compensation for Caesar's dishonesty in feigning his self-sacrifice.

Thus the problematic "honesty" of this Cynic. It is fitting that the most peculiar and problematic terms employed in this play are applied to Caska by Caska himself. When Cassius asks if Caska can be trusted, Caska answers with his usual duplicity by saying that he is "no fleering tell-tale".¹² It would appear Shakespeare intends by "fleering" both of its basic meanings: Not only 'mocking' (from the Scandinavian flire) but also 'flim flamming', that is, deceiving.¹³ Caska mocks the character(s) of Caesar, Brutus, Cassius and Cicero, while he deceives throughout in this 'report' of Caesar's actions. When Caska says of himself that he is not a 'mocking' and 'flim-flamming' man, it is almost a sure bet that he is such.

Given Caska's duplicitous complexity, it is no surprise that he is a most officious 'yes-man'. This is especially so when the conspirators are deciding whether or not to include Cicero in the conspiracy. At first, Caska holds that Cicero should be included:

Let vs not leaue him out.

¹⁴

Yet, just as quickly, after Brutus makes his speech sizing up Cicero's more passive interpretation of Stoicism, thereby suggesting that Cicero not be included, the 'yes-man' Caska changes his mind at once:

Indeed, he is not fit.

¹⁵

Practically, Caska goes along with anything and anybody; and indeed is the first murderer in the corps of conspirators. Theoretically, Caska, the typical Cynic, holds little or nothing in complex principle.

Hence, once the undoing of Caesar is accomplished, the very problematic nature of Caska is further revealed when he says:

Go to the Pulpit Brutus.

¹⁶

Caska, through the anachronistic-religious use of the term "pulpit", reveals himself as a type of malicious soul who would attempt to cloak his evil in the mere appearance of virtue. Caska would hide behind the virtue of Brutus as the latter speaks from the pulpit. Indeed, the critical and resentful Caska speaks of Brutus likewise elsewhere. He sees in Brutus merely an instrument of his own advantage, whose profound and principled nobility might mask Caska's own personal, premeditated murder of Caesar:

And that which would appeare Offence in vs, His Countenance, like richest Alchymie, Will change to vertue and to Worthinesse.¹⁷

Thus again the gross dishonesty of "honest" Caska, the Cynic.

Though Caska is not of obvious historical note, for Shakespeare's purposes he is of note as a representative of Cynicism, albeit problematic Cynicism. Hence, when Cassius heard Caska's 'report' of Caesar's epileptic fit, he cleverly attributed the "falling sickness" not to Caesar but to Brutus, to himself, and to "honest Caska". With these words Cassius put Caska on a level of importance with himself the problematic Epicurean, and with Brutus, the noblest Stoic; not merely qua conspirator, but as a representative of a philosophical world-view. Yet, of course, in comparison with the Stoic and the Epicurean, the Cynic, Caska, holds no definitive world-view, no systematic cosmology.¹⁸ He is, as with virtually all of those of the Cynic stripe, resentful of the might and wealth of the imperial few, displeased with the artificiality of Caesar's charades, disdainful of the vicious masses, and unimpressed with the systematic thought of the Stoic and Epicurean. Hence, when Shakespeare has Cassius call Caska "honest", he obviously has him do so very sarcastically. In so doing, he hits the mark as to Caska's nature as a problematic Cynic.

Thus the complexity of the scene in which Cassius attributes the "falling sickness" to Brutus the Stoic, to himself the Epicurean, and to the "honest Caska". In one sense, they would all have the "falling sickness" in the same way, to the extent to which they would all fail to see, as Cassius says later, that their fault is not in their stars, but in themselves, that they are political underlings. They would all fall alike to the extent to which they would passively let Caesar assume the role of god, and so all become slaves by comparison, a position in which Caska, as with many Cynics, already resided.¹⁹

Yet, on a more cosmological plane, Brutus, Cassius, and Caska might all be said to have the "falling sickness" as a principle of their respective world-views. For Brutus, the Stoic comprehension of the "falling sickness" on this fundamental level would lie with the Stoic notion of the inferiority of the more passive, literally more 'falling' elements, earth and water, as distinct from the more active elements, air and fire, which tend, more literally, to 'stand up' the persons they infuse.²⁰ Hence, Cassius' brilliantly subtle call of the Stoic Brutus to his tragic action: were Brutus not to act, he would in essence violate the first principle of his Stoic natural philosophy from which his noble ethic is derived.

In turn, Cassius the Epicurean has his own cosmological-ethical comprehension of a "falling sickness". In the Epicurean cosmology, all things would be regarded as composed of combinations of atoms ever in motion, and, more specifically, ever theoretically in a downward plunge, a downward 'fall' into the infinite gulf of the "unfathomable inane".²¹ Thus the Epicurean poses a certain "falling sickness" as a principle of the universe itself. For all atoms are ever replacing other atoms via 'voids' ever-generated in an endless plunge toward the cosmic abyss; which universal 'falling' (with secondary and tertiary atoms creating inferior compounds) is the source of the corruption of all things.²²

In light of the Stoic and Epicurean cosmologies, however, it is not altogether clear what the cosmological/ontological "falling sickness" attributable to Caska and his world-view would be. Caska the Cynic, having no systematic cosmology, would be more inclined to hold an exclusively moral position on the 'fall' of man; to hold to the conception of the radical evil of all men; a universal condition of 'falling' into perpetual rascality. Such must be the only notion of a "falling sickness" on a universal scale which Caska could hold. Thus Cassius' suggestion that Caska lacks a systematic cosmology fits the operative descriptions of both the classic Cynic and the early Christian.²³ Indeed, when Cassius attributes the "falling sickness" to Caska, Caska replies, "I know not what you meane by that . . ."²⁴ though Caska emphasizes, "but I am sure Caesar fell downe".²⁵ Caska's reply is, as ever, problematic. He could be admitting either his general ignorance of, or indifference toward, the Stoic and Epicurean cosmologies; or admitting his intellectual indifference toward the more specific political implications of being attributed with the "falling sickness". Caska's interests, qua Cynic, would only be those of "honesty" and so-called "common sense", not sophisticated cosmology.

Caska is, indeed, murderously honest: If The Tragedie of Julius Caesar can be said to open as a discourse on 'bad souls' (given the play on words with "bad soles" from the opening moments of the play), it should come as no surprise that "honest Caska" is the one who inverts the attribution of the title "good soul" to Caesar. For Caska says he heard three or four wenches cry out to Caesar, "Alasse good Soule!"²⁶ and therewith "forgaue him with all their hearts".²⁷ Such a display in Caska's eyes is yet more evidence of the radical sickness of all of human nature, ever ready to succumb to dishonesty. For, as Caska says, "if Caesar had stab'd their Mothers, they would haue done no lesse".²⁸ The moralizing Cynic in Caska can respond to such a moment only negatively. Arguably worse than the major figures who have systematic world-views, albeit world-views with clearly tragic limitations, Caska stands as the odd man out: he who can do little more than merely 'negate' such systems at every turn by Cynical moralizing; which negation is all but capsulized in Caska's haste to make an end of Caesar, the prime target of his Cynical resentment.

Caska: Critic of Stoicism

Caska, for all of his problematic nature, is yet the one person in The Tragedie of Julius Caesar who reveals the limitations of the Stoic and Epicurean systems, especially in light of these systems' excessive, and nigh exclusive, reliance upon material cause as the ground of their respective cosmologies. This critical voice is heard in Caska's encounter with the classic Stoic, Cicero. As the world shakes with thunder and lightning, Caska in essence asks after the ultimate effect such shaking has on Cicero; asks if Cicero is indeed a true Stoic by holding to the monistic principle that the individual is but a part of this quivering cosmos. Hence Caska asks both literally and figuratively of Cicero:

Are not you mou'd, when all the sway of Earth
Shakes, like a thing vnfirme?

²⁹

To a degree, and by literal confirmation, the Cynic and the Stoic would follow the same first principle: follow Nature.³⁰ Yet, given the strictness of Stoic pantheism and the monistic principle of identity of the Stoic physic on the whole, in principle Cicero should obviously answer 'yes' to this question, to the extent to which the individual, as but a particular limitation of the whole of Nature (as that Nature), yet would obviously be literally so 'moved' as Nature moves. Caska is obviously asking for a response which answers to that notion of being 'moved' as well emotionally and 'spiritually'; moved in a way which registers effects not manifestly explicable through material causation alone. Thus this question is posed with the listing of all kinds of wonders seen on the streets: The hand of a common slave appears to burn as if it were the joining of twenty torches, and yet the slave was not burned; an owl, "the bird of night" who sees all, is seen in the marketplace at noon; "men all in fire" walk up and down the streets. It is hereupon that Caska offers up the all-important casting of suspicion upon Stoicism and Epicureanism:

When these Prodigies Doe so conioyntly meet, let not men say, 'These are their Reasons, they are Naturali', For I beleeue, they are portentous things Vnto the Clymate, that they point vpon.³¹

Here Caska expresses lines crucial for the comprehension of not only his character, but also of a fundamental 'moral' of the play itself. The reliance of the Stoic system on 'naturali' cause alone, via pantheism, would be mocked by these several eratic wonders. If a perfect God is the immanent mind of the universe, immediately commanding order therein, how is it possible that the world should shake and tremble so and thereby generate the monstrous?

Cicero, for his part, responds with a rather typical academic-Stoic answer, saying that one need only be bothered by an effect to that extent to which one lets oneself be bothered by it. The Academic-Stoic need not assent to anything, no matter how strange, extraordinary, or powerful the phenomena appear:

Indeed, it is a strange disposed time: But men may construe things after their fashion, Clean e from the purpose of the things themselues.³²

Here Cicero almost openly confesses the Stoic system's theoretical limitations. He virtually acknowledges that something is fundamentally unsound about the Stoic epistemology. That is, on the one hand, the Stoic manifestly recognizes something of the order of ultimate reality, the 'in itself, an existence "of the things themselves". Moreover, he can even posit an ultimate "purpose" in accord with "the things themselves". Yet, even having posited such reality, "the thing itself, the Stoic apparently need not heed any compulsion to trace out an immediate, or even significantly mediate, relation to that reality, that existence "in itself; nor need he assent to any such objective reality or truth. Rather, the Stoic 'system' makes allowance for 'inventing' truth. Men may "construe" things after their own fashion; man can "construct" the truth in effect, "cleane" from the way things appear; even though the order of appearances themselves would allegedly be manifestations of an immanent God.

In this sense, the nickname "honest" Caska fits his Cynical bearing very well. As Caska calls into question the Stoic reliance upon material causation alone, in its attempt to maintain its systematic consistency, he thereby calls into question the very epistemological foundation of Stoicism. In so doing, he reveals (especially Academic) Stoicism's fundamental internal contradiction.³³ For it posits the truth on the one hand with regard to both Being and Becoming ("the thing itself and "purpose"), yet therewith it denies that it has an obligation to determine unconditionally the nature of that truth. A Cicero can 'resign' himself into the merely conditioned, the merely construed, the merely fashioned, indeed the untrue. In the eyes of Caska, the Cynic, this resignation would seem at the very least dishonest.

Caska: Critic of Epicureanism

Caska's encounter with the Academic-Stoic, Cicero, is followed at once by his encounter with the Epicurean, Cassius. As in the encounter with Cicero, the topic is that of the estimation of the wondrous portents of the moment. While Cicero adopts a posture of resigned indifference to the wild and moving effects which dominate the hour, Cassius takes an almost perverse delight in them. Indeed, reciting the term "honest", Cassius says to Caska of this horrific night that it is:

A very pleasing Night to honest men.

³⁴

That is, like the "honest" Cynic, Cassius the Epicurean could see how these unharmonious effects, in light of the 'Caesar question', might be used to call into question the Stoic notion of Cosmic order and its monistic, pantheistic principle.

Cassius' delight in this horrific night is a kind of perverse delight borne of his own Epicurean disregard for the Stoic system. If the Stoic system were so well-ordered, no such calamities could occur in nature. Hence, this horrific night, by its very manifestations, makes manifest how 'dishonest' the Stoic principle is. Cassius, of course, unlike Caska, has a definitive cosmology from which to criticize Stoicism. So, when Caska, the Cynic, asks:

Who euer knew the Heauens menace so?

³⁵

Cassius has a quick, Epicurean answer:

Those that haue knowne the Earth so full of faults.

³⁶

That is, the shakiness and disorder of the night, with its horrific manifestations, militates against the Stoic principle of cosmic order, while all the better arguing the case of Epicureanism. For the Epicurean conceives of nature as a basically chaotic domain with, in principle, ever downward-moving atoms replacing other atoms in bodies, bodies imbued in essence with vacua, 'voids', (those regions in which secondary or tertiary atoms would replace primary atoms, leading to the body's corruption); imbued, that is, by double-entendre, with "faults".³⁷

Caska, qua Cynic, not being able to articulate a sophisticated cosmology, can at least appreciate how Cassius the Epicurean can see man as 'radically evil', being imbued with "faults", much as the entire order of nature is imbued with "faults", the 'voids' in which atoms are ever-replacing one another. Yet, Caska, the extreme moralist, using that which can be heard as proto-Christian language, is almost offended by Cassius' reaction to all of these horrid displays of nature. Indeed, whereas the Stoic Cicero was merely resigned, Cassius appears rather perversely bold in the face of this horrific display. For Cassius, the Epicurean, would hold that there was no divine purpose behind this display, as his gods were coolly atomic gods, removed and indifferent from all of these mundane matters.³⁸ Thus Cassius boasts:

And when the crosse blew Lightning seem'd to open The Brest of Heauen, I did present my selfe Euen in the ayme, and very flash of it.³⁹

In light of this bold Epicurean proclamation, the problematic Cynic/proto-Christian, Caska, is dismayed to see that Cassius could "tempt the heavens" so. Indeed Caska says, contrarily, employing Pauline terms posed intentionally anachronistically in this pre-Christian air:

It is the part of men, to feare and tremble, When the most mightie Gods, by tokens send Such dreadfull Heraulds, to astonish us.⁴⁰

Hereupon Cassius in turn attacks Caska's problematic Cynicism. Caska, qua Cynic, is "dull". That is, he has no systematic world-view upon which to base his queries and worries. Moreover, Caska does not have those "sparks of life that should be in a Roman", though Caska called himself a Roman just moments before. This lack of a certain vim and vigorous ambition is the classic charge brought against Cynicism.⁴¹ Thus Cassius observes not only Caska's nature as Cynic, but also his very problematically Cynical character in particular, especially when he alludes to the superstitious side of Caska.

No doubt Cassius would argue that the superstitious side of Caska is borne of Caska's lack of a wholly material cosmology. Caska's intellectual "dullness" leads him to be perplexed by the question as to "Why all these things change from their ordinance". He is as superstitiously perplexed by all of these monstrous changes as much as he is morally infuriated by the potential "change in nature" which the deceitful Caesar would undergo in his nomination as a "god". Thus Cassius further notes Caska's unsystematic reckoning. Caska does not seek a "naturali" explanation of the many marvels of the hour. As a mere moralist, he is rather "cast. . . in wonder", to the disregard of "naturali" (material) cause. Here Cassius makes light of both Stoicism, (with its monistic view of man, state, and nature) and the fearful wonder into which Caska, the Cynic and proto-Christian, has been cast. With one rhetorical note, Cassius tells Caska, in sarcastic affirmation of Stoic monism, that it is not entirely unnatural that the universe should have this "monstrous quality" when they are now living in "some monstrous state"; that it is no wonder there should be a "monstrous state" when there is a mere man, Caesar, so monstrous, so "prodigious grown".

Caska's response to Cassius' sarcastic account of Stoic monism in this moment is extraordinary. Of this man "prodigious grown" not named by Cassius, Caska asks rather oddly:

'Tis Caesar that you meane: Is it not,
Cassius?

⁴²

as though Cassius might mean someone else, some other person "prodigious grown". Here Caska, the proto-Christian in language otherwise, could be understood as expressing some unusual intuition in these (and other) words:

When these Prodigies Doe so conloyntly meet . . .

⁴³

words which, in the intuition of a proto-Christian, might be taken as references to the unnatural wonders of the moment, and/or to the manifestations of two extraordinary prodigies "meeting" in almost the same world-historical moment: Caesar, the "prodigious grown" man-would-be-god whose particular divinization would violate both the Stoic and Epicurean cosmologies/ideologies, preceding the prodigy on the horizon, the God-man, the Christ, "prodigious grown" in the sense of being 'begotten', not 'made'. The would-be apotheosis of the former would world-historically forecast the incarnation of the latter.

All told then Caska is not as entirely "dull" as Cassius claims. Although Caska never has a systematic response to any Stoic or Epicurean error, he does critically reveal by moral intuition, (apparently the exclusive manner of'argument' associated with the 'school' of Cynicism), that which is problematic in those systems. Such criticism can ,be seen in this very context in which Cassius laments Caesar's potential ascent to absolute power. If Caesar were to assume absolute power, Cassius would be placed in a novel bondage, the only freedom from which might lie in the Epicurean allowance of suicide. Hence the boast:

Cassius from Bondage will deliuer Cassius: Therein, yee Gods, you make the weake most strong; Therein, yee Gods, you tyrants doe defeat.⁴⁴

Cassius makes this declaration of independence by suicide, an article of Epicureanism, as a bold pronouncement. Yet, in the ears of the Cynical bondman, Caska, this claim of freedom by suicide, justified by the principles of the Epicurean system, is only an empty freedom. For all of the elaborate "principles" of Epicureanism, its final statement on freedom turns out to be a final statement on nothing. This Epicurean freedom is really just a negative freedom available even to the unsophisticated slave, as the experienced and "honest" Caska knows. Hence, when Cassius continues this essentially negative boast:

If I know this, know all the World besides, That part of Tyrannie that I doe beare, I can shake off at pleasure⁴⁵

Caska responds very simply, though critically, to the quick, saying:

So I can: So euery Bond-man in his owne hand beares The power to cancell his Captiuitie.⁴⁶

On this point of 'negative' freedom, complex Epicureanism offers no clear advantage over the "dullness" of Cynicism.

Not only does Caska, qua Cynic, offer a critique of Epicureanism concerning suicide, he also offers a similar point regarding homicide (and thereby a partial 'defense' of his participation in Caesar's assassination). With his closing words, the "honest" Caska calls into question the nature and the purpose of the Stoic and Epicurean systems one last time. These systems, in great part, in fundamental part in the case of Epicureanism, attempt relief from the fear of death. Much of the significant Stoic and Epicurean ethical literature explicitly aims at the elimination of this fear. For the Stoic, the question of death was answered by arguing that the soul, albeit refinedly constituted as pneuma, spirit, is yet material, and so dies shortly after the decomposition of the body in which it dwells.⁴⁷ For the Epicurean, the soul is similarly a refined body, being not unlike the air itself in atomic constitution. Thus, upon death, the soul disperses as quickly as air, such that there is no need to fear death itself; nor is there a need to fear any punishment in a life after, since death brings the termination of consciousness.⁴⁸ In this light, it is as though the very "honest" Caska cannot help but be brutally honest concerning the death of Caesar. And, indeed, if the Stoic and Epicurean systems reduce to systems aimed at the elimination of the fear of death, then the "honest" Caska, with his wholly critical bent, best argues the case of even the most base of conspirators, turning the logic of these systems toward a most nihilistic conclusion:

Why he that cuts off twenty yeares of life, Cuts off so many years of fearing death.⁴⁹

Again the Cynic reduces the Stoic and Epicurean to naught in word, and the would-be man-god, Caesar, to naught in deed.

Caska: The Problematic Proto-Christian

All told, Caska has the dramatic function of moving the action of the play, with the intellectual function of casting lasting criticism on the ultimate consistency and worth of the Stoic and Epicurean systems. Therewith, given his Pauline language, Caska also serves to point to a change in the age in which the theoretical and practical limitations of those systems would be world-historically revealed; a revelation occasioned by the Caesar event. Nowhere is this more obvious than in one very prominent speech, the anachronistic terms of which 'point' to that change in World-History, the impending advent of Christianity, from which perspective the previous cosmological-ethical-political systems may be critically regarded with more precision.

Caska, in whose mouth Shakespeare places one (of course anachronistic) Christian reference after another, says to Decius and Cinna, followers of Brutus and Cassius, thus of Stoicism and Epicureanism respectively:

You shall confesse, that you are both deceiu'd: Heere, as I point my Sword, the Sunne arises, Which is a great way growing on the South, Weighing the youthfull Season of the yeare. Some two moneths hence, vp higher toward the North He first presents his fire, and the high East Stands as the Capitoli, directly heere.⁵⁰

Caska's particular suggestion that these two must "confesse" their ignorance confirms the notion that he is a problematic proto-Christian. Further, the puns and other Judeo-Christian imagery of this very artificial speech let Caska "point" to where the 'son' arises, toward a great "way". This "way" will "weigh" (judge) this youthful season of man (the epoch before the emergence of Christ). And this direction lies with the 'due', or "high" east, there where lies the truer "Capitol", Jerusalem. Here is the paradigmatic speech from that 'other half of the Cynic, Caska: he reproves the Stoic and Epicurean again because, for all of their elaborate systematizing, they are unable to comprehend the signs of the time.

Yet, by the same token, of course, Caska, the Cynic and problematic proto-Christian, can only intuit the greater significance of his own words. This Cynic, in his exclusively critical manner, is something of a prophet, though only a vacuous prophet. He has somewhat the form of the seer, yet, qua Cynic, has none of the elevated consciousness and magnanimity of a true prophet.⁴⁷ How then sum up the character of Caska? In light of other persons, he is similar to the unjust servant described by Augustine in De Libero Arbitrio.⁵¹ He complains about his master's ill manner, yet he in turn harbours the same ill will himself. He would ill—willingly slay his master so as to attain his master's station and acquire his possessions, and is therefore, though proto-Christian in discourse, yet subjectable to Christian critique. Further, like the irrationally religious attacked by Hobbes in Leviathan, Caska appears to be overly superstitious.⁵² He elevates morality above all natural inquiry to an unhealthy degree. Further yet, like the oddly religious or overly peevish in Nietzsche's various criticisms, Caska, qua moralizing Cynic, may be said to represent one of the earliest forms of that "peasant rebellion of the spirit"; or that type who would want to interpret all of life as if it were exclusively a "moral phenomenon", to the exclusion of much that is great and ennobling.⁵³ Thus the deserved infamy of this extreme moralist. The Cynic, at least in Caska's case, in his peevish zeal for "honesty", would even murder for it.

Notes

¹ See Shakespeare's Plutarch, C. F. T. Brooke, ed. (Haskell House: New York, 1966).

² See The Tragedie of Julius Caesar, in William Shakespeare: The Complete Works, Stanley Wells and Gary Taylor, eds. (Oxford Univ. Press, 1986), Scene 2, 334-337, p. 678. All citations from this play will come from this text and will be noted accordingly.

³ Hence the various portrayals of the Cynic as possessing an "uncompromising morality" and a certain "narrowness and fanatacism." For these and more detailed descriptions of the character of the Cynic see A History of Cynicism: From Diogenes to the 6th Century A.D., Donald R. Dudley (Ares: Chicago, 1980), pp. 97-99. One sentence from Dudley (p. 127) in the description of the work of Demetrius all but sums up the Cynical character: "The insistence on the practical aspect of philosophy, and the consequent depreciation of theory and of scientific speculation, contempt for the unconverted mass of humanity, complete suppression of desires, attacks on the luxury of the age—all are in the well-known vein of the gospel according to Diogenes."

⁴ For a more complete account of the 'origins' of Cynicism, traced back through Diogefies to Antisthenes and back even further to Socrates, see chapter I of A History of Cynicism. It would be my argument, after Dudley, that the proclaimed 'succession' of Cynicism: Socrates—Antishenes—Diogenes—Crates—Zeno is somewhat plausible, though very problematic. The problematic nature of such succession can be seen in a variety of ways, as Dudley notes, though one simple example of such may be the manner in which many later Cynics are characterized as having a certain vicious officiousness rather foreign to the character of Socrates. I would make the argument that Caska represents Cynicism in a degenerated form, much as the Skeptic would represent Plato's Academy in a degenerated form.

⁵ Scene 2, 312-313.

⁶ Scene 2, 313-316.

⁷ Scene 2, 316-317. Insofar as Julius Caesar dupes the people and toys with their emotions, perhaps one could call him an effectively 'actual' tyrant and not merely a "prospective tyrant" as Bonjour calls him. See The Structure of Julius Caesar, Adrien Bonjour (Liverpool Univ. Press: Liverpool, 1958), pp. 3-4.

⁸ Scene 2, 320-324.

⁹ Scene 2, 324-326.

¹⁰ Scene 2, 310-311.

¹¹ Scene 2, 339-342. Blits notices this change in Caska's 'report' but does not proceed with a more detailed account of the many duplicities in Caska's words. See The End of the Ancient Republic, Jan H. Blits (Carolina Academic Press: Durham, 1982), pp. 66-70.

¹² Scene 3, 514.

¹³ See The Oxford English Dictionary, Second Edition, Volume V, J. A. Simpson and E. S. C. Weiner, preps. (Clarendon Press: Oxford, 1989), p. 1039.

¹⁴ Scene 4, 704.

¹⁵ Scene 4, 715.

¹⁶ Scene 8, 1171.

¹⁷ Scene 3, 556-558.

¹⁸ See Dudley on Cynicism's lack of ability to develop as a 'School' such as Stoicism and Epicureanism (pp. 117-124). Thus the telling quote therein (p. 118): "The weakness of Cynicism lay in its inability to give an account of itself . . . now that its adherents could not command the 'persuasive charm' . . . of a Diogenes, it could make no appeal to the intelligence. Cynicism thus became a 'popular' philosophy; the philosophy of the proletariat as it has been called, and the description will serve provided one avoids the implications such a phrase would carry to-day."

¹⁹ Again Dudley (p. 147): "It is easy to understand how the 'free life' of the Cynic could attract those engaged in the generally oppressive and monotonous tasks of an artisan in the ancient world. To a slave the attraction would be still greater, and the rapid spread of Christianity, and such of the mystery religions as were open to them, amongst the slaves, shows how eager they were to embrace any creed which would lighten the monotony of their lot." Dudley goes on to treat of the hypocrisy of certain Cynics who insisted on moral rigor and yet who engaged in rather open and unrestrained sexual activity. Shakespeare, for his part, would obviously depict the hypocrisy of Caska around the topic of violence. Caska would ostensibly desire "peace", but would achieve it by violent revolution.

²⁰ See chapters I and II of Physics of the Stoics, S. Sambursky (Routledge and Kegan Paul: London, 1987).

²¹ The translation given to "inane profundum" by Leonard. See On the Nature of Things, Lucretius, William Ellery Leonard, trans. (Dutton: New York, 1957), p. 48. For a more prosaic translation see De Rerum Natura, Lucretius, W. H. D. Rouse, trans. (Harvard University Press: Cambridge, 1947).

²² For detailed study of the Epicurean atomic cosmology see The Greek Atomists and Epicurus, C. Bailey (Oxford University Press: Oxford, 1928); Epicurus and His Gods, A. J. Festugiere, C. W. Chilton, trans. (Oxford Univ Press, 1955); and The Epicurean Tradition, Howard Jones (Routledge, Chapman, and Hall: London, 1989).

²³ Cf. 19. Also note the labelling of Paul as . . ."babbler" or "seed-talker" in Novum Testamentum Graece: . . . (17:18), Nestle-Aland (Deutsche Bibelstiftung: Stuttgart, 1979), p. 373. Birch was one commentator who also argued that Shakespeare painted Caska as something of a proto-Christian, in particular a proto-Puritan. In fact, Birch goes so far as to say that Shakespeare is posing through the character of Caska a person legitimizing an almost blanket attack on religion: "Religion is error here . . . Religious sentiment is ascribed by Shakespeare to a defect in the constitution and temperament of mankind." See An Inquiry into the Philosophy and Religion of Shakespeare, W. J. Birch, C. Mitchell (London, 1848), p. 454. My argument would be that Shakespeare paints Caska as he does so as to propose a critique of Cynicism in particular and of Christianity in particular to the extent to which Christianity might not rise above the tendency to be Cynical or to be only a moral religion. That Shakespeare can be a harsh critic of problematic Christianity is obvious from Measure for Measure. That he is not an unconditional critic of Christianity can be seen in As You Like It. Moreover, that Cynicism is a concern for Shakespeare elsewhere can be seen further in Timon of Athens.

²⁴ Scene 2, 333.

²⁵ Scene 2, 333-334.

²⁶ Scene 2, 348.

²⁷ Scene 2, 348-349.

²⁸ Scene 2, 350-351.

²⁹ Scene 3, 401-402.

³⁰ See Dudley (p. 97): "The 'End' . . . of Zeno's system is defined in the famous formula 'Life in accordance with the law of Nature' . . . here Zeno is borrowing and expanding the . . . of the Cynics, which is 'Life in Accordance with virtue' . . . . The Cynics regarded . . . but the . . . of Zeno is an altogether deeper conception and . . . meant obedience to Universal Law, much as did Heracleitus' precept . . . .

³¹ Scene 3, 426-430.

³² Scene 3, 431-433.

³³ It might be argued that here Shakespeare is somewhat unfair to Cicero in particular, as Cicero may not have been so obviously resigning as were other Stoics such as Epictetus. Yet, Caska's counter of Cicero's epistemology would clearly highlight this Stoic self-contradiction in principle, a self-contradiction which Shakespeare may well have recognized by reading another work from Plutarch bearing that very title: On Stoic Self-Contradictions, excerpts from which have been most recently reproduced in Hellenistic Philosophy: Introductory Readings, Brad Inwood and L. P. Gerson, trans. (Hackett: Indianapolis, 1988).

³⁴ Scene 3, 441.

³⁵ Scene 3, 442.

³⁶ Scene 3, 443.

³⁷ Again see Leonard's translation of a section of Book II of De Rerum Natura concerning a universe of atoms and voids, which translation could easily have been Shakespeare's: This to maintain by many a fact besides—That in no wise the nature of the world For us was builded by a power divine—So great the faults it stands encumbered with.

³⁸ See the opening lines of Book III of De Rerum Natura.

³⁹ Scene 3, 448.

⁴⁰ Scene 3, 451-453 (emphasis mine).

⁴¹ Lucretius, for one, spoke often of the "dull" wits of people. See Book IV of De Rerum Natura (line 44): Id licet hinc quamvis hebeti cognoscere corde. Cassius appears to apply this sense of "dullness" to anyone who does not have a systematic world-view. Brutus himself suggests that Caska has changed from being a potential thinker of note to one who is simply a Cynical moralizer with no systematic conception of things. Hence Brutus' words to Cassius concerning Caska (Scene 2, 370-371):

What a blunt fellow is this
grown to be.
He was quick Mettle
when he went to Schoole.

⁴² Scene 3, 476.

⁴³ Scene 3, 426-430.

⁴⁴ Scene 3, 487-489.

⁴⁵ Scene 3, 495-498.

⁴⁶ Scene 3, 497-500.

⁴⁷ See Physics of the Stoics, Chapter II.

⁴⁸ See "Letter to Menoeceus," Epicurus, in Greek and Roman Philosophy after Aristotle, Jason L. Saunders, ed. (The Free Press: New York, 1966). Scene 8, 1190. ⁴⁹

⁵⁰ Scene 4, 665-669. Not observing the cosmological import of this scene in light of Caska's greater function in the play, Rymer was wrong to see this scene as utterly superfluous. The scene may be exaggerated, but it is hardly worthless. See The Tragedies of the Last Age Consider'd and Examin'd (1692), Thomas Rymer (Garland: New York, 1974), pp. 147-182.

⁵¹ See On Free Choice of the Will (De Libero Arbitrio libri tres), Saint Augustine, Anna S. Benjamin and L. H. Hackstaff, trans. (Bobbs-Merrill: Indianapolis, 1964), Question IV.

⁵² See Leviathan, Thomas Hobbes (Oxford Univ. Press, 1947).

⁵³ See any number of statements on the part of Nietzsche on this topic, representative of which would be 358 in Die Froehliche Wissenschaft, Friedrich Nietzsche, Wilhelm Goldmann (Muenchen, 1977), pp. 218-221; or this statement: "It has always been not faith but the freedom from faith, that half-stoical and smiling unconcern with the seriousness of faith, that enraged slaves in their masters—against their masters." See 47 in Beyond Good and Evil, Friedrich Nietzsche, Walter Kaufmann, trans. (Vintage: New York, 1966), p. 61.