'A Roman's part': Ciceronian decorum

The peculiar quality of Roman constancy in Julius Caesar, I have suggested, derives from the mingling of its Senecan and Ciceronian definitions. While Senecan Stoic constancy involves an element of pretence, it is Cicero who explicitly recommended his readers to model their behaviour on 'Roman actors'. Shakespeare's Romans, however, take from Cicero's image not its ostensible point—the need to choose appropriate roles—but rather its implications of externality and performance.

For Cicero, every human being has three personae or roles which must be played consistently—the role of a human being, the role of oneself as an individual, and the social role—but the first two must take precedence over the last. In Julius Caesar—from the opening lines in which Flavius and Murellus berate the plebeians for violating decorum by appearing on the street 'without the sign of [their] profession' (1. 1. 4-5)—the social role is primary.³⁶ Shakespeare's Romans are less concerned with 'play[ing] the man well and duely' (in Montaigne's phrase), or with knowing themselves, than with being consistently Roman, playing 'a Roman's part' (5. 3. 88).

Even individual identity becomes a social role. Names such as 'Brutus' and 'Caesar' become the labels of a persona, a publicly defined role which the bearer of the name must play.³⁷ We see this most clearly in the device which John W. Velz has usefully labelled 'illeism', by which characters refer to themselves (or their listeners) in the third person.³⁸ Illeism is used most often by Caesar—'Caesar is turned to hear' (1. 2. 19), 'Caesar shall forth' (2. 2. 10), 'Shall Caesar send a lie?' (2. 2. 65)—but also by Brutus, Cassius, Antony, Casca, Portia, and others. Its effect is to suggest the speaker looking at himself or herself from the outside. When Caesar says, 'Caesar should be a beast without a heart / If he should stay at home today for fear' (2. 2. 42-3), he means that this is what others would say of him. When Brutus says that 'poor Brutus, with himself at war, / forgets the shows of love to other men' (1. 2. 48-9), he is concerned with how his friends will 'construe' his neglect of them.

In such cases the name stands for an ideal self which the speaker must consistently live up to. Caesar must be valiant, Brutus wise, Portia constant, in order to be themselves. 'Shall Caesar send a lie?' implies that Caesar, being Caesar, cannot stoop to such an act. Portia tells Brutus that he is acting out of character ('I should not know you Brutus'), and, when he tries to use illness as an excuse, responds unanswerably, 'Brutus is wise, and were he not in health / He would embrace the means to come by it' (2. 1. 254, 257-8). Brutus, being Brutus, cannot act as unwisely as he claims to be doing.

The relationship between person and name is defined most sharply by Caesar. Advised by Antony not to fear Cassius, he retorts,

I fear him not.
Yet if my name were liable to fear,
I do not know the man I should avoid
So soon as that spare Cassius.

(1.2. 199-202)

He goes on to analyse shrewdly why Cassius is dangerous, yet ends by insisting, 'I rather tell thee what is to be feared / Than what I fear, for always I am Caesar' (212-13). 'Caesar' by definition cannot fear. In asserting 'always I am Caesar', Caesar is making the Stoic claim to be unus idemque inter diversa, always the same. This is not exactly a claim to be 'true to himself (in a sense he is being false to himself, since his earnest denials betray that he does indeed fear Cassius), but rather to be true to his role. 'Caesar' is a publicly assumed role, which Caesar the man must play with decorum and 'formal constancy'. The range of actions possible to him is circumscribed by his role; to allow others to say 'Lo, Caesar is afraid' (2. 2. 101) would be a violation of decorum.

To see one's actions in this way from the outside can be a means of avoiding personal responsibility. When Caesar announces what 'Caesar' thinks, he is not expressing his personal feelings but issuing a press statement about a public figure. His shifts in 2. 2 between third person ('Caesar shall forth') and first person ('I will stay at home') suggest his wavering between the vulnerable human being and the immutable public Caesar. Similarly Brutus, while debating with himself over the murder, speaks of himself as T; having made the decision, he slips self-protectively into the third person:

O Rome, I make thee promise,
If the redress will follow, thou receivest
Thy full petition at the hand of Brutus.

(2. 1. 56-8)

Representing himself as Rome sees him, as a public figure, he avoids the personal implications of the direct statement 'I shall kill Caesar.'

In some ways the Romans of Julius Caesar are acting out Cicero's concept of decorum. They see themselves as actors, conceive of virtue as the consistent playing of a part, and are intensely concerned with aequabilitas, believing that 'ther is nothing more seemely than an evennesse in all mans lyfe, and everye of his doinges'. They neglect, however, the rest of Cicero's sentence: ' . . . which you can not keepe, if you counterfette an others nature, and lette passe your owne' (1. 111). Lacking self-knowledge, they try instead to act artificial parts imposed on them by their society, the expectations of others, and their own moral aspirations. Casca, an extreme and semi-comic example, seems a man without a self, who changes his personae (obsequious courtier, laid-back cynic, superstitious omen-monger, Stoic patriot) as rapidly as he changes his opinions.³⁹ Others show a clearer tension between natural self and role: Caesar shows fitful glimpses of human warmth and weakness behind the mask of being 'always . . . Caesar'; 'gentle Portia' (2. 1. 277) is crushed by her attempts to live up to the role of Brutus' wife and Cato's daughter.

The tension is clearest in Brutus, the gentle philosopher who turns himself into a political assassin, despite his sense that he is being made to 'seek within [him]self for that which is not in [him]'. He is drawn away from his true self by temptations which Cicero warns against: family tradition, the influence of others, the pressure of public opinion, and, most of all, what Cicero singles out as the greatest enemy of true decorum: the desire to take up a noble role without considering whether one is fitted for it—'for neither is it to anye purpose to fight againste nature nor to ensue any thynge that ye can not atteine' (1. 110). The strain of Brutus' fight against his own nature finally leads him to embrace death with relief.

The most successful characters in Julius Caesar are those who eschew consistency and treat their roles as masks to be manipulated and discarded. Both Cassius (in the earlier scenes) and the theatre-loving Antony play with the possibility of alternative roles: 'If I were Brutus now, and he were Cassius . . . ' (1. 2. 314); 'But were I Brutus, / And Brutus Antony . . . ' (3. 2. 221-2). Refusing (in Montaigne's words) to treat a 'vizard or apparance' as a 'real essence' (3. 10), they avoid the rigidity of a Brutus or a Caesar. Of course, the flexibility of an Antony has its own dangers. Antony and Cleopatra will suggest that the future belongs to Octavius, who maintains his role perfectly because, as far as we can see, he has no identity outside it.