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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 20 November 2018
Two difficult passages in the second act of Shakespeare's Julius Caesar can be illuminated if each is interpreted as an emblem. Brutus’ troublesome first soliloquy and the strange dialogue among three conspirators about where the sun rises are both moments of great moral intensity; Brutus meditates on the necessity of assassinating Caesar in the first passage and commits himself to the conspiracy during the second. We might plausibly look to iconography as a perspective on such morally intense moments; emblems, certainly, are in keeping with the pageantry, symbolic statuary, ritual, and solemn moral utterance which permeate this play.
1 II.i.13-15. Quotations from Shakespeare in both parts of the article are from the Pelican Complete Works (1969), General Editor Alfred Harbage; Julius Caesar, ed. S. F.Johnson.
2 An emblem from Joachim and Ludwig Camerarius’ Symbolorum et Emblematum ex Aquatilibus et Reptilibus Desumptorum Centuria Quarta (1604) shows three serpents emerging from hibernation into the bright sunshine; another from Jacob Cats's Proteus (1627) shows a serpent basking in the sun while a spider descends on a thread to sting it. See Henkel, Arthur und Schone, Albrecht, Emblemata: Handbuch zur Sinnbildkunst des XVI. und XVII. Jahrhunderts, Stuttgart: J. B. Metzler, 1967 Google Scholar, cols. 632, 633. The dates of these two emblems leave source questions out of consideration, but such analogues suggest the validity of regarding Brutus’ soliloquy emblematically.
3 T. S. Dorsch calls it ‘structurally a parenthesis’ and suggests that it may have been Shakespeare's afterthought (Arden ed., 1955, p. 34).
4 D. J. Palmer has argued recently that Brutus is damned by his metaphor here—that his use of metaphorical language indicates that he is abandoning reason for passion—see ‘Tragic Error in Julius Caesar,’ SQ, 21 (1970), 399-409 (403 esp.). By this logic nearly all of Shakespeare's characters are slaves of passion, since nearly all use figurative language; to treat Brutus as if he were a backsliding member of the Royal Society is to negate the indirections of imaginative literature.
5 See Biggins, Dennis, ‘Scorpions, Serpents, and Treachery in Macbeth,’ ShStud, 1 (1965), 29–36 Google Scholar for evidence other than that to be presented here.
6 This iconographical tradition is traceable to the Venerable Bede; see Hankins, John E., Shakespeare s Derived Imagery (Lawrence, Kansas, 1953), pp. 243–244 Google Scholar. My colleague Fred Ahl has pointed out to me a curious analogue in Statius (Thebaid 1, 596-600); Apollo devises a monstrous serpent ‘cui virginis ora pectoraque.’ Edward Topsell speaks of the treachery of the scorpion, ‘the Countenance whereof is fawning, and Virgin-like … Notwithstanding the fair face, it beareth a sharp sting in the tail …'; History of Four-footed Beasts and Serpents, ed. of 1658, sig. Sss4v (passage cited by Biggins).
7 92-93. L. J. Ross has demonstrated the importance of this passage for the connotations of strawberries in the Renaissance; he reproduces serpent-strawberry emblems from M. Claudius Paradin's Heroicall Devis:s (1591) and Joachim Camerarius’ Symboloru & etnblematum ex re herberaria desuntorum centuria una collecta (1654) (the Paradin emblem— French ed. of 1562—also appears in Green, Henry, Shakespeare and the Emblem Writers [London, 1870], p. 340)Google Scholar. See ‘The Meaning of Strawberries in Shakespeare,’ SRen, 7 (1960), 225-240.
8 Shakespeare makes various conventional references to the duplicitous forked tongue of serpents and adders which are not relevant to the passage in JC; Hamlet's bitter indication that he has seen malice through the appearance of friendship in Rosencrantz and Guildenstern is more to the point: ‘There's letters sealed, and my two schoolfellows, / Whom I will trust as I will adders fanged, / They bear the mandate’ (Ham. 111.iv.203- 205). Shakespeare's most striking use of the disguised serpent is, of course, Cleopatra's ‘aspic’ beneath the fig leaves, but here the source is Plutarch's ‘Life of Marcus Antonius.'
9 From the facsimile ed. by Henry Green, London, 1866. In the margin Whitney gives as his locus classicus Ovid's Epistulae ex Ponto II, vi,9-12, where the thought is similar, but the metaphor is strangely different—seafaring.
10 Shakespeare and the Emblem Writers, London, 1870. Whitney's source in Johannes Sambucus is no closer to Shakespeare and perhaps further, since its verse contains imagery (a burning house from Horace's Epistles, bald Opportunity, an open window) which is not in the play; see Henkel and Schone, cols. 630-631.
11 John D. Rea believed that the adder here is a translation from some Latin play in which Caesar was referred to punningly as regulus: diminutive of rex / Latin for basilisk, or crowned serpent; ‘Julius Caesar II, i, 10-34,’ MLN, 37 (1922), 374-376.
12 One further bit of adder folklore is curious in the context of JC. Adders were proverbially deaf to good opinion from the locus classicus in Ps. lviii: the ungodly ‘are as venomous as the poison of a serpent, * even like the deaf adder, that stoppeth her ears; / Which refusetli to hear the voice of the charmer, * charm he never so wisely’ (vv. 4-5, Book of Common Prayer). See, e.g., Topsell, op. cit., sig. Hhh3: ‘Serpents and Adders, especially deaf Adders, signifie unrepentant wicked men… .’ Cf. Margaret, when Henry VI refuses to hear her plea of innocence after the murder of Duke Humphrey: ‘Look on me. / What? Art thou like the adder waxen deaf?’ (2H6 m.ii.75-76); also Hector, explaining why young men like Paris and Troilus are ‘unfit to hear moral philosophy': ‘for pleasure and revenge / Have ears more deaf than adders to the voice / Of any true decision’ (Tro. n.ii.171-173). Caesar, of course, is deaf in I.ii; anyone remembering the proverb (see M. P. Tilley's Dictionary s.v. adder) would be the more likely here in n.i to think Caesar incorrigible, and to agree with Brutus’ judgment that ‘it must be by his death.’ For other kinds of evidence that Brutus’ fear of tyranny in Caesar is well founded, see Bernard R. Breyer, ‘A New Look at Julius Caesar,’ in Essays in Honor of Walter Clyde Curry, Vanderbilt Studies in the Humanities, 11 (Nashville, Term., 1954), pp. 161-180; Ribner, Irving, ‘Political Issues in Julius Caesar,’ JEGP, 56 (1957), 10–22 Google Scholar; Velz, John W., ‘Clemency, Will, and Just Cause injulius Caesar,’ ShS, 22 (1969), 109–118 Google Scholar.
13 My student, Mark Jorjorian, has pointed out to me the further irony that immediately after Brutus has instructed the conspirators in the importance and efficacy of moral disguise Portia enters to tell Brutus that he has revealed his inner turmoil to her by his ‘ungentle looks’ (II.i.237-255).
14 ‘Power and Spirit in julius Caesar,’ UR, 36 (1970), 307-314.
15 It is one of a number of onstage private conversations in the play. Caesar's famous characterization of Cassius is an aside to Antony (I.ii.190-214); Cassius warns Brutus in an aside against letting Antony speak in Caesar's funeral (III.i.231-243); Brutus draws Lucilius aside from Pindarus for words about Cassius’ demeanor (iv.ii. 13-27); Cassius speaks apart to Messala about his new belief in portents while Brutus is having a private word with Lucilius which we never hear (v.i.69-92); we might think of Cassius’ long seduction of Brutus in l.ii as an extended aside from the Lupercalian games taking place offstage. It is plausible to suppose that the clandestine conspiracy suggested the motif of private dialogue to Shakespeare.
16 Rymer, Thomas, A Short View of Tragedy; It's Original, Excellency, and Corruption (London, 1693)Google Scholar, sig. L4v-L5.
17 Lewis Theobald, edition of 1733, Vol. vr, sig. Lv.
18 MS notes in the margin of a copy of Theobald (in the Folger Shakespeare Library), ibid.
19 New Illustrations of the Life, Studies, and Writings of Shakespeare (London, 1845), 11 Google Scholar, 150.
20 Michael Macmillan, Arden ed. (1902/27); H. N. Hudson, ed. (1908/35); T. S. Dorsch, Arden ed. (1955).
21 Southwell, Michael G., ‘Dawn in Brutus’ Orchard,’ ELN, 5 (1967), 91–98.Google Scholar
22 ‘Brutus, Virtue, and Will,’ SQ, 10 (1959), 367-379 (368 esp.).
23 David L. Carson believes that what the conspirators mistake for dawn is ‘exhalations whizzing in the air’ (n.i.44-45), which reach their greatest intensity as the conspiracy is ratified; see ‘The Dramatic Importance of Prodigies injulius Caesar, Act II, Scene i,’ ELN, 2 (1965). 177-180.
24 I am grateful to my colleague Joseph Moldenhauer for the suggestion that led to the interpretation proposed here.
25 If Shakespeare is an emblematist here, he is apparently an innovator: the emblems under ‘aufgehende Sonne’ in Henkel and Schöne (see above, n. 2), cols. 18-19, are not relevant.
26 Walker, Roy, ‘The Northern Star: An Essay on the Roman Plays,’ SQ, 2 (1951), 287–293 Google Scholar.
27 See Hapgood, Robert, ‘Speak Hands for Me: Gesture as Language in Julius Caesar,’ DramS, 5 (1966), 162–170 Google Scholar.