_High noon. Festival and military pageant on the esplanade before the
palace. In the east harbor Caesar's galley, so gorgeously decorated
that it seems to be rigged with flowers, is along-side the quay, close
to the steps Apollodorus descended when he embarked with the carpet. A
Roman guard is posted there in charge of a gangway, whence a red
floorcloth is laid down the middle of the esplanade, turning off to
the north opposite the central gate in the palace front, which shuts
in the esplanade on the south side. The broad steps of the gate,
crowded with Cleopatra's ladies, all in their gayest attire, are like
a flower garden. The façade is lined by her guard, officered by the
same gallants to whom Bel Affris announced the coming of Caesar six
months before in the old palace on the Syrian border. The north side
is lined by Roman soldiers, with the townsfolk on tiptoe behind them,
peering over their heads at the cleared esplanade, in which the
officers stroll about, chatting. Among these are Belzanor and the
Persian; also the Centurion, vinewood cudgel in hand, battle worn,
thick-booted, and much outshone, both socially and decoratively, by
the Egyptian officers._
_Apollodorus makes his way through the townsfolk and calls to the
officers from behind the Roman line._
APOLLODORUS. Hullo! May I pass?
CENTURION. Pass Apollodorus the Sicilian there! (_The soldiers let him
through._)
BELZANOR. Is Caesar at hand?
APOLLODORUS. Not yet. He is still in the market place. I could not
stand any more of the roaring of the soldiers! After half an hour of
the enthusiasm of an army, one feels the need of a little sea air.
PERSIAN. Tell us the news. Hath he slain the priests?
APOLLODORUS. Not he. They met him in the market place with ashes on
their heads and their gods in their hands. They placed the gods at his
feet. The only one that was worth looking at was Apis: a miracle of
gold and ivory work. By my advice he offered the chief priest two
talents for it.
BELZANOR (_appalled_). Apis the all-knowing for two talents! What said
the chief priest?
APOLLODORUS. He invoked the mercy of Apis, and asked for five.
BELZANOR. There will be famine and tempest in the land for this.
PERSIAN. Pooh! Why did not Apis cause Caesar to be vanquished by
Achillas? Any fresh news from the war, Apollodorus?
APOLLODORUS. The little King Ptolemy was drowned.
BELZANOR. Drowned! How?
APOLLODORUS. With the rest of them. Caesar attacked them from three
sides at once and swept them into the Nile. Ptolemy's barge sank.
BELZANOR. A marvelous man, this Caesar! Will he come soon, think you?
APOLLODORUS. He was settling the Jewish question when I left.
_A flourish of trumpets from the north, and commotion among the
townsfolk, announces the approach of Caesar._
PERSIAN. He has made short work of them. Here he comes. (_He hurries
to his post in front of the Egyptian lines._)
BELZANOR (_following him_). Ho there! Caesar comes.
_The soldiers stand at attention, and dress their lines. Apollodorus
goes to the Egyptian line._
CENTURION (_hurrying to the gangway guard_). Attention there! Caesar
comes.
_Caesar arrives in state with Rufio: Britannus following. The soldiers
receive him with enthusiastic shouting._
CAESAR. I see my ship awaits me. The hour of Caesar's farewell to
Egypt has arrived. And now, Rufio, what remains to be done before I
go?
RUFIO (_at his left hand_). You have not yet appointed a Roman
governor for this province.
CAESAR (_Looking whimsically at him, but speaking with perfect
gravity_). What say you to Mithridates of Pergamos, my reliever and
rescuer, the great son of Eupator?
RUFIO. Why, that you will want him elsewhere. Do you forget that you
have some three or four armies to conquer on your way home?
CAESAR. Indeed! Well, what say you to yourself?
RUFIO (_incredulously_). I! I a governor! What are you dreaming of? Do
you not know that I am only the son of a freedman?
CAESAR (_affectionately_). Has not Caesar called you his son?
(_Calling to the whole assembly_) Peace awhile there; and hear me.
THE ROMAN SOLDIERS. Hear Caesar.
CAESAR. Hear the service, quality, rank and name of the Roman
governor. By service, Caesar's shield; by quality, Caesar's friend; by
rank, a Roman soldier. (_The Roman soldiers give a triumphant shout._)
By name, Rufio. (_They shout again._)
RUFIO (_kissing Caesar's hand_). Ay: I am Caesar's shield; but of what
use shall I be when I am no longer on Caesar's arm? Well, no matter--
(_He becomes husky, and turns away to recover himself._)
CAESAR. Where is that British Islander of mine?
BRITANNUS (_coming forward on Caesar's right hand_). Here, Caesar.
CAESAR. Who bade you, pray, thrust yourself into the battle of the
Delta, uttering the barbarous cries of your native land, and affirming
yourself a match for any four of the Egyptians, to whom you applied
unseemly epithets?
BRITANNUS. Caesar: I ask you to excuse the language that escaped me in
the heat of the moment.
CAESAR. And how did you, who cannot swim, cross the canal with us when
we stormed the camp?
BRITANNUS. Caesar: I clung to the tail of your horse.
CAESAR. These are not the deeds of a slave, Britannicus, but of a free
man.
BRITANNUS. Caesar: I was born free.
CAESAR. But they call you Caesar's slave.
BRITANNUS. Only as Caesar's slave have I found real freedom.
CAESAR (_moved_). Well said. Ungrateful that I am, I was about to set
you free; but now I will not part from you for a million talents. (_He
claps him friendly on the shoulder. Britannus, gratified, but a trifle
shamefaced, takes his hand and kisses it sheepishly._)
BELZANOR (_to the Persian_). This Roman knows how to make men serve
him.
PERSIAN. Ay: men too humble to become dangerous rivals to him.
BELZANOR. O subtle one! O cynic!
CAESAR (_seeing Apollodorus in the Egyptian corner and calling to
him_). Apollodorus: I leave the art of Egypt in your charge. Remember:
Rome loves art and will encourage it ungrudgingly.
APOLLODORUS. I understand, Caesar. Rome will produce no art itself;
but it will buy up and take away whatever the other nations produce.
CAESAR. What! Rome produces no art! Is peace not an art? is war not an
art? is government not an art? is civilization not an art? All these
we give you in exchange for a few ornaments. You will have the best of
the bargain. (_Turning to Rufio_) And now, what else have I to do
before I embark? (_Trying to recollect_) There is something I cannot
remember: what _can_ it be? Well, well: it must remain undone: we must
not waste this favorable wind. Farewell, Rufio.
RUFIO. Caesar: I am loth to let you go to Rome without your shield.
There are too many daggers there.
CAESAR. It matters not: I shall finish my life's work on my way back;
and then I shall have lived long enough. Besides: I have always
disliked the idea of dying: I had rather be killed. Farewell.
RUFIO (_with a sigh, raising his hands and giving Caesar up as
incorrigible_). Farewell. (_They shake hands._)
CAESAR (_waving his hand to Apollodorus_). Farewell, Apollodorus, and
my friends, all of you. Aboard!
_The gangway is run out from the quay to the ship. As Caesar moves
towards it, Cleopatra, cold and tragic, cunningly dressed in black,
without ornaments or decoration of any kind, and thus making a
striking figure among the brilliantly dressed bevy of ladies as she
passes through it, comes from the palace and stands on the steps.
Caesar does not see her until she speaks._
CLEOPATRA. Has Cleopatra no part in this leave taking?
CAESAR (_enlightened_). Ah, I _knew_ there was something. (_To Rufio_)
How could you let me forget her, Rufio? (_Hastening to her_) Had I
gone without seeing you, I should never have forgiven myself. (_He
takes her hands, and brings her into the middle of the esplanade. She
submits stonily._) Is this mourning for me?
CLEOPATRA. No.
CAESAR (_remorsefully_). Ah, that was thoughtless of me! It is for
your brother.
CLEOPATRA. No.
CAESAR. For whom, then?
CLEOPATRA. Ask the Roman governor whom you have left us.
CAESAR. Rufio?
CLEOPATRA. Yes: Rufio. (_She points at him with deadly scorn._) He who
is to rule here in Caesar's name, in Caesar's way, according to
Caesar's boasted laws of life.
CAESAR (_dubiously_). He is to rule as he can, Cleopatra. He has taken
the work upon him, and will do it in his own way.
CLEOPATRA. Not in your way, then?
CAESAR (_puzzled_). What do you mean by my way?
CLEOPATRA. Without punishment. Without revenge. Without judgment.
CAESAR (_approvingly_). Ay: that is the right way, the great way, the
only possible way in the end. (_To Rufio_) Believe it, Rufio, if you
can.
RUFIO. Why, I believe it, Caesar. You have convinced me of it long
ago. But look you. You are sailing for Numidia to-day. Now tell me: if
you meet a hungry lion there, you will not punish it for wanting to
eat you?
CAESAR (_wondering what he is driving at_). No.
RUFIO. Nor revenge upon it the blood of those it has already eaten.
CAESAR. No.
RUFIO. Nor judge it for its guiltiness.
CAESAR. No.
RUFIO. What, then, will you do to save your life from it?
CAESAR (_promptly_). Kill it, man, without malice, just as it would
kill me. What does this parable of the lion mean?
RUFIO. Why, Cleopatra had a tigress that killed men at bidding. I
thought she might bid it kill you some day. Well, had I not been
Caesar's pupil, what pious things might I not have done to that
tigress? I might have punished it. I might have revenged Pothinus on
it.
CAESAR (_interjects_). Pothinus!
RUFIO (_continuing_). I might have judged it. But I put all these
follies behind me; and, without malice, only cut its throat. And that
is why Cleopatra comes to you in mourning.
CLEOPATRA (_vehemently_). He has shed the blood of my servant
Ftatateeta. On your head be it as upon his, Caesar, if you hold him
free of it.
CAESAR (_energetically_). On my head be it, then; for it was well
done. Rufio: had you set yourself in the seat of the judge, and with
hateful ceremonies and appeals to the gods handed that woman over to
some hired executioner to be slain before the people in the name of
justice, never again would I have touched your hand without a shudder.
But this was natural slaying: I feel no horror at it.
_Rufio, satisfied, nods at Cleopatra, mutely inviting her to mark
that._
CLEOPATRA (_pettish and childish in her impotence_). No: not when a
Roman slays an Egyptian. All the world will now see how unjust and
corrupt Caesar is.
CAESAR (_taking her handy coaxingly_). Come: do not be angry with me.
I am sorry for that poor Totateeta. (_She laughs in spite of
herself._) Aha! you are laughing. Does that mean reconciliation?
CLEOPATRA (_angry with herself for laughing_). No, _no_, NO!! But it
is so ridiculous to hear you call her Totateeta.
CAESAR. What! As much a child as ever, Cleopatra! Have I not made a
woman of you after all?
CLEOPATRA. Oh, it is you who are a great baby: you make me seem silly
because you will not behave seriously. But you have treated me badly;
and I do not forgive you.
CAESAR. Bid me farewell.
CLEOPATRA. I will not.
CAESAR (_coaxing_). I will send you a beautiful present from Rome.
CLEOPATRA (_proudly_). Beauty from Rome to Egypt indeed! What can Rome
give _me_ that Egypt cannot give me?
APOLLODORUS. That is true, Caesar. If the present is to be really
beautiful, I shall have to buy it for you in Alexandria.
CAESAR. You are forgetting the treasures for which Rome is most
famous, my friend. You cannot buy _them_ in Alexandria.
APOLLODORUS. What are they, Caesar?
CAESAR. Her sons. Come, Cleopatra: forgive me and bid me farewell; and
I will send you a man, Roman from head to heel and Roman of the
noblest; not old and ripe for the knife; not lean in the arms and cold
in the heart; not hiding a bald head under his conqueror's laurels;
not stooped with the weight of the world on his shoulders; but brisk
and fresh, strong and young, hoping in the morning, fighting in the
day, and reveling in the evening. Will you take such an one in
exchange for Caesar?
CLEOPATRA (_palpitating_). His name, his name?
CAESAR. Shall it be Mark Antony? (_She throws herself in his arms._)
RUFIO. You are a bad hand at a bargain, mistress, if you will swap
Caesar for Antony.
CAESAR. So now you are satisfied.
CLEOPATRA. You will not forget.
CAESAR. I will not forget. Farewell: I do not think we shall meet
again. Farewell. (_He kisses her on the forehead. She is much affected
and begins to sniff. He embarks._)
THE ROMAN SOLDIERS (_as he sets his foot on the gangway_). Hail,
Caesar; and farewell!
_He reaches the ship and returns Rufio's wave of the hand._
APOLLODORUS (_to Cleopatra_). No tears, dearest Queen: they stab your
servant to the heart. He will return some day.
CLEOPATRA. I hope not. But I can't help crying, all the same. (_She
waves her handkerchief to Caesar; and the ship begins to move._)
THE ROMAN SOLDIERS (_drawing their swords and raising them in the
air_). Hail, Caesar!
NOTES TO CAESAR AND CLEOPATRA
CLEOPATRA'S CURE FOR BALDNESS
For the sake of conciseness in a hurried situation I have made
Cleopatra recommend rum. This, I am afraid, is an anachronism: the
only real one in the play. To balance it, I give a couple of the
remedies she actually believed in. They are quoted by Galen from
Cleopatra's book on Cosmetic.
"For bald patches, powder red sulphuret of arsenic and take it up with
oak gum, as much as it will bear. Put on a rag and apply, having
soaped the place well first. I have mixed the above with a foam of
nitre, and it worked well."
Several other receipts follow, ending with: "The following is the best
of all, acting for fallen hairs, when applied with oil or pomatum;
acts also for falling off of eyelashes or for people getting bald all
over. It is wonderful. Of domestic mice burnt, one part; of vine rag
burnt, one part; of horse's teeth burnt, one part; of bear's grease
one; of deer's marrow one; of reed bark one. To be pounded when dry,
and mixed with plenty of honey til it gets the consistency of honey;
then the bear's grease and marrow to be mixed (when melted), the
medicine to be put in a brass flask, and the bald part rubbed til it
sprouts."
Concerning these ingredients, my fellow-dramatist, Gilbert Murray,
who, as a Professor of Greek, has applied to classical antiquity the
methods of high scholarship (my own method is pure divination), writes
to me as follows: "Some of this I don't understand, and possibly Galen
did not, as he quotes your heroine's own language. Foam of nitre is, I
think, something like soapsuds. Reed bark is an odd expression. It
might mean the outside membrane of a reed: I do not know what it ought
to be called. In the burnt mice receipt I take that you first mixed
the solid powders with honey, and then added the grease. I expect
Cleopatra preferred it because in most of the others you have to
lacerate the skin, prick it, or rub it till it bleeds. I do not know
what vine rag is. I translate literally."
APPARENT ANACHRONISMS
The only way to write a play which shall convey to the general public
an impression of antiquity is to make the characters speak blank verse
and abstain from reference to steam, telegraphy, or any of the
material conditions of their existence. The more ignorant men are, the
more convinced are they that their little parish and their little
chapel is an apex which civilization and philosophy have painfully
struggled up the pyramid of time from a desert of savagery. Savagery,
they think, became barbarism; barbarism became ancient civilization;
ancient civilization became Pauline Christianity; Pauline Christianity
became Roman Catholicism; Roman Catholicism became the Dark Ages; and
the Dark Ages were finally enlightened by the Protestant instincts of
the English race. The whole process is summed up as Progress with a
capital P. And any elderly gentleman of Progressive temperament will
testify that the improvement since he was a boy is enormous.
Now if we count the generations of Progressive elderly gentlemen
since, say, Plato, and add together the successive enormous
improvements to which each of them has testified, it will strike us at
once as an unaccountable fact that the world, instead of having been
improved in 67 generations out all recognition, presents, on the
whole, a rather less dignified appearance in Ibsen's Enemy of the
People than in Plato's Republic. And in truth, the period of time
covered by history is far too short to allow of any perceptible
progress in the popular sense of Evolution of the Human Species. The
notion that there has been any such Progress since Caesar's time (less
than 20 centuries) is too absurd for discussion. All the savagery,
barbarism, dark ages and the rest of it of which we have any record as
existing in the past, exists at the present moment. A British
carpenter or stonemason may point out that he gets twice as much money
for his labor as his father did in the same trade, and that his
suburban house, with its bath, its cottage piano, its drawingroom
suite, and its album of photographs, would have shamed the plainness
of his grandmother's. But the descendants of feudal barons, living in
squalid lodgings on a salary of fifteen shillings a week instead of in
castles on princely revenues, do not congratulate the world on the
change. Such changes, in fact, are not to the point. It has been
known, as far back as our records go, that man running wild in the
woods is different to man kennelled in a city slum; that a dog seems
to understand a shepherd better than a hewer of wood and drawer of
water can understand an astronomer; and that breeding, gentle nurture
and luxurious food and shelter will produce a kind of man with whom
the common laborer is socially incompatible. The same thing is true of
horses and dogs. Now there is clearly room for great changes in the
world by increasing the percentage of individuals who are carefully
bred and gently nurtured, even to finally making the most of every man
and woman born. But that possibility existed in the days of the
Hittites as much as it does to-day. It does not give the slightest
real support to the common assumption that the civilized
contemporaries of the Hittites were unlike their civilized descendants
to-day.
This would appear the tritest commonplace if it were not that the
ordinary citizen's ignorance of the past combines with his
idealization of the present to mislead and flatter him. Our latest
book on the new railway across Asia describes the dulness of the
Siberian farmer and the vulgar pursepride of the Siberian man of
business without the least consciousness that the sting of
contemptuous instances given might have been saved by writing simply
"Farmers and provincial plutocrats in Siberia are exactly what they
are in England." The latest professor descanting on the civilization
of the Western Empire in the fifth century feels bound to assume, in
the teeth of his own researches, that the Christian was one sort of
animal and the Pagan another. It might as well be assumed, as indeed
it generally is assumed by implication, that a murder committed with a
poisoned arrow is different to a murder committed with a Mauser rifle.
All such notions are illusions. Go back to the first syllable of
recorded time, and there you will find your Christian and your Pagan,
your yokel and your poet, helot and hero, Don Quixote and Sancho,
Tamino and Papageno, Newton and bushman unable to count eleven, all
alive and contemporaneous, and all convinced that they are heirs of
all the ages and the privileged recipients of _the_ truth (all others
damnable heresies), just as you have them to-day, flourishing in
countries each of which is the bravest and best that ever sprang at
Heaven's command from out of the azure main.
Again, there is the illusion of "increased command over Nature,"
meaning that cotton is cheap and that ten miles of country road on a
bicycle have replaced four on foot. But even if man's increased
command over Nature included any increased command over himself (the
only sort of command relevant to his evolution into a higher being),
the fact remains that it is only by running away from the increased
command over Nature to country places where Nature is still in
primitive command over Man that he can recover from the effects of the
smoke, the stench, the foul air, the overcrowding, the racket, the
ugliness, the dirt which the cheap cotton costs us. If manufacturing
activity means Progress, the town must be more advanced than the
country; and the field laborers and village artizans of to-day must be
much less changed from the servants of Job than the proletariat of
modern London from the proletariat of Caesar's Rome. Yet the cockney
proletarian is so inferior to the village laborer that it is only by
steady recruiting from the country that London is kept alive. This
does not seem as if the change since Job's time were Progress in the
popular sense: quite the reverse. The common stock of discoveries in
physics has accumulated a little: that is all.
One more illustration. Is the Englishman prepared to admit that the
American is his superior as a human being? I ask this question because
the scarcity of labor in America relatively to the demand for it has
led to a development of machinery there, and a consequent "increase of
command over Nature" which makes many of our English methods appear
almost medieval to the up-to-date Chicagoan. This means that the
American has an advantage over the Englishman of exactly the same
nature that the Englishman has over the contemporaries of Cicero. Is
the Englishman prepared to draw the same conclusion in both cases? I
think not. The American, of course, will draw it cheerfully; but I
must then ask him whether, since a modern negro has a greater "command
over Nature" than Washington had, we are also to accept the
conclusion, involved in his former one, that humanity has progressed
from Washington to the _fin de siècle_ negro.
Finally, I would point out that if life is crowned by its success and
devotion in industrial organization and ingenuity, we had better
worship the ant and the bee (as moralists urge us to do in our
childhood), and humble ourselves before the arrogance of the birds of
Aristophanes.
My reason then for ignoring the popular conception of Progress in
Caesar and Cleopatra is that there is no reason to suppose that any
Progress has taken place since their time. But even if I shared the
popular delusion, I do not see that I could have made any essential
difference in the play. I can only imitate humanity as I know it.
Nobody knows whether Shakespear thought that ancient Athenian joiners,
weavers, or bellows menders were any different from Elizabethan ones;
but it is quite certain that he could not have made them so, unless,
indeed, he had played the literary man and made Quince say, not "Is
all our company here?" but "Bottom: was not that Socrates that passed
us at the Piræus with Glaucon and Polemarchus on his way to the house
of Kephalus." And so on.
CLEOPATRA
Cleopatra was only sixteen when Caesar went to Egypt; but in Egypt
sixteen is a riper age than it is in England. The childishness I have
ascribed to her, as far as it is childishness of character and not
lack of experience, is not a matter of years. It may be observed in
our own climate at the present day in many women of fifty. It is a
mistake to suppose that the difference between wisdom and folly has
anything to do with the difference between physical age and physical
youth. Some women are younger at seventy than most women at seventeen.
It must be borne in mind, too, that Cleopatra was a queen, and was
therefore not the typical Greek-cultured, educated Egyptian lady of
her time. To represent her by any such type would be as absurd as to
represent George IV by a type founded on the attainments of Sir Isaac
Newton. It is true that an ordinarily well educated Alexandrian girl
of her time would no more have believed bogey stories about the Romans
than the daughter of a modern Oxford professor would believe them
about the Germans (though, by the way, it is possible to talk great
nonsense at Oxford about foreigners when we are at war with them). But
I do not feel bound to believe that Cleopatra was well educated. Her
father, the illustrious Flute Blower, was not at all a parent of the
Oxford professor type. And Cleopatra was a chip of the old block.
BRITANNUS
I find among those who have read this play in manuscript a strong
conviction that an ancient Briton could not possibly have been like a
modern one. I see no reason to adopt this curious view. It is true
that the Roman and Norman conquests must have for a time disturbed the
normal British type produced by the climate. But Britannus, born
before these events, represents the unadulterated Briton who fought
Caesar and impressed Roman observers much as we should expect the
ancestors of Mr. Podsnap to impress the cultivated Italians of their
time.
I am told that it is not scientific to treat national character as a
product of climate. This only shews the wide difference between common
knowledge and the intellectual game called science. We have men of
exactly the same stock, and speaking the same language, growing in
Great Britain, in Ireland, and in America. The result is three of the
most distinctly marked nationalities under the sun. Racial
characteristics are quite another matter. The difference between a Jew
and a Gentile has nothing to do with the difference between an
Englishman and a German. The characteristics of Britannus are local
characteristics, not race characteristics. In an ancient Briton they
would, I take it, be exaggerated, since modern Britain, disforested,
drained, urbanified and consequently cosmopolized, is presumably less
characteristically British than Caesar's Britain.
And again I ask does anyone who, in the light of a competent knowledge
of his own age, has studied history from contemporary documents,
believe that 67 generations of promiscuous marriage have made any
appreciable difference in the human fauna of these isles? Certainly I
do not.
JULIUS CAESAR
As to Caesar himself, I have purposely avoided the usual anachronism
of going to Caesar's books, and concluding that the style is the man.
That is only true of authors who have the specific literary genius,
and have practised long enough to attain complete self-expression in
letters. It is not true even on these conditions in an age when
literature is conceived as a game of style, and not as a vehicle of
self-expression by the author. Now Caesar was an amateur stylist
writing books of travel and campaign histories in a style so
impersonal that the authenticity of the later volumes is disputed.
They reveal some of his qualities just as the Voyage of a Naturalist
Round the World reveals some of Darwin's, without expressing his
private personality. An Englishman reading them would say that Caesar
was a man of great common sense and good taste, meaning thereby a man
without originality or moral courage.
In exhibiting Caesar as a much more various person than the historian
of the Gallic wars, I hope I have not succumbed unconsciously to the
dramatic illusion to which all great men owe part of their reputation
and some the whole of it. I admit that reputations gained in war are
specially questionable. Able civilians taking up the profession of
arms, like Caesar and Cromwell, in middle age, have snatched all its
laurels from opponent commanders bred to it, apparently because
capable persons engaged in military pursuits are so scarce that the
existence of two of them at the same time in the same hemisphere is
extremely rare. The capacity of any conqueror is therefore more likely
than not to be an illusion produced by the incapacity of his
adversary. At all events, Caesar might have won his battles without
being wiser than Charles XII or Nelson or Joan of Arc, who were, like
most modern "self-made" millionaires, half-witted geniuses, enjoying
the worship accorded by all races to certain forms of insanity. But
Caesar's victories were only advertisements for an eminence that would
never have become popular without them. Caesar is greater off the
battle field than on it. Nelson off his quarterdeck was so quaintly
out of the question that when his head was injured at the battle of
the Nile, and his conduct became for some years openly scandalous, the
difference was not important enough to be noticed. It may, however, be
said that peace hath her illusory reputations no less than war. And it
is certainly true that in civil life mere capacity for work--the power
of killing a dozen secretaries under you, so to speak, as a
life-or-death courier kills horses--enables men with common ideas and
superstitions to distance all competitors in the strife of political
ambition. It was this power of work that astonished Cicero as the most
prodigious of Caesar's gifts, as it astonished later observers in
Napoleon before it wore him out. How if Caesar were nothing but a
Nelson and a Gladstone combined! a prodigy of vitality without any
special quality of mind! nay, with ideas that were worn out before he
was born, as Nelson's and Gladstone's were! I have considered that
possibility too, and rejected it. I cannot cite all the stories about
Caesar which seem to me to shew that he was genuinely original; but
let me at least point out that I have been careful to attribute
nothing but originality to him. Originality gives a man an air of
frankness, generosity, and magnanimity by enabling him to estimate the
value of truth, money, or success in any particular instance quite
independently of convention and moral generalization. He therefore
will not, in the ordinary Treasury bench fashion, tell a lie which
everybody knows to be a lie (_and consequently expects him as a matter
of good taste to tell_). His lies are not found out: they pass for
candors. He understands the paradox of money, and gives it away when
he can get most for it: in other words, when its value is least, which
is just when a common man tries hardest to get it. He knows that the
real moment of success is not the moment apparent to the crowd. Hence,
in order to produce an impression of complete disinterestedness and
magnanimity, he has only to act with entire selfishness; and this is
perhaps the only sense in which a man can be said to be _naturally_
great. It is in this sense that I have represented Caesar as great.
Having virtue, he has no need of goodness. He is neither forgiving,
frank, nor generous, because a man who is too great to resent has
nothing to forgive; a man who says things that other people are afraid
to say need be no more frank than Bismarck was; and there is no
generosity in giving things you do not want to people of whom you
intend to make use. This distinction between virtue and goodness is
not understood in England: hence the poverty of our drama in heroes.
Our stage attempts at them are mere goody-goodies. Goodness, in its
popular British sense of self-denial, implies that man is vicious by
nature, and that supreme goodness is supreme martyrdom. Not sharing
that pious opinion, I have not given countenance to it in any of my
plays. In this I follow the precedent of the ancient myths, which
represent the hero as vanquishing his enemies, not in fair fight, but
with enchanted sword, superequine horse and magical invulnerability,
the possession of which, from the vulgar moralistic point of view,
robs his exploits of any merit whatever.
As to Caesar's sense of humor, there is no more reason to assume that
he lacked it than to assume that he was deaf or blind. It is said that
on the occasion of his assassination by a conspiracy of moralists (it
is always your moralist who makes assassination a duty, on the
scaffold or off it), he defended himself until the good Brutus struck
him, when he exclaimed "What! you too, Brutus!" and disdained further
fight. If this be true, he must have been an incorrigible comedian.
But even if we waive this story, or accept the traditional sentimental
interpretation of it, there is still abundant evidence of his
lightheartedness and adventurousness. Indeed it is clear from his
whole history that what has been called his ambition was an instinct
for exploration. He had much more of Columbus and Franklin in him than
of Henry V.
However, nobody need deny Caesar a share, at least, of the qualities I
have attributed to him. All men, much more Julius Caesars, possess all
qualities in some degree. The really interesting question is whether I
am right in assuming that the way to produce an impression of
greatness is by exhibiting a man, not as mortifying his nature by
doing his duty, in the manner which our system of putting little men
into great positions (not having enough great men in our influential
families to go round) forces us to inculcate, but by simply doing what
he naturally wants to do. For this raises the question whether our
world has not been wrong in its moral theory for the last 2,500 years
or so. It must be a constant puzzle to many of us that the Christian
era, so excellent in its intentions, should have been practically such
a very discreditable episode in the history of the race. I doubt if
this is altogether due to the vulgar and sanguinary sensationalism of
our religious legends, with their substitution of gross physical
torments and public executions for the passion of humanity. Islam,
substituting voluptuousness for torment (a merely superficial
difference, it is true) has done no better. It may have been the
failure of Christianity to emancipate itself from expiatory theories
of moral responsibility, guilt, innocence, reward, punishment, and the
rest of it, that baffled its intention of changing the world. But
these are bound up in all philosophies of creation as opposed to
cosmism. They may therefore be regarded as the price we pay for
popular religion.
End of Project Gutenberg's Caesar and Cleopatra, by George Bernard Shaw