Shakespeare's Tragedy Of Julius Caesar [antikvár]

" The piece of * Julius Caesar/ to complete the action, requires to be continued to the fall of Brutus and Cassius. Caesar is not the hero of the piece, but Brutus. The amiable beauty of his character, his feeling and patriotic heroism, are portrayed with peculiar care. Yet the poet has pointed out with great nicety the superiority of Cassius oyer Brutus in independent volition and discernment in judging of human affairs; that the latter, fromthe purity of his mind, and his conscientious love of justice, is unfit to be the head of a party in a state entirely corrupted ; and that these very faults give an unfortunate turn to the cause of the conspirators. In the part of Caesar, several ostentatious speeches have been censured as unsuitable. But as he never appears in action, wc have no other measure of his greatness than the impression which he makes upon the rest of the characters, and his peculiar confidence in himself. ^ In this, Caesar was by no means deficient,as welearn from history and hisown writings; but he displayed it more in the easy ridicule of his enemies than in pompous discourses. The theatrical effect of this play is injured by a partial falling off of the last two acts,compared with the preceding, in external splendour and rapidity. The first appearance of Caesar in festal robes, when the music stops, and all are silent whenever he opens his mouth, and when the few words which he utters are received as oracles, is truly magnificent; the conspiracy is a true conspiracy, which, in stolen interviews and in the dead of night, prepares the blow which is to be struck in open day, and which is to change the constitution of the world ;-the confused thronging before the murder of Caesar, the general agitation even of the perpetrators after the deed, are all portrayed with most masterly skill; with the funeral procession and the speech of Antony, the effect reaches its utmost height. Ccesar's shade is more powerful to avenge his fall than he himself was to guard against it. After the overthrow of the external splendour and greatness of the conqueror and ruler of the world, the intrinsic grandeur of character of Brutus and Cassius is all that remains to fill the stage and occupy the minds of the spectators : suitably to their name, as the last of the Romans, they stand there, in some degree alone ; and the forming of a great and hazardous determination is more powerfully calculated to excite our expectation, than the supporting the Consequences of the deed with heroic firmness" schlegel.