Et Tu Queen Elizabeth? An Analysis of Fears of Roman Tyranny
In 1599 Elizabethan England

 

ERH 321
Date Due: 03, May2019
Date Sub.: 03, May 2019
Help received: Scholarly Sources
Draft Five
Bryant Smilie

William Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar is a play whose main theme is dotted with references that reflect the fears many people in England may have had of Queen Elizabeth’s death bringing an end to the stabilizing and absolute reign of the Tudor dynasty. They feared her death would open the door of the populace supporting the rise of an enterprising tyrant, who instead of knowing the limits of their power and recognizing that there are events they simply cannot control, would introduce extreme social instability into the nation and continue to convince the people of their own command over the ensuing chaos. Instead of accusing Queen Elizabeth herself of being a tyrant who would bring chaos to the nation upon her death, according to Stephen Greenblatt, Shakespeare seems to use his play to pose the question of how such cherished governmental institutions suddenly become so fragile, with large numbers of people suddenly flocking to support the rise of a tyrannical character (1). This analysis of Julius Caesar will deeply explore the play’s political conflict as a way to show how English Politics during this time inherently favored the absolute monarchial rule wielded by Queen Elizabeth, and the concern many felt for what they would do after the childless monarch passed away without naming an heir. By exploring specific scenes in Shakespeare’s work that emphasize the fears many prominent members in English society had of the ‘masses’ offering the crown to an enterprising demagogue, we will see that Shakespeare’s play may have acted as a warning for a society in crisis favoring the rise of individuals who are never in control of the viscous whirlwind spiraling about themselves.
In 1599, Queen Elizabeth was unmarried, childless, and suffered from several health problems; yet she still stubbornly refused to name an heir to the English throne (Greenblatt7). Her refusal to acknowledge that her reign was soon coming to an end raised a resounding alarm among the members of Parliament, who were scrambling to identify a suitable heir to the ailing queen. Around the same time, William Shakespeare had brought the play Julius Caesar to the stage for the first time. Wayne Rebhorn underscores the fact that, while the performance was often seen as a play about the killing of a would-be king, many in England also saw it as depicting a struggle among aristocrats that was aimed at preventing one of their own from transcending their place and destroying the entire system (78). In many ways, the events going on in Julius Caesar’s triumphant return to Rome, such as Flavius and Marullus clearing the streets of Caesar’s fervent supporters alongside Brutus and Cassius eerily remarking on how Caesar has consolidated all the power of the Roman Republic into his own being, embody similar feelings in the members of England’s Parliament. These noblemen were holding the “mirror up to nature” (80) and were haunted by fears of the people flocking to support a candidate for the throne outside of the parliament’s own authority. As Rebhorn points out, many who would have seen the play would have observed the distinct parallels that could be drawn between the Roman Senators Brutus and Cassius and the aristocracy of Elizabethan society (81). Both the Roman senators and the English leaders had become deeply fearful of the prospects of a power vacuum being filled by an ambitious figure would simultaneously challenge the lawful identities of the ruling class while riding on top of a wave of popular support from what they saw as the ignorant and unruly masses.
The opening scenes of Julius Caesar see the victorious general finally returning to Rome after having defeated the remnants of Pompey’s supporters, and successfully bringing the resource-rich Ptolemaic Egypt under the direct influence of the Republic. As Cassius appropriately states, Caesar truly did “bestride the narrow world like a Colossus” (I.ii.134). With these duly elected senators now hidden beneath the massive shadow that is Caesar’s power, Brutus reluctantly asks Casca why the people have cheered three times. “Why there was a crown offered him” Casca replies, “being offered him, he put it by with the back of his hand, thus, and then the people fell a-shouting” (I.ii.221). This moment in the play heavily underscores the fears many of the Roman senators have of the inevitability of Caesar being crowned the King of Rome. Of great concern to them, however, is the fact that it is Marc Antony who, instead of being ordered by the Senate to do so, follows the demands of the people to offer Caesar the crown. The most significant problem with this, as pointed out by Irving Ribner, is that the highest authority in the nation never came close to ordaining Caesar with the powers of a king. He instead derived all of his power by being an “adventurer who, by force, has replaced another adventurer, Pompey, and is now reaping the civil acclaim which had been Pompey’s” (11).
It was with this similar concern in mind that many English nobles viewed their own political situation at the time. While no ambitious individuals tried to lay claim to being Elizabeth’s successor, the sheer number of nations and people that wished to see her Protestant kingdom disappear directly threatened the existing Tudor theory of the royal sovereign acting as God’s agent on Earth, with their lineal descendant being the only person who could take on this authority (11). In short, Queen Elizabeth’s decision to not have a child to name as her heir opened up the possibility of other groups to possibly influence who the successor would be. As shown in Julius Caesar, if Caesar was to be crowned, he would be crowned by the populace instead of any legitimate authority (11). Shakespeare seems to hint at the fact that he believed it was the masses who were the most dangerous group to ever possess such power. It was through the peoples violent and chaotic behavior that the authority and legitimacy of the Senators would be challenged after Caesar’s assassination. Soon, Cassius’s bold declaration to Brutus that he “was born free as Caesar” (I.ii.95) would be put to the ultimate test as he and the rest of the conspirator’s identity as the true leaders of Rome came to blows with the amoral attitudes of Antony, Lepidus, and Octavius and the voracious mob that would support them. It was not the tyrannical rule of Caesar himself that Cassius railed against however, because Caesar never was king, but his decision to rely on the support of the mob to seize an authority that never was meant to be his that left him and the other conspirators with no choice but to assassinate Caesar. Rebhorn reminds us that the English Parliament, much like the Roman senators, possess a shared character of emulating a distinct class of lawmakers who were far above the rest of the rabblement (81). They identified themselves as the sole leaders of their society, and any unexpected event that challenged that identity quickly revealed how fragile their power was and just how precarious their position was if it collided with the career of a would-be tyrant (Ribner 12).
The assassination of Julius Caesar catalyzes a chain of events that would result in Rome once again being plunged into a brutal civil war. Instead of being the saviors of the Republic, Brutus, Cassius and the rest of the conspirators are made out to be men who are taking desperate, painful, and recklessly heroic measures in an attempt to preserve their identity and authority (Greenblatt 2). It is at this point in the play that Shakespeare seems to add an ironic twist to the already-precarious position that Brutus and the rest now find themselves in, and one that reflects directly on the concerns felt by many in England at the time. As Richard Wilson points out, Julius Caesar is a play plagued by the negativity of real and imagined echoes, where the beginning is already haunted by some past omen (129). This sense of echoing omens is easily seen in the scenes immediately following Caesar’s murder, where the conspirators must confront a shocked Marc Antony and decide his fate as well. Brutus having being exclaimed as “the most boldest and best hearts of Rome (III.i.123), requests that Marc Antony be brought before them not as an enemy, but as a friend to the Republic. A shrewder Cassius remarks that he has a “mind that fears him much” (III.i.146), correctly realizing that Antony could immediately claim to be Caesar’s heir if given the chance to speak to the people. Despite Cassius’s insistence to not let Antony speak, Brutus decides that he poses no threat with Caesar being dead, believing that he can win over the people through his own epideictic skills far more effectively than Antony ever could.
At this very moment, the haunting echoes of Caesar’s own hubris ironically reemerge in the play through the actions of Brutus, who has seemingly adopted the same arrogant reassurance and sense of complete security that Caesar had before his death. Rebhorn tells us that all of the aristocrats in the play base their behavior strictly on of some form of emulation. The kind especially shown in the play is one of omnipresent rivalry with one another, in their own competition for preeminence, and in their factionalism, which leads to assassination and civil strife (83). Instead of their actions showing humble service to a superior authority, the Republic itself, Brutus conveys a sense of triumph over those surrounding him just as much as Caesar did upon entering Rome (83). Shakespeare may have used this section of the play to raise warnings against some of the members of the English Parliament itself. If Queen Elizabeth were to suddenly die without naming an heir, the threat posed by Parliament members taking drastic measures in an attempt to preserve the kingdom themselves could be as dangerous as any ambitious general utilizing the masses to place the crown on their own head.
Even with Queen Elizabeth’s court being as strong as it was, the inevitable progression of time ensured that England’s fundamental institutions would remain in a precarious position if there was not a suitable heir to take her place. Her respect for the sanctity of the realm’s political institutions was the strongest deterrence against anyone who sought to subordinate the system under their own influence (Greenblatt 5). Without her or a strong successor present, the potential for a serious social crisis to emerge became increasingly apparent. Many in England would hauntingly hear the echoes of Shakespeare’s Rome in their own time with Shakespeare himself seeming to note that “Not all the echoes of [Rome’s] violent past have been silenced” (Wilson 130). Alternatively, in a society that took such an inherent interest in the history of Rome, England seemed to be helpless to prevent this brutal repetition of history as the fragility of their institutions became extremely obvious.
In Act Three, Scene Two, we see the tension in Rome has reached a fever pitch as Brutus and the conspirators seek to win over the populace to their cause. Throughout the speech, Brutus tries to convince the people of the fact that their main goal in killing Caesar was not to take his place, but to restore the authority of the Senate itself. He declares “not that I loved Caesar less, but that I loved Rome more” (III.ii.20), asking the crowd, “Had you rather Caesar were living and die all slaves, than that Caesar were dead, to all live free men?” (III.ii.21). Caesar had to be killed, according to Brutus, because he aspired to unlawful power, and such power must inevitably corrupt even the most virtuous man and turn him to tyranny (Ribner 13). While it looks as though Brutus has succeeded in winning over the populace, his fateful decision to let Antony speak, allowing him to reveal the will of Caesar he “found,” permits Antony to unleash a vicious mob which steadily chanted, “Revenge! About! Seek! Burn! Fire! Kill! Slay! Let not a traitor live!” (III.ii.201). The mob then released its hatred onto anyone they are able to get their hands on, with Cinna the Poet tragically being cut down simply because of his bad verses. As Ribner suggests, the main villain of the play is not Brutus or Cassius, but the mob itself (14). Many in England already feared the power the mob could have if it was being directed by a capable and enterprising individual. Minor attempts at claiming the throne during Elizabeth’s reign by some political actors combined with the play itself only exacerbated the fear of the “irrationality and fickleness of the mob…[whose] support can never lead to good” (15).
Perhaps the most disturbing result of this mob being unleashed, and the one looked upon with the most concern by Shakespeare and other Englishmen, was what Marc Antony, Lepidus, and Octavius did in the ensuing chaos. In Act Four, Scene One, the new triumvirate implements an intense purge against anyone in Rome who could threaten their control over the state, wantonly suggesting to one another who should and should not be put to death. These three men especially show the existence of individuals that Rebhorn states possess an identity of the imperial self. These men “[show] an urge to personal aggrandizement, a will to extend the terrain of the self until it entirely dominates the human landscape like the Colossus Caesar” (85). It was with this notion in mind that many people in England during 1599 fearfully looked to the near future. The potential for Elizabeth’s death to open up a destabilizing power vacuum that would allow people who identified with this imperial self and only showed contempt for England’s cherished institutions was something Shakespeare may have been warning about the most in Julius Caesar. As Ribner soberingly reminds us, the divinely constituted Tudor monarchy in which Shakespeare unquestionably believed, was directly threatened by the growing power of a debased populace that could be easily swayed and informed by the spirit of triumphant Caesarism (14).
William Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar is a play whose core theme evokes the fears many in England had of what would happen if Queen Elizabeth died without naming a successor. Many saw the play as a reflection of their own society, where it was inevitable that their powerful yet fragile form of government would come crashing down upon itself and lead to an era of moral corruption, massive waste of treasure, and substantial loss of life that would take years to heal (Greenblatt 2). Shakespeare seems to use the play as a way to begin sounding the alarms on the threat posed not only by ambitious individuals who would possibly take advantage of the queen’s death to seize control, but also of Members of England’s Parliament who would only encourage a social crisis by confusing their own authority with that instilled in the royal sovereign. A recent history of dangerous revolts in England made this fear all too apparent for many who worryingly look up to their ailing queen. The arrival of Mary, Queen of Scots, in England in 1569 after her overthrow quickly showed how divided the loyalties actually were in Elizabeth’s court, with several northern Catholic lords flocking to support Mary as Henry VII’s true successor. (Hodgon 171). The only thing that prevented a serious Catholic revolt from erupting was the brutal efficiency at which Elizabeth’s secret police eliminated the plot’s ring leaders. Only a year before her death, the Earl of Essex would attempt an honor revolt that proved threatening enough for the Crown to issue a proclamation of treason against several prominent noble families (171). The most disturbing aspect of these revolts however, was the fact that a substantial amount of people had shown keen interest in these individuals claims to the crown. The greatest deterrent to such a threat was the absolute and centralizing authority which was centered upon Queen Elizabeth herself. Although James VI was name Elizabeth’s heir and the nation seemed secure, it would only be a few decades later that England would descend into a period of intense civil war and bloodshed. If Ribner is right in saying that “the history play used events in the past to mirror contemporary political problems” (14), then Julius Caesar eerily predicted what awaited Elizabethan England after the death of their queen.

Works Cited
Greenblatt, Stephen. Tyrant: Shakespeare on Politics. New York: W.W. Norton & Company Ltd, 2018. Print.
Rebhorn, Wayne. “The Crisis of the Aristocracy in Julius Caesar”. Renaissance Quarterly vol. 43, no. 1, 1990, pp. 75-112. JSTOR.
Ribner, Irving. “Political Issues in Julius Caesar”. The Journal of English and German Philology, vol.56, no.1, 1957, pp. 10-22. JSTOR.
Shakespeare, William. Julius Caesar A Longman Cultural Edition. Edited by Oliver Arnold, Pearson Education, 2010.
Shakespeare, William. The First Part of King Henry the Fourth. Edited by Barbara Hogdon, Bedford Books, 1997.
Wilson, Richard. “O World: The Echoes of Rome in Julius Caesar”. Free Will: Art and Power on Shakespeare’s Stage. New York: Manchester University Press, 2013. 128-199. Print.