The chorus sings the glories of those who, like Harmodius with his “amiculus,” destroy the tyrants, and the risks these tyrants run.

In the third act Calpurnia, flying in panic to her chamber, is met by her nurse, to whom she discloses the cause of her distress. She has dreamed that Caesar lies dead in her arms covered with blood, and stabbed with many wounds. The nurse points out the vanity of dreams and the unlikelihood of any attempt against one so great and beneficent, whose clemency has changed even foes to friends. Calpurnia, only half comforted, rejoins that she will at least beseech him to remain at home that day, and the chorus prays that misfortune may be averted.

In the fourth act Calpurnia tries her powers of persuasion. To her passionate appeal, her husband answers:

She goes on to enumerate the warning portents, and at length Caesar assents to her prayers since she cannot repress her terrors. But here Decimus Brutus strikes in:

He bids him remember his glory:

O most shameful plight if the world is ruled by Caesar and Caesar by a woman.... What, Caesar, dost thou suppose the Fathers will think if thou bidst them, summoned at thy command, to depart now and to return when better dreams present themselves to Calpurnia. Go rather resolutely and assume a name the Parthians must dread: or if this please thee not, at least go forth, and thyself dismiss the Fathers; let them not think they are slighted and had in derision.[46]

Caesar is bent one way by pity for his wife, another by fear of these taunts; but, at last, leaving Calpurnia to her misgivings, he exclaims:

But yet, since even to fall, so it be but once, is better than to be laden with lasting fear; not if three hundred prophet-voices call me back, not if with his own voice the present Deity himself warn me of the peril and urge my staying here, shall I refrain.[47]

The chorus cites the predictions of Cassandra to show that it would sometimes be wise to follow the counsel of women.

In the fifth act Brutus and Cassius appear in triumph.

As they leave, Calpurnia enters bewailing the truth of her dream, and inviting to share in her laments the chorus, which denounces vengeance on the criminals. Then the voice of Caesar is heard in rebuke of their tears and in comfort of their distress. Only his shadow fell, but he himself is joined to the immortals.

Weep no more: it is the wretched that tears befit. Those who assailed me with frantic mind—a god am I, and true is my prophecy—shall not escape vengeance for their deed. My sister’s grandson, heir of my virtue as of my sceptre, will require the penalty as seems good to him.[49]

Calpurnia recognises the voice, and the chorus celebrates the bliss of the “somewhat” that is released from the prison house of the body.

It is interesting to note that Muretus already employs a number of the motifs that reappear in Shakespeare. Thus he gives prominence to the self-conscious magnanimity of Caesar: to the temporary hesitation of Brutus, with his appeal to his name and the letters that are placed in his way; to his admiration for the courage and constancy of Portia; to his final whole-heartedness and disregard of Caesar’s love for him; to his prohibition of Mark Antony’s death; to Cassius’ vindictive zeal and eager solicitation of his friend; to Calpurnia’s dream, and the contest between her and Decimus Brutus and in Caesar’s own mind; to Caesar’s fatal decision in view of his honour, and his rejection of the fear of death; to the exultation of Brutus and Cassius as they enter with their blood-stained swords after the deed is done. And more noticeable than any of these details, are the divided admiration and divided sympathy the author bestows both on Brutus and Caesar—which are obvious even in the wavering utterances of the chorus. We are far removed from the times when Dante saw Lucifer devouring Brutus and Cassius in two of his mouths with Judas between them; or when Chaucer, making a composite monster of the pair, tells how “false Brutus-Cassius,”

“stikede” Julius with “boydekins.” But we are equally far from the times when Marie-Joseph Chénier was to write his tragedy of Brutus et Cassius, Les Derniers Romains. At the renaissance the characteristic feeling was enthusiasm for Caesar and his assassin alike, though it was Shakespeare alone who knew how to reconcile the two points of view.[50]

Of the admiration which Muret’s little drama excited there is documentary proof. Prefixed to it are a number of congratulatory verses, and among the eulogists are not only scholars, like Buchanan,[51] but literary men, members of the Pléiade—Dorât, Baïf, and especially Jodelle, who has his complimentary conceits on the appropriateness of the author’s name, Mark Antony, to the feat he has accomplished.

But this last testimony leads us to the less explicit but not less obvious indications of the influence exercised by Muret’s tragedy which appear in the subsequent story of literary production. This influence was both indirect and direct. The example of this modern Latin play could not but count for something when Jodelle took the further step of treating another Roman theme in the vernacular. In the vernacular, too, Grévin was inspired to rehandle the same theme as Muretus, obtaining from his predecessor most of his material and his apparatus. These experiments again were not without effect on the later dramas of Garnier, two of which were to leave a mark on English literature.

The first regular tragedy as well as the first Roman history in the French language was the Cléopatre Captive of Jodelle, acted with great success in 1552 before Henry II. by Jodelle’s friends, who at the subsequent banquet presented to him, in semi-pagan wise, a goat decked with flowers and ivy. The prologue[52] to the King describes the contents.

But this programme conveys an impression of greater variety and abundance than is justified by the piece. In point of fact it begins only after the death of Antony, who does not intervene save as a ghost in the opening scene, to bewail his offences and announce that in a dream he has bid Cleopatra join him before the day is out.[53] Nor do we hear anything of “desirs et flammes” on his part; rather he resents her seductions, and has summoned her to share his torments:

The sequel does little more than describe how his command is carried out. Cleopatra enters into conversation with Eras and Charmium, and despite their remonstrances resolves to obey. The chorus sings of the fickleness of fortune: (Act i.). Octavianus, after a passing regret for Antony, arranges with Proculeius and Agrippa to make sure of her presence at his triumph. The chorus sings of the perils of pride: (Act ii.). Octavianus visits the Queen, dismisses her excuses, but grants mercy to her and her children, and pardons her deceit when her retention of her jewellery is exposed by Seleucus. But Seleucus is inconsolable for his offence as well as his castigation, and exclaims:

The chorus oddly enough discovers in her maltreatment of the tale-bearer a proof of her indomitable spirit, and an indication that she will never let herself be led to Rome: (Act iii.). Cleopatra now explains that her submission was only feigned to secure the lives of her children, and that she herself has no thought of following the conqueror’s car. Eras and Charmium approve, and all three depart to Antony’s tomb to offer there a last sacrifice, which the chorus describes in full detail: (Act iv.). Proculeius in consternation announces the sequel:

The chorus celebrates the pitifulness and glory of her end, and the supremacy of Caesar: (Act V.).

Thus, despite the promises of the prologue, the play resolves itself to a single motif, the determination of Cleopatra to follow Antony in defiance of Octavianus’ efforts to prevent her. Nevertheless, simple as it is, it fails in real unity. The ghost of Antony, speaking, one must suppose, the final verdict, pronounces condemnation on her as well as himself; yet in the rest of the play, even in the undignified episode with Seleucus, Jodelle bespeaks for her not only our sympathy but our admiration. It is just another aspect of this that Antony treats her death as the beginning of her punishment, but to her and her attendants and the women of Alexandria it is a desirable release. The recurrent theme of the chorus, varied to suit the complexion of the different acts, is always the same:

Half a dozen years later, in 1558, the Confrères de la Passion were acting a play which Muretus had more immediately prompted, and which did him greater credit. This was the Cesar of Jacques Grévin, a young Huguenot gentlemen who, at the age of twenty, recast in French the even more juvenile effort of the famous scholar, expanding it to twice the size, introducing new personages, giving the old ones more to do, and while borrowing largely in language and construction, shaping it to his own ends and making it much more dramatic. Indeed, his tragedy strikes one as fitter for the popular stage than almost any other of its class, and this seems to have been felt at the time, for besides running through two editions in 1561 and 1562, it was reproduced by the Confrères with great success in the former year. Of course its theatrical merit is only relative, and it does not escape the faults of the Senecan school. Grévin styles his dramatis personae rather ominously and very correctly “entre-parleurs”; for they talk rather than act. They talk, moreover, in long, set harangues even when they are conversing, and Grévin so likes to hear them that he sometimes lets the story wait. Nor do they possess much individuality or concrete life. But the young author has passion; he has fire; and he knows the dramatic secret of contrasting different moods and points of view.

He follows his exemplar most closely, and often literally, in the first three acts, though even in them he often goes his own way. Thus, after Caesar’s opening soliloquy, which is by no means so Olympian as in Muret, he introduces Mark Antony, who encourages his master with reminders of his greatness and assurances of his devotion. In the second act, after Marcus Brutus’ monologue, not only Cassius but Decimus has something to say, and there is a quicker interchange of statement and rejoinder than is usual in such a play. In the third act, the third and fourth of Muretus are combined, and after the conversation of Calpurnia with the Nurse, there follow her attempts to dissuade her husband from visiting the senate house, the hesitation of Caesar, the counter-arguments of Decimus; and in conclusion, when Decimus has prevailed, the Nurse resumes her endeavours at consolation. The fourth act is entirely new, and gives an account of the assassination by the mouth of a Messenger, who is also a new person, to the distracted Calpurnia and her sympathetic Nurse. In the fifth Grévin begins by returning to his authority in the jubilant speeches of Brutus and Cassius, but one by Decimus is added; and rejecting the expedient of the ghostly intervention, he substitutes, much more effectively, that of Mark Antony, who addresses the chorus of soldiers, rouses them to vengeance, and having made sure of them, departs to stir up the people.

Altogether a creditable performance, and a distinct improvement on the more famous play that supplied the groundwork. One must not be misled by the almost literal discipleship of Grévin in particular passages, to suppose that even in language he is a mere imitator. The discipleship is of course undeniable. Take Brutus’ outburst:

And compare:

So, too, after the murder Brutus denounces his victim:

The lines whence this extract is taken merely enlarge Muretus’ conciser statement:

But generally Grévin is more abundant and more fervid even when he reproduces most obviously, and among the best of his purple patches are some that are quite his own. He indeed thought differently. He modestly confesses:

Je ne veux pourtant nier que s’il se trouve quelque traict digne estre loué, qu’il ne soit de Muret, lequel a esté mon precepteur quelque temps es lettres humaines, et auquel je donne le meilleur comme l’ayant appris de luy.

All the same there is nothing in Muretus like the passage in which Brutus promises himself an immortality of fame:

Grévin’s tragedy had great vogue, was preferred even to those of Jodelle, and was praised by Ronsard, though Ronsard afterwards retracted his praises when Grévin broke with him on religious grounds. His protestantism, however, would be a recommendation rather than otherwise in England, and one would like to know whether some of the lost English pieces on the same subject owed anything to the French drama. The suggestion has even been made that Shakespeare was acquainted with it. There are some vague resemblances in particular thoughts and phrases,[54] the closest of which occurs in Caesar’s pronouncement on death:

This suggests:

Herr Collischonn also draws attention to a coincidence in situation that is not derived from Plutarch. When the conspirators are discussing the chances of Caesar’s attending the senate meeting, Cassius says:

and Decimus answers:

It is at least curious to find the same sort of addition, in the same circumstances and with the same speakers in Shakespeare.

Such minutiae, however, are far from conclusive, especially since, as in the two instances quoted, which are the most significant, Plutarch, though he did not authorise, may at any rate have suggested them. The first looks like an expansion of Caesar’s remark when his friends were discussing which death was the best: “Death unlooked for.” The second follows as a natural dramatic anticipation of the part that Decimus actually played in inducing Caesar to keep tryst. They may very well have occurred independently to both poets; or, if there be a connection, may have been transmitted from the older to the younger through the medium of some forgotten English piece. There is more presumptive evidence that Grévin influenced the Julius Caesar of Sir William Alexander, Earl of Stirling; but Stirling’s paraphrase of his authorities is so diffuse that they are not always easy to trace. His apparent debts to Grévin may really be due to the later and much more famous French Senecan Garnier, two of whose works have an undoubted though not very conspicuous place in the history of the English Drama generally, and especially of the Roman Play in England.

Cornélie, the earlier and less successful of the pair, written in Garnier’s twenty-eighth year, was performed at the Hôtel de Bourgogne in 1573, and was published in 1574. The young author was not altogether unpractised in his art, for already in 1568 he had written a drama on the subject of Portia, but he has not yet advanced beyond his predecessors, and like them, or perhaps more obviously than they, is at the stage of regarding the tragedy “only as an elegy mixed with rhetorical expositions.” The episode that he selected lent itself to such treatment.

Cornelia, the daughter of Metellus Scipio, had after the loss of her first husband, the younger Cassius, become the wife of Pompey the Great, of whose murder she was an eye-witness. Meanwhile her father still made head against Caesar in Africa, and the play deals with her regrets and suspense at Rome till she learns the issue of this final struggle. In the first act Cicero soliloquises on the woes of the country, which he traces to her lust of conquest; and the chorus takes up the burden at the close. In the second Cornelia bewails her own miseries, which she attributes to her infidelity in marrying again: Cicero tries to comfort her and she refuses his comfort, both in very long harangues; and the chorus describes the mutability of mortal things. In the third act she narrates an ominous dream in which the shade of Pompey has visited her. Scarcely has she left the stage when Cicero enters to announce the triumph of Caesar and the death of Scipio. Cornelia re-enters to receive the urn with Pompey’s ashes, the sight of which stirs her to new laments for herself and imprecations against Caesar. The chorus dwells on the capriciousness of fortune. In the fourth act the resentment against Caesar is emphasised by Cassius in discourse with Decimus Brutus, and the chorus sings of Harmodios and Aristogeiton; but after that Caesar and Antony come in and discuss the means to be taken for Caesar’s safety, Antony advocating severity and caution, Caesar leniency and confidence. This act is closed by a chorus of Caesar’s friends, who celebrate his services and virtues. The fifth act is chiefly occupied with the messenger’s account of Scipio’s last battle and death, at the end of which Cornelia at some length declares that when she has paid due funeral rites to husband and father, she will surrender her own life.

From this analysis it will be seen that Cornélie as a play is about as defective as it could be. The subject is essentially undramatic, for the heroine—and there is no hero—has nothing to do but spend her time in lamentations and forebodings, in eulogies and vituperations. Yet the subject is more suitable than the treatment. There is no trace of conflict, internal or external; for the persons maintain their own point of view throughout, and the issue is a matter of course from the first. There is no entanglement or plot; but all the speakers, as they enter in turn, are affected with a craving to deliver their minds either in solitude or to some congenial listener: and their prolations lead to nothing. Even the unity of interest, which the classicists so prized, and over-prized, is lacking here, despite the bareness of the theme. Cicero has hardly less to say than Cornelia, and in two acts she does not so much as appear, while in one of them attention is diverted from her sorrows to the dangers of Caesar. The heroine no doubt retains a certain kind of primacy, but save for that, M. Faguet’s description would be literally correct: “The piece in the author’s conception might be entitled Thoughts of various persons concerning Rome at the Date of Thapsus.”[55] The Cornélie is by no means devoid of merit, but that merit is almost entirely rhetorical, literary, and poetical. The language is never undignified, the metres are carefully manipulated; the descriptions and reflections, many of them taken from Lucan, though sometimes stilted, are often elevated and picturesque. But the most dramatic passages are the conversations in the fourth act, where the inter-locuteurs, as Garnier calls the characters with even more reason than Grévin calls those of his play entre-parleurs, are respectively Decimus Brutus and Cassius, Caesar and Mark Antony: and this is typical for two reasons. In the first place, these scenes have least to do with the titular subject, and are, as it were, mere excrescences on the main theme. In the second place, they are borrowed, so far as their general idea is concerned, from Grévin, as Grévin in turn had borrowed them from Muretus; and even details have been transmitted to the cadet in the trinity from each and both of his predecessors. Thus in the Cornélie Decimus not very suitably replaces or absorbs Marcus Brutus, but the whole tone and movement of the interview with Cassius are the same in all the three plays, and particular expressions reappear in Garnier that are peculiar to one or other of his elder colleagues or that the later has adapted from the earlier. For example, Garnier’s Cassius describes Caesar as

There is no express reference to this scandal in Muretus, but it furnishes Grévin’s Decimus with a vigorous couplet which obviously has inspired the above quotation:

Here, on the other hand, is an instance of Garnier getting a phrase from Muretus that Grévin passed over. Decimus says in excuse of his former patron:

to which Cassius replies:

In the Latin both objection and answer are put in the lips of Marcus Brutus, but that does not affect the resemblance.

In other cases the parallelism is threefold. Thus Garnier’s Cassius exclaims:

Grévin’s Marcus Brutus said:

In Muretus the same personage puts it more shortly:

In the scene between Caesar and Antony the resemblances are less marked in detail, partly owing to the somewhat different role assigned to the second speaker, but they are there; and the general tendency, from the self-conscious monologue of Caesar with which it opens, to the dialogue in which he gives expression to his doubts, is practically the same in both plays.

And these episodes are of some importance in view of their subsequent as well as their previous history. Though neither entirely original nor entirely relevant, they seem, perhaps because of their comparative fitness for the stage, to have made a great impression at the time. It has been suggested that they were not without their influence on Shakespeare when he came to write his Julius Caesar: a point the discussion of which may be reserved. It is certain that they supplied Alexander, though he may also have used Grévin and even Muretus, with the chief models and materials for certain scenes in his tragedy on the same subject. Thus, he too presents Caesar and Antony in consultation, and the former prefaces this interchange of views with a high-flown declaration of his greatness. Thus, too, the substance of their talk is to a great extent adapted from Garnier and diluted in the process. Compare the similar versions of the apology that Caesar makes for his action. In Alexander he exclaims:

It is very like what Garnier’s Caesar says:

So, too, when Antony asserts that some are contriving Caesar’s death, the speakers engage in a dialectical skirmish:

The filiation with Garnier is surely unmistakable, though it cannot be shown in every line or phrase.

The scene with the conspirators Stirling treats very differently and much more freely. It had had, as we have seen, a peculiar history. In Muretus it was confined to Marcus Brutus and Cassius, in Grévin Decimus Brutus is added, in Garnier Decimus is retained and Marcus drops out. Alexander discriminates. He keeps one discussion for Marcus and Cassius, in so far restoring it to the original and more fitting form it had obtained from Muretus, though he transfers to Marcus some of the sentiments that Garnier had assigned to Decimus. But the half-apologetic rôle that Decimus plays in Garnier had impressed him, and he did not choose to forego the spice of variety which this contributed. So he invents a new scene for him in which Cicero takes the place of Cassius and solicits his support. But though the one episode is thus cut in two, and each of the halves enlarged far beyond the dimensions of the original whole, it is unquestionable that they owe their main suggestion and much of their matter to the Cornélie.

Since then Garnier, when his powers were still immature, could so effectively adapt these incidental passages, it is not surprising that he should by and by be able to stand alone, and produce plays in which the central interest was more dramatic.

Of these we are concerned only with Marc Antoine, which was acted with success at the Hôtel de Bourgogne in 1578, and was printed in the same year. In it Garnier has not altogether freed himself from his former faults. There are otiose personages who are introduced merely to supply general reflections: Diomedes, the secretary, on the pathos of Cleopatra’s fall; Philostratus, the philosopher, on the overthrow of the Egyptian monarchy. There is no interaction of character on character, all the protagonists being so carefully excluded from each other that Octavianus does not meet Antony, Antony does not meet Cleopatra, Cleopatra does not meet Octavianus. The speeches are still over long, and the “sentences” over abundant. Nevertheless there is a real story, there are real characters; and the story and characters admit, or rather demand, an effective alternation of passion.

The time comprises the interval between Antony’s final reverse and the suicide of Cleopatra: it is short, but a good deal longer than what Jodelle allowed himself in the companion play. Further, the situation is much more complex and less confined, so that Garnier, while borrowing many motifs from Jodelle, or from their common authority, Plutarch, is able to avoid the monotony of Cléopatre Captive. Nor does the coherence suffer. It is true that the account of Antony’s death, announced by Dercetas, occurs as with Shakespeare in the fourth act; but the play is rightly named after him and not after the Queen. He is the principal and by far the most interesting figure, and it is his tragic fate to which all that precedes leads up, and which determines all that follows.

The first act, as so often in these Senecan plays, is entirely occupied with a soliloquy, which Antony declaims; but even this has a certain share of dramatic life, though rather after the fashion of a dramatic lyric than of a dramatic scene. He rages against what he supposes to be the crowning perfidy of his mistress, he recalls all that his infatuation has cost him; the worst of his woes is that they are caused by her; but he must love her still. The second act has at the opening and the close respectively the unnecessary monologues of Philostratus and Diomedes, but they serve as setting for the animated and significant conversation between Cleopatra and her women. From it we learn that of the final treason at least she is innocent, but she is full of remorse for the mischief that her love and her caprices have done, and determines, despite the claims of her children, to expiate it in death. Then, entering the monument she despatches Diomedes with her excuses to Antony. To him we return in the third act, which is central in interest as in position, and we hear him disburden his soul to his friend Lucilius. His fluctuations of feeling, shame at his undoing, passion for the fair undoer, jealousy lest his conqueror should supplant him in love as in empire, are delineated with sympathetic power:

He remembers his past glory and past prowess, and it stings him that he should now be overcome by an inferior foe:

But he has only himself to blame, for he has debased his life:

Now it only remains for him to die. In the fourth act Octavianus dwells on the arduousness of his triumphs and the enormity of Antony’s offences, in order to justify a ruthless policy; and a discussion follows between him and Agrippa, like the one between Julius and Antony in the Cornélie, except that here the emperor and his adviser have their parts reversed. When his resolution seems fixed Dercetas enters in dismay with tidings that Antony has sought to take his own life, and that mortally wounded he has been drawn up into the monument to breathe his last in Cleopatra’s arms. For a moment his conqueror’s heart is touched. But only for a moment. He speedily gives ear to the warning of Agrippa, that to secure her treasures and preserve her life, Cleopatra must be seized. In the fifth act she has all her preparations made to follow her lord. In vain Euphron tries to stay her by gathering her children round and predicting their probable fate: