Mixed Media: Julius Caesar (2013)

The Mixed Media Column from the March 2013 issue of the Socialist Standard

Shakespeare’s Roman tragedy Julius Caesar was recently staged by the RSC at the Noel Coward Theatre in London. Director Gregory Doran has used an all-black British cast and transposed the plays setting to a modern African state. This play in particular had political resonance for imprisoned ANC leader Nelson Mandela. In 1937 the Mercury Theatre production by Orson Welles drew a specific analogy between Caesar and Fascist dictator Mussolini. The new RSC version makes subtle references to African dictators Mugabe, Mobutu and Amin, and also the recent ‘Arab Spring’.

The central theme of the play is the conflict between republicanism and tyranny, and the political necessity of assassinating a dictator (‘an emerging adder’). Caesar, played with a superior dignity by Jeffrey Kissoon, is a demagogue who is arrogant (‘immortal Caesar’) and posturing, speaks of himself in the third person, compares himself to the northern star, and whose political hubris means he will not ‘beware the ides of March.’

The tragic protagonist of the play is really Plutarch’s ‘angel,’ Brutus, ‘the noblest Roman of them all,’ played with humanity by Paterson Joseph. It is Brutus’s inner conflict between his love for Caesar, and his love for Rome and its republican ideals that form the psychological drama of the play. Brutus is full of personal integrity; he commands trust, friendship, love and devotion in others; he is gracious with friends, guards, servants and has a tender relationship with his wife Portia. The funeral oration by Brutus is rational: ‘not that I loved Caesar less, but that I loved Rome more.’

In contrast to Brutus, Mark Antony, played with a beguiling Machiavellianism by Ray Fearon, is all emotional political opportunism. The political mistakes by Brutus of not killing Antony and also allowing Antony’s funeral oration (‘Friends, Romans, Countrymen’) clearly highlight Brutus’s lack of political guile, and are the cause of his ultimate defeat, death and the end of republican Rome.

Shakespeare based his play on Plutarch’s Lives of the Noble Grecians and Romans, but an interesting source that Gregory Doran could have used is Suetonius Lives of the Caesars which identified Julius Caesar as ‘every woman’s husband and every man’s wife.’ Caesar’s rival triumvir, Crassus is portrayed in a homoerotic vein in Spartacus by Kubrick.

Shakespeare rejects ‘deus ex machina’ and portrays humans in charge of their destiny (‘Men at some time are masters of their fates’) which recalls Marx in The 18th Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte; ‘Men make their own history, but they do not make it just as they please.’

Steve Clayton