Of all Shakespeare’s portraits, there are few which have so puzzled his critics as that of Julius Caesar. Their ingenuity has been taxed to the utmost to account for a characterization so at variance with historical fact, and many have been the theories advanced in explanation. It is not my purpose to detail this controversy. The facts are commonplaces of Shakespearian study. Neither is it necessary to set forth all the many and various tributes wherein Shakespeare, in his other works, and in “Julius Caesar” itself, gives ample evidence of his appreciation of Caesar’s true greatness. What I do purpose to show is the marked similarity between the conception of Caesar’s character in Shakespeare and that found in Pescetti.
It must be understood that I employ the term characterization as applied to Pescetti’s dramatis personae for lack of a better term. In his type of the drama very little of the characterization is brought out by the clash of conflict, although, as I have before pointed out, there are passages in “Cesare” in which this is to some extent true. We gain our conception of character more through a recital of the characteristics or traits of his persons, rather than through a revelation in action.
To Shakespeare, therefore, “Cesare” would not have appealed as a drama; but as a history or a recital of the feelings animating various persons during certain situations, it had its attractions. I purpose to show in just what manner Shakespeare in his delineation of Caesar may have availed himself of the material provided by this long forgotten work.
It has been claimed, and in my opinion, erroneously, that Shakespeare’s peculiar characterization of his titular hero was due to his lack of classical knowledge. Surely such a charge can not hold against the Veronese rhetorician, whose livelihood depended on his classical training, and who did not hesitate to dispute with Tasso. Yet his characterization brings into relief many of those features which have in Shakespeare’s portrait so aroused the surprise and chagrin of critics.
Professor Harry Morgan Ayres[[72]] traces these peculiarities in Shakespeare’s delineation of his titular character to the influence of a Renaissance idea of Caesar which had its ultimate source in the Hercules Oetoeus of Seneca, found its way into the Renaissance drama through Muretus, and had become traditional in Shakespeare’s time. No claim is advanced of any direct relation of “Julius Caesar” to preceding versions, but the similarity in certain particulars existing between the various characterizations of Caesar is emphasized. That Grévin’s portrait should be markedly similar to that of Muretus is but natural in view of the former’s open plagiarism. Pescetti also owes much to the noted humanist. The latter made Caesar a grandiloquent braggart. Pescetti, following his example, makes Caesar’s boastfulness a prominent trait of his character. Yet neither Muretus nor Grévin emphasizes Caesar’s vacillation, nor this indecision, which, seemingly through the Italian’s drama, found its way later into Shakespeare’s portrait.
While it is quite possible that the traditional conception of Caesar supposedly prevalent in Shakespeare’s time influenced his peculiar delineation of the Dictator, there is apparently no good reason for excluding the possibility that the dramatist’s notion of his titular hero’s traditional character was confirmed by an examination of Pescetti’s work, if indeed he did not derive from the latter all the hints supposedly due to the tradition fixed by Muretus.
Like Shakespeare, Pescetti is not lacking in appreciation of Caesar’s greatness; of his courage, patriotism, magnanimity. Thus Cassius says to Brutus,
“Tu sai, ch’egli è feroce, e ne’ perigli
Non si sgomenta punto, anzi diviene
Allor più ardito, e coraggioso, quando