Another similarity in the treatment of Caesar must be noted. While Pescetti’s tragedy is called “Il Cesare,” the titular hero occupies a position of the same relative unimportance as the Caesar of Shakespeare’s drama. He appears in but two of the five acts, the third and the fourth, and is fairly prominent. Yet, Brutus is the real protagonist. He appears in each act but the third, and is conspicuous throughout as the chief representative of the action.

Yet here, as in Shakespeare, the spirit of Caesar dominates the play. From first to last it permeates the drama and provides the mainspring of the action. From Brutus’ first speech to the concluding words of the Second Messenger his name is always before us. Calpurnia beholds him in her dreams, the Priest sees in the portents destruction threatening him and Rome, while the Choruses beg the gods to avert the impending disasters. Even Portia is animated by a desire to wreak vengeance on him. The Messenger in his final lament sees in his death the end of Rome’s glories and presents him to us as the nemesis of his murderers. The effect of this treatment is to invest the entire play in an atmosphere of portent, with Caesar predominant.

BRUTUS

Pescetti wrote his tragedy with the evident intention of flattering the Duke of Ferrara, yet never was fulfillment further from promise. “Cesare” could hardly have furnished agreeable reading to a prince, who, lauded on one page as the greatest descendant of the mightiest Julius, finds throughout the succeeding pages this same ancestor denounced as an odious tyrant, and displayed in action as a weak, vacillating braggart. Nor would his appreciation of Pescetti’s efforts have been increased by a consideration of the treatment accorded Brutus. Far from presenting the assassin of Caesar in a manner which might have been regarded as acceptable to the Duke, the Italian dramatist considers him throughout with the highest favor and never wearies of his praises.

Pescetti’s dedication renders it rather difficult to account satisfactorily for his Brutus. Possibly he harbored liberal sympathies of which he found it hard to rid himself; possibly he was here too greatly under Plutarch’s influence; perhaps he was simply following in the footsteps of Muretus and Grévin. Plutarch certainly wrote the life “con amore,” and both Pescetti and Shakespeare continue the idealization of the character begun by the biographer. To both dramatists, as to Muretus and Grévin, Brutus was the “last of the Romans,” in whom the old regime found its final and noblest champion. Under the circumstances it is difficult to seize upon any phase of the character peculiar alone to Shakespeare and Pescetti. Both went to the same, or nearly the same source for their material; both followed their source faithfully. Yet it is this very similarity in the conception of the character which is especially significant for our purpose, for Shakespeare could have found in the Italian dramatist nothing to weaken, but much to confirm the favorable impression he gathered from the varied pages of Plutarch.

Pescetti’s pronounced bias is discernible from the very beginning. In his dedication[[89]] his fulsome flattery of Alfonso does not prevent him hinting that Caesar was no lawful ruler, nor from glancing at his excessive ambition, even though he afterward, in his drama, makes little mention of the one and none of the other. But perhaps most significant of his own feelings are the words he puts into the mouth of the Chorus of Citizens in his last act. The chorus sings the praises of Brutus in a manner which makes the immediately following praise of Caesar by the soldiers pale in comparison:

Coro di Cittadini: .  .  .  .  .  .  .

O magnanimo Bruto,

Vera stirpe di lui,

Che cacciò i Rè, ch’uccise i figli sui: