We seem to see him carrying out the programme that he has announced for the night of the Lupercalia. Yet there are other hints,—the frequency with which Brutus has received these instigations (ii. i. 49), his protracted uncertainty since Cassius first sounded him (ii. i. 61), the fact that he himself has had time to approach Ligarius,—which presently make us realise that the opening scenes of the drama are left a long way behind.
And in this section, too, Shakespeare has crowded his incidents. The decisive arrangements of the conspirators, with their rejection of the oath, are dated the night before the assassination; Plutarch puts them earlier. Then, according to Plutarch, there was a senate meeting the morning after Caesar’s murder; and Antony, having escaped in slave’s apparel, proposed an amnesty for the perpetrators, offered his son as hostage, and persuaded them to leave the Capitol. On the following day dignities were distributed among the ringleaders and a public funeral was decreed to Caesar. Only then did the reading of the will, the speech of Antony, and the émeute of the people follow, and the reading of the will preceded the speech. After a while Octavius comes from Apollonia to see about his inheritance.
In the play, on the other hand, Antony’s seeming agreement with the assassins is patched up a few minutes after the assassination. Octavius, summoned by the dead Caesar, is already within seven leagues of Rome. Antony at once proceeds with the corpse to the market place. He has hardly made his speech and then read the will, when, as the citizens rush off in fury, he learns that Octavius has arrived.
A lengthy interval elapses between the end of Act iii. and the beginning of Act iv., occupied, so far as Rome and Italy were concerned, with the rivalry and intrigues of Antony and Octavius, and the discomfiture of the former (partly through Cicero’s exertions), till he wins the army of Lepidus and Octavius finds it expedient to join forces with him and establish the Triumvirate. But of all this not a word in Shakespeare. He dismisses it as irrelevant, and creates an illusion of speed and continuity, where there is none. The servant who announces the arrival of Octavius, tells Antony:
He and Lepidus are at Caesar’s house.
(III. xi. 269.)
“Bring me to Octavius,” says Antony. And the fourth act opens “at a house in Rome,” “Antony, Octavius and Lepidus seated at a table,” just finishing the lists of the proscription. The impression produced is that their conference is direct sequel to the popular outbreak and the conspirators’ flight. Yet it is November, 43 b.c., and nineteen or twenty months have gone by since the Ides of March. And the progress of time is indicated as well as concealed. Antony announces as a new and alarming piece of news
And now, Octavius,
Listen great things:—Brutus and Cassius
Are levying powers.