(V. iii. 99.)
The minor conspirators, with the adherents of the cause and the humbler dependents, are of course sketched very slightly, as proportion requires, but they have all something to individualise them in gait or pose. Even in the crowded final act, where, as in the chronicle histories which Shakespeare was leaving behind him, a number of persons are introduced with whom we are almost or entirely unacquainted, there is no monotony in the subordinate figures. They are distinguished from or contrasted with each other in their circumstances, sentiments or fate. Thus Pindarus and Strato are both described as servants, they are both attached to their masters, they are both reluctantly compelled to assist in their masters’ death. Should we have thought it possible to differentiate them in the compass of the score or so of lines at the dramatist’s disposal? But Cassius’ slave, who, since his capture, has been kept like a dog to do whatever his owner might bid him, will not abide the issue and uses his new liberty to flee beyond the Roman world. Strato, to whom Brutus characteristically turns because he is “a fellow of a good respect” with “some snatch of honour” in his life, claims Brutus’ hand like an equal before he will hold the sword, confronts the victors with praise of the dead, hints to Messala that Brutus’ course is the one to follow, and has too much self-respect to accept employment with Octavius till Messala “prefers,” that is, recommends him.
So too with the three captains, all on the losing side, all devoted to their leaders. Titinius, who seems to feel that his love for Cassius exceeds that of Brutus
(Brutus, come apace,
And see how I regarded Caius Cassius)
will not outlive him. Lucilius is quite ready to die for his general, but spared by the generosity of Antony, survives to exult that Brutus has fulfilled his prophecy and been “like himself.” Messala, who brought word of Portia’s death, must now tell the same tale of Cassius with the same keen sympathy for Brutus’ grief; and though Strato seems to censure him for consenting to live “in bondage,” he shows no bondman’s mind when he grounds his preferment of Strato to Octavius on the fact of Strato’s having done “the latest service to my master.”
More prominent, but still in the background, are the subaltern members of the faction in Rome. Ligarius, the best of them, with his fiery enthusiasm and personal fealty to Brutus, is an excellent counterpart to the ingratiating and plausible Decius, the least erected spirit of the group. Between them comes Casca, the only one who may claim a word or two of comment, partly because he is sketched in some detail, partly because he is practically an original creation. Plutarch has only two particulars about him, the one that he was the first to strike Caesar and struck him from behind; the other that when Caesar cried out and gripped his hand, he shouted to his brother in Greek. Shakespeare, as we have seen, summarily rejects his acquaintance with Greek, but the stab in the back sets his fancy to work, and he constructs for him a character and life-history to match.
Casca is a man who shares with Cassius the jealousy of greatness—“the envious Casca,” Antony described him—but is vastly inferior to Cassius in consistency and manhood. He seems to be one of those alert, precocious natures, clever at the uptake in their youth and full of a promise that is not always fulfilled: Brutus recalls that “he was quick mettle when we went to school” (i. ii. 300). Such sprightly youngsters, when they fail, often do so from a certain lack of moral fibre. And so with Casca. He appears before us at first as the most obsequious henchman of Caesar. When Caesar calls for Calpurnia, Casca is at his elbow: “Peace, ho! Caesar speaks.” When Caesar, hearing the soothsayer’s shout, cries, “Ha! who calls?” Casca is again ready: “Bid every noise be still: peace yet again!” Cassius would never have condescended to that. For Casca resents the supremacy of Caesar as much as the proudest aristocrat of them all: he is only waiting an opportunity to throw off the mask. But meanwhile in his angry bitterness with himself and others he affects a cross-grained bluntness of speech, “puts on a tardy form,” as Cassius says, plays the satirist and misanthrope, as many others conscious of double dealing have done, and treats friend and foe with caustic brutality. But it is characteristic that he is panic-stricken with the terrors of the tempestuous night, which he ekes out with superstitious fancies. It illustrates his want both of inward robustness and of enlightened culture. We remember that Cicero’s remark in Greek was Greek to him, and that Greek was as much the language of rationalists then, as was French of the eighteenth century Philosophes. Nor is it less characteristic that even at the assassination he apparently does not dare to face his victim. Antony describes his procedure
Damned Casca, like a cur, behind
Struck Caesar on the neck.