Eighty-Two

“Flavius, then, walks through the streets of Rome with another tribune. They meet a mob of citizens who support Julius Caesar. They interrogate them, reprimand them, belittle them, accuse them of all kinds of things, and, in the end, attempt to win them over to their cause. What do the citizens do? They leave. Do they side with the murdered Pompey? Nobody knows. They just leave. Perhaps they simply tell the tribunes what they want to hear, then turn the corner and go back to rejoicing in the arrival of Julius Caesar. Maybe they just wanted to celebrate something. We don’t know. Shakespeare himself doesn’t seem to know.

“We do know what Flavius does once the mob has left. ‘See whe’er their basest mettle be not moved,’ he tells Marullus, indicating the citizens as they walk away. Is Flavius feeling self-satisfied here? Does he really believe that his speech was enough to move those plebeians? Perhaps it’s all he has left, perhaps he can’t conceive of any other possibility. Or maybe he’s just strutting in front of Marullus, showing him that his eloquence is capable of changing the course of history. But it’s a course, young actor, that is in fact rerouted by murder: that of Pompey before the play begins, and that of Julius, at the start of the third act. Would it be appropriate to recall that famous sentence that posits violence as the midwife of history? We’d need to think about it; it’s not a simple matter, nor an agreeable one. Let’s go back to Flavius: ‘See whe’er their basest mettle be not moved. They vanish tongue-tied to their guiltiness.’ That’s his line. The last he dedicates to the people of Rome. He’ll say something else after, we’ll get to that, but right now the important thing is this phrase. Who awakens guilt in the people of Rome? Flavius, of course. And what are the Roman people guilty of? According to the tribunes, of celebrating the assassination of Pompey.

“Now: since the tribunes are followers of Pompey, and since not too many pages ahead they are the very ones who will drive their daggers into Julius Caesar’s body, where is the virtue invoked by guilt’s gag rule? Flavius doesn’t charge the Roman people with cheering a murderer, but rather that murderer in particular. Is it cynicism that Flavius reveals, then? Does he have a selective morality that approves of certain crimes while condemning others? I wouldn’t go that far. Rather, it seems to me that the play is hostage to contingency, that swamp where ethos is diluted and leaves the door ajar in the face of atrocity.”