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REVIEW
- Mack, Maynard. "Teaching Drama: Julius Caesar."
- Essays on the Teaching of English: Reports of the Yale
Conferences on the Teaching of English. Ed. Edward J. Gordon and
Edward S. Noyes. New York: Appleton-Century Crofts, 1960. 320-36.
Thesis: The leading idea of Mack's essay is that Shakespeare
is always relevant and "can be taught to almost any sort of audience"
(321), but the greater part of the essay is given over to a
persuasive analysis of Julius Caesar. Mack shows how both
Caesar and Brutus have divided selves. Caesar is both "the husband
with his hopeful supersition" and "the marble superman of state"
(325); Brutus is both "a grave studious private man, of a wonderfully
gentle temper" and "the man of public spirit" (327). And so both are
involved in "the problem at the tragic center of the
play, . . . the tug of private versus public, the
individual versus a world he never made," and "the other tug .
. . of the irrational versus the rational, the
destiny we think we can control versus the destiny that sweeps all
before it" (327).
Evaluation: Mack is an excellent writer, able to make his
points with clear accounts of how scenes play, as in the following
paragraphs:
Through I.ii, Brutus' public
self . . . is no more than a reflection in a
mirror, a mere anxiety in his own brain, about which he refuses to
confide, even to Cassius. In II.i, we see the public self making
further headway. First, there is Brutus' argument with himself about
the threat of Caesar, and in his conclusion that Caesar must be
killed we note how far his private self—he is, after all, one of
Caesar's closest friends—has been invaded by the self of public
spirit. From here on, the course of invasion accelerates. The
letter comes, tossed from the public world into the private world,
into Brutus' garden, and addressing, as Cassius had, that public
image reflected in the mirror: "Brutus, thou sleep'st awake and see
thyself." Then follows the well-known brief
soliloquy . . . , showing us that Brutus' mind
has moved now from the phase of decision to the inquietudes that
follow decision:
Between the acting of a dreadful thing
And the first motion, all
the interim is
Like a phantasma, or a hideous dream.
What is important to observe is that these lines stress once again
the gulf that separates motive from action, that which is interior in
man and controllable by his will from that which, once acted, becomes
independent of him and moves with a life of its own. This gulf is no
man's land, a phantasma, a hideous
dream.
Finally, there arrives in
such a form that no audience can miss it the actual visible invasion
itself, as this peaceful garden quiet is broken in on by knocking,
like the knocking of fate in Beethoven's fifth symphony, and by men
with faces hidden in their cloaks. Following this, a lovely
interlude with Portia serves to emphasize how much the private self,
the private world has been shattered. We have something close to
discord here—as much of a discord as these very gentle people
are capable of—and though there is a reconciliation at the end
and Brutus' promise to confide in her soon, this division in the
family is an omen. So is that knock of the latecomer, Caius
Ligarius, which reminds us once again of the intrusions of the public
life. And when Ligarius throws off his sick man's kerchief on
learning that there is an honorable exploit afoot, we may see in it
an epitome of the whole scene, a graphic visual renunciation, like
Brutus', of the private good to the public; and we may see this also
in Brutus' own exit a few line later, not into the inner house where
Portia waits for him, but out into thunder and lightning of the
public life of Rome. (327-8)
Bottom Line: Readable and persuasive.
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