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REVIEW
- Vawter, Marvin L. "'After Their Fashion':
- Cicero and Brutus in
Julius Caesar" Shakespeare Studies 9 (1976): 205 - 219.
Thesis: Cicero, who appears in Julius Caesar, wrote a
work, De Divinatione, attacking the Stoic belief in
divination. Vawter writes:
I am convinced that Shakespeare knew De Divinatione and used
it to help shape the point of view in Caesar. Not only does
Shakespeare have Cicero appear and speak lines only during the
discussion of portents—and speak perfectly in character—but
Cicero's catalogue of portents and practices of divination is much
closer in detail and completeness to those in Caesar than in
Plutarch's account. More important, Cicero's work offered Shakespeare
extended commentary on and psychological insight into the fatalistic
personalities of Roman Stoics, particularly the distorted, even
perverse syllogisms with which stoics rationalized events—events
they may only have imagined—as signs of Fate and "reasoned"
about the future. (206)
According to Vawter, Shakespeare, following Cicero, shows that the
interpretations of portents reveals not what Fate has in store, but
the personalities of those who do the interpreting. Thus Caesar, in
choosing between Calpurnia's interpretation of his dream and Decius'
interpretation, chooses the one most favorable to his image of
himself. Furthermore, Vawter says that the supposed Stoic reasoning
is mere rationalization. His prime example is Brutus' soliloquy on
the reason that Caesar must die. Vawter writes that "actually the
formal argument only appears to be a logical syllogism but is in
reality a monstrous piece of rationalization, a tissue of words built
to cover over subjective conclusion that Brutus has already drawn"
(214).
Evaluation: It is not necessary to accept Vawter's assertion
that Shakespeare must have read Cicero in order to see the validity
of his arguments about Shakespeare's treatment of reasoning and the
interpretation of portents. It seems to me indisputable that a great
theme of the play is the ways in which people deceive themselves.
Bottom Line: Good stuff.
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