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“The Elements Were So Mix'd . . . ”

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 December 2020

Ruth M. Levitsky
Ruth M. Levitsky*
Affiliation:
St. Jerome's College, University of Waterloo, Waterloo, Ontario
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Abstract

In an effort to correct the overidealization of Brutus, recent criticism has tended to obscure the distinctions between Brutus and his fellow Romans. Yet, Shakespeare was at some pains to depict him as the noblest Roman of them all. That is not to say he was flawless: the noblest pagan was still pagan, and as such was guided only by the light of Reason and tempted to trust in himself. If contemporary prose treatises are any key to Elizabethan attitudes toward ancient philosophy, Shakespeare's audience regarded the Stoic with ambivalence: they admired his constancy, purity of motive, and pursuit of virtue; yet they distrusted his pride, his self-sufficiency, and his hardness. By contrasting Brutus with Cassius and Caesar, Shakespeare has shown him as possessing the best of the Stoic characteristics commingled with touches of Christian compassion and ordinary human weakness. The elements are seen to be so mixed in him that one must say of him with both pride and humility: This was a man.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 88 , Issue 2 , March 1973 , pp. 240 - 245
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1973

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References

1 “Shakespeare's Roman Plays: 1900–1956,” Shakespeare Survey, 10 (1957), 9.

2 There have, of course, been champions of Brutus since that time. For a fairly comprehensive bibliography ofrecent scholarship on this subject, see William R. Bowden, “The Mind of Brutus,” SQ, 17 (1966), 57–67.

3 Shakespeare Studies, 2 (1966), 31.

4 Jeronimo Osorio da Fonseca, Five Bookes of Civill andChristian Nobilitie (London: T. Marsh, 1576), sig. M3V . George Gifford, A Treatise of True Fortitude (London: J. Roberts f. J. Hardy, 1594), sig. B6V . Richard Barckley, A Discourse of the Felicitie of Man (London: R. Field f. Wm. Ponsonby, 1598), sig. V2r .

5 See, e.g., Erasmus' Chiliades (London: E. Whitchurch, 1545) and William Baldwin's A Treatise of Moral! Phylosophie, sixteen editions of which appeared between 1547 and 1620.

6 Ludwig Edelstein's recent book, The Meaning of Stoicism (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Univ. Press, 1966), corrects a number of misconceptions with reference to Stoicism; and Joseph Chang's “Shakespeare and Stoic Ethics” (Diss. Wisconsin 1965) points out the unorthodoxy of much of Seneca's Stoicism. Our interest here, however, is in what the Elizabethan understood this austere code to demand. For the basic tenets of Stoic discipline as they can be found in Elizabethan and Jacobean treatises see my “Rightly to Be Great,” ShakS, 1 (1965), esp. pp. 142–45. To those 16th- and 17th-century titles mentioned above (in text and footnotes), the following may be added, as particularly pertinent: George Gascoigne, The Dromme of Dommesday (London: J. Windet f. G. Cawood, 1586); Guillaume de la Perriere, Mirrour of Policie (London: A. Islip, 1598); John Downame, A Treatise of Anger (London: T. E. for W. Welby, 1609); Richard Hooker, A Remedy against Sorrow and Feare (Oxford: Jos. Barnes, 1612); Daniel Tuvil, Essayes, Morall and Theological! (London: J. W. for E. Edgar, 1609); Gabriel Powel, The Resolved Christian (London: V. S. f. T. Bushel, 1600); Thomas Wright, The Passiotis of the Minde (London: V. Sims f. W. Burre, 1604).

7 The Christian Manuell (London: J. C. f. T. Sturruppe, 1576), sig. DVIv.

8 Seneca admits that such a wise man as the Stoics approve is seldom found; but, he says, “I believe that Cato . . . exceedeth by farre the Wiseman which is now in question.” The Workes of Lucius Annaeus Seneca, trans Tho. Lodge (London: W. Stansby, 1614), sig. Kkk2r .

9 Plutarch's Lives, trans. Sir Thomas North, ed. W. H. D. Rouse, 16 vols. (London: Dent, 1898), ix, 243–44. Hereafter, volume and page number will be incorporated in the text.

10 “Shakespeare's Plutarch,” SQ, 12 (1961), 342–51.

11 See Jason Saunders, Justus Lipsius: The Philosophy of Renaissance Stoicism (New York: Liberal Arts Press, 1955), p. xiii. In Plutarch, it is reiterated that “his intent was good,” that he was concerned for the general good, etc., while Caesar is described as one who “never seemed to care for any man, but for himself” and who gave “good and silver by handfuls . . . [only] to serve his turn …” (see VII, 216, ix, 277–88).

12 Shakespeare also allows Brutus the language of hypocrisy, however, in u.i.175–77, when he demands that the heart remain untouched by anger while stirring up the hands to deeds which men generally assume cannot be done except in anger. That Brutus has actually bowed to the expedient of hypocrisy is much clearer in ii.i.82.

13 In “Julius Caesar in Revision,” SQ, 13 (1962), 187–205, Brents Sterling reviews a number of suggested explanations for the duplicate revelation of Portia's death.

14 Although the terms Shakespeare uses here have Christian connotations (particularly the word “providence”), the sentiments could as easily be derived from Plato, whom Cato and Brutus are said by Plutarch to have admired.

15 E.g., Marlowe's Tamburlaine speaks of “Nature that fram'd us of four elements, / Warring within our breasts for regiment” (Tamburlaine 1.869–70); and Shakespeare's Cleopatra declares: “I am fire and air; my other elements I give to baser life” (v.ii.292–93). E. M. W. Tillyard's Elizabethan World Picture (London: Chatto and Windus, 1943) provides a thorough explanation of the “humours psychology” based upon the distribution of the four elements in the human body.