SHAKESPERE'S "JULIUS CÆSAR."

New Zealand Herald, Volume XLIX, Issue 14925, 24 February 1912, Page 4 (Supplement)

SHAKESPERE'S "JULIUS CÆSAR."

The might of Caesar is chiefly seen as reflected in the events which followed on his death. The Roman State was torn in two by the task of having to decide between Brutus's view and Anthony's view of him whom all alike recognised as having been the foremost man in all the world. So long as that problem remained unsolved, the dead Coesar was still to sway the destiny of Rome, and on the solution of it. depended the line of succession to the earthly empire which Caesar had set up. But where are we to trace the spiritual succession. He who had been the natural captain of his people, who had won them their gieatest victories, had passed 4heir wisest laws, had deliberately set himself as a man of letters to keep their language pure, had ever performed better than he promised, and at his death had left, a legacy to every Roman citizen—and who would if he had lived, among many other plans which he had projected, have swept away the malaria which to this day infests the neighbourhood of Rome—he could leave no real successor. And so even now we may speak of him, in the language of a modern historian, as the one man who redeemed the title of King from being nothing more than a conspicuous instance of human insufficiency. Some critics have thought that Brutus was the real hero of our drama, that Shakespeare intended that the chief interest should centre round him. But if as we read scene after scene we note the spirit of the great dictator haunting the imagination of speaker after speaker, we shall come to the conclusion that 'Shakespere meant what lie wrote when he entitled this play "Julius Craw." —F. G. Rucker, in the Contemporary Review.