CLEOPATRA (striking her on the mouth). Strike his life out as I strike his name from your lips. Dash him down from the wall. Break him on the stones. Kill, kill, KILL him.
FTATATEETA (showing all her teeth). The dog shall perish.
CLEOPATRA. Fail in this, and you go out from before me forever.
FTATATEETA (resolutely). So be it. You shall not see my face until his eyes are darkened.
Caesar comes back, with Apollodorus, exquisitely dressed, and Rufio.
CLEOPATRA (to Ftatateeta). Come soon–soon. (Ftatateeta turns her meaning eyes for a moment on her mistress; then goes grimly away past Ra and out. Cleopatra runs like a gazelle to Caesar.) So you have come back to me, Caesar. (Caressingly) I thought you were angry. Welcome, Apollodorus. (She gives him her hand to kiss, with her other arm about Caesar.)
APOLLODORUS. Cleopatra grows more womanly beautiful from week to week.
CLEOPATRA. Truth, Apollodorus?
APOLLODORUS. Far, far short of the truth! Friend Rufio threw a pearl into the sea: Caesar fished up a diamond.
CAESAR. Caesar fished up a touch of rheumatism, my friend. Come: to dinner! To dinner! (They move towards the table.)
CLEOPATRA (skipping like a young fawn). Yes, to dinner. I have ordered SUCH a dinner for you, Caesar!
CAESAR. Ay? What are we to have?
CLEOPATRA. Peacocks’ brains.
CAESAR (as if his mouth watered). Peacocks’ brains, Apollodorus!
APOLLODORUS. Not for me. I prefer nightingales’ tongues. (He goes to one of the two covers set side by side.)
CLEOPATRA. Roast boar, Rufio!
RUFIO (gluttonously). Good! (He goes to the seat next Apollodorus, on his left.)
CAESAR (looking at his seat, which is at the end of the table, to Ra’s left hand). What has become of my leathern cushion?
CLEOPATRA (at the opposite end). I have got new ones for you.
THE MAJOR-DOMO. These cushions, Caesar, are of Maltese gauze, stuffed with rose leaves.
CAESAR. Rose leaves! Am I a caterpillar? (He throws the cushions away and seats himself on the leather mattress underneath.)
CLEOPATRA. What a shame! My new cushions!
THE MAJOR-DOMO (at Caesar’s elbow). What shall we serve to whet Caesar’s appetite?
CAESAR. What have you got?
THE MAJOR-DOMO. Sea hedgehogs, black and white sea acorns, sea nettles, beccaficoes, purple shellfish–
CAESAR. Any oysters?
THE MAJOR-DOMO. Assuredly.
CAESAR. BRITISH oysters?
THE MAJOR-DOMO (assenting). British oysters, Caesar.
CAESAR. Oysters, then. (The Major-Domo signs to a slave at each order; and the slave goes out to execute it.) I have been in Britain–that western land of romance–the last piece of earth on the edge of the ocean that surrounds the world. I went there in search of its famous pearls. The British pearl was a fable; but in searching for it I found the British oyster.
APOLLODORUS. All posterity will bless you for it. (To the Major-Domo) Sea hedgehogs for me.
RUFIO. Is there nothing solid to begin with?
THE MAJOR-DOMO. Fieldfares with asparagus-
CLEOPATRA (interrupting). Fattened fowls! Have some fattened fowls, Rufio.
RUFIO. Ay, that will do.
CLEOPATRA (greedily). Fieldfares for me.
THE MAJOR-DOMO. Caesar will deign to choose his wine? Sicilian, Lesbian, Chian–
RUFIO (contemptuously). All Greek.
APOLLODORUS. Who would drink Roman wine when he could get Greek? Try the Lesbian, Caesar.
CAESAR. Bring me my barley water.
RUFIO (with intense disgust). Ugh! Bring ME my Falernian. (The Falernian is presently brought to him.)
CLEOPATRA (pouting). It is waste of time giving you dinners, Caesar. My scullions would not condescend to your diet.
CAESAR (relenting). Well, well: let us try the Lesbian. (The Major-Domo fills Caesar’s goblet; then Cleopatra’s and Apollodorus’s.) But when I return to Rome, I will make laws against these extravagances. I will even get the laws carried out.
CLEOPATRA (coaxingly). Never mind. To-day you are to be like other people: idle, luxurious, and kind. (She stretches her hand to him along the table.)
CAESAR. Well, for once I will sacrifice my comfort (kissing her hand) there! (He takes a draught of wine.) Now are you satisfied?
CLEOPATRA. And you no longer believe that I long for your departure for Rome?
CAESAR. I no longer believe anything. My brains are asleep. Besides, who knows whether I shall return to Rome?
RUFIO (alarmed). How? Eh? What?
CAESAR. What has Rome to show me that I have not seen already? One year of Rome is like another, except that I grow older, whilst the crowd in the Appian Way is always the same age.
APOLLODORUS. It is no better here in Egypt. The old men, when they are tired of life, say “We have seen everything except the source of the Nile.”
CAESAR (his imagination catching fire). And why not see that? Cleopatra: will you come with me and track the flood to its cradle in the heart of the regions of mystery? Shall we leave Rome behind us–Rome, that has achieved greatness only to learn how greatness destroys nations of men who are not great! Shall I make you a new kingdom, and build you a holy city there in the great unknown?
CLEOPATRA (rapturously). Yes, Yes. You shall.
RUFIO. Ay: now he will conquer Africa with two legions before we come to the roast boar.
APOLLODORUS. Come: no scoffing, this is a noble scheme: in it Caesar is no longer merely the conquering soldier, but the creative poet-artist. Let us name the holy city, and consecrate it with Lesbian Wine–and Cleopatra shall name it herself.
CLEOPATRA. It shall be called Caesar’s Gift to his Beloved.
APOLLODORUS. No, no. Something vaster than that–something universal, like the starry firmament.
CAESAR (prosaically). Why not simply The Cradle of the Nile?
CLEOPATRA. No: the Nile is my ancestor; and he is a god. Oh! I have thought of something. The Nile shall name it himself. Let us call upon him. (To the Major-Domo) Send for him. (The three men stare at one another; but the Major-Domo goes out as if he had received the most matter-of-fact order.) And (to the retinue) away with you all.
The retinue withdraws, making obeisance.
A priest enters, carrying a miniature sphinx with a tiny tripod before it. A morsel of incense is smoking in the tripod. The priest comes to the table and places the image in the middle of it. The light begins to change to the magenta purple of the Egyptian sunset, as if the god had brought a strange colored shadow with him. The three men are determined not to be impressed; but they feel curious in spite of themselves.
CAESAR. What hocus-pocus is this?
CLEOPATRA. You shall see. And it is NOT hocus-pocus. To do it properly, we should kill something to please him; but perhaps he will answer Caesar without that if we spill some wine to him.
APOLLODORUS (turning his head to look up over his shoulder at Ra). Why not appeal to our hawkheaded friend here?
CLEOPATRA (nervously). Sh! He will hear you and be angry.
RUFIO (phlegmatically). The source of the Nile is out of his district, I expect.
CLEOPATRA. No: I will have my city named by nobody but my dear little sphinx, because it was in its arms that Caesar found me asleep. (She languishes at Caesar; then turns curtly to the priest.) Go, I am a priestess, and have power to take your charge from you. (The priest makes a reverence and goes out.) Now let us call on the Nile all together. Perhaps he will rap on the table.
CAESAR. What! Table rapping! Are such superstitions still believed in this year 707 of the Republic?
CLEOPATRA. It is no superstition: our priests learn lots of things from the tables. Is it not so, Apollodorus?
APOLLODORUS. Yes: I profess myself a converted man. When Cleopatra is priestess, Apollodorus is devotee. Propose the conjuration.
CLEOPATRA. You must say with me “Send us thy voice, Father Nile.”
ALL FOUR (holding their glasses together before the idol). Send us thy voice, Father Nile.
The death cry of a man in mortal terror and agony answers them. Appalled, the men set down their glasses, and listen. Silence. The purple deepens in the sky. Caesar, glancing at Cleopatra, catches her pouring out her wine before the god, with gleaming eyes, and mute assurances of gratitude and worship. Apollodorus springs up and runs to the edge of the roof to peer down and listen.
CAESAR (looking piercingly at Cleopatra). What was that?
CLEOPATRA (petulantly). Nothing. They are beating some slave.
CAESAR. Nothing!
RUFIO. A man with a knife in him, I’ll swear.
CAESAR (rising). A murder!
APOLLODORUS (at the back, waving his hand for silence). S-sh! Silence. Did you hear that?
CAESAR. Another cry?
APOLLODORUS (returning to the table). No, a thud. Something fell on the beach, I think.
RUFIO (grimly, as he rises). Something with bones in it, eh?
CAESAR (shuddering). Hush, hush, Rufio. (He leaves the table and returns to the colonnade: Rufio following at his left elbow, and Apollodorus at the other side.)
CLEOPATRA (still in her place at the table). Will you leave me, Caesar? Apollodorus: are you going?
APOLLODORUS. Faith, dearest Queen, my appetite is gone.
CAESAR. Go down to the courtyard, Apollodorus; and find out what has happened.
Apollodorus nods and goes out, making for the staircase by which Rufio ascended.
CLEOPATRA. Your soldiers have killed somebody, perhaps. What does it matter?
The murmur of a crowd rises from the beach below. Caesar and Rufio look at one another.
CAESAR. This must be seen to. (He is about to follow Apollodorus when Rufio stops him with a hand on his arm as Ftatateeta comes back by the far end of the roof, with dragging steps, a drowsy satiety in her eyes and in the corners of the bloodhound lips. For a moment Caesar suspects that she is drunk with wine. Not so Rufio: he knows well the red vintage that has inebriated her.)
RUFIO (in a low tone). There is some mischief between those two.
FTATATEETA. The Queen looks again on the face of her servant.
Cleopatra looks at her for a moment with an exultant reflection of her murderous expression. Then she flings her arms round her; kisses her repeatedly and savagely; and tears off her jewels and heaps them on her. The two men turn from the spectacle to look at one another. Ftatateeta drags herself sleepily to the altar; kneels before Ra; and remains there in prayer. Caesar goes to Cleopatra, leaving Rufio in the colonnade.
CAESAR (with searching earnestness). Cleopatra: what has happened?
CLEOPATRA (in mortal dread of him, but with her utmost cajolery). Nothing, dearest Caesar. (With sickly sweetness, her voice almost failing) Nothing. I am innocent. (She approaches him affectionately) Dear Caesar: are you angry with me? Why do you look at me so? I have been here with you all the time. How can I know what has happened?
CAESAR (reflectively). That is true.
CLEOPATRA (greatly relieved, trying to caress him). Of course it is true. (He does not respond to the caress.) You know it is true, Rufio.
The murmur without suddenly swells to a roar and subsides.
RUFIO. I shall know presently. (He makes for the altar in the burly trot that serves him for a stride, and touches Ftatateeta on the shoulder.) Now, mistress: I shall want you. (He orders her, with a gesture, to go before him.)
FTATATEETA (rising and glowering at him). My place is with the Queen.
CLEOPATRA. She has done no harm, Rufio.
CAESAR (to Rufio). Let her stay.
RUFIO (sitting down on the altar). Very well. Then my place is here too; and you can see what is the matter for yourself. The city is in a pretty uproar, it seems.
CAESAR (with grave displeasure). Rufio: there is a time for obedience.
RUFIO. And there is a time for obstinacy. (He folds his arms doggedly.)
CAESAR (to Cleopatra). Send her away.
CLEOPATRA (whining in her eagerness to propitiate him). Yes, I will. I will do whatever you ask me, Caesar, always, because I love you. Ftatateeta: go away.
FTATATEETA. The Queen’s word is my will. I shall be at hand for the Queen’s call. (She goes out past Ra, as she came.)
RUFIO (following her). Remember, Caesar, YOUR bodyguard also is within call. (He follows her out.)
Cleopatra, presuming upon Caesar’s submission to Rufio, leaves the table and sits down on the bench in the colonnade.
CLEOPATRA. Why do you allow Rufio to treat you so? You should teach him his place.
CAESAR. Teach him to be my enemy, and to hide his thoughts from me as you are now hiding yours.
CLEOPATRA (her fears returning). Why do you say that, Caesar? Indeed, indeed, I am not hiding anything. You are wrong to treat me like this. (She stifles a sob.) I am only a child; and you turn into stone because you think some one has been killed. I cannot bear it. (She purposely breaks down and weeps. He looks at her with profound sadness and complete coldness. She looks up to see what effect she is producing. Seeing that he is unmoved, she sits up, pretending to struggle with her emotion and to put it bravely away.) But there: I know you hate tears: you shall not be troubled with them. I know you are not angry, but only sad; only I am so silly, I cannot help being hurt when you speak coldly. Of course you are quite right: it is dreadful to think of anyone being killed or even hurt; and I hope nothing really serious has– (Her voice dies away under his contemptuous penetration.)
CAESAR. What has frightened you into this? What have you done? (A trumpet sounds on the beach below.) Aha! That sounds like the answer.
CLEOPATRA (sinking back trembling on the bench and covering her face with her hands). I have not betrayed you, Caesar: I swear it.
CAESAR. I know that. I have not trusted you. (He turns from her, and is about to go out when Apollodorus and Britannus drag in Lucius Septimius to him. Rufio follows. Caesar shudders.) Again, Pompey’s murderer!
RUFIO. The town has gone mad, I think. They are for tearing the palace down and driving us into the sea straight away. We laid hold of this renegade in clearing them out of the courtyard.
CAESAR. Release him. (They let go his arms.) What has offended the citizens, Lucius Septimius?
LUCIUS. What did you expect, Caesar? Pothinus was a favorite of theirs.
CAESAR. What has happened to Pothinus? I set him free, here, not half an hour ago. Did they not pass him out?
LUCIUS. Ay, through the gallery arch sixty feet above ground, with three inches of steel in his ribs. He is as dead as Pompey. We are quits now, as to killing–you and I.
CAESAR. (shocked). Assassinated!–our prisoner, our guest! (He turns reproachfully on Rufio) Rufio–
RUFIO (emphatically–anticipating the question). Whoever did it was a wise man and a friend of yours (Cleopatra is qreatly emboldened); but none of US had a hand in it. So it is no use to frown at me. (Caesar turns and looks at Cleopatra.)
CLEOPATRA (violently–rising). He was slain by order of the Queen of Egypt. I am not Julius Caesar the dreamer, who allows every slave to insult him. Rufio has said I did well: now the others shall judge me too. (She turns to the others.) This Pothinus sought to make me conspire with him to betray Caesar to Achillas and Ptolemy. I refused; and he cursed me and came privily to Caesar to accuse me of his own treachery. I caught him in the act; and he insulted me–ME, the Queen! To my face. Caesar would not revenge me: he spoke him fair and set him free. Was I right to avenge myself? Speak, Lucius.
LUCIUS. I do not gainsay it. But you will get little thanks from Caesar for it.
CLEOPATRA. Speak, Apollodorus. Was I wrong?
APOLLODORUS. I have only one word of blame, most beautiful. You should have called upon me, your knight; and in fair duel I should have slain the slanderer.
CLEOPATRA (passionately). I will be judged by your very slave, Caesar. Britannus: speak. Was I wrong?
BRITANNUS. Were treachery, falsehood, and disloyalty left unpunished, society must become like an arena full of wild beasts, tearing one another to pieces. Caesar is in the wrong.
CAESAR (with quiet bitterness). And so the verdict is against me, it seems.
CLEOPATRA (vehemently). Listen to me, Caesar. If one man in all Alexandria can be found to say that I did wrong, I swear to have myself crucified on the door of the palace by my own slaves.
CAESAR. If one man in all the world can be found, now or forever, to know that you did wrong, that man will have either to conquer the world as I have, or be crucified by it. (The uproar in the streets again reaches them.) Do you hear? These knockers at your gate are also believers in vengeance and in stabbing. You have slain their leader: it is right that they shall slay you. If you doubt it, ask your four counselors here. And then in the name of that RIGHT (He emphasizes the word with great scorn.) shall I not slay them for murdering their Queen, and be slain in my turn by their countrymen as the invader of their fatherland? Can Rome do less then than slay these slayers too, to show the world how Rome avenges her sons and her honor? And so, to the end of history, murder shall breed murder, always in the name of right and honor and peace, until the gods are tired of blood and create a race that can understand. (Fierce uproar. Cleopatra becomes white with terror.) Hearken, you who must not be insulted. Go near enough to catch their words: you will find them bitterer than the tongue of Pothinus. (Loftily wrapping himself up in an impenetrable dignity.) Let the Queen of Egypt now give her orders for vengeance, and take her measures for defense; for she has renounced Caesar. (He turns to go.)
CLEOPATRA (terrified, running to him and falling on her knees). You will not desert me, Caesar. You will defend the palace.
CAESAR. You have taken the powers of life and death upon you. I am only a dreamer.
CLEOPATRA. But they will kill me.
CAESAR. And why not?
CLEOPATRA. In pity–
CAESAR. Pity! What! Has it come to this so suddenly, that nothing can save you now but pity? Did it save Pothinus?
She rises, wringing her hands, and goes back to the bench in despair. Apollodorus shows his sympathy with her by quietly posting himself behind the bench. The sky has by this time become the most vivid purple, and soon begins to change to a glowing pale orange, against which the colonnade and the great image show darklier and darklier.
RUFIO. Caesar: enough of preaching. The enemy is at the gate.
CAESAR (turning on him and giving way to his wrath). Ay; and what has held him baffled at the gate all these months? Was it my folly, as you deem it, or your wisdom? In this Egyptian Red Sea of blood, whose hand has held all your heads above the waves? (Turning on Cleopatra) And yet, When Caesar says to such an one, “Friend, go free,” you, clinging for your little life to my sword, dare steal out and stab him in the back? And you, soldiers and gentlemen, and honest servants as you forget that you are, applaud this assassination, and say “Caesar is in the wrong.” By the gods, I am tempted to open my hand and let you all sink into the flood.
CLEOPATRA (with a ray of cunning hope). But, Caesar, if you do, you will perish yourself.
Caesar’s eyes blaze.
RUFIO (greatly alarmed). Now, by great Jove, you filthy little Egyptian rat, that is the very word to make him walk out alone into the city and leave us here to be cut to pieces. (Desperately, to Caesar) Will you desert us because we are a parcel of fools? I mean no harm by killing: I do it as a dog kills a cat, by instinct. We are all dogs at your heels; but we have served you faithfully.
CAESAR (relenting). Alas, Rufio, my son, my son: as dogs we are like to perish now in the streets.
APOLLODORUS (at his post behind Cleopatra’s seat). Caesar, what you say has an Olympian ring in it: it must be right; for it is fine art. But I am still on the side of Cleopatra. If we must die, she shall not want the devotion of a man’s heart nor the strength of a man’s arm.
CLEOPATRA (sobbing). But I don’t want to die.
CAESAR (sadly). Oh, ignoble, ignoble!
LUCIUS (coming forward between Caesar and Cleopatra). Hearken to me, Caesar. It may be ignoble; but I also mean to live as long as I can.
CAESAR. Well, my friend, you are likely to outlive Caesar. Is it any magic of mine, think you, that has kept your army and this whole city at bay for so long? Yesterday, what quarrel had they with me that they should risk their lives against me? But to-day we have flung them down their hero, murdered; and now every man of them is set upon clearing out this nest of assassins–for such we are and no more. Take courage then; and sharpen your sword. Pompey’s head has fallen; and Caesar’s head is ripe.
APOLLODORUS. Does Caesar despair?
CAESAR (with infinite pride). He who has never hoped can never despair. Caesar, in good or bad fortune, looks his fate in the face.
LUCIUS. Look it in the face, then; and it will smile as it always has on Caesar.
CAESAR (with involuntary haughtiness). Do you presume to encourage me?
LUCIUS. I offer you my services. I will change sides if you will have me.
CAESAR (suddenly coming down to earth again, and looking sharply at him, divining that there is something behind the offer). What! At this point?
LUCIUS (firmly). At this point.
RUFIO. Do you suppose Caesar is mad, to trust you?
LUCIUS. I do not ask him to trust me until he is victorious. I ask for my life, and for a command in Caesar’s army. And since Caesar is a fair dealer, I will pay in advance.
CAESAR. Pay! How?
LUCIUS. With a piece of good news for you.
Caesar divines the news in a flash.
RUFIO. What news?
CAESAR (with an elate and buoyant energy which makes Cleopatra sit up and stare). What news! What news, did you say, my son Rufio? The relief has arrived: what other news remains for us? Is it not so, Lucius Septimius? Mithridates of Pergamos is on the march.
LUCIUS. He has taken Pelusium.
CAESAR (delighted). Lucius Septimius: you are henceforth my officer. Rufio: the Egyptians must have sent every soldier from the city to prevent Mithridates crossing the Nile. There is nothing in the streets now but mob–mob!
LUCIUS. It is so. Mithridates is marching by the great road to Memphis to cross above the Delta. Achillas will fight him there.
CAESAR (all audacity). Achillas shall fight Caesar there. See, Rufio. (He runs to the table; snatches a napkin; and draws a plan on it with his finger dipped in wine, whilst Rufio and Lucius Septimius crowd about him to watch, all looking closely, for the light is now almost gone.) Here is the palace (pointing to his plan): here is the theatre. You (to Rufio) take twenty men and pretend to go by THAT street (pointing it out); and whilst they are stoning you, out go the cohorts by this and this. My streets are right, are they, Lucius?
LUCIUS. Ay, that is the fig market–
CAESAR (too much excited to listen to him). I saw them the day we arrived. Good! (He throws the napkin on the table and comes down again into the colonnade.) Away, Britannus: tell Petronius that within an hour half our forces must take ship for the western lake. See to my horse and armor. (Britannus runs out.) With the rest I shall march round the lake and up the Nile to meet Mithridates. Away, Lucius; and give the word.
Lucius hurries out after Britannus.
RUFIO. Come: this is something like business.
CAESAR (buoyantly). Is it not, my only son? (He claps his hands. The slaves hurry in to the table.) No more of this mawkish reveling: away with all this stuff: shut it out of my sight and be off with you. (The slaves begin to remove the table; and the curtains are drawn, shutting in the colonnade.) You understand about the streets, Rufio?
RUFIO. Ay, I think I do. I will get through them, at all events.
The bucina sounds busily in the courtyard beneath.
CAESAR. Come, then: we must talk to the troops and hearten them. You down to the beach: I to the courtyard. (He makes for the staircase.)
CLEOPATRA (rising from her seat, where she has been quite neglected all this time, and stretching out her hands timidly to him). Caesar.
CAESAR (turning). Eh?
CLEOPATRA. Have you forgotten me?
CAESAR. (indulgently). I am busy now, my child, busy. When I return your affairs shall be settled. Farewell; and be good and patient.
He goes, preoccupied and quite indifferent. She stands with clenched fists, in speechless rage and humiliation.
RUFIO. That game is played and lost, Cleopatra. The woman always gets the worst of it.
CLEOPATRA (haughtily). Go. Follow your master.
RUFIO (in her ear, with rough familiarity). A word first. Tell your executioner that if Pothinus had been properly killed–IN THE THROAT–he would not have called out. Your man bungled his work.
CLEOPATRA (enigmatically). How do you know it was a man?
RUFIO (startled, and puzzled). It was not you: you were with us when it happened. (She turns her back scornfully on him. He shakes his head, and draws the curtains to go out. It is now a magnificent moonlit night. The table has been removed. Ftatateeta is seen in the light of the moon and stars, again in prayer before the white altar-stone of Ra. Rufio starts; closes the curtains again softly; and says in a low voice to Cleopatra) Was it she? With her own hand?
CLEOPATRA (threateningly). Whoever it was, let my enemies beware of her. Look to it, Rufio, you who dare make the Queen of Egypt a fool before Caesar.
RUFIO (looking grimly at her). I will look to it, Cleopatra. (He nods in confirmation of the promise, and slips out through the curtains, loosening his sword in its sheath as he goes.)
ROMAN SOLDIERS (in the courtyard below). Hail, Caesar! Hail, hail!
Cleopatra listens. The bucina sounds again, followed by several trumpets.
CLEOPATRA (wringing her hands and calling). Ftatateeta. Ftatateeta. It is dark; and I am alone. Come to me. (Silence.) Ftatateeta. (Louder.) Ftatateeta. (Silence. In a panic she snatches the cord and pulls the curtains apart.)
Ftatateeta is lying dead on the altar of Ra, with her throat cut. Her blood deluges the white stone.
ACT V
High noon. Festival and military pageant on the esplanade before the palace. In the east harbor Caesar’s galley, so gorgeously decorated that it seems to be rigged with flowers, is along-side the quay, close to the steps Apollodorus descended when he embarked with the carpet. A Roman guard is posted there in charge of a gangway, whence a red floorcloth is laid down the middle of the esplanade, turning off to the north opposite the central gate in the palace front, which shuts in the esplanade on the south side. The broad steps of the gate, crowded with Cleopatra’s ladies, all in their gayest attire, are like a flower garden. The facade is lined by her guard, officered by the same gallants to whom Bel Affris announced the coming of Caesar six months before in the old palace on the Syrian border. The north side is lined by Roman soldiers, with the townsfolk on tiptoe behind them, peering over their heads at the cleared esplanade, in which the officers stroll about, chatting. Among these are Belzanor and the Persian; also the Centurion, vinewood cudgel in hand, battle worn, thick-booted, and much outshone, both socially and decoratively, by the Egyptian officers.
Apollodorus makes his way through the townsfolk and calls to the officers from behind the Roman line.
APOLLODORUS. Hullo! May I pass?
CENTURION. Pass Apollodorus the Sicilian there! (The soldiers let him through.)
BELZANOR. Is Caesar at hand?
APOLLODORUS. Not yet. He is still in the market place. I could not stand any more of the roaring of the soldiers! After half an hour of the enthusiasm of an army, one feels the need of a little sea air.
PERSIAN. Tell us the news. Hath he slain the priests?
APOLLODORUS. Not he. They met him in the market place with ashes on their heads and their gods in their hands. They placed the gods at his feet. The only one that was worth looking at was Apis: a miracle of gold and ivory work. By my advice he offered the chief priest two talents for it.
BELZANOR (appalled). Apis the all-knowing for two talents! What said the chief priest?
APOLLODORUS. He invoked the mercy of Apis, and asked for five.
BELZANOR. There will be famine and tempest in the land for this.
PERSIAN. Pooh! Why did not Apis cause Caesar to be vanquished by Achillas? Any fresh news from the war, Apollodorus?
APOLLODORUS. The little King Ptolemy was drowned.
BELZANOR. Drowned! How?
APLLODORUS. With the rest of them. Caesar attacked them from three sides at once and swept them into the Nile. Ptolemy’s barge sank.
BELZANOR. A marvelous man, this Caesar! Will he come soon, think you?
APOLLODORUS. He was settling the Jewish question when I left.
A flourish of trumpets from the north, and commotion among the townsfolk, announces the approach of Caesar.
PERSIAN. He has made short work of them. Here he comes. (He hurries to his post in front of the Egyptian lines.)
BELZANOR (following him). Ho there! Caesar comes.
The soldiers stand at attention, and dress their lines. Apollodorus goes to the Egyptian line.
CENTURION (hurrying to the gangway guard). Attention there! Caesar comes.
Caesar arrives in state with Rufio: Britannus following. The soldiers receive him with enthusiastic shouting.
RUFIO (at his left hand). You have not yet appointed a Roman governor for this province.
CAESAR (Looking whimsically at him, but speaking with perfect gravity). What say you to Mithridates of Pergamos, my reliever and rescuer, the great son of Eupator?
RUFIO. Why, that you will want him elsewhere. Do you forget that you have some three or four armies to conquer on your way home?
CAESAR. Indeed! Well, what say you to yourself?
RUFIO (incredulously). I! I a governor! What are you dreaming of? Do you not know that I am only the son of a freedman?
CAESAR (affectionately). Has not Caesar called you his son? (Calling to the whole assembly) Peace awhile there; and hear me.
THE ROMAN SOLDIERS. Hear Caesar.
CAESAR. Hear the service, quality, rank and name of the Roman governor. By service, Caesar’s shield; by quality, Caesar’s friend; by rank, a Roman soldier. (The Roman soldiers give a triumphant shout.) By name, Rufio. (They shout again.)
RUFIO (kissing Caesar’s hand). Ay: I am Caesar’s shield; but of what use shall I be when I am no longer on Caesar’s arm? Well, no matter– (He becomes husky, and turns away to recover himself.)
CAESAR. Where is that British Islander of mine?
BRITANNUS (coming forward on Caesar’s right hand). Here, Caesar.
CAESAR. Who bade you, pray, thrust yourself into the battle of the Delta, uttering the barbarous cries of your native land, and affirming yourself a match for any four of the Egyptians, to whom you applied unseemly epithets?
BRITANNUS. Caesar: I ask you to excuse the language that escaped me in the heat of the moment.
CAESAR. And how did you, who cannot swim, cross the canal with us when we stormed the camp?
BRITANNUS. Caesar: I clung to the tail of your horse.
CAESAR. These are not the deeds of a slave, Britannicus, but of a free man.
BRITANNUS. Caesar: I was born free.
CAESAR. But they call you Caesar’s slave.
BRITANNUS. Only as Caesar’s slave have I found real freedom.
CAESAR (moved). Well said. Ungrateful that I am, I was about to set you free; but now I will not part from you for a million talents. (He claps him friendly on the shoulder. Britannus, gratified, but a trifle shamefaced, takes his hand and kisses it sheepishly.)
BELZANOR (to the Persian). This Roman knows how to make men serve him.
PERSIAN. Ay: men too humble to become dangerous rivals to him.
BELZANOR. O subtle one! O cynic!
CAESAR (seeing Apollodorus in the Egyptian corner and calling to him). Apollodorus: I leave the art of Egypt in your charge. Remember: Rome loves art and will encourage it ungrudgingly.
APOLLODORUS. I understand, Caesar. Rome will produce no art itself; but it will buy up and take away whatever the other nations produce.
CAESAR. What! Rome produces no art! Is peace not an art? Is war not an art? Is government not an art? Is civilization not an art? All these we give you in exchange for a few ornaments. You will have the best of the bargain. (Turning to Rufio) And now, what else have I to do before I embark? (Trying to recollect) There is something I cannot remember: what CAN it be? Well, well: it must remain undone: we must not waste this favorable wind. Farewell, Rufio.
RUFIO. Caesar: I am loath to let you go to Rome without your shield. There are too many daggers there.
CAESAR. It matters not: I shall finish my life’s work on my way back; and then I shall have lived long enough. Besides: I have always disliked the idea of dying: I had rather be killed. Farewell.
RUFIO (with a sigh, raising his hands and giving Caesar up as incorrigible). Farewell. (They shake hands.)
CAESAR (waving his hand to Apollodorus). Farewell, Apollodorus, and my friends, all of you. Aboard!
The gangway is run out from the quay to the ship. As Caesar moves towards it, Cleopatra, cold and tragic, cunningly dressed in black, without ornaments or decoration of any kind, and thus making a striking figure among the brilliantly dressed bevy of ladies as she passes through it, comes from the palace and stands on the steps. Caesar does not see her until she speaks.
CLEOPATRA. Has Cleopatra no part in this leave taking?
CAESAR (enlightened). Ah, I KNEW there was something. (To Rufio) How could you let me forget her, Rufio? (Hastening to her) Had I gone without seeing you, I should never have forgiven myself. (He takes her hands, and brings her into the middle of the esplanade. She submits stonily.) Is this mourning for me?
CLEOPATRA. NO.
CAESAR (remorsefully). Ah, that was thoughtless of me! It is for your brother.
CLEOPATRA. No.
CIESAR. For whom, then?
CLEOPATRA. Ask the Roman governor whom you have left us.
CAESAR. Rufio?
CLEOPATRA. Yes: Rufio. (She points at him with deadly scorn.) He who is to rule here in Caesar’s name, in Caesar’s way, according to Caesar’s boasted laws of life.
CAESAR (dubiously). He is to rule as he can, Cleopatra. He has taken the work upon him, and will do it in his own way.
CLEOPATRA. Not in your way, then?
CAESAR (puzzled). What do you mean by my way?
CLEOPATRA. Without punishment. Without revenge. Without judgment.
CAESAR (approvingly). Ay: that is the right way, the great way, the only possible way in the end. (To Rufio) Believe it, Rufio, if you can.
RUFIO. Why, I believe it, Caesar. You have convinced me of it long ago. But look you. You are sailing for Numidia to-day. Now tell me: if you meet a hungry lion you will not punish it for wanting to eat you?
CAESAR (wondering what he is driving at). No.
RUFIO. Nor revenge upon it the blood of those it has already eaten.
CAESAR. No.
RUFIO. Nor judge it for its guiltiness.
CAESAR. No.
RUFIO. What, then, will you do to save your life from it?
CAESAR (promptly). Kill it, man, without malice, just as it would kill me. What does this parable of the lion mean?
RUFIO. Why, Cleopatra had a tigress that killed men at bidding. I thought she might bid it kill you some day. Well, had I not been Caesar’s pupil, what pious things might I not have done to that tigress? I might have punished it. I might have revenged Pothinus on it.
CAESAR (interjects). Pothinus!
RUFIO (continuing). I might have judged it. But I put all these follies behind me; and, without malice, only cut its throat. And that is why Cleopatra comes to you in mourning.
CLEOPATRA (vehemently). He has shed the blood of my servant Ftatateeta. On your head be it as upon his, Caesar, if you hold him free of it.
CAESAR (energetically). On my head be it, then; for it was well done. Rufio: had you set yourself in the seat of the judge, and with hateful ceremonies and appeals to the gods handed that woman over to some hired executioner to be slain before the people in the name of justice, never again would I have touched your hand without a shudder. But this was natural slaying: I feel no horror at it.
Rufio, satisfied, nods at Cleopatra, mutely inviting her to mark that.
CLEOPATRA (pettish and childish in her impotence). No: not when a Roman slays an Egyptian. All the world will now see how unjust and corrupt Caesar is.
CAESAR (taking her handy coaxingly). Come: do not be angry with me. I am sorry for that poor Totateeta. (She laughs in spite of herself.) Aha! You are laughing. Does that mean reconciliation?
CLEOPATRA (angry with herself for laughing). No, no, NO!! But it is so ridiculous to hear you call her Totateeta.
CAESAR. What! As much a child as ever, Cleopatra! Have I not made a woman of you after all?
CLEOPATRA. Oh, it is you, who are a great baby: you make me seem silly because you will not behave seriously. But you have treated me badly; and I do not forgive you.
CAESAR. Bid me farewell.
CLEOPATRA. I will not.
CAESAR (coaxing). I will send you a beautiful present from Rome.
CLEOPATRA (proudly). Beauty from Rome to Egypt indeed! What can Rome give ME that Egypt cannot give me?
APOLLODORUS. That is true, Caesar. If the present is to be really beautiful, I shall have to buy it for you in Alexandria.
CAESAR. You are forgetting the treasures for which Rome is most famous, my friend. You cannot buy THEM in Alexandria.
APOLLODORUS. What are they, Caesar?
CAESAR. Her sons. Come, Cleopatra: forgive me and bid me farewell; and I will send you a man, Roman from head to heel and Roman of the noblest; not old and ripe for the knife; not lean in the arms and cold in the heart; not hiding a bald head under his conqueror’s laurels; not stooped with the weight of the world on his shoulders; but brisk and fresh, strong and young, hoping in the morning, fighting in the day, and reveling in the evening. Will you take such an one in exchange for Caesar?
CLEOPATRA (palpitating). His name, his name?
CAESAR. Shall it be Mark Antony? (She throws herself in his arms.)
RUFIO. You are a bad hand at a bargain, mistress, if you will swap Caesar for Antony.
CAESAR. So now you are satisfied.
CLEOPATRA. You will not forget.
CAESAR. I will not forget. Farewell: I do not think we shall meet again. Farewell. (He kisses her on the forehead. She is much affected and begins to sniff. He embarks.)
THE ROMAN SOLDIERS (as he sets his foot on the gangway). Hail, Caesar; and farewell!
He reaches the ship and returns Rufio’s wave of the hand.
APOLLODORUS (to Cleopatra). No tears, dearest Queen: they stab your servant to the heart. He will return some day.
CLEOPATRA. I hope not. But I can’t help crying, all the same. (She waves her handkerchief to Caesar; and the ship begins to move.)
THE ROMAN SOLDIERS (drawing their swords and raising them in the air). Hail, Caesar!
NOTES TO CAESAR AND CLEOPATRA
CLEOPATRA’S CURE FOR BALDNESS
For the sake of conciseness in a hurried situation I have made Cleopatra recommend rum. This, I am afraid, is an anachronism: the only real one in the play. To balance it, I give a couple of the remedies she actually believed in. They are quoted by Galen from Cleopatra’s book on Cosmetic.
“For bald patches, powder red sulphuret of arsenic and take it up with oak gum, as much as it will bear. Put on a rag and apply, having soaped the place well first. I have mixed the above with a foam of nitre, and it worked well.”
Several other receipts follow, ending with: “The following is the best of all, acting for fallen hairs, when applied with oil or pomatum; acts also for falling off of eyelashes or for people getting bald all over. It is wonderful. Of domestic mice burnt, one part; of vine rag burnt, one part; of horse’s teeth burnt, one part; of bear’s grease one; of deer’s marrow one; of reed bark one. To be pounded when dry, and mixed with plenty of honey til it gets the consistency of honey; then the bear’s grease and marrow to be mixed (when melted), the medicine to be put in a brass flask, and the bald part rubbed til it sprouts.”
Concerning these ingredients, my fellow-dramatist, Gilbert Murray, who, as a Professor of Greek, has applied to classical antiquity the methods of high scholarship (my own method is pure divination), writes to me as follows: ” Some of this I don’t understand, and possibly Galen did not, as he quotes your heroine’s own language. Foam of nitre is, I think, something like soapsuds. Reed bark is an odd expression. It might mean the outside membrane of a reed: I do not know what it ought to be called. In the burnt mice receipt I take that you first mixed the solid powders with honey, and then added the grease. I expect Cleopatra preferred it because in most of the others you have to lacerate the skin, prick it, or rub it till it bleeds. I do not know what vine rag is. I translate literally.”
APPARENT ANACHRONISMS
The only way to write a play which shall convey to the general public an impression of antiquity is to make the characters speak blank verse and abstain from reference to steam, telegraphy, or any of the material conditions of their existence. The more ignorant men are, the more convinced are they that their little parish and their little chapel is an apex which civilization and philosophy have painfully struggled up the pyramid of time from a desert of savagery. Savagery, they think, became barbarism; barbarism became ancient civilization; ancient civilization became Pauline Christianity; Pauline Christianity became Roman Catholicism; Roman Catholicism became the Dark Ages; and the Dark Ages were finally enlightened by the Protestant instincts of the English race. The whole process is summed up as Progress with a capital P. And any elderly gentleman of Progressive temperament will testify that the improvement since he was a boy is enormous.
Now if we count the generations of Progressive elderly gentlemen since, say, Plato, and add together the successive enormous improvements to which each of them has testified, it will strike us at once as an unaccountable fact that the world, instead of having been improved in 67 generations out all recognition, presents, on the whole, a rather less dignified appearance in Ibsen’s Enemy of the People than in Plato’s Republic. And in truth, the period of time covered by history is far too short to allow of any perceptible progress in the popular sense of Evolution of the Human Species. The notion that there has been any such Progress since Caesar’s time (less than 20 centuries) is too absurd for discussion. All the savagery, barbarism, dark ages and the rest of it of which we have any record as existing in the past, exists at the present moment. A British carpenter or stonemason may point out that he gets twice as much money for his labor as his father did in the same trade, and that his suburban house, with its bath, its cottage piano, its drawingroom suite, and its album of photographs, would have shamed the plainness of his grandmother’s. But the descendants of feudal barons, living in squalid lodgings on a salary of fifteen shillings a week instead of in castles on princely revenues, do not congratulate the world on the change. Such changes, in fact, are not to the point. It has been known, as far back as our records go, that man running wild in the woods is different to man kennelled in a city slum; that a dog seems to understand a shepherd better than a hewer of wood and drawer of water can understand an astronomer; and that breeding, gentle nurture and luxurious food and shelter will produce a kind of man with whom the common laborer is socially incompatible. The same thing is true of horses and dogs. Now there is clearly room for great changes in the world by increasing the percentage of individuals who are carefully bred and gently nurtured even to finally making the most of every man and woman born. But that possibility existed in the days of the Hittites as much as it does to-day. It does not give the slightest real support to the common assumption that the civilized contemporaries of the Hittites were unlike their civilized descendants to-day.
This would appear the truest commonplace if it were not that the ordinary citizen’s ignorance of the past combines with his idealization of the present to mislead and flatter him. Our latest book on the new railway across Asia describes the dulness of the Siberian farmer and the vulgar pursepride of the Siberian man of business without the least consciousness that the sting of contemptuous instances given might have been saved by writing simply “Farmers and provincial plutocrats in Siberia are exactly what they are in England.” The latest professor descanting on the civilization of the Western Empire in the fifth century feels bound to assume, in the teeth of his own researches, that the Christian was one sort of animal and the Pagan another. It might as well be assumed, as indeed it generally is assumed by implication, that a murder committed with a poisoned arrow is different to a murder committed with a Mauser rifle. All such notions are illusions. Go back to the first syllable of recorded time, and there you will find your Christian and your Pagan, your yokel and your poet, helot and hero, Don Quixote and Sancho, Tamino and Papageno, Newton and bushman unable to count eleven, all alive and contemporaneous, and all convinced that they are heirs of all the ages and the privileged recipients of THE truth (all others damnable heresies), just as you have them to-day, flourishing in countries each of which is the bravest and best that ever sprang at Heaven’s command from out of the azure main.
Again, there is the illusion of “increased command over Nature,” meaning that cotton is cheap and that ten miles of country road on a bicycle have replaced four on foot. But even if man’s increased command over Nature included any increased command over himself (the only sort of command relevant to his evolution into a higher being), the fact remains that it is only by running away from the increased command over Nature to country places where Nature is still in primitive command over Man that he can recover from the effects of the smoke, the stench, the foul air, the overcrowding, the racket, the ugliness, the dirt which the cheap cotton costs us. If manufacturing activity means Progress, the town must be more advanced than the country; and the field laborers and village artizans of to-day must be much less changed from the servants of Job than the proletariat of modern London from the proletariat of Caesar’s Rome. Yet the cockney proletarian is so inferior to the village laborer that it is only by steady recruiting from the country that London is kept alive. This does not seem as if the change since Job’s time were Progress in the popular sense: quite the reverse. The common stock of discoveries in physics has accumulated a little: that is all.
One more illustration. Is the Englishman prepared to admit that the American is his superior as a human being? I ask this question because the scarcity of labor in America relatively to the demand for it has led to a development of machinery there, and a consequent “increase of command over Nature” which makes many of our English methods appear almost medieval to the up-to-date Chicagoan. This means that the American has an advantage over the Englishman of exactly the same nature that the Englishman has over the contemporaries of Cicero. Is the Englishman prepared to draw the same conclusion in both cases? I think not. The American, of course, will draw it cheerfully; but I must then ask him whether, since a modern negro has a greater “command over Nature” than Washington had, we are also to accept the conclusion, involved in his former one, that humanity has progressed from Washington to the fin de siecle negro.
Finally, I would point out that if life is crowned by its success and devotion in industrial organization and ingenuity, we had better worship the ant and the bee (as moralists urge us to do in our childhood), and humble ourselves before the arrogance of the birds of Aristophanes.
My reason then for ignoring the popular conception of Progress in Caesar and Cleopatra is that there is no reason to suppose that any Progress has taken place since their time. But even if I shared the popular delusion, I do not see that I could have made any essential difference in the play. I can only imitate humanity as I know it. Nobody knows whether Shakespear thought that ancient Athenian joiners, weavers, or bellows menders were any different from Elizabethan ones; but it is quite certain that one could not have made them so, unless, indeed, he had played the literary man and made Quince say, not “Is all our company here?” but “Bottom: was not that Socrates that passed us at the Piraeus with Glaucon and Polemarchus on his way to the house of Kephalus.” And so on.
CLEOPATRA
Cleopatra was only sixteen when Caesar went to Egypt; but in Egypt sixteen is a riper age than it is in England. The childishness I have ascribed to her, as far as it is childishness of character and not lack of experience, is not a matter of years. It may be observed in our own climate at the present day in many women of fifty. It is a mistake to suppose that the difference between wisdom and folly has anything to do with the difference between physical age and physical youth. Some women are younger at seventy than most women at seventeen.
It must be borne in mind, too, that Cleopatra was a queen, and was therefore not the typical Greek-cultured, educated Eyptian lady of her time. To represent her by any such type would be as absurd as to represent George IV by a type founded on the attainments of Sir Isaac Newton. It is true that an ordinarily well educated Alexandrian girl of her time would no more have believed bogey stories about the Romans than the daughter of a modern Oxford professor would believe them about the Germans (though, by the way, it is possible to talk great nonsense at Oxford about foreigners when we are at war with them). But I do not feel bound to believe that Cleopatra was well educated. Her father, the illustrious Flute Blower, was not at all a parent of the Oxford professor type. And Cleopatra was a chip of the old block.
BRITANNUS
I find among those who have read this play in manuscript a strong conviction that an ancient Briton could not possibly have been like a modern one. I see no reason to adopt this curious view. It is true that the Roman and Norman conquests must have for a time disturbed the normal British type produced by the climate. But Britannus, born before these events, represents the unadulterated Briton who fought Caesar and impressed Roman observers much as we should expect the ancestors of Mr. Podsnap to impress the cultivated Italians of their time.
I am told that it is not scientific to treat national character as a product of climate. This only shows the wide difference between common knowledge and the intellectual game called science. We have men of exactly the same stock, and speaking the same language, growing in Great Britain, in Ireland, and in America. The result is three of the most distinctly marked nationalities under the sun. Racial characteristics are quite another matter. The difference between a Jew and a Gentile has nothing to do with the difference between an Englishman and a German. The characteristics of Britannus are local characteristics, not race characteristics. In an ancient Briton they would, I take it, be exaggerated, since modern Britain, disforested, drained, urbanified and consequently cosmopolized, is presumably less characteristically British than Caesar’s Britain.
And again I ask does anyone who, in the light of a competent knowledge of his own age, has studied history from contemporary documents, believe that 67 generations of promiscuous marriage have made any appreciable difference in the human fauna of these isles? Certainly I do not.
JULIUS CAESAR
As to Caesar himself, I have purposely avoided the usual anachronism of going to Caesar’s books, and concluding that the style is the man. That is only true of authors who have the specific literary genius, and have practised long enough to attain complete self-expression in letters. It is not true even on these conditions in an age when literature is conceived as a game of style, and not as a vehicle of self-expression by the author. Now Caesar was an amateur stylist writing books of travel and campaign histories in a style so impersonal that the authenticity of the later volumes is disputed. They reveal some of his qualities just as the Voyage of a Naturalist Round the World reveals some of Darwin’s, without expressing his private personality. An Englishman reading them would say that Caesar was a man of great common sense and good taste, meaning thereby a man without originality or moral courage.
In exhibiting Caesar as a much more various person than the historian of the Gallic wars, I hope I have not succumbed unconsciously to the dramatic illusion to which all great men owe part of their reputation and some the whole of it. I admit that reputations gained in war are specially questionable. Able civilians taking up the profession of arms, like Caesar and Cromwell, in middle age, have snatched all its laurels from opponent commanders bred to it, apparently because capable persons engaged in military pursuits are so scarce that the existence of two of them at the same time in the same hemisphere is extremely rare. The capacity of any conqueror is therefore more likely than not to be an illusion produced by the incapacity of his adversary. At all events, Caesar might have won his battles without being wiser than Charles XII or Nelson or Joan of Arc, who were, like most modern “self-made” millionaires, half-witted geniuses, enjoying the worship accorded by all races to certain forms of insanity. But Caesar’s victories were only advertisements for an eminence that would never have become popular without them. Caesar is greater off the battle field than on it. Nelson off his quarterdeck was so quaintly out of the question that when his head was injured at the battle of the Nile, and his conduct became for some years openly scandalous, the difference was not important enough to be noticed. It may, however, be said that peace hath her illusory reputations no less than war. And it is certainly true that in civil life mere capacity for work–the power of killing a dozen secretaries under you, so to speak, as a life-or-death courier kills horses– enables men with common ideas and superstitions to distance all competitors in the strife of political ambition. It was this power of work that astonished Cicero as the most prodigious of Caesar’s gifts, as it astonished later observers in Napoleon before it wore him out. How if Caesar were nothing but a Nelson and a Gladstone combined! A prodigy of vitality without any special quality of mind! Nay, with ideas that were worn out before he was born, as Nelson’s and Gladstone’s were! I have considered that possibility too, and rejected it. I cannot cite all the stories about Caesar which seem to me to show that he was genuinely original; but let me at least point out that I have been careful to attribute nothing but originality to him. Originality gives a man an air of frankness, generosity, and magnanimity by enabling him to estimate the value of truth, money, or success in any particular instance quite independently of convention and moral generalization. He therefore will not, in the ordinary Treasury bench fashion, tell a lie which everybody knows to be a lie (and consequently expects him as a matter of good taste to tell). His lies are not found out: they pass for candors. He understands the paradox of money, and gives it away when he can get most for it: in other words, when its value is least, which is just when a common man tries hardest to get it. He knows that the real moment of success is not the moment apparent to the crowd. Hence, in order to produce an impression of complete disinterestedness and magnanimity, he has only to act with entire selfishness; and this is perhaps the only sense in which a man can be said to be naturally great. It is in this sense that I have represented Caesar as great. Having virtue, he has no need of goodness. He is neither forgiving, frank, nor generous, because a man who is too great to resent has nothing to forgive; a man who says things that other people are afraid to say need be no more frank than Bismarck was; and there is no generosity in giving things you do not want to people of whom you intend to make use. This distinction between virtue and goodness is not understood in England: hence the poverty of our drama in heroes. Our stage attempts at them are mere goody-goodies. Goodness, in its popular British sense of self-denial, implies that man is vicious by nature, and that supreme goodness is supreme martyrdom. Not sharing that pious opinion, I have not given countenance to it in any of my plays. In this I follow the precedent of the ancient myths, which represent the hero as vanquishing his enemies, not in fair fight, but with enchanted sword, superequine horse and magical invulnerability, the possession of which, from the vulgar moralistic point of view, robs his exploits of any merit whatever.
As to Caesar’s sense of humor, there is no more reason to assume that he lacked it than to assume that he was deaf or blind. It is said that on the occasion of his assassination by a conspiracy of moralists (it is always your moralist who makes assassination a duty, on the scaffold or off it), he defended himself until the good Brutes struck him, when he exclaimed “What! you too, Brutes!” and disdained further fight. If this be true, he must have been an incorrigible comedian. But even if we waive this story, or accept the traditional sentimental interpretation of it, there is still abundant evidence of his lightheartedness and adventurousness. Indeed it is clear from his whole history that what has been called his ambition was an instinct for exploration. He had much more of Columbus and Franklin in him than of Henry V.
However, nobody need deny Caesar a share, at least, of the qualities I have attributed to him. All men, much more Julius Caesars, possess all qualities in some degree. The really interesting question is whether I am right in assuming that the way to produce an impression of greatness is by exhibiting a man, not as mortifying his nature by doing his duty, in the manner which our system of putting little men into great positions (not having enough great men in our influential families to go round) forces us to inculcate, but by simply doing what he naturally wants to do. For this raises the question whether our world has not been wrong in its moral theory for the last 2,500 years or so. It must be a constant puzzle to many of us that the Christian era, so excellent in its intentions, should have been practically such a very discreditable episode in the history of the race. I doubt if this is altogether due to the vulgar and sanguinary sensationalism of our religious legends, with their substitution of gross physical torments and public executions for the passion of humanity. Islam, substituting voluptuousness for torment (a merely superficial difference, it is true) has done no better. It may have been the failure of Christianity to emancipate itself from expiatory theories of moral responsibility, guilt, innocence, reward, punishment, and the rest of it, that baffled its intention of changing the world. But these are bound up in all philosophies of creation as opposed to cosmism. They may therefore be regarded as the price we pay for popular religion.