Shakespeare And The Roman Crowd

`Nothing is more unpredictable than the mob, nothing more obscure than public opinion, nothing more deceptive than the whole political system` - Cicero. Discuss the role of `the mob` in Shakespeare.

Shakespeare`s Roman plays dramatize the precarious balance between two timeless political forces: the volatile mob and the ambitious tyrant. The threat of chaos manifested in the crowd is set against the implicit principle that `power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely` . Shakespeare poses no conclusive answers to this dilemma. As Yeats writes: `[poets] have no gift to set a statesman right` . However, as Ahmed Kathrada wrote after his imprisonment on Robben Island, `somehow Shakespeare always has something to say to us` . In December 1933, right-wing groups turned a production of Coriolanus at the Comédie Francaise into a demonstration, cheering at every outburst against the `common cry of curs`. The termination of the play directly preceded the riots of February 1934. In contrast, Ralph Fiennes` 2011 film adaptation presents a handful of well-dressed intellectuals at the forefront of the crowd, an appealing contrast with the blood-soaked protagonist. The fascination of Shakespeare lies in the unresolved problems at the heart of his plays. His genius is in the excavation of individual personalities beneath the crude oppositions of mob and tyrant, royalist and republican, right and wrong. It is this strand of individuality, running through all of these plays, that will be examined in relation to the Roman `mob`.

The opening scenes of Julius Caesar and Coriolanus are charged with the electric tension of half-submerged class-warfare. Both plays begin with a direct confrontation between the people and those who rule them. Julius Caesar opens with an `image of restless movement` , as people leave their shops and fill the streets, only to be dispersed by the tribunes. The crowd are forbidden from partaking in `the grand march of history incarnate` celebrating Caesar`s victory. However, as Bakhtin eloquently put it: history is `a theatre without footlights` . The very fact of their presence signals their unavoidable importance throughout this play. These opening scenes establish both plays as emphatically public. As John Palmer notes, Coriolanus `stands, as it were, in the public square` and in Julius Caesar, `the Roman marketplace.rocks with unruly, gullible crowds buying and selling` . Even when Cleopatra symbolically draws the people away from the political realm to witness her barge in Antony and Cleopatra, we are reminded of Antony who is left `enthroned in the marketplace.whistling to the air`. Nevertheless, the voice of authority leaves the crowds of both plays dispersed, denigrated and degraded. In Julius Caesar, Flavius accuses the people of betraying Pompey, whom they celebrated in the same way so recently, emphasising the short memory of the crowd. Similarly, Menenius patronises the starving crowd at the opening of Coriolanus with the analogy of the `body politic` in which the `belly` of the state feeds the outward veins of the people with greater competence than they are capable of. The pacification of the crowd, like the taming of Plato`s beast, outlines a pattern which persists throughout the plays.

The language of Shakespeare`s ruling class signals the reification of the people. Flavius tells the people in the opening scene of Julius Caesar that `being mechanical, you ought not walk on this day without sign of your profession`. He demands that the citizens are effectively defined by the economic role as a cog in the machine of society. Cleopatra reinforces this vision of the people in her horrified premonition of her life at Rome, when

`Mechanic slaves With greasy aprons, rules and hammers shall Uplift us to the view. In their thick breaths, Rank of gross diet, shall we be enclouded And forced to drink their vapour`

The repulsive sensuality of this passage is the culmination of a carefully generated sense of disgust at `the mob` from Caesar`s condemnation of `knaves that smell of sweat` in Act 1 onwards. This sense of disgust pervades Coriolanus` descri ptions of `the mutable, rank-scented many` and Casca`s relaying of `the rabblement` in Julius Caesar who `clapp`d their chopt hands, and threw up their sweaty night-caps, and uttered such a deal of stinking breath because Caesar refused the crown.` The people are reduced to their economic utility-value by the powerful figures of these plays and on holidays, they become a monstrous, nauseating crowd. As L.C Knights observes, `for Coriolanus, large classes of people are reduced to the category of `it`` . They are not only disgusting, but also idiotic. Coriolanus` contemptuous disregard for `the common cry of curs` is used in Antony`s threat of leaving Cleopatra to Caesar, who will `take thee and hoist thee up to the shouting plebeians!` In Julius Caesar, they are `blocks, stones, worse than senseless things!`

The crowd which destabilises the ruling powers in these plays is not only disgusting - it is also fickle and dangerous. Act 3, Scene 2 of Julius Caesar is arguably one of the most cynical anti-republican scenes in the history of literature. After being easily pacified about the death of Caesar, and reminded of the priceless virtues of a Republic, Mark Antony`s speech angers the crowd to a point of frenzy, at which point they cry, with terrible irony `let him be Caesar!` This scene appears to prove Coriolanus` observations that the `disposition` of the mob is mutable. The volatile nature of the capricious crowd is expressed in the imagery of fire when Menenius says `kindle their dry stubble and their blaze shall darken him forever` in Coriolanus and manifested in actual fire when the crowd of Julius Caesar cry `burn all!` and murder the poet, Cinna. The disgust of those in power at the common people, combined with the terrifying power of the mob as a force for destruction, creates a very dark and cynical view of the people in these plays.

The consistent demonization of the crowd within these plays, even when it is in the mouths of questionable characters, makes it tempting to conclude with Hazlitt that `the whole dramatic moral.is that those who have little shall have less.the people are poor, therefore they ought to be starved. They are slaves: therefore they ought to be beaten` . However, as A.P Rossiter argues, `it is only necessary to read the text, to say that Hazlitt`s Jacobinical comments are false and nonsensical`Th. The public sphere in which these comments are intended to be received must be remembered. To return to Palmer`s idea, these plays `stand in the public square`. Thus, when Hamlet refers to the `groundlings, who are capable of nothing but inexplicable dumb-shows and noise`, he is allowing the audience a greater involvement in the living moment of theatre, inviting a response, provoking outrage and laughter with the ironic self-referentiality so characteristic of late Elizabethan drama. In the same way, the contempt for the crowd is exposed before the crowd, and often stands as proof of a character`s flaws. Although the violent madness of the mob, the `herd-instinct` is undeniably emphasised by Shakespeare, the equally dangerous implications of tyranny must also be highlighted, for a balanced, complete understanding of his complex treatment of `the crowd` in the Roman plays.

Pitted against the contempt of Caesar and Casca, the disgust of Cleopatra and Coriolanus, is a very definite voice of the people in Shakespeare. As the crowd boldly proclaim in Coriolanus: `the people are the city`. They have a point. Brutus, in many ways a true hero, works for `the general good`. Although not part of the `crowd`, it is the servants in Antony and Cleopatra who have the greatest political insights. Servant 1 observes that `some o`their plants are ill-rooted already the least wind i`th`world will blow them down` at the meeting with Pompey. Although these characters are not even afforded names, their intelligence and understanding of politics is evident in the striking image of Lepidus as being `called into a huge sphere and not to be seen to move in`t`, which is like `the holes where eyes should be, which pitifully disaster the cheeks`. Moreover, the fear of tyranny is expressed throughout Julius Caesar, epitomised in Brutus` line `the abuse of greatness is that it disjoins remorse from power`. Ambition stalks the landscape of these plays. Flavius worries that Caesar might `soar above the view of men and keep us all in servile fearfulness` and Brutus envisions Caesar atop the `ladder` of ambition `who looks in the clouds, scorning the base degrees by which he did ascend`. The people fear the same ambition in the language of height, describing Coriolanus as `proud, even to the altitude of his virtue`. If the crowd is dangerous, the tyrant is potentially more dangerous.

The trappings of power are exposed as hollow, undermining that which elevates the leader above the people in this play. The talismanic power of the name `Caesar` is questioned by Cassius: `what should be in that "Caesar"? Why should that name be sounded more than yours?` The illusory stability of names as denoting power or identity is questioned throughout Shakespeare, whether by Cassius or Juliet: `what`s in a name? A rose by any other name would smell as sweet`. As Robert S. Miola observes, the name `Caesar` is repeated seven times in twenty-four lines in scene 2 alone. However, the talismanic effect of the name is punctured by the demonstrable human imperfection of the leader himself. Cassius talks of how the invulnerable Caesar almost drowned, and describes in a bitterly acerbic, ironic tone, `how he did shake, this god did shake`. We are reminded of Hotspur`s brutal mockery of Glendower, who claims invincibility and mystical powers because the `earth shook` when he was born.

The myths that kept Alexander and Caesar amongst others in power are debunked in these plays. Coriolanus is chided for speaking of `the people as if you were a god to punish, not a man of their infirmity`. However, this very infirmity is vindicated by his exile and eventual death. Similarly, Antony`s great military and political power, emphasised throughout from comparisons with `plated Mars` the god of war in the opening passage to Cleopatra`s descri ption of how he did `bestride the narrow world like a Collosus` is undermined ultimately by his susceptibility to desire and death. However, it is Antony`s humanity that causes him at once to fail as a political leader and to transcend politics. The arrival of the Romans after Cleopatra`s death is an invasion on the personal, sacred world of Antony and Cleopatra`s love. Despite all of its flaws, it is more passionate and more real than the petty cries of `A way there! A way there for Caesar!` If Antony`s human imperfection allows him to transcend politics and expose the falsity of imperial titles, then it is Coriolanus` inhumanity that allows him to expose the falsity of political titles. Upon his return to Rome, Cominius describes his encounter with the exiled Coriolanus:

`Coriolanus He would not answer to: forbad all names He was a kind of nothing, titleless, Till he had forged himself a name o` the fire Of burning Rome`

In his disgust at the falsity and petty political people of Rome, Coriolanus relinquishes his own identity, as it is defined within this context. There is a peerless Spartan honesty in this, contrasting with characters such as Julius Caesar. He refuses to hear his wounds praised to the crowd by Menenius, unable to sit and `hear my nothings monstered`. In becoming a `kind of nothing`, Coriolanus engages with this reality, free of all political titles and falsity. Later in the play, before his death, Aufidius reinforces this underlying reality: `dost thou think I`ll grace thee with that stolen name?` Antony undermines the nominal ruling power by making it look petty and sterile next to his deeply personal tragedy. Coriolanus undermines nominal ruling power with sheer destructive malice in the drive towards that which is authentic, no matter how brutal. Julius Caesar is caught in the middle, his name being questioned and eroded by the eloquent conspirators. The plays collectively seem to say to us, with Richard II: `mock not flesh and blood with solemn reverence`.

The dangers of ambition, the fear of tyranny, the falsity of nominal power and debunked myths of invincibility all counterbalance the disgust and fear of the crowd in Shakespeare`s Roman plays. It appears that we are presented with an impossible choice between the iron grip of ambitious tyrants or the political chaos of riotous crowds. However, these forces stem from the same problem in these plays - that of falsity. The real tragedy of these plays is that integrity cannot survive in the political world of Shakespeare. Whether it is displayed in the Spartan simplicity of Coriolanus, the dutiful democratic idealism of Brutus or even the elevated valour of Caesar, it never survives for long. The falsity of Caesar`s empty political title is eradicated in his noble death. His display of bravery in the lines `cowards die many times before their death, the valiant taste of death but once` gives us a hint of the great man behind the title, who is missed in Antony`s explicitly personal lamentation: `pardon me, Julius!` Brutus dies in the name of the people, in honour of his ancestors, never falling to deceit and avoiding what Cleopatra calls `those mouth-made vows, which break themselves in swearing` in bidding the conspirators not vow, for greater and more authentic strength of purpose. In Antony and Cleopatra, Pompey tells the plotting Menas that `tis not my profit that leads mine honour, mine honour it`, later dying for this refusal. Finally, Coriolanus has no place either in this world. His blunt and brutal honesty is displayed in what Menenius calls his `noble carelessness`. As he tells his mother: `I`d rather play the man I am`.

Coriolanus, Brutus and Antony all strive in their own way towards a sense of `integrity` or `wholeness`. In contrast with the dissembling and crowd manipulation of Sicinius and Brutus in Coriolanus, Cassius in Julius Caesar, and Enobarbus and Milenus in Antony and Cleopatra, they reach towards a kind of honesty. In the divided world of Shakespeare`s Rome, they strive in vain. R.P Rossiter`s claim that Coriolanus is `about conflict, not in personal, but political life` should be moderated with L.C Knights` convincing and nuanced argument that Coriolanus demonstrates that `disruption in the state - the body politic - is related to individual disharmony by something more palpable than an Elizabethan trick of metaphor, that the public crisis is rooted in the personal and habitual` . Shakespeare is neither attacking republicanism nor royalism (though he masterfully exposes the flaws of both) but he is primarily showing the detrimental effects of a culture which breeds internal division - principally through the violent separation from women. The internal division is a principal cause of political turmoil in these plays.

Robert S. Miola takes Caesar`s dismissal of Calphurnia`s prophetic dream and Brutus` turning away from Portia as typical of `the larger pattern of Roman ethical behaviour, which subordinates the claims of hearth and home to those of the city. Natural affection gives way to abstract ideals` . Coriolanus represents an extreme version of this Roman hyper-masculinity, turning away from his wife and mother to a point of being prepared to kill them. His reconciliation does not represent true `self-awareness` as evidenced in his petulant, enraged response to being called a `boy`, reverting to incensed hyper-masculine violence. Caesar and Coriolanus suffer the effects of trying to live `as if a man were author of himself and knew no kin`. Antony, though free of parental pressure, struggles with the profound influence of Cleopatra upon him, suffering similar problems with what Stockholder calls `conflicting desires for self-assertion and for loss of selfhood` . Antony fails to fulfil his desire to separate love from politics, just as Caesar and Coriolanus fail to deny the importance of the women in their lives.

The intense power of the personality cult derives from a collective desire for loss of selfhood. Just as Antony wants to worship Cleopatra, the people want to worship Caesar. In contrast, the destructive potential of the mob derives from the collective desire for self-assertion. Just as Coriolanus wishes to deny his debt towards his mother, rioters wish to deny their interdependence in a fit of self-assertion. Therein lies the key to the capricious crowd in Shakespeare. However, the integrity of those characters who honestly struggle with this conflict in themselves are prized over those who exploit its manifestations in the crowd.