Mojo, The Bard, & Me

Go with me to my tent, where you shall see

How hardly I was drawn into this war,

How calm and gentle I proceeded still

In all my writings.

-Octavius Caesar

 

Antony and Cleopatra                   Act V, scene i       Line 75

These are the words of Octavius Caesar upon learning of the death of Antony. For starters, ‘hardly’ in this context means ‘with great difficulty’. Consider now that Caesar came all the way to Egypt to fight Antony because Antony was rebelling, sort of. Consider also that Caesar and Antony were compatriots, even friends, at one point. Caesar does not sound triumphant in this line. Contrast this with “Taking Comfort” at the severed head of Macbeth in the 8/27 post. Caesar sounds tired in this line, and in the lines that lead up to this he’s downright sad. If you listen to this scene acted out (it’s a pretty short scene and this is the end of it), which I did, you’ll really get the sadness and resignation in Caesar’s voice.

I’m not quite sure what Will is making reference to in ‘all my writings’. There are actual writings of Octavius Caesars that survived, but this is a little confusing. It’s an interesting little line and it seems to get more interesting the more I look at it. Like almost all of Will’s stuff. Somehow the tone of this line reminds me a little of Prospero at the end of The Tempest when he’s inviting Alonso and his group back to his cell. It’s a very different play, a comedy as opposed to a tragedy, but there’s just something about the tone that I find familiar. I can’t help but think that over the course of thirty-whatever plays that Will wrote that he came to the same place of human feelings many times, even if this is not what I think it is in regards to The Tempest specifically. In any event, I think that’s all I’ve got on this one for today.

                         The death of the just is like the aurora of a beautiful day which will never end.

This is a picture I took today of a grave marker on a church grounds in Southington. It’s the only marker there, and it doesn’t appear to be a cemetery, but there it was nonetheless. I was struck by the death of the just... epitaph on the stone more than anything else, and I felt it resonated somehow with the death of Mark Antony, a death that precipitated today’s Totally Random line.