No,
I am promised forth.
-Casca
Julius Caesar
Act I, scene ii, line 291
It’s a short and pretty simple little line. Casca’s been
asked to stay for dinner and he says No, I am promised forth. ‘No,
I’ve got a previous commitment’, he’s saying. In the meantime though, I went
back and read most of this act and there’s a lot of really interesting stuff
here. A few very famous lines. There’s It’s Greek to me, and also
Yond Cassius has a lean and hungry look. However, it was a much
less than famous line that really caught my eye. Casca is describing what he
saw happening. He saw Caesar faint and
When he came to himself again, he said, if he had done or
said anything amiss, he desired their worships to think it was his infirmity.
Three or four wenches, where I stood, cried, ‘Alas, good soul!’ and forgave him
with all their hearts: but there’s no heed to be taken of them; If Caesar had
stabb’d their mothers, they would have done no less.
So the thing is, if you’re not familiar with Julius Caesar,
the whole reason that the conspirators are getting ready to assassinate Caesar
is that they believe that he’s going to be crowning himself king. They want to
prevent this because they don’t want a king, they want the representative government
that they have. And when I read that passage I could not help but think of a
current politician’s words about being able to shoot someone in broad daylight
on Fifth Avenue and not lose any votes over it. And then I thought of this self-same
politician being used as the model for Caesar in a modern production of Julius
Caesar and the hub bub that was raised about him being assassinated in the
production.
So, there’s the genius of Shakespeare. He’s more prescient and more
relevant now than he ever was.
