Some people spend their lives trying to prove they’re extraordinary.
Most people run from storms. Cassius? He seeks one out and challenges it:
I have bared my bosom to the thunder-stone;
And when the cross blue lightning seem’d to open
The breast of heaven, I did present myself
Even in the aim and very flash of it.1
It’s such a memorable image: Cassius and the heavens baring their chests and bumping up against each other like a couple of rutting stags.
In teaching and tutoring, I call these acts of defiance ‘begging for the thunderbolt‘ moments, and there are plenty of them in Shakespeare’s plays. In King Lear, the unravelling king defies the worst the storm can do. In Richard III, Buckingham delivers an extravagant oath of allegiance to the young princes on Edward IV’s deathbed.
And, of course, we mustn’t forget Caesar himself, dismissing the ‘augurers’ (who he instructed) when they bring him unwelcome news:
Danger knows full well
That Caesar is more dangerous than he.
But let’s stay with Cassius.
The obvious reading of this scene is that it’s a heroic act of daring. His courage isn’t, I think, in question.
His motive is.
When Caesar describes him as having:
‘a lean and hungry look’
I don’t think he’s talking about ambition, per se.
I think he’s talking about envy.
And I reckon I can see why.
It’s in what I like to call ‘the seduction of Brutus’ that the telling details appear:
I had as lief not be as live to be
In awe of such a thing as I myself.
And later:
It doth amaze me
A man of such a feeble temper should
So get the start of the majestic world
And bear the palm alone.
In Cassius’ mind, Caesar – a poor swimmer with a weak constitution; a man deaf in one ear, and with a barren wife – is no better than he is.
And this man
Is now become a god, and Cassius is
A wretched creature and must bend his body,
If, as Caesar carelessly but nod on him.
I don’t think Cassius wants to become Caesar.
He simply cannot understand why Caesar has become Caesar.
He cannot abide the idea that his own talents have been overlooked in favour of what he sees as an inferior specimen.
As Prince would say:
You’ll see what I’m all about
If I gotta scream and shout…
‘Cos baby, I’m a star.2
Back to the storm, then.
I see this image as the ultimate ‘begging for the thunderbolt‘ moment. Part of it may even be performative, but the challenge seems clear enough:
‘If I am wrong,’ Cassius appears to say, ‘strike me down. And if you don’t, perhaps I’ll take your silence as confirmation that I’m every bit as extraordinary as Caesar.’
Shakespeare rarely sends the thunderbolt.
Reckoning comes more slowly than that.
His most defiant characters are seldom destroyed by the gods. More often, they become the architects of their own downfall.
Cassius stands beneath the apocalyptic storm and dares the heavens to do their worst.
The lightning never strikes.
Shakespeare doesn’t need it to.
- all Shakespeare quotations from https://www.opensourceshakespeare.org ↩︎
- ‘Baby I’m a Star’, Prince, Purple Rain (1984) ↩︎
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