“He doth bestride the narrow world

like a Colossus”: Julius Caesar as the

Sun in Julius Caesar

Shakespeare constructed hidden allegories about human beings and the sun

and coal beneath the surface of his plays. The very first allegory to appear was in

Romeo and Juliet, where he gives away Juliet’s identity as the sun (“Juliet is the

sun”). In this allegory, Shakespeare’s conception of man’s relationship with the sun

over time is portrayed in a formal way and delineated by a few separate scenes

featuring only the lovers: man meets and worships the sun, man becomes slightly

separated from the sun as nature religions gave way to Christianity, man stopped

depending on the sun economy and came to rely on fossil fuels and finally, man

returns to the sun economy.

This paper addresses the question of whether such a coal/sun allegory appears

in the tragedy Julius Caesar (1599), and also considers how Julius Caesar

foreshadows Hamlet (written 2 years later). Both plays feature a vengeful ghost (old

Hamlet and Julius Caesar) and a witty and verbally talented performer type (Hamlet

and Mark Antony) who likes the theater and who, I will show, represents

Shakespeare’s conception of his role as an artist in the coal-sun-man allegories in

the respective plays.

Anti-Coal

There are a few places in Julius Caesar where the anti-coal allegory emerges,

and all of them are, of course, interesting, but let’s start off with Mark Antony’s

speech to the conspirators after they have just stabbed Caesar to death. Mark

Antony says to Brutus, Cassius, and the other conspirators, “I do beseech ye, if you

bear me hard/ Now, whilst your purple hands do reek and smoke, Fulfill your

pleasure.” (157-160) In his plays, Shakespeare consistently associated coal with bad

smells, and of course “reek” could be used to describe the smell of blood, but by

positioning it beside the word “smoke” (an adjective which makes no logical sense,

since bloody hands would have no smoke on them), the words “reek and smoke”

point Hermetically to the idea of coal. (Hermeticism was the art of delivering a

message that could be understood only by those in on the secret.) Coal, when it is

burned, produces a lot of smoke, and coal smoke was an enormous environmental

problem in London in Shakespeare’s time (and of course for centuries afterwards).

Please note that it is the conspirators who have the hands that “reek and

smoke”, making them the logical ‘coal figures’ in the secret allegory. The basic

action of the play is, of course, the assassination of Julius Caesar by the

conspirators. Shakespeare seems to have totally---though secretly--- oriented his art

around this central fact of his era: that by 1603, coal had become the number one

fuel in Britain, displacing wood, which is a fuel driven by the sun’s energy. Again and

again, in Shakespeare’s tragedies, we see the ‘sun figure’ getting killed: King

Duncan in Macbeth, Cordelia in King Lear, Desdemona in Othello, old King Hamlet in

Hamlet, Mark Antony in Antony and Cleopatra. Now let’s add another: Julius Caesar,

in Julius Caesar. Their deaths always represent the death of the sun economy. (I

won’t add Juliet to the list because although she is a sun figure and she dies

eventually, actually the moment that coal displaced wood is not represented by her

death but by Romeo becoming exiled from her). While the sun figure always dies in

the tragedies, the character that is to blame for the death may vary: sometimes it is

an ambitious ‘mankind figure’ (like in Macbeth) or sometimes it is more like a ‘coal

figure’, like in Hamlet, where Claudius is associated with bad smells reeking to high

heaven and has killed off his noble brother.

In real life it is impossible to separate ‘man’ from the ‘coal economy’ since coal

was mined and burned by people, but nevertheless, Shakespeare did seem to

conceive of the oppositional characters in the allegories as one or the other, ‘coal

figures’ or ‘mankind figures’ always in opposition to the ‘sun figure’, and it is

precisely through this sort of variation that the allegories become so fascinating and

worth studying since they reveal his artistic development.

Julius Caesar as the Sun

So the basic pattern in the secret allegory in Julius Caesar is that the sun

economy, played by Julius Caesar is overcome and overthrown by the coal

economy, played by the conspirators. To understand how Julius Caesar is the sun

figure, of course, we need to look at some lines of text. The main speech of ‘high

oratory’ delivered by Julius Caesar himself right before he is stabbed contains the

main evidence that shows him to be the ‘sun figure’.

In this speech, Cassius asks Julius Caesar to repeal the banishment of Publius

Cimber. Caesar’s response is lengthy and rather odd, touching on the stars, the

skies, and the firmament:

Cassius: Pardon, Caesar! Caesar, pardon!

As low to thy foot doth Cassius fall,

To beg enfranchisement for Publius Cimber.

Caesar: I could be well mov’d, if I were as you;

If I could pray to move, prayers would move me;

But I am constant as the northern star,

Of whose true-fix’d and resting quality

There is no fellow in the firmament.

The skies are painted with unnumb’red sparks,

They are all fire, and every one doth shine;

But there’s but one in all doth hold his place.

So in the world: ‘tis furnish’d well with men,

And men are flesh and blood, and apprehensive;

Yet in the number I do know but one

That unassailable holds on his rank,

Unshak’d of motion; and that I am he,

Let me a little show it, even in this―

That I was constant Cimber should be banish’d,

And constant do remain to keep him so. (III.i.59-73)

The lines draw a direct analogy between Caesar and the “northern star”, or

Polaris, used for navigation because it stands almost motionless in the sky, and all

the stars of the northern sky appear to rotate around it. However, the lines also

contain many key phrases that reference Giordano Bruno and Bruno’s work on

astronomy and heliocentrism. These key phrases include: mov’d, star, firmament,

unnumb’red, fire, there’s but one, in the number I do but know one, unshak’d of

motion, that I was constant, and banish’d.

Let me briefly address each term in order to explain its significance for Bruno’s

heretical and innovative ideas.

“mov’d”--- This concept refers in a basic way to the heliocentric revolution

(with the earth moving around the sun) sweeping Europe in the wake of

Copernicus’ model, published in 1538. Bruno looked beyond just the Copernican

mechanics of the motion of the earth orbiting the sun and saw the “light and heat”

(i.e. thermodynamics) as causing the “planets to turn toward” the sun:

The Earth, in the infinite universe, is not at the center,

except in so far as everything can be said to be at the

center. In this chapter it is explained that the Earth is not

central amongst the planets. That place is reserved for the

Sun, for it is natural for the planets to turn towards its light

and heat, and accept its law. (Bruno, de Immenso)

“star”, “firmament”, “unnumb’red”-----Bruno proposed that the sun was a

star, one of an “infinite” number of stars in the “firmament”

“fire”----Orthodox opinion held that the spheres, a sort of spherical covering

or roof over the sky, was where the stars resided and that these were comprised of

‘pure fire’ or what was also called ‘quintessence’. Bruno held that the concept of

pure fire or quintessence was nonsense and that the universe was comprised of the

same matter everywhere.

“there’s but one”, “in the number I do but know one”---the infinite universe was

also a monad, or a unity, according to Bruno.

“unshak’d of motion”---this could refer again to the heliocentric idea that the sun

is stationary while the Earth moves around it, but it could also refer to Bruno

himself, who refused to renounce his ideas though the Roman Inquisition sentenced

him to death in 1599, the same year that Julius Caesar was written.

“I was constant”---again, Bruno refused to renounce his ideas. Also, Shakespeare

remained constant to Bruno’s ideas.

“banish’d”---may be a reference to Bruno’s situation. By 1599, he had not yet

been executed, though he was imprisoned; therefore he and his ideas were

“banish’d” from ordinary life and spaces, and his books were placed on the Codex,

the list of forbidden and heretical works.

Bruno pointed to the action of the sun to generate substances and life on earth

and begins his book, Lo Spaccio della besta trionfante, with:

He is blind who does not see the sun, foolish who does not

recognize it, ungrateful who is not thankful unto it, since

so great is the light, so great the good, so great the

benefit, through which it glows, through which it excels,

through which it serves, the teacher of the senses, the

father of substances, the author of life. (Bruno, 69)

In particular, the “father of substances” points to Bruno’s realization that the

action of the sun is a primary bringer of material benefits to the earth, and the

phrase “the author of life” shows Bruno’s awareness of the sun’s role in generating

the material to support life on earth.

Similarly, in Caesar’s lines the phrase “But there’s but one in all doth hold his

place. So in the world: ‘tis furnish’d well with men, and men are flesh and blood” is

an allusion to the important historical role of the sun in maintaining human life in a

material way. So Julius Caesar’s lines point, Hermetically, to a vision of a universe

where the sun (renewable energy) is a dominant theme.

Giordano Bruno is Hermetically represented again in Act III, scene II when Marc

Antony makes a reference to a “brave hart”, slain by hunters:

Pardon me, Julius! Here wast thou bay’d, brave hart,

Here didst thou fall, and here thy hunters stand,

Sign’d in thy spoil, and crimson’d in thy lethe.

O world! Thou wast the forest to this hart,

And this indeed, O world, the heart of thee.

How like a deer, strooken by many princes,

Dost thou here lie! (III.ii.204-210)

The slain deer is an immensely important image in Shakespeare, occurring in

Twelfth Night, Hamlet, As You Like It, and Julius Caesar. This slain deer image

belonged originally to the (Greek) Actaeon-Diana myth, but this myth was one of

the main metaphors Giordano used in Gli Heroici Furori to describe the methods of

the Heroic Lover, the pursuer of truth. In Bruno’s telling, Artemis, or Diana, is a

vision of the Eternal Truth being ‘caught’ (seen, apprehended) by the pursuing

Heroic Lover (on his quest for the truth). Actaeon’s cruel fate is used in a rapturous

way as a metaphor for the heroic intellect approaching---and gaining intimate

knowledge of-- the Divine, to the point where the distinction between his human

body and the truth of nature dissolves and becomes a unity. Bruno was executed

on February 17, 1600, so by 1599, as Julius Caesar was being written, it was clear

that he would never be freed and the reference to the “princes” above can also be

alluding to the high ranks of the church officials who condemned Bruno to death in

January 1600.

Another interesting image corroborates this idea that Julius Caesar is the ‘sun

figure’. The image occurs in scene I in Act II, when the conspirators meet early in

the morning in order to discuss their plans to carry out the assassination in the

Capitol later that day:

Cassius: Shall I entreat a word? (They whisper)

Decius: Here lies the east; doth not the day break here?

Casca: No.

Cinna: O, pardon, sir, it doth; and yon grey lines

That fret the clouds are messengers of day.

Casca: You shall confess that you are both deceive’d.

Here, as I point my sword, the sun arises.

Which is a great way growing on the south,

Weighing the youthful season of the year.

Some two months hence, up higher toward the north

He first presents his fire, and the high east

Stands, as the Capitol, directly here. (II.i.100-111)

The line “Here, as I point my sword, the sun arises” particularly prefigures the

death of Caesar, since the meeting of the sword’s point and the sun (on the horizon)

echoes the later stabbing of the ‘sun figure’, Caesar, by the same sword a little

while later that same day. In addition the line “He first presents his fire, and the high

east Stands, as the Capitol, directly here”, further blurs the distinction between the

sun (“He”) and Caesar, the man about to be assassinated while he is standing in the

Capitol.

The very first characterization of Julius Caesar as a sun figure in the play

occurs in one of its most famous lines:

Cassius: Why man, he doth bestride the narrow world

like a Colossus, and we petty men

Walk under his huge legs, and peep about

To find ourselves dishonorable graves.

Men at some time are masters of their fates;

The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars,

But in ourselves, that we are underlings. (I.ii.135-141)

The lines above give us an image of Caesar as something immense who

“bestrides” or steps high above and around the world, that is to say, something

bigger than the earth (or the “world”). A few lines later, the word “stars” occurs.

While the sun is not explicitly mentioned, we have images such as “world” and

“stars” which are found in the vicinity of the sun.

Moreover, the planetary situation as it exists may also be seen as a locus of

issues giving rise to the human background situation whereby fossil fuels were

accepted and adopted. While Shakespeare obviously did not like coal and felt that

abandoning the sun economy was, for mankind, to be totally fraught with

uncertainty, doubt and even tragedy, he also could see that even in an economy

running on the sun alone, life in general as an “underling” in a harsh material world

(where “we petty men…..peep about to find ourselves dishonorable graves”) was

not without problems. And these problems were large enough---to seem, at least at

the time---as if getting rid of Caesar---that is to say, transitioning out of pure

desperation to fossil fuels---- was not an illogical step.

Brutus

Returning again to the topic of the conspirators (that is to say, the ‘coal

figures’), Brutus is featured in a dialogue with his wife, Portia, in Act II. (Portia is not

a conspirator, but Brutus is one, of course, and he is quite torn about his decision to

help assassinate Julius Caesar, though he can’t tell Portia what is bothering him).

The couple share a wrenching dialogue in Act II, scene I which also Hermetically

makes a reference to coal:

Portia: ……make me acquainted with your cause of grief.

Brutus: I am not well in health, and that is all.

Portia: Brutus is wise, and were he not in health,

He would embrace the means to come by it.

Brutus: Why, so I do. Good Portia, go to bed.

Portia: Is Brutus sick? And is it physical

To walk unbraced and suck up the humors

Of the dank morning? What, is Brutus sick?

And will he dare steal out of his wholesome bed

To dare the vile contagion of the night,

And tempt the rheumy and unpurged air

To add unto his sickness? No, my Brutus,

You have some sick offense within your mind….(II.ii.255-267)

The “vile contagion of the night” is a direct reference to the darkness of coal

smoke (it is very black when burned without filters). “Contagion” could refer to the

way that coal smoke and soot made people sick, but this word could also refer to

the economic contagion of using fossil fuels, for once people start burning them,

they change the economy in a systemic way and further fossil fuels are always

required. “Tempt the rheumy and unpurged air” also refers to the sicknesses

caused by burning coal and to the pollution caused by coal smoke.

Brutus is the conspirator who receives by far the most attention in the play.

Who is he? More than just a coal figure, he is also ‘mankind’ in the underground

allegory, tormented, doubt-filled and well-meaning as he goes about murdering the

sun economy. It is worthwhile to examine Brutus’ reasons for assassinating Caesar:

“as he was ambitious, I slew him”, says Brutus. Also he says, “Had you rather

Caesar were living and all die slaves than that Caesar were dead, to live all

freemen?”

“Ambition” (although it is ascribed to Caesar, not Brutus, it is more like a

general reason, a locus of trouble, that is given as the reason) is indeed the reason

that humans desired more than just what the sun could offer and switched to fossil

fuels. Ambition is pinpointed in Macbeth as well. Economist Nicholas Georgescu-

Roegen particularly mentions ambition as well in his discussion of how human

economic progress over time has included a “shift” from the sun to fossil fuels:

Up to this day, the price of technological progress has meant a shift

from the more abundant source of low entropy----the solar

radiation----to the less abundant one----the earth’s mineral

resources……Population pressure and technological progress bring

ceteris paribus the career of the human species nearer to its end

only because both factors cause a speedier decumulation of its

dowry. The sun will continue to shine on the earth, perhaps, almost

as bright as today even after the extinction of mankind and will

feed with low entropy other species, those with no ambition

whatsoever.” (The Entropy Law and the Economic Process, page

304))

Mark Antony’s last speech on Brutus, at the end of the play, reveals

Brutus to be “man” in the hidden allegory:

This was the noblest Roman of them all;

All the conspirators, save only he,

Did that they did in envy of Caesar;

He, only, in general honest thought

And common good to all, made one of them.

His life was gentle, and the elements

So mix’d in him that Nature might stand up

And say to the world, “This was a man!” (V.v.68-75)

Mark Antony

Early on, Caesar has misgivings about Cassius (these misgivings turn out to be

correct) and he contrasts Cassius with Mark Antony:

I do not know the man I should avoid

So soon as that spare Cassius. He reads much;

He is a great observer and he looks

Quite through the deeds of men: he loves no plays,

As thou dost, Antony; he hears no music;

Seldom he smiles, and smiles in such a sort

As if he mock'd himself and scorn'd his spirit

That could be moved to smile at any thing.

Mark Antony’s love of “plays” is further underscored when Caesar says that

Antony “revels long a-nights” (II.ii.116) and interestingly, it is Julius Caesar himself

who is also associated with “players”:

Casca: I am sure Caesar fell down. If the rag-tag people did

not clap him and hiss him, according as he pleased and

displeas’d them, as they use to do the players in the theater,

I am no true man. (I.iii.257-261)

The association of Caesar, Mark Antony and players and plays (and music) is a

subtle connection to the sun, since drama began as a form of pagan seasonal

ritual celebration. (Shakespeare would have known all about this through many

ways, especially through access to classical texts.)

Mark Antony, who likes revels and plays, is therefore a sort of incipient Prince

Hamlet, whose fandom of plays and players is more developed---and, of course,

Hamlet is even a sort of playwright. As Hamlet considers how to take on the issue

of the usurpation of the throne by his uncle (Claudius is fossil fuels), Mark Antony

debates how to approach the death of Julius Caesar. As Hamlet and Mark Antony

perform their thoughts variously on the weighty issue confronting them, what we

are really seeing, in the allegories underneath, is Shakespeare performing his own

various artistic approaches toward the central issue, at least in his mind, of his

day, which was the relegation of the sun economy to bit player while fossil fuels

took the leading role (and capitalism was born).

So what are Mark Antony’s thoughts about Caesar’s death? Shortly after

Caesar’s assassination, he makes this rather weird, ghoulish speech where he asks

each conspirator to “render me his bloody hand”:

I doubt not of your wisdom.

Let each man render me his bloody hand:

First, Marcus Brutus, will I shake with you;

Next, Caius Cassius, do I take your hand;

Now, Decius Brutus, yours: now yours, Metellus;

Yours, Cinna; and, my valiant Casca, yours;

Though last, not last in love, yours, good Trebonius.

Gentlemen all,—alas, what shall I say?

My credit now stands on such slippery ground,

That one of two bad ways you must conceit me,

Either a coward or a flatterer.

That I did love thee, Caesar, O, 'tis true:

If then thy spirit look upon us now,

Shall it not grieve thee dearer than thy death,

To see thy thy Anthony making his peace,

Shaking the bloody fingers of thy foes,

Most noble! in the presence of thy corse?

Had I as many eyes as thou hast wounds,

Weeping as fast as they stream forth thy blood,

It would become me better than to close

In terms of friendship with thine enemies.

Pardon me, Julius! Here wast thou bay'd, brave hart;

Here didst thou fall; and here thy hunters stand,

Sign'd in thy spoil, and crimson'd in thy lethe.

O world, thou wast the forest to this hart;

And this, indeed, O world, the heart of thee.

How like a deer, strucken by many princes,

Dost thou here lie! (III.i. 183-210)

At this point, Cassius, that rational and cold man, doubts that Mark Antony is

sincerely a friend of the conspirators and asks him, “I blame you not for praising

Caesar so, but what compact mean you to have with us? Will you be prick’d in

number of our friends, or shall we on, and not depend on you?” (III.i.215-217) And

Mark Antony assures him “Friends I am with you all, and love you all.” (220) A few

lines later, Mark Antony asks if he can bring the body of Caesar into the

marketplace and “in the pulpit, as becomes a friend, Speak in order of his funeral”.

(228-30) Brutus naively agrees, but Cassius is horrified and in an aside to Brutus

tells him to change his mind: “Do not consent/ that Antony speak in his funeral.

Know you how much the people may be mov’d/ By that which he will utter?” (232-

4)

In fact, the conspirators have not been able to catch Antony’s secret references

to Giordano Bruno (through the way that Antony addresses Caesar as a “brave

hart”) so they have failed to perceive that Antony’s true loyalties are to the sun, to

the basic thermodynamic nature of the heliocentric model, and to the cosmic truth

that fossil fuels deplete while the sun shines on. In Bruno’s own words, from The

Heroic Enthusiasts:

Rare, I say, are the Actaeons to whom fate has granted

the power of contemplating the nude Diana and who,

entranced with the beautiful disposition of the body of

nature, and led by those two lights, the twin splendor of

Divine goodness and beauty become transformed into

stags; for they are no longer hunters but become that

which is hunted. For the ultimate and final end of this

sport, is to arrive at the acquisition of that fugitive and

wild body, so that the thief becomes the thing stolen, the

hunter becomes the thing hunted; in all other kinds of

sport, for special things, the hunter possesses himself of

those things, absorbing them with the mouth of his own

intelligence; but in that Divine and universal one, he

comes to understand to such an extent that he becomes

of necessity included, absorbed, united. (The Heroic

Enthusiasts, p.68)

The conspirators exit, and once Mark Antony is left alone on the stage, his real

loyalties to the truth and his duplicitousness become apparent, for he immediately

calls the conspirators “butchers” and prophecies a curse to “light upon the limbs of

man”. (“Light” is a reference to the now missing sun, and Antony addresses Caesar

as “Thou bleeding piece of earth”, which is another sign of the cosmic significance

of Caesar):

O, pardon me, thou bleeding piece of earth,

That I am meek and gentle with these butchers!

Thou art the ruins of the noblest man

That ever lived in the tide of times.

Woe to the hand that shed this costly blood!

Over thy wounds now do I prophesy,—

Which, like dumb mouths, do ope their ruby lips,

To beg the voice and utterance of my tongue—

A curse shall light upon the limbs of men;

Domestic fury and fierce civil strife

Shall cumber all the parts of Italy;

Blood and destruction shall be so in use

And dreadful objects so familiar

That mothers shall but smile when they behold

Their infants quarter'd with the hands of war;

All pity choked with custom of fell deeds:

And Caesar's spirit, ranging for revenge,

With Ate by his side come hot from hell,

Shall in these confines with a monarch's voice

Cry 'Havoc,' and let slip the dogs of war;

That this foul deed shall smell above the earth

With carrion men, groaning for burial. (III.i.254-275)

Hamlet is similarly duplicitous and deceitful toward those characters associated

with fossil fuels, reassuring Claudius that the disturbing play-within-a-play, written

by Hamlet, “does not touch” him and sending Rosencrantz and Guildenstern to their

deaths through an artfully forged letter. Antony uses a public performance (of the

funeral elegy) to dishonor Brutus and invite the crowd to turn on the conspirators---

and this turns out to be all part of his plan (“Now let it work. Mischief, thou art

afoot” (III.ii.259)). Similarly, Hamlet uses his play to “catch the conscience” of

Claudius. Like Hamlet, Julius Caesar presents Shakespeare’s own view of his role as

an artist in a dangerous world badly in need of reform, but where duplicity, deceit,

circumspection and craft must be used because speaking truth to power openly and

directly is not an option.1

Shakespeare’s duplicity and deviousness was put in service of participants in---

or victims of--- the new market economy, which arose as a result of coal

consumption. He stood, therefore, and he still stands, in solidarity with people who

are forced to use fossil fuels because they have no other choice:

Shakespeare’s authority is linked to the capacity of his works

to represent the complexity of social time and value in the

successor cultures of early modern England. One of the crucial

features common to these successor cultures is the way

1 Langdon looked as if he wanted to put a comforting hand on her shoulder, but he refrained. “You’ve heard her story before, Sophie. Everyone has. We just don’t realize it when we hear it”.“I don’t understand.”“The Grail story is everywhere, but it is hidden. When the Church outlawed speaking of the shunned Mary Magdelene, her story and importance had to be passed on through more discreet channels…..channels that supported metaphor and symbolism.”“Of course. The arts.” (The DaVinci Code, by Dan Brown, page 281)

individuals and institutions must constantly adapt to the

exigencies of a market economy. (Big Time Shakespeare by

Michael Bristol, page xii)

(The phrase “social time” and value” in the quotation above can be another way

to express the idea of the allegory of man in an economic interaction of the sun and

coal on the earth over time.)

Cassius refers with contempt to the new triumvirs Octavius and Mark Antony as,

respectively, “A peevish schoolboy, worthless of such honor, Join’d with a masker

and a reveler!” (V.i.61-2): Mark Antony is referred to as a “masker” not just because

he enjoys plays but because he actually is wearing a mask; he expresses

Shakespeare’s views and opinions in code and acts out Shakespeare’s own deceits

and subversions.

Behind his very clever mask, the artist risks total annihilation: after the

conspirators are driven off, Cinna, the poet, is mistaken for Cinna, the conspirator,

and dragged off by the crowd. This is a sharp commentary by Shakespeare on how

annihilation of the artist may be par for the course through ‘mistaken identity’: that

is, through the artist’s own cloaked presentation of his ideas and art, an audience

may never receive the message of the artist, effectively annihilating the real

underlying message. This is merely a professional hazard.