VERSIONS OF SHAKEPEARE
37
corresponded in a way to the spirit and construction of the original,
and one saw a play that was modern and that was, at the same time,
Dr. Faustus.
The other two have been what people call "interesting";
they have not been good.
The Harlem
Macbeth
is now far enough in the past so that even
those who enjoyed it can see that it was at best a pleasant bit of
legerdemain.
Caesar,
however, is still thought of as an important pro-
duction. This is not the first play of Shakespeare's to have been done
in modern dress, and superficially, therefore, Mr. Welles's stunt of
taking the Romans out of their togas docs not sound as novel as on
the stage it seems. What is novel about the production is Mr. Welles's
motive for putting it in modern dress. In the past, when
Hamlet,
for
example, was done by Basil Sydney in a dinner jacket, the motive was,
apparently, to say something about Hamlet, to show how modern a
character he is. The purpose of the Mercury Theater
Caesar,
on the
contrary, was to say something about the modern world, to use
Shakespeare's characters to drive home the horrors and inanities of
present-day fascism.
Caesar,
in fact, was Mr. Welles's personal ac-
knowledgment of the bankruptcy of contemporary playwriting, for in
Caesar
Mr. Welles as director tried to construct a modern play of his
own. Any other interpretation of Mr. Welles's production seems to
me nonsensical. I cannot believe that Mr. Welles is, for example, so
ignorant of Roman history that he can offer this as his conception of
what
actually
happened, that he can equate Caesar with black re-
action and Brutus with progressivism, when the exact opposite was
the case. On the other hand, I cannot think Mr. Welles so naive as to
imagine that Shakespeare in 1599 had premonitions of fascism. The
alternative (already mentioned) is that Mr. Welles feIt that
Julius
Caesar
was- an adequate rack on which to hang an anti-fascist play.
Only a very superficial understanding of Shakespeare's play could
have permitted Mr. Welles to entertain this notion for long.
Julius
Caesar
is about the tragic consequences that come to idealism when it
attempts to enter the sphere of action. It is perhaps also a comment
on the futility and dangerousness of action in general. In a non-
political sense it is a "liberal" play, for it has three heroes, Caesar,
Antony, and Brutus, of whom Brutus is the most large-souled and
sympathetic. Shakespeare's "liberal" formula, which insists on playing
fair with all its characters, is obv:iously in fearful discord with Mr.
Welles'santi-fascist formula, which must have heroes and villains at
all costs. The production of
Caesar,
consequently, turns into a battle-
ground between Mr. Welles's play and Shakespeare's play. Mr. Wel-
leshas cut the play to pieces; he has very nearly eliminated the whole
sordid tragic business of the degeneration and impotence of the re-
