Page:The Tragedy of Julius Caesar (The Warwick Shakespeare).djvu/17

 thing like the same force as in the play with which we are now dealing, though it accompanies Octavius through Antony and Cleopatra. The feeling that the events of greatest import in the world's history are beyond the manipulation of the actors in them—that in these high matters, at any rate,

seems to permeate the whole play. Cæsar sometimes speaks as if he would have said of Destiny what he does say of Danger—

yet it is he who says

Cassius can proclaim with Epicurean fervour that

but even he is thoroughly possessed with the sense of doom at the end of the play. And the whole of the supernatural machinery is utilized to farther this same effect. If the overruling powers so will it, we cannot calculate that the normal result will follow any given act or event. The owl hooting in the market-place is simply a reminder that the ultimate control of things is beyond calculation or human management. And most of all, the idea is embodied in the person of the boy Octavius, who impresses one throughout as the instrument of Fate: triumphant over Brutus and Cassius, and one day to triumph over Antony, not because he is nobler or abler than they, but because he is the chosen means for fulfilling the will of heaven.

At the same time it would be an error to base any argument as to Shakespeare's own belief in omens, spirits, and the like on his use of them in the play. They are appropriate dramatically because they are part of the accepted narrative. Whether the things reported ever actually took place, or are really credible, is of no consequence; they are true, so to