Ides of March: Cinna the Poet

 

CINNA THE POET

I dreamt to-night that I did feast with Caesar,
And things unlucky charge my fantasy:
I have no will to wander forth of doors,
Yet something leads me forth.
Enter Citizens

First Citizen

What is your name?

Second Citizen

Whither are you going?

Third Citizen

Where do you dwell?

Fourth Citizen

Are you a married man or a bachelor?

Second Citizen

Answer every man directly.

First Citizen

Ay, and briefly.

Fourth Citizen

Ay, and wisely.

Third Citizen

Ay, and truly, you were best.

CINNA THE POET

What is my name? Whither am I going? Where do I
dwell? Am I a married man or a bachelor? Then, to
answer every man directly and briefly, wisely and
truly: wisely I say, I am a bachelor.

Second Citizen

That’s as much as to say, they are fools that marry:
you’ll bear me a bang for that, I fear. Proceed; directly.

CINNA THE POET

Directly, I am going to Caesar’s funeral.

First Citizen

As a friend or an enemy?

CINNA THE POET

As a friend.

Second Citizen

That matter is answered directly.

Fourth Citizen

For your dwelling,–briefly.

CINNA THE POET

Briefly, I dwell by the Capitol.

Third Citizen

Your name, sir, truly.

CINNA THE POET

Truly, my name is Cinna.

First Citizen

Tear him to pieces; he’s a conspirator.

CINNA THE POET

I am Cinna the poet, I am Cinna the poet.

Fourth Citizen

Tear him for his bad verses, tear him for his bad verses.

CINNA THE POET

I am not Cinna the conspirator.

Fourth Citizen

It is no matter, his name’s Cinna; pluck but his
name out of his heart, and turn him going.

Third Citizen

Tear him, tear him! Come, brands ho! fire-brands:
to Brutus’, to Cassius’; burn all: some to Decius’
house, and some to Casca’s; some to Ligarius’: away, go!
Exeunt

William Shakespeare,  Julius Caesar, Act 3, Scene III

 

 

 

I think it would have amused the Romans of Caesar’s generation if they could have learned that the assassination of Julius Caesar would eventually receive immortality through a play written more than 16 centuries after the event by a barbarian playwright in the Tin Islands that Caesar had briefly invaded. It would have tickled their well developed concept of the ludicrous, judging from Roman comedy.

This Ides of March we are focused on Cinna the Poet.  Helvius Cinna was a noted poet of the late Roman Republic.  In the riots that followed the funeral of Caesar, he was lynched by a pro-Caesar mob on March 20, 44 BC,, who confused him with one of the conspirators, the unrelated Cornelius Cinna.

Elizabethan England, was no stranger to riots in London, Shakespeare no doubt having witnessed several.  Judging from his plays, Shakespeare hated mobs, regarding them as unreasoning and dangerous.  We see this in the mob that murders Cinna the Poet.  Confusing him at first with the conspirator, they then decide, once Cinna says that he is the poet and not the conspirator, to slay him for his “bad verses”, which the mob members had no doubt not read a line of, blood lust accepting any excuse.  The scene can be played as a comic scene, but if today we laugh, we laugh uneasily, riots of recent times reminding us of how dangerous a mob can be.

Norman Lloyd died last year at 106.  He played Cinna the Poet in the 1937 Orson Welles’ production of Julius Caesar.  The death of Cinna the Poet was a show stopper in that performance, Welles portraying it as symbolic of the unthinking mob violence that had helped to bring Mussolini and Hitler to power in Europe.

 

Shakespeare holds up to us mirrors filled with light and dark.  The death of the Poet Cinna is one of the darker passages in the Bard’s work.

 

 

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