Let Slip the Dogs of War: Shakespeare Finding Immortal Words

Our second look at that frilly dude from Avon

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Today we return to Shakespeare, and indeed to the same play I drew from in this newsletter’s first issue. This time we’re covering Mark Antony’s other famous scene, his soliloquy over Caesar’s body, which is just as powerful and memorable as his Friends, Romans, Countrymen speech galvanizing the Roman public against Caesar’s assassins.

Much like the funeral speech, today’s soliloquy contains unforgettable lines that still circulate in the popular imagination, some four hundred years after they were written. But there is a critical and I think very revealing difference between the two, which is that the funeral speech is delivered publicly, with the explicit intent to manipulate and rally the public to Antony’s side; here we get Antony alone with his grief, and see that grief for his friend transform into an otherworldly rage and prescient vision of civil war that would consume the Roman world.

I recommend seeing this soliloquy performed before diving into the text. Marlon Brando served us well enough last time to get an encore:

And now the stage is set, pun intended. I’d like to break it down line by line, more or less:

O, pardon me, thou bleeding piece of earth,
That I am meek and gentle with these butchers.

Antony first begs forgiveness of Caesar’s corpse for pretending to cooperate with the assassins. Of course he will soon turn the tables on them in dramatic fashion, but even the appearance of appeasement is a sin he must unburden himself of. He calls Caesar’s body a “bleeding piece of earth,” a weighty and vivid piece of metaphor—half this speech, in fact, is weighty and vivid metaphor, which is probably why it’s so memorable. An apt metaphor simply captures an idea more succinctly and gives it more life than any mundane approach.

Thou art the ruins of the noblest man
That ever livèd in the tide of times.
Woe to the hand that shed this costly blood!

Another fanciful description of a corpse: the ruins of a man. This one is more direct, hits a little more squarely. “The tide of times” is an immortal phrase—and nicely alliterative—bundling the whole idea of the changing fortunes of history in that one word, tide. So much is captured, and implied, by that word. Tides ebb and flow, of course, and so too, we are made to understand, do the civilizations of the world. They rise to splendor and collapse to decay and eventually nothing; rulers live and die, and so do republics. It suggests a kind of nihilistic eternity to everything, not just a change but a repetition we are helpless to avoid. But some things must rise above it all, if Caesar can be the noblest man to emerge from it—and if writers like Shakespeare are still read after the tide has cycled through a few times.

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—

Likening Caesar’s wounds to “dumb mouths” whose “ruby lips” helplessly and soundlessly gape and compel Antony to speak is an amazing visual.

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 quartered with the hands of war,
All pity choked with custom of fell deeds,

Antony’s prophecy of destruction. The most vivid image here is the mothers of Rome who, so accustomed to bloodshed, “shall but smile when they behold their infants quartered with the hands of war”—quartered here meaning literally torn into four pieces. Shakespeare’s gory imagination might put the likes of Tarantino and George R.R. Martin to shame.

And Caesar’s spirit, ranging for revenge,
With Ate by his side come hot from hell,

Ranging for revenge has a satisfying verbal texture. Ate is the name of the Greek goddess of discord, who beside Caesar’s vengeful spirit will emerge from hell to bring wrath and chaos.

Shall in these confines with a monarch’s voice
Cry “havoc!” and let slip the dogs of war,

There are not many lines in English more famous than Cry “havoc!” and let slip the dogs of war. Shouting “havoc” was a command from a military officer signaling his men to break rank and engage in unrestrained slaughter, pillage and rape. “Let slip the dogs of war” is a perfect visual metaphor, so impossible to forget it remains famous centuries after it was coined. The image of attack dogs straining at the leash, allowed to slip free at the cry of havoc, perfectly embodies the idea of unleashing violence and bloodshed upon the world.

That this foul deed shall smell above the earth
With carrion men, groaning for burial.

Somehow I like carrion men, groaning for burial even better than let slip the dogs of war. We imagine a gruesome scene of half-dead men strewn across the battlefield, begging for death. This is presented as a fitting consequence for the “foul deed” of Caesar’s murder—and Antony’s vision for the fate of the conspirators and their armies. This of course colors his speech in the following scene, where he is meant to deliver a relatively tame eulogy honoring Caesar’s memory, but instead inflames the public and makes his vision reality.

At four centuries and counting, Shakespeare’s plays never go out of date, and scenes like this are exactly why. He wields language to perfection, gives emotions such visceral, concrete expressions that the listener cannot let go of. They infect the common language and become our shared heritage—this is why I like Shakespeare and like to write about him. The effort is worth it because the reward is so great.

—Floyd

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