Was Brutus Framed? The Caesar Case
Gold, Reopened Vic
Vic Gold Was Brutus Framed? The Caesar Case Reopened Nine anni have passed, give or take an equinox, since National Review, in a treatise entitled "Rush to Philippi," first raised critical...
...A lie...
...Q: Pardon...
...It was before the New Revised Version...
...rather, with an observer who, in the phrase of the slain Dictator himself, is to be considered above suspicion...
...A: As you like it, gumba, but you can't blame an old tyrant's widow for trying...
...Q: I concede, Signora, you raise some provocative points...
...The answers to those unanswered questions the Shake-speare Commission wasn't interested in pursuing...
...I haven't finished with the unexplained elimination of key personae...
...A: The Marlowe Commission...
...Certainly not my husband...
...Q: You mean, he knew something...
...They may doubt the authenticity of our interviewee's version of events transpiring during that inauspicious feast of the Lupercalia...
...You remember Act III, Scene ii...
...Q: With due respect, Signora, the Commission's findings...
...Calpurnia: And did the job single-handed...
...What's that supposed to mean...
...A: So this: one scene later—one short scene—where do we find Octavius...
...I knew who was writing the Report...
...He says that his master—and this is straight from the Commission Report—"lies within seven leagues of Rome...
...More recently, however, growing public interest and the prospect of expanded newsstand circulation has led other publications—notably, New Times, Ramparts, National Enquirer—to raise fresh questions regarding inconsistencies in the official studies of a number of other political assassinations...
...Believe me, I would have known if he'd shown up at my place...
...Q: But the Shakespeare Commission Report...
...Look it up, Act V, Scene iii: "Caesar, now be stilled, I killed not thee...
...But I had special insurance...
...My husband, believe me, treated that boy like he was his own son...
...Q: You mean, Caesar ignored your warning about leaving home...
...That interview sequitur...
...Q: Much ado about nothing...
...So why didn't I speak up before...
...wasn't even a vintage year for auThe Alternative: An American Spectator August/September 1976 19 guries...
...Q: The colloquy between Mark Antony and Octavius' runner...
...Her point is that the killing of Cinna the poet —Act III, Scene iii—was more than met the Roman eagle's eye...
...When he had something on his mind, he just came out with it...
...Q: His nephew...
...The hearsay indictment of that right-wing paranoid, Artimedorus...
...Lying there on that cold marble floor...
...Yet we would caution that such readers temper their skepticism...
...Q: Such as...
...Q: That's rather odd, I'll admit...
...He would shrug his toga and go about his business...
...If there was anything Mark wasn't, it was ironic...
...Why should the Commission accept such a ridiculous alibi...
...By the Commission's own finding, he went to his grave denying he killed my husband...
...A: Better than that...
...What kind of investigative reporter are you...
...Could you be specific...
...It just goes to show...
...Then framed Brutus and the rest...
...Q: So...
...A: Well, videlicet, for openers: by my own personal count, not including that of my lawyer here, there are no fewer than 57 major and 432 minor discrepancies, anomalies, inconsistencies, contradictions, and weird auguries in the official Shakespeare version...
...Poor Brutus...
...Q: What about Antony...
...A: That's the one...
...He was like a son to my...
...A grassy knoll...
...A: First, he wasn't at the murder scene himself...
...I count as many holes in the Shakespeare findings as there were in my poor husband—may the gods, et cetera...
...To be sure, there will be those readers skeptical even of historical skepticism...
...Listen, I knew that boy since he was in a swaddling tunic...
...Or trajectory...
...Q: The Report, however...
...May the gods rest his soul...
...Q: What kinds of holes in the Report, Signora...
...Antony...
...A: Mistaken, my sandaled foot...
...Am I to understand that you claim the Shakespeare Commission was actually...
...A nice boy...
...Comparare: there were "three-and-thirty" according to Knight's Pictorial Edition of the Shakespeare Report...
...A: I'm not into grassy knoll or "magic sword" theories...
...The Caesar Case Reopened Nine anni have passed, give or take an equinox, since National Review, in a treatise entitled "Rush to Philippi," first raised critical questions regarding the official Shakespeare Commission Report on the Assassination of Gaius Julius Caesar...
...I would say, "Julius, be careful...
...Lanius: The Signora's point is: Octavius wasn't en route, but actually in the Capitol all the time...
...With half so good a will" only meant he had rotten lawyers draw up his last testament...
...A: When did he ever pay attention to anybody's warning about anything...
...Like a daughter to my husband...
...But how else...
...And take my word for it, 44 B.C...
...5 ft...
...Would Mike Wallace ask a stupid question like that...
...But in candor, I'm not convinced that the world could be duped for three centuries by a spurious Report...
...Calpurnia: I'll say he knew something...
...Q: Antony and Cleopatra...
...Q: Ah, you knew where Octavius' skeletons were hidden...
...Q: Signora Caesar, there will be those who will wonder why you're only now getting around to criticizing the Shakespeare Report...
...He could do it in a Karmann Ghia chariot, maybe, with Ben Hur driving...
...three-andtwenty" in the variorum reading...
...Just a few days ago I was telling Lady Macbeth and her literary agent—you remember her, she's the one whose husband was framed at Dunsinane...
...Either that, or he was bribed...
...Q: What you're implying then is the systematic, deliberate elimination of witnesses...
...Q: Marlowe...
...And how about that far-fetched coincidence of the two Cinnas...
...The ingrate...
...And she died—"by strange manner" yet...
...A: Brutus himself what...
...I just stick to my plain, uncomplicated sinister plot: One man, one dagger...
...You don't live with G. J. Caesar without learning a few tricks...
...Sure, Octavius Caesar...
...I should care what other people think...
...Q: Your husband's nephew, you say...
...But anyway, what does Octavius' flunky answer...
...Why, I ask you...
...Not to be outdistanced in the field of historical skepticism, The Alternative, in keeping with its tradition of errant pedantry, assigned crack Occult Inquisitor Vic Gold to dig up the spirit of someone familiar with the Caesar assasVic Gold's last posthumous interview was with the ghost of Calvin Coolidge...
...Antony dies, according to the Commission, "Falling on his sword...
...Who would believe me...
...I never knew a boy with better balance...
...Not even Gibbon bothered to look me up...
...Ab initio, for all your talk about unexplained dispatchings, the matter of your own uncomplicated departure as a dramatis persona...
...Do you swallow that one, too...
...Beware of Brutus, take heed of Cassius"—all that pastafageole...
...Octavius Caesar...
...Guilt-by-prophecy...
...A: Wait...
...After lengthy study and considerable borrowing from the theories of Plutarch and Suetonius, it was determined that G. J. Caesar/ Caucasian male/ Height approx...
...We are not dealing here, after all, with any run-of-the-conspiracy-market literary hustler...
...Fine...
...What was he afraid of...
...A: Such as the actual number of wounds inflicted on my husband...
...Q: And you interpret that...
...4 in./ Weight 145/ Age 56/ Eyes, jet/ Hair, balding with garland/ Distinguishing characteristics, prominent Roman nose/ Occupation, Dictator, was indeed killed on the fifteenth day of March, 44 B.C., "his mantle muffling up his face," before the orchestrated bladework of a liberal senatorial cabal composed of Casca, Cassius, Cinna, Decius, Ligarius, Metellus Cimber, Trebonius, and (surprisingly) Brutus...
...The one who dreams about lions whelping and graves yawning...
...And Antony wouldn't have said that if he didn't mean it...
...In the Commission's Supplementary Egyptian Report...
...What testimony did the Commission have that the so-called conspirators were anywhere near the Capitol at the time...
...A: No, gumba, Octavius Shapiro...
...Or would you buy, the Bacon Commission...
...A: So...
...Just because I'm not mentioned beyond Act II, Scene ii doesn't mean my husband's dear nephew wouldn't have liked to trouble me with a green sickness...
...et Quis survivat...
...A: People would just say, "There's that crazy woman again...
...A: All right, you want to look at the Report...
...Q: The mistaken killing of Cinna the poet by the mob...
...Of all the Carthaginian elephant cr - - Lanius: Strike that last remark...
...But take the Report at face value: Tell me, how does a man travel seven leagues in one short scene...
...Omens, yes...
...Although, as self-advertised, Calpurnia was not one to stand "on ceremonies," she nevertheless insisted that her attorney-agent, Marcus Lanius, be at her side during the course of the Q-and-A session...
...A: Before Brutus died, there was Cassius, et Cato the Younger, et—and I'm quoting the Report here—"an hundred Senators...
...Let them wonder...
...Did anyone ever pay any attention to Calpurnia...
...Now you tell me...
...Or double-agents...
...Rush to Stratford or Who Wrote Shakespeare...
...A: You got it...
...And Antony wouldn't have said that if he didn't mean it...
...Tempus, as the old saw goes, fugit...
...Q: Yes, but isn't the last part of that line, "with half so good a will "? A: You call that evidence...
...A: Oh, not just witnesses...
...Q: If you don't mind my saying, that interpretation strains credulity...
...A: Based on what...
...Q: But Brutus, himself...
...20 The Alternative: An American Spectator August/ September 1976...
...The following interview with Calpurnia, spiritually located Somewhere on the French Riviera (or, as she sees it, the lower third of divided Gaul), is die result of Gold's latest venture into the inquisitorial beyond...
...The real Commission cover-up...
...There are gaps in your case...
...Act IV, Scene xiii...
...Signor Know-It-All...
...Got out while the getting was good...
...Brutus says, "I killed not thee," so how do you twist that into a confession...
...Q: Lepidus...
...Q: Exempli gratia...
...Act III, Scene ii, of the Supplementary, he's dispatched—get this—"troubled...with the green sickness...
...And how about the third member of the Triumvirate...
...What happened in the tavern of Dame Eleanor Bull, 30 May 1593, when Christopher Marlowe allegedly was stabbed...
...Q: Well, Signora, all roads leading to Rome, it might have been possible...
...Q: You tell me, Signora...
...We have Antony's word that Brutus was an honorable man...
...His own nephew, mind you...
...Enough to stand the Roman power structure on its patrician ear...
...My client, you see, gets carried away...
...What should we call the book...
...So after he's dead and buried I'm going to run around yelling his nephew did him in...
...A: Antony ironic...
...sination case, with an eye toward cashing in on a hot market...
...and ``two—and—thirty," if you accept the Beaumont and Fletcher version...
...Yet the dogs of doubt, let slip, are not easily curbed, despite the fact that it was to bury, not to reappraise, such doubt that the Commission was originally appointed in 1623 A.D...
...The Commission's conclusions are, of course, well-known to every secondary school senior in the Western World...
...Now, here Antony—a good boy, Antony, he was like a son to my husband—Antony asks Octavius' messenger, he says: "Is thy mastercoming ?" That's the way we talked in those days, understand...
...A: A lot you know...
...I ask you two questions, in plain Latin: Cui bono...
...In the Report, Act III, Scene iii, it puts him "at Caesar's home...
...A: Not Shakespeare at all...
...You've read the Commission Report...
...The Report admits that...
...Lanius here prefers that one, but help us settle another argument...
...Second, we have his word that Brutus was an honorable man...
...Because you're the first to ask...
...A: You want examples...
...All done in...
...But even if we grant everything you say, what's the point...
...A: Right...
...But not auguries...
...Q: Again, all respect, but the usualinterpretation given that description is that Antony was being, shall I say, ironic...
...What about that poor girl Portia...
...Where never Roman shall take note" of him...
...A: A togawash of the whole affair...
...Somewhat gone to chubbiness in the manner of Mediterranean beauties past their prime, Caesar's wife, according to Gold, was one of his most talkative occult interview subjects...
...You know the type...
...He did his uncle in...
...Tear him to pieces for his bad verses...
...Then there was the flight of Pindarus, "Far from this country...
...Start with the big one...
...Immediately before the assassination he was lurking, vi et armis, behind Pompey's statue...
...A: Oh, it does...
...A: Marcus, I think we should have gotten in touch with Mike Wallace...
...Well, how does your strained credulity account for the fact that not a single one of the people who were allegedly in the Capitol at the time of my husband's murder HI, ed through the Commission Report...
Vol. 9 • August 1976 • No. 10
