Who He Is
Casca is the conspirator with a sharp tongue and rough manners. Brutus is struck by the coarseness he has shown since school, and Cassius calls it the sauce for good judgment. He is the one who tells Brutus and Cassius what happened at the Lupercal festival, with the contempt of someone dismantling a spectacle, and he is the one who gives the first blow to Julius Caesar in the Capitol.
Trajectory
In Act I, Scene 2, Brutus pulls him by the cloak as Caesar's procession passes, and Casca recounts that Antony offered a crown, three times, and that Caesar refused it, each time more gently. He says he paid no attention, because all of it was nonsense, and that even so, in his view, Caesar wanted it. He describes the crowd applauding as one applauds actors, the sweaty caps thrown into the air, the fetid breath of those who shouted until Caesar fainted and foamed. Of Cicero, he says he spoke Greek, and that, for him, it was Greek: those who understood smiled and nodded. He warns that Flavius and Marullus were silenced for taking the decorations off the statues. When Cassius invites him to dinner, he answers yes, if he is alive, if Cassius keeps his opinion, and if the dinner is worth it. After he leaves, Brutus remarks on his coarseness, and Cassius answers that it is the sauce of his judgment.
In Act I, Scene 3, in the night of the storm, he runs with his sword in hand to meet Cicero and recounts the portents: a slave whose left hand burned like twenty torches without being burned, a lion that stared at him and passed on in the Capitol without touching him, a hundred women who swore they saw men on fire. Cicero answers that men interpret events in their own way, and leaves. Cassius finds him and thinks him slow. Casca says that every servant holds in his own hand the power to cancel his bondage, offers his hand to Cassius, and promises to go as far as the furthest. Afterward, he remarks that Brutus stands high in the heart of the people, and that what would be an offense in others will be a virtue in him.
In Act II, Scene 1, he arrives with the others, hooded, and argues with Decius and Cinna about where the sun rises. He defends including Cicero and, on hearing Brutus, agrees that he is of no use. In Act II, Scene 2, he comes with Brutus to fetch Caesar, who greets him by name. In Act III, Scene 1, he is the one who says "Speak, hands, for me" and gives the first blow, to the neck, and then asks Brutus to go to the pulpit. He says that whoever cuts twenty years of life cuts as many years of fear of death.
He no longer appears on stage after this. In Act III, Scene 2, Antony shows the tear in the cloak and says it was the knife of the envious Casca. In Act V, Scene 1, he is called a dog who struck Caesar from behind.
Themes Embodied
Casca is the one who tells and the one who acts, and the two go together: in Act I, Scene 2, he dismantles the ritual with contempt, and in Act III, Scene 1, he opens the ritual of the murder with a short phrase, "Speak, hands, for me." Cinna reminds him that he will be the first to raise his hand, and he is.
The scene of the crown, the gravest event in Rome that day, reaches the reader through the most hostile narrator possible: Casca does not like Caesar, does not like the people, and does not like to tell. What he tells is contempt and doubt, not what he saw: he says he paid no attention and, even so, believes Caesar wanted the crown. The Language and Narration of the play begins with someone who does not wish to narrate, and in Act III Betrayal is done with a single phrase. In the night of the storm, Casca reads the portents as a sign from heaven, and Cassius reads the same portents as a sign against Caesar: the reading serves whoever makes it.
Relationships
- Cassius: who recruits him on the night of the storm, after finding him slow, and who has Brutus pull Casca by the cloak to learn what happened.
- Brutus: who pulls him by the cloak to hear the story of the crown, and to whom he is sent to the pulpit after the blow.
- Julius Caesar: the victim, who greets him by name on the morning of the Ides and falls to his first blow.
- Mark Antony: the one who calls him the dog who struck Caesar from behind.