It’s pretty clear that people can learn something about Rome from
Julius Caesar–indeed, I doubt that anyone would really deny that–but
there’s a difference between learning something from the play (say, that
Brutus and Cassius fought against Octavian) and answering yes to the
question‘did it really happen like that?’After all, one can learn plenty
from counterfactual history plays, or simply from plays that feature his-
toricalfigures, but that doesn’t mean that what is depicted really took
place in the way that is shown on stage.
A more philosophically advanced account of how history plays depict
history was developed by the philosopher Georg Lukács, in his bookThe
Historical Novel. A full explanation of Lukács’ claims would require a
background in the Marxist theory that Lukács assumes, but that is not
typically known by a twenty-first-century reader. Nonetheless, even for
our purposes, Lukács’approach can be instructive. Lukács begins not with
what historians do, but with what playwrights do. More accurately, he
looks at the form of historical drama and asks what it is good at. He
identifies certain features of historical drama, and then, having done so,
asks which kinds of history are suitable to be presented in this way.
To begin with, he claims, historical plays are very effective at present-
ing conflicts or collisions.^25 This might be a personal decision for a par-
ticular character, or a conflict between different characters. Two further
points here. First, the conflicts and collisions suitable for dramatic por-
trayal are brief and focused. Plays are much shorter than, say, novels or
epic poems. They are not so good at depicting slow development over
time, either character development or political and social development.
What they can offer, very effectively, is moments of decision and conflict,
in which, for instance, a character must choose between two significant
options. Lukács clearly connects drama with the portrayal of political
revolutions, although he is careful not to limit historical drama to the
portrayal of revolution.^26 Something like the French Revolution would
provide good material for a drama; but the so-called‘industrial revolu-
tion’–relatively speaking, a slower, more gradual development of tech-
nology over a longer period of time–would not be so suitable. Second, a
conflict between two characters often represents a much broader conflict
between certain ways of life or ethical codes.^27
Lukács has in mind Hegel’s famous reading of Sophocles’ Antigone.^28
Antigone’s dead brother, Polyneices, has been publically disgraced; his
body has been left to rot in the open, deprived of important burial rites.
The King, Creon, forbids anyone from performing the burial rites on
Polyneices. Antigone disobeys and, ultimately, dies for it. For Hegel, the
conflict between Creon and Antigone displays the unfolding of a deep
tension within a Greek ethical life that had seemed harmonious, natural
and necessary to its members. Antigone and Creon embody different
82 From the World to the Stage