Back in the day, the 18th century day, Geo. Washington and co. really, really like Addison’s Cato.
After reading it, I am at a loss to see why it was so popular, decades after it’s debut, compared to say, Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar or even Titus Andronicus which to me are the height of English drama and poetry.
Cato is passable but only at rare times does it approach quotability, such as this:
Whate’er the Roman virtue has subdued,
The sun’s whole course, the day and year, are Caesar’s.
For him the self-devoted Decii died,
The Fabii fell, and the great Scipios conquered:
Even Pompey fought for Caesar. Oh! my friends!
How is the toil of fate, the work of ages,
The Roman empire fallen! O curst ambition!
Fallen into Caesar’s hands! our great forefathers
Had left him nought to conquer but his country.
The rest is not as well written I fear. Cato’s lines are the only ones I found worth paying much attention to, and he does not have as much as the center stage as the title might indicate. Most of the play is stock trope of rival lovers and treasonous plotters, and seems to be a pale imitation of Iago and other characters that Shakespeare so much more fully represented.
So why was *Cato *so dang popular with the founding fathers?
No clue, but interesting topic and I would love to hear an in-the-know answer.
We do know that arts’ and artists’ popularity wax and wane - IIRC, Botticelli was the *sine qua non *of Renaissance Artists 150 years ago, but now is one of the highly respected, but not THE guy. And Piero Della Francesca was known about but not highly regarded in past years but is now held up much higher…
So, given how our Founding Fathers approach prose and art, I can see where the verse we consider overloaded and trite may have been regarded differently by them…
Cato became popular because of political circumstances. It came out in 1713, when Queen Anne was dying, and there was a real fear of Jacobite invasion. So, the Whigs, of whom Addison was one, adopted it, seeing themselves in Cato and the republicans’ place…they were both trying to defend their liberty from a tyrant: Caesar in the one hand, James in the other.
Not to be outdone, the Tories also adopted the play, claiming that they were the ones trying to defend liberty, in this case from the Duke of Marlborough, who had been campaigning to get the title of Commander-in-Chief of the Army for life. He was, they claimed, another Caesar, who had taken the title dictator for life. So, the play, regardless of its merits as a piece of art, got turned into something political.
The other thing contributing to the success of the play was that both Alexander Pope, Jonathan Swift, and Richard Steele, who all had influence as men of letters, were friends of Addison’s, and did their best to talk up the play and attack its critics (and Pope probably contributed to the writing).
I thank you as your anaylsis is superb, and in fact, you may be the “last intellecutal remaining” on the internet, at least as far as this thread is concerned.