Very interesting, as usual. Shakespeare was more sympathetic to Brutus than Dante was, I think.
From a British point of view, the most famous traitors of recent centuries are Guy Burgess, Donald Maclean and Kim Philby, upper-class, Cambridge-educated men who reached the top of the Foreign Office and MI6 while secretly spying for the USSR. They escaped before arrest. They were ideological Marxists.
This was the inspiration for John le Carre's novel, Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy. Le Carre (real name David Cornwall) was a minor MI6 agent whose cover was blown by Philby.
In 1979, a fourth member of the spy ring was discovered, Anthony Blunt (later a fifth was found, John Cairncross). Embarrassingly, Blunt by this time was a knight, a respected art historian and academic, as well as Surveyor of the Queen's Pictures. He was stripped of his knighthood, but not arrested and remained esteemed as an art historian. I suspect this would not have happened had he been passing secrets to the Gestapo rather than the NKVD.
A great comment! Yes, Shakespeare certainly was more sympathetic to Brutus. It may be because Dante wanted unified Italy and saw Caesar as a prototype of a strong leader who could accomplish it. And the story of the Cambridge Five is jaw-dropping. I should have mentioned it in my essay but I wanted to talk about newts 😊 There were many more communist sympathizers and Soviet spies in the West than Nazi sympathizers and spies, yet we barely talk about it. It’s all part of that Soviet amnesia I mentioned. There is a connection between our reluctance to call Soviet spies “traitors” and the fact that a socialist may be the next mayor of NYC.
Very interesting, as usual. Shakespeare was more sympathetic to Brutus than Dante was, I think.
From a British point of view, the most famous traitors of recent centuries are Guy Burgess, Donald Maclean and Kim Philby, upper-class, Cambridge-educated men who reached the top of the Foreign Office and MI6 while secretly spying for the USSR. They escaped before arrest. They were ideological Marxists.
This was the inspiration for John le Carre's novel, Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy. Le Carre (real name David Cornwall) was a minor MI6 agent whose cover was blown by Philby.
In 1979, a fourth member of the spy ring was discovered, Anthony Blunt (later a fifth was found, John Cairncross). Embarrassingly, Blunt by this time was a knight, a respected art historian and academic, as well as Surveyor of the Queen's Pictures. He was stripped of his knighthood, but not arrested and remained esteemed as an art historian. I suspect this would not have happened had he been passing secrets to the Gestapo rather than the NKVD.
A great comment! Yes, Shakespeare certainly was more sympathetic to Brutus. It may be because Dante wanted unified Italy and saw Caesar as a prototype of a strong leader who could accomplish it. And the story of the Cambridge Five is jaw-dropping. I should have mentioned it in my essay but I wanted to talk about newts 😊 There were many more communist sympathizers and Soviet spies in the West than Nazi sympathizers and spies, yet we barely talk about it. It’s all part of that Soviet amnesia I mentioned. There is a connection between our reluctance to call Soviet spies “traitors” and the fact that a socialist may be the next mayor of NYC.
I loved RUR and hope to see it performed one day; I'll have to check out War of the Newts!