Julius Caesar6
Julius Caesar provided a unique opportunity for Shakespeare to represent a well-known story of a public figure whose life and death enormously affected the future of his nation and it citizens. Caesar's life could serve as a reflection on the prevailing worries about monarchal leadership, while dipping into questions of public and private life of leaders and studying the famously conflicted rationales of Caesar's murderers.From the moment the conspirators pulled their swords from Caesar's body, their reasons for killing him were debated and documented with various spins, some accounts portraying Caesar's killers as heroes and others, like Dante, damning them to the deepest pit of hell. Shakespeare's account focuses largely on Brutus' internal conflicts between his loyalty to Caesar and to Rome, between his belief about what Rome should be and what it had become. He struggles to decide whether the demands of civic responsibility prevail over the ties of personal loyalty.Caesar focuses on the lives of the great men, circulating among several characters, with the title character playing a smaller role than might be imagined. Brutus is most fully drawn of them. Unlike other characters, he appears in several roles throughout he p
In a play where characters try to see a better future, misunderstandings and misinterpretations are startlingly foregrounded. Yet fate seems to play a stronger role than Cassius would like to admit. Antony shows off a malleable improvisatory tone in his speech over Caesar's body that allows him to win over the masses, because he is able to bend to suit public opinion rather than making the public match his beliefs. Beside these exclusive ties, connections with women are barely noticed. Cassius is much more alert to the workings of the world; he knows he can fool Brutus with a faked letter, whereas Brutus would never imagine that a letter could not be real. Caesar declares his permanence mere moments before his death. Caesar decides to humor Calpurnia and stay home, but as soon as Decius Brutus mentions the crown, Caesar speeds off to the Senate. Women are completely powerless, and even 'female intuition' is ignored. Brutus' painful conflicts come from this overlap of roles -- his role in the assassination of Caesar seems more wrenching because of his intimacy with the man. Fate plays a curious role in the play. None are able to gain any perspective on events. Both Brutus and Caesar pay for their inflexibility with their lives. Brutus the republican may be the last of his kind, the last to stand for the way Rome was, while Octavius the politician prepares to become Rome's next emperor and lead Rome into a different future. The play ends on two different notes, as Antony compliments a dead Brutus, foregrounding Brutus' conflict and tragedy, while Octavius stands by to take command.
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