Essay on Shakespeare’s —
‘The Tragedy of Julius Caesar’
The entire play of Shakespeare’s ‘The Tragedy of Julius Caesar’ (FOLGER Shakespeare Library edition) starts from Cassius’ persuasion to Brutus, one of the patricians that conspire against Caesar and expands to the conspiracy and civil war in Rome. This including all the characters that heightened the war in the name of power and influence. Here are the five arched points I’ve rummaged along reading the playwright and multifold of its exegesis:
1. The Ideology of the Republic.
The republican ideal that Cassius evokes to seduce Brutus into opposing Caesar, and that Brutus uses to justify murder, is closer to myth than to history. Or we might call it an ideology, which, according to Louis Althusser, is a set of imagined relations as opposed to the actual political conditions of Rome. –Coppelia Kahn
“The Republic never, for more than brief periods, functioned as it was supposed to — as a combination of monarchy (in the consuls), oligarchy (in the Senate), and democracy that, by keeping all three forms of power in balance, would prevent the worst tendencies of each.”
The conspiracy and the tragedy of Julius Caesar are the central focus of Shakespeare’s playwright foremost, although there are a lot of cited tidings regarding the other main characters namely: Brutus, Cassius, and Mark Anthony. One of the points of this essay highlights Brutus’ blindness of his ideal Rome that permitted him to approve and join the conspiracy. Brutus longed for a government that isn’t dominated by a sole ruler, which he imagined Caesar might commit of he’ll be crowned as emperor. Instead, the republic Brutus experienced in real life, way back fostered the faction and the rise of military superheroes whose armies were loyal to them rather than to the Republic.
2. The Politics of Gender.
To be a Roman means to be gendered male. The word “virtue” comes from the Latin word “virtus”, meaning both manliness and valor, which is derived from Latin “vir” — man. The virtues promoted by the social and political life of the Republic are also gendered masculine and considered proper to men alone. –Coppelia Kahn
The politics of gender in Julius Caesar is governed by relations among men, however, rather than between men and women. Male friendships are indistinguishable from politics itself, from which women are formally excluded, and such friendships are strongly marked by rivalry.
This, in consideration that Pompey and Caesar were political allies before they became enemies; Brutus, though favored by Caesar, plots to kill him; Brutus and Cassius, bound by shared ideals, quarrel bitterly. Cassius’ story of his swimming match with Caesar captures the routine intensity of competition that is central to the formation of men as Romans:
Cassius (1.2.96–100)
I know that virtue to be in you, Brutus,
As well as I do know your outward favor.
Well, honor is the subject of my story.
I cannot tell what you and other men
Think of this life; but, for my single self,
I had as life not be as live to be
In awe of such a thing as I myself.
3. Sicknesses Caused by Grief
Even so great men great losses should endure
and some that smile have in their hearts, I fear,
millions of mischiefs.
I am sick of many griefs;
of your philosophy, you make no use.
But let it be told:
no man bears sorrow better.
Now, you weep and I perceive you feel.
Kind souls — weep!
In this, I bury all unkindness.
I should not know but although you weep,
make me acquainted with your cause of grief.
I admire that the play not only depicts the essence about the realities of one’s hunger of power and influence but it also shows the reality of one’s grief. There have been numerous of times when different characters mentioned that all along in each scene and transition of the story, they are sick of many kinds of grief. Upon reading their statements, I deem these dialogues as something relevant to the modern readers, no matter how classic the reading piece was. Say, when Brutus was bewildered back when Cassius persuaded him to conspire against Caesar — it occurred to him the difficulty of having enough rest due to the pressure of sound decision-making. Yet, Portia, Brutus’ wife told him:
and could it work so much upon your shape/ as it hath much prevailed on your condition/ I should not know you Brutus/ Dear my lord, make me acquainted with your cause of grief
As a reader, I couldn’t love this line more!
4. Political Compromise
Brutus persuaded himself and the other conspirators that they can disassociate Caesar’s spirit from his body, and wishes that it were possible to cut off Caesar’s ambition without making him bleed for it. From the assassination scene to the end, however, Caesar’s blood and corpse become key images in the contest of power between conspirators and their opponents. Brutus urges his friends to bathe their hands in Caesar’s blood as a sign of “Peace, freedom, and liberty” (3.1.118–22) — the death of a tyrant is the restoration of the Republic.
This is a thread to my first point. Just when the talk about Brutus and the conspirators’ ideology about the Republic concludes, is the exact time where this point of political compromise opens. It has been an adage already, “millions of compromises happen in the realm of politics” — what so could be different from the milieu of Julius Caesar (c.100 BC — 44 BC / Reigned 46–44 BC — according to PBS)? I assert, this Shakespearean play mirrors us today (as literature should).
Yet, Brutus himself isn’t evil, though his idealism carries with it a subtle vanity. We might say that he only carries to a misguided extreme values and expectations implied in the republican ideals he inherited.
5. Beyond Politics: The Image of Mark Anthony
Mark Antony, Latin — Marcus Antonius, (born 83 — died August, 30 BCE, Alexandria, Egypt), Roman general under Julius Caesar and later triumvir (43–30 BCE), who, with Cleopatra, queen of Egypt, was defeated by Octavian (the future emperor Augustus) in the last of the civil wars that destroyed the Roman Republic. — Britannica
Mark Anthony is a pro-Caesar. He, together with Octavian defeated Caesar’s conspirators at the battle in Philippi. Although both dead-ends of Brutus and Cassius were the act of committing suicide, there had been a bloody combat between their armies and the latter’s camp were defeated. It is Mark Anthony who defeated the conspirators through superior military tactics. Further, he is a passionate man who loves art and music, and teased by Caesar for staying out late at parties, Antony is the opposite of the coldly logical Brutus. While not perceptive enough to suspect the plot against Caesar, his masterful speech to the plebeians at Caesar’s funeral stirs up the masses to mutiny. He then takes up an army against Brutus and the other conspirators to avenge Caesar’s death. Antony can be devious when necessary, planning to cheat the people by altering Caesar’s will, and to eliminate his ally Lepidus. It is the combination of these qualities that make him a better all-around politician — and replacement for Caesar — than either Brutus or Cassius. At the end of the play, his army triumphs over Brutus’s, yet he praises Brutus as having been the noblest of Romans. — Litcharts
APPENDAGE — Here are few of the play’s highlight lines:
(Folger Shakespeare Library — Julius Caesar by William Shakespeare; Edited by: Barbara A. Mowat & Paul Werstine)
Cassius (1.2.40)
Brutus, I do observe you now of late.
I have not from your eyes that gentleness
And show of love as I was wont to have.
You bear too stubborn and too strange a hand
Over your friend that loves you.
Brutus (1.2.45–50)
Be not deceived. If I have veiled my look,
I turn the trouble of my countenance
Merely upon myself. Vexed I am
Of late with passions of some difference,
Conceptions only proper to myself,
Which give some soil, perhaps, to my behaviors.
But let not therefore my good friends be grieved
Nor construe any further my neglect
Than that poor Brutus, with himself at war,
Forgets the shows of love to other men.
Brutus (1.2.94–95)
What is it that you would impart to me?
If it be aught toward the general good,
Set honor in one eye and death i’ th’ other
And I will look on both indifferently;
For let the gods so speed me as I love
The name of honor more than I fear death.
Cassius (1.2.100)
Well, honor is the subject of my story.
I cannot tell what you and other men
Think of this life; but, for my single self,
I had as life not be as live to be
In awe of such a thing as I myself.
Cassius (1.2.144–145)
Why, man, he doth bestride the narrow world
Like a Colossus, and we petty man
Walk under his huge legs and peep about
To find ourselves dishonorable graves.
Men at some time are masters of their fates.
The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars,
But in ourselves, that we are underlings.
Cassius (1.2.330)
Writings, all tending to the great opinion
That Rome holds of his name, wherein obscurely
Caesar’s ambition shall be glanced at.
And after this, let Caesar seat him sure,
For we will shake him, or worse days endure.
Casca (1.3.4–8)
Are not you moved, when all the sway of earth
Shakes like a thin unfirm?
I have seen the tempests when the scolding winds
Have rived the knotty oaks, and I have seen
Th’ ambitious ocean swell and rage and foam
To be exalted with the threat’ning clouds;
But never till tonight, never till now,
Did I go through a tempest dropping fire.
Either there is a civil strife in heaven,
Or else the world, too saucy with the gods,
Incensed them to send destruction.
Cicero (1.3.14)
Why, saw you anything more wonderful?
Cassius (1.3.49)
Those that have known the earth so full of faults.
For my part, I have walked about the streets,
Submitting me unto the perilous night,
And thus, unbraced.
Cassius (1.3.100)
But life, being weary of these world bars,
Never lacks power to dismiss itself.
Casca (1.3.105)
So every bondman in his own hand bears
The power to cancel his captivity
Cassius (1.3.115)
But, O grief,
Where hast thou led me? I perhaps speak this
Before a willing bondman; then, I know
My answer must be made. But I am armed,
And dangers are to me indifferent.
Casca (1.3.165)
O, he sits high in all the people’s hearts,
And that which would appear offense in us
His countenance, like richest alchemy,
Will change to virtue and to worthiness
Cassius (1.3.170)
Him and his worth and our great need of him
You have right well conceited. Let us go,
For it is after midnight, and ere day
We will awake him and be sure of him.
