The Shakespeare Book

174

T

he first of Shakespeare’s

Roman plays, Julius

Caesar is a tale of ambition,

political manipulation, and duty.

The true tragic figure of the play

is Brutus, whose actions proceed

from a noble desire to serve Rome.

Brutus’s struggle between love for

Caesar and fear of his despotism

make him a sympathetic and

honorable tragic figure.

Following the events laid out in

Plutarch’s history, the play charts

the events leading up to Caesar’s

assassination and the civil war that

breaks out thereafter. The senators’

concerns about Caesar’s leadership

echoed anxieties about the aged

and heirless Queen Elizabeth in

1599, when the play was first

performed. Her inheritance and

legacy were not to be discussed,

let alone satirized, but could be

approached sideways via history.

Shakespeare brings an acute

sense of humanity to the story. His

historical figures are not simply

biographical documentations of the

lives of noble Romans. Rather, the

characters experience hardship and

JULIUS CAESAR

anxiety, which makes them more

morally ambiguous than Plutarch’s

counterparts. For instance, it is not

clear whether Caesar would have

mutated into the tyrant that Brutus

fears before his assassination,

nor that Cassius is a categorically

self-interested man, nor even that

Ocatvius will make a suitable

successor to his adopted father.

Such ambiguity has led the

American historian Garry Wills to

argue that the play has no villains

and is, therefore, unique among

Shakespeare’s tragedies.

Seductive rhetoric

Power in this play does not come

from strength, honor, or military

prowess. Instead, power is linked

to manipulative and calculated

rhetoric. Without the support of the

people, the senators cannot avoid

civil unrest, and how to convince,

placate, and organize the civilians

in Rome is a major preoccupation of

the leaders. It is this that motivates

Brutus’s address to the people

after Caesar’s death and Antony’s

speech about Caesar’s reputation.

Antony’s oft-quoted speech

beginning “Friends, Romans,

countrymen” (3.2.74) is a carefully

crafted piece of rhetoric calculated

IN CONTEXT

THEMES

Power, ambition, rebellion,

civil war

SETTING

Ancient Rome

SOURCES

1579 Sir Thomas North’s

translation of Plutarch’s

Lives of the Noble Grecians

and Romans.

LEGACY

1599 A performance at a

Bankside theater is mentioned

in the diary of the Swiss

traveler Thomas Platter the

Younger. The theater is likely

to have been the Globe.

1898 British actor-manager

Herbert Beerbohm Tree opens

the first of his successful

Shakespearean productions at

Her Majesty’s Theatre, London,

with a lavish Julius Caesar.

1937 At the age of 22, Orson

Welles stages a heavily edited,

modern-dress adaptation set

within a European fascist

context at the Mercury Theatre

in New York.

1977 While imprisoned on

Robben Island, South Africa,

Nelson Mandela marks on his

copy of the play Caesar’s

words “cowards die many

times before their deaths” as

an inspirational passage.

2013 An all-female production

at the Donmar Warehouse in

London, directed by Phyllida

Lloyd, sets the action in a

contemporary women’s prison.

O conspiracy,

Sham’st thou to show thy

dang’rous brow by night,

When evils are most free?

Brutus

Act 2, Scene 1

Why, man, he doth bestride

the narrow world

Like a Colossus, and

we petty men

Walk under his huge legs,

and peep about

To find ourselves

dishonourable graves.

Cassius

Act 1, Scene 2