Julius Caesar (1599)
Spiazzi Tavella, Only Connect. New Directions, Zanichelli, vol. 1, III edizione
Julius Caesar: the title character
Most critics argue that Julius Caesar is the protagonist of the play, pointing out that he is the title character and the cause of all the action in the play. Even in scenes in which he is absent, he is the focus of the discussion and the reason for the revenge. He is an aging man who stands for the past, while the conspiracy is the future and the desire of freedom. He embodies a great antithesis: the human, superstitious, loving man and the arrogant ambitious politician; this causes his downfall.
Brutus: a sketch for Hamlet
Other critics believe that the Roman nobleman Brutus is the protagonist, claiming he is the complex character of the play whose psyche is explored in depth. His tragic flaw is his permanent sense of principle and nobility; in fact he believes that his role in the assassination is for the good of Rome, as he tells the plebeians in his famous speech: “If then that friend demand why Brutus rose against Caesar, this is my answer – not that I loved Caesar less, but that I loved Rome more”.
He stands for the man of the Renaissance, still attached to a disappearing world but at the same time attracted by new ideas he does not completely understand. He is torn between past and future and is a preparatory sketch for Shakespeare’s Hamlet, who has many of the same difficulties to face and the same doubts about his relationship with his own soul and the society surrounding him. He stands for reason, for the political idea of ‘republic’, but he lacks passion and does not take the crowd’s attitudes and emotions into consideration; because of this his words are ineffectual.
Antony: the power of words
Antony is more charming, more practical than Brutus and with a subtler political mentality; he has the power of words and he is able to transform the conspiracy from an act committed in the name of freedom into a murderous crime. In fact after Caesar’s assassination, he turns the crowd against the conspirators: his speech begins with the
well-known lines, “Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears”. He continually praises Brutus as “an honourable man” who has killed Caesar for being ambitious. He then presents all the images of Caesar in which the General has not been ambitious, and instigates mob riots and subtly encourages the burning of the conspirators’ houses. Along with Octavius and Lepidus, Antony leads an attack against Cassius and Brutus and defeats them at Philippi.
The rhetoric of politics
Julius Caesar is the most important Roman tragedy based on the rhetoric of politics.
According to Shakespeare, rhetoric is the maker of history: the people who can make an effective speech are the winners. Two microcosms, irony on the one hand and the particular rhetoric forms on the other, work together to form the macrocosm which is the play. Irony is particularly suitable, since it has an evident ideological, political value in persuading, convincing and dominating through language.
Ambition in public men
The nature of ambition and the problem of “goodness and honesty in people having public roles”, are examined; what is virtue in a private man, may cause ruin in a public man: Brutus is unable to judge people because he is too ‘honest’ and the clever Antony soon discovers how to defeat him.
Julius Caesar: the mirror of the Elizabethan order
In 1599, when Julius Caesar was first performed, queen Elizabeth I was old; she had never married and had no children to succeed her. Shakespeare and his contemporaries must have worried greatly that someone would try to grab power causing civil war. When the Elizabethans spoke of order, they didn’t just mean political or social order The universe was ruled by a benevolent God and everything, from the lowest flower to the angels, had a divine purpose to fulfil. The king’s right to rule came from God himself, and opposition to the king earned the wrath of God and threw the whole system into disorder. Everyone was linked together by a chain of rights and obligations, and when someone broke that chain, the whole system broke down and plunged the world into chaos. What destroys the divine harmony in Julius Caesar may have been Cassius’s jealousy of the General’s power, Caesar’s ambition, Brutus’s rationality.
Today a sense of hopelessness hangs over us: a mistake, a simple misunderstanding, and a bomb may drop and destroy life on earth. Our fate is out of our control. But the Elizabethans were much more optimistic: if something went wrong, then someone had broken God’s laws, the laws of the universe. Many would suffer, but in the end the guilty would be punished and the order restored.
The power of monarchy
Julius Caesar is a historical play about a political assassination. The question it asks is: is it ever right to use force to remove a ruler from power? We, as contemporary readers, can answer that question in terms of our own experience in the last quarter of the 20th century. But if we are going to understand what Shakespeare thought, it is important to know something about the values of the Elizabethan world in which he lived.
History plays were popular during Shakespeare’s lifetime because that was the Age of Discovery, and English men and women were eager to learn about worlds different from theirs. But the Elizabethans also saw history as a mirror where they could find answers to the problems of their lives.
Nowadays we believe in democracy and are suspicious of anyone who seeks unlimited power; but Shakespeare and his contemporaries had no such prejudice against strong rulers. Their queen, Elizabeth I, ruled with an iron hand for forty-five years, yet her subjects had great affection for her. Under her rule the arts flourished and the economy prospered. While the rest of Europe was involved in war, mostly between Catholics and Protestants, England enjoyed a period relatively free from civil strife. Therefore to Shakespeare and his contemporaries the message of this play was clear: only a strong, benevolent ruler could protect the peace and save the country from falling into chaos again.