Friendship and the Common Good in Julius Caesar

Abstract

Abstract This essay proposes a new reading of Julius Caesar’s account of friendship that also illuminates Shakespeare’s broader communitarian political attitudes. It argues that the ‘quarrel’ (or reconciliation) scene between Brutus and Cassius presents a crucial turn in the play’s closely meditated account of amity. This sheds new light on Shakespeare’s response to two classical sources: Cicero’s De Amicitia and Euripides’ Iphigenia at Aulius, whose opening provides the model for this sequence. The significance of how Brutus and Cassius settle their differences, as well as their refusal to believe the enemy is always occulted within the friend, has been under-estimated. The high-minded ideals of Ciceronian amicitia seem wildly remote from the play’s exposure of how friendship works in political life. We witness it being made serviceable to ambitions and held in bad faith: Cicero acknowledges these possibilities too. Yet the neglected later sequences of Julius Caesar tell a different story about friendship that emphasizes its role in promoting commonalty and reconciliation. The tragedy lies in the loss of this potential.