The Problem of Julius Caesar

Abstract

ULlUS CAESAR is one of Shakespeare's perplexing plays. Its stylistic simplicity, coupled with an absence of bawdy lines, has made it favorite school text, and this has led * vK tr , some critics believe that it o'ught be simple play, belief which has easily ripened into the conviction that it is simple play. Others have acknowledged its perplexities. Professor Allardyce Nicoll calls it one of Shakespeare's most difficult plays rightly assess,' and Mr. Wilson Knight remarks that to close analysis it reveals subtleties and complexities which render interpretation difficult.2 There is widespread disagreement among critics about who is the play's principal character or whether it has principal character, on whether it is tragedy and if so whose, on whether Shakespeare wants us consider the assassination as damnable or praiseworthy, while of all the chief characters in the play violently contradictory interpretations have been offered. To illustrate this polarity of views it will be sufficient refer two eminent critics. Professor Dover Wilson tells us that in this play Shakespeare adopted the traditional Renaissance view of Caesar, derived from Lucan, which regarded him as a Roman Tamburlaine of illimitable ambition and ruthless irresistible genius; monstrous tyrant who destroyed his country and ruined 'the mightiest and flourishing commonwealth that the world will ever see. play's theme is the single one, Liberty versus Tyranny (p. xxi). The assassination is wholly laudable, the conspirators are unselfish champions of freedom, while Brutus' tragedy consists in his vain struggle against the destiny of Rome, which lies in the establishment of Caesarism (p. xxii). we turn from this Sir Mark Hunter's interpretation of the play we are told that can be no doubt that Shakespeare's way of thinking, however much he extends sympathy the perpetrators of the deed, the murder of Julius was the foulest crime in secular history. Of Caesar we learn, When put the test of the stage the personality of Julius 'moves before us as something right royal', character sufficiently great render the impassioned eulogy of Antony and the calm tribute of not inconsistent with what we have actually heard and seen of the object of their praise. Of the conspirators we are told, Brutus excepted, there is no sign anywhere that the enemies