Julius Caesar
Introduction
Julius Caesar is one of Shakespeare’s most majestic historical plays in
which he deals excitingly with the themes of power and conscience. In the play,
Shakespeare makes use of his great artistic skills while creating his characters.
His characters have variety and are strongly conceptualized. Julius Caesar has
numerous characters. Julius Caesar, Brutus, Cassius, Mark Antony and Octavius
Cimber are the major characters who are based on real-life figures in Roman
history. The minor characters include Portia, Calpurnia, Casca, Cicero, Decius
Brutus, Lepidus, Lucilius, Messala, Titinius, Pindarus, Lucius, Ligarius, Cinna
the Conspirator, Strato, Voluninius, Young Cato and Popilius Lena.
Four Major Characters of Julius Caesar
Julius Caesar
Julius Caesar is a brilliant general and protagonist of the play. He is the
leader of Rome who hopes to be crowned head of the entire Roman Empire.
The play begins with his marching towards Rome in triumph over Pompey and
all others who opposed him. He enjoys popularity among the people, but what
leads to his tragic assassination is his susceptibility to flattery and his false
sense of infallibility. Caesar’s pride makes him ignore warnings that are given
to him. He fails to understand the many signs indicating a plot against him and
is killed by conspiracy led by Cassius and Brutus. His ghost haunts the
remainder of the play, and his name is invoked by both Cassius and Brutus
before they commit suicide in the final act.
The entire play revolves around Caesar. The first three acts focus on the
conspirators’ desire to get rid of him; the last two acts are a reaction to his
death. While his good friend Brutus worries that Caesar may aspire to
dictatorship power, Caesar seems to show no such tendency, declining the
crown several times. He is unable to separate his public life from his private
life, and, seduced by the populace’s increasing idealization and idolization of
his image, he ignores ill omens and threats against his life, believing himself as
eternal as the North Star. He is complicated mixture of strength and weakness,
coupled with virtue and vice.
Unlike the changing character of Brutus, Caesar does not undergo any
real change during the play. Caesar’s conflation of his public image with his
private self helps bring about his death, since he mistakenly believes that the
immortal status granted to his public self somehow protects his mortal body.
Still, in many ways, Caesar’s faith that he is eternal proves valid by the end of
the play. Brutus attributes his and Cassius’s misfortunes to Caesar’s power
reaching from beyond the grave. Caesar’s aura seems to affect the general
outcome of events in a mystic manner, while also inspiring Octavius and
Antony and strengthening their determination. As Octavius ultimately assumes
the title Caesar, Caesar’s permanence is indeed established in some respect.
Brutus
Marcus Brutus is an intelligent noble Roman and the most complex and
interesting character in the play. He is an idealist who upholds honour above
everything else and a real supporter of the republic. While Brutus loves Caesar
as a friend, he opposes the ascension of any single man to the position of
dictator, and he fears that Caesar aspires to such power. Brutus’s inflexible
sense of honour makes it easy for Caesar’s enemies to manipulate him into
believing that Caesar must die in order to preserve the republic. On one hand, he
prides himself on high political principles that do not allow him to tolerate even
the possibility of a dictatorship. On the other hand, he is a sensitive moral being
to whom murder is extremely distasteful, especially the murder of Caesar, who
is his friend and patron. Torn between the conflicting claims of his personal
love for Caesar and his political love for Rome, Brutus becomes the tragic hero
of the play.
Brutus’s commitment to principle repeatedly leads him to make
miscalculations as ignoring Cassius’s suggestion that the conspirators kill
Antony as well as Caesar, or allowing Antony to speak a funeral oration over
Caesar’s body as well as endangering his good relationship with Cassius.
Ultimately, his misguided sense of nobility and his poor judgement lead to his
downfall.
Unlike the static character of Caesar, Brutus undergoes a great change in
the play: he also serves as the protagonist of his own subplot. Brutus clearly has
a fatal tragic flaw or hamartia.By the end of the play, Brutus has changed. He is
no longer the totally self-confident and rational man seen earlier in the play.
Although he still remains the leader of the conspiratorial forces, he himself is
haunted by fear after seeing the ghost of Caesar. He even questions if he has
done the right thing in the assassination. He kills himself rather than face the
ignominy of living under their rule. As he plans his own death, he is still
idealistic enough, however, to believe that history will vindicate his actions.
Mark Antony
Mark Antony was a loyal friend to Caesar, and a skilled general and a
brilliant orator and actor as well. After Caesar is murdered on the senate house
floor, Antony immediately drops his reckless lifestyle and begins a serious life
of revenge against the conspiracy. Upon seeing Caesar’s dead body, he falls to
weeping but soon controls his emotions and follows his strategy for seeking
power for himself. He pretends to reconcile with the conspirators and shaking
their bloody hands. He succeeds in gaining permission to make a speech at
Caesar’s funeral. With tears on his cheeks and Caesar’s will in his hand, Antony
engages masterful rhetoric to stir the crowd to revolt against the conspirators.
He instigates mob riots and subtly encourages the burning of the houses of the
conspirators. Along with Octavius and Lepidus, Antony leads an attack against
Cassius and Brutus and defeats them at Philippi.
Antony proves strong in all of the ways that Brutus proves weak. Antony
proves himself a consummate politician, using gestures and skilled rhetoric to
his advantage. In both his eulogy for Caesar and the play as a whole, Antony is
adept at tailoring his words and actions to his audiences’ desires .Unlike Brutus,
who prides himself on acting solely with respect to virtue and blinding himself
to his personal concerns, Antony never separates his private affairs from his
public actions. Antony’s desire to exclude Lepidus from the power that Antony
and Octavius intend to share shows his own ambitious nature and indicates his
elimination from the scheme of things after he has server his purpose.
Cassius
Cassius is the chief architect of the conspiracy to assassinate Julius
Caesar. He is the brother-in- law to Brutus by his marriage to Brutus’ sister.
Cassius is the opposite of Brutus in that his participation in the conspiracy is
neither noble nor based on ideas. He is envious of Caesar and wants to achieve
power for himself. He is a shrewd manipulator of people, easily able to
understand their motivation and intents. In other words, he is a shrewd
opportunist who proves successful but lacks integrity.
Cassius knows that Brutus feels an overwhelming responsibility to save
Rome from Caesar’s tyranny, and Cassius pushes Brutus to action by making
Brutus feel guilty and by forging letters from various citizens of Rome pleading
Brutus to strike against Caesar. Cassius also knows that Casca is proud and
stupid, and so a simple challenge to Casca’s courage is all that he needs to
convince Casca. By the end of the play, refusing to be taken by Antony’s men,
Cassius orders Pindarus(his slave) to stab him, which he does. Cassius dies and
Pindarus becomes a free man.
Cassius is shrewd and practical while making decisions. He makes
practical suggestions while planning the assassination of Caesar to which Brutus
disagrees. Cassius makes a point that they should take an oath to murder Caesar.
He wants Cicero to be approached to join the conspiracy and Antony to be
murdered along with Caesar. His suggestions are logical and far-sighted. Had
his suggestions been accepted there would not have been civil war in Rome.
The conspirators would have easily taken over as the rulers of Rome.
Cassius presents himself as a better strategist and able military officer by
suggesting to Brutus that they should stay at Sardis and wait for the enemy to
attack them before they retaliate. Cassius is extremely cunning and
unscrupulous. He has very few commendable traits in his character. The
demerits in his character over-rule the merits in him.
To conclude, although the play is titled Julius Caesar, there is no doubt
that Brutus is its protagonist as A. C. Bradley argues that “Caesar is in a sense
the dominating figure in the story, but Brutus is the ‘hero’.” Shakespeare has
depicted both Julius Caesar and Brutus as the two great tragic heroes of his
play: although Shakespeare is much intrigued by the latter and has made him
the real protagonist of Julius Caesar.
Conclusion
To conclude, one of the most important features of Julius Caesar is the
ambiguous and ambivalent portrayal of its characters and the above discussion
explores its main characters with a special focus on the four figures of this play:
Julius Caesar, Brutus, Cassius, Mark Antony. Shakespeare has depicted both
Julius Caesar and Brutus as the two great tragic heroes of his play: although
Shakespeare is much intrigued by the latter and has made him the real
protagonist of Julius Caesar. A final question we need to address is: If Brutus is
not the villain of the play and Shakespeare has made this well-understood, then
who? The answer is simple: the mob. From the very beginning of the play,
Shakespeare makes it clear how irrational and fickle the mob is and he
highlights that what the mob supports can never lead to any good, a theme
which culminates when Marc Antony manipulates the mob.