THEMES IN JULIUS CAESAR
1. Power (corruption and fear of it)
When it seems evident to the conspirators in Shakespeare's play that Julius Caesar is
headed for absolute power, he becomes a threat to the ideals and values of the Roman
Republic. They assassinate Caesar before he can be crowned king. The irony is that
Caesar's death results in civil war. As two factions with questionable motives grab for power,
chaos ensues and the Republic is never the same again.
By dramatizing the historical circumstances surrounding Caesar's assassination,
Shakespeare asks a series of questions relevant to his 16th-century audience and readers
today: How should cities and countries be governed? What makes a good leader? What
happens when a political leader's power is unchecked? And, what happens when the leader
dies without a suitable replacement lined up?
2. Fate vs Free Will
Men at some time are masters of their fates:
The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars,
But in ourselves, that we are underlings. (1.2.9)
That's what Cassius says to Brutus as the two contemplate removing Caesar from power.
Although Cassius claims that men are "masters of their fates" as a way to motivate the
conspirators to action against Caesar, there's a lot of evidence to suggest he's wrong. The
play is full of omens and prophesies that come true, which undermines the sense that
characters can exercise free will and shape the outcomes of their lives. We should also keep
in mind that Julius Caesar dramatizes historical events that have, by definition, already
happened. As characters struggle with questions of fate vs. free will, the audience already
knows what their futures hold. This tends to create a lot of dramatic irony.
3. Friendship/Betrayal
Male bonds are funny things in Julius Caesar. Men in the play must to choose between
loyalty to their friends and loyalty to the Roman Republic, which leads to some of the most
famous examples of manipulation and violent betrayal in Western literature. This is
especially true for Brutus, who chooses to join the conspirators' assassination plot when it
seems clear to him that his BFF, Julius Caesar, is headed for absolute power.
4. Gender (women are weak)
It's definitely a man's world in Julius Caesar. Characters who display any signs of weakness
in the masculine realm of politics and warfare are considered sissies. Women are considered
weak and irrelevant (as when Caesar totally disregards Calphurnia's ominous dream so he
won't be thought of as a wimp). Portia, one of the play's two female characters, subscribes to
the idea that women are feeble and erratic: her infamous declaration, "Ay me, how weak a
thing / The heart of woman is!" echoes throughout the play.
5. Manipulation/Propaganda (for ambition)
In Julius Caesar, manipulation seems like a professional sport. Politicians use their rhetorical
skills to gain power and to influence large, fickle crowds, and seeming friends lie outright to
each other. Persuasion and suggestion are rhetorical skills that play central roles in Julius
Caesar, but they also highlight the willingness of individuals in hard times to hear what they
want to hear (remind you at all of our own day and age?). It's often unclear whether
characters are manipulated by others, or do they simply find in the speech of others an
inspiration to do what they might otherwise have been too afraid to do.
6. Words are powerful weapons.
Daggers kill Caesar, but it is the suasion of Cassius and others that seal his fate. And it is the
rhetoric of Mark Antony—in particular, in his funeral oration—that turns the people against the
conspirators.
7. One man’s hero is another man’s villain. (Heros & Villains)
Caesar and Brutus are each a villain and each a hero, depending upon the philosophical and
moral vantage points of the observers. As Barbara Mowat and Paul Werstine observe: "Many
people in the Renaissance were passionately interested in the story of Caesar's death at the
hands of his friends and fellow politicians. There was much debate about who were the villains
and who were the heroes. According to the fourteenth-century Italian poet Dante, Brutus and
Cassius, the foremost of the conspirators who killed Caesar, were traitors who deserved an
eternity in hell. But, in the view of Shakespeare's contemporary Sir Philip Sydney, Caesar was a
rebel threatening Rome, and Brutus was the wisest of senators. Shakespeare's dramatization of
Caesar's assassination and its aftermath has kept this debate alive among generations of readers
and playgoers."—Mowat, Barbara, and Paul Werstine, Eds. The New Folger Shakespeare
Library: Julius Caesar. New York: Washington Square Press, Published by Pocket Books, 1972
(Page ix).