If you used the word faggot in Shakespeare’s time; you wouldn’t be called a homophobe, you’d simply be referring to a bundle of sticks. If you considered women less capable than men; you wouldn’t be called a misogynist, you’d be a Jacobean realist. If you...
A common practice that William Shakespeare employs in many of his works is the experimentation with gender politics. Shakespeare often shows how notions of gender become unstable as a result of social forces. To discuss Shakespeare’s treatment of gender in his plays, it is helpful...
In his study Shakespeare: Time and Conscience, Grigori Kozintsev expresses how the plot of King Lear sets in motion “an unstoppable avalanche of the fragments of structures, attitudes, ties, all intermingled in frenzied movement”. Indeed, Shakespeare’s “great” tragedy is a play of extremes, with its...
Right or wrong, black or white, good or evil. Some aspect within the human psyche commands that specific and rigid classifications exist. There is a yearning to categorize every aspect, object, and experience ever encountered-once categorized, it is hard to adapt. Likewise, philosophers have long...
In four of Shakespeare’s plays, he introduces a character who is illegitimate. Philip Faulconbridge, Don John, Thersites, and Edmund are all children who were born out of wedlock. Also, all four characters were antagonists, if not the main antagonists, of the plays. In Much Ado...
In Leviathan from 1651, philosopher Thomas Hobbes reflects on “the time wherein men live without other security than what their own strength and their own invention shall furnish them withal… the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short” (“Hobbes”). Even though Shakespeare’s King...
We meet the character of Mark Antony three times before Julius Caesar’s death, though he speaks little and we do not get much of an indication of his character. Antony fully enters the play exactly halfway through, when he makes a gripping speech, and his...
Although the characters of The Tragedy of Julius Caesar can not be easily classified because of their emotional depth and mental complexity, one can draw certain conclusions about them based on the attributes that they possess. Shakespeare uses the intricacy of the characters’ personalities to...
The main characters in Shakespeare’s Tragedy of Julius Caesar have distorted self-perception, showing throughout the play that they see themselves as actors in a great historical play rather than actual people (Van Laan 139). Brutus, Antony, Cassius, and Caesar all overact in a sense and...
“For who so firm that cannot be seduced?” (1.2.312). Cassius’ muttered soliloquy in William Shakespeare’s The Tragedy of Julius Caesar immediately calls attention to his goal of manipulating people. A man well versed in rhetoric, he puts to good use his knowledge of persuading and...
The title of Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar is often criticized, argued that it should be titled Brutus, as Marcus Brutus is the tragic hero. However, the title is appropriate, as Julius Caesar, though insignificant as an actor in the play since he dies in Act 3...
Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar opens with the concurrent celebrations of Caesar’s defeat of Pompey and the annual fertility festival of Lupercal. The coupling of the two historically separate events each celebrating distinct gender roles dramatically highlights the importance of gender characterization. Rome’s patriarchal society demands a...
Introduction In The Tragedy of Julius Caesar speech plays an important role in the plot. The people in play are easily persuaded into opposing viewpoints though both Anthony’s and Brutus’s speeches. In Brutus’s speech he says “Not that I loved Caesar less, but that I...
Shakespeare’s Caesar in “The Tragedy of Julius Caesar” is often mistaken as being a tyrant. This view comes from the characterization of Caesar through Cassius and Brutus’ eyes. Caesar’s qualities that make him a martyr instead of a tyrant are often overshadowed by Cassius’ accusing...
A comparative study of two texts reveals context as the primary influence upon the interplay between pragmatism and personality morality in an individual’s pursuit and consolidation of power. Driven by an overarching contextual desire for stable government, Niccolò Machiavelli’s The Prince (1513) and William Shakespeare’s...
Act 2 scene 1 of Julius Caesar, from lines 1-69, is terribly important as it marks a turning point in the play. The two characters appearing are Brutus and his servant, Lucius. Brutus, having had the notion of murdering Caesar planted in his mind by...
In Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, Caesar is a soon-to-be monarch who is murdered by a group called the Conspirators whose justification for their actions may be debated. Throughout the story, Brutus switches sides several times, starting as Caesar’s best friend, then going on to kill Caesar,...
After a close look at today’s society, an observer will find that within all healthy relationships, both people are equal partners. Today, this equality is something we believe to be a result of our basic human rights. However, in Shakespearean times, women were considered to...
In William Shakespeare’s tragic play Julius Caesar, the contrast between honor and power in a leadership position is presented as many individuals work to better Rome with their own ideals of national glory. Brutus and his followers pursue the idea that Julius Caesar was not...