Julius Caesar

Who He Is

Julius Caesar is the man the whole play talks about and who appears in few scenes: celebrated in Rome on the day of the Lupercal, the man to whom part of the Senate wants to give the crown and whom another part decides to kill. He is deaf in one ear, falls in public in a fit that Casca recounts with contempt, and speaks of himself as of a name greater than the man. He falls in the Capitol, on the Ides of March, under the stabs of Casca, of Cassius and of Brutus, and goes on in the play as an exposed body, as a ghost and as a force: Mark Antony makes his death a weapon, and Brutus says, at Philippi, that Caesar's spirit still walks abroad.

Trajectory

Before he enters a scene, he is already the problem. In Act I, Scene 1, the tribunes Flavius and Marullus strip the decorations from his statues and disperse the people celebrating him, and Flavius explains that Caesar's wing must be plucked of its feathers so that he will not soar too high.

In Act I, Scene 2, in the Lupercal procession, he tells Calpurnia to stand in Antony's path in the race, because the old people say that a barren woman touched in the sacred chase sheds her curse, and demands that no rite be omitted. A soothsayer cries out to beware the Ides of March, he orders him to come near, looks at his face and dismisses him: he is a dreamer. On the return from the race, with the procession silent, he points Cassius out to Antony: lean, hungry, he thinks too much, does not listen to music and smiles as if mocking himself. He calls such men dangerous, then backs off, says he does not fear him and that he speaks of what is to be feared, for he is always Caesar, and asks Antony to stand on his right, because the left ear is deaf. The refusal of the crown, three times, and the fainting fit with foam at the mouth come through Casca, who also tells that, on coming to, Caesar asked them to attribute it to his infirmity.

In Act II, Scene 2, at home, on the morning of the Ides, he resists Calpurnia, who cried out three times in her sleep that they were murdering Caesar, and the augurers, who found no heart in the sacrificed animal. He says that what threatened him never saw more than his back and that danger knows Caesar is more dangerous than he, two lions born on the same day, he the elder and the more terrible. He answers fear with the most quoted line of the play about him:

He yields to Calpurnia's request, as she offers herself as the one to blame for the fear, and tells Decius to inform the Senate. Decius reinterprets the dream, saying that the statue's blood is the new blood Rome will drink, promises the crown that day and reminds him that the senators would say the session was adjourned until Caesar's wife had better dreams, and that Caesar is afraid. Caesar answers that Calpurnia's fears seem foolish and that he is ashamed to have yielded, asks for his robe and receives the conspirators at home, whom he invites for wine. He asks Cinna, Metellus and Trebonius to stay near him, and Trebonius answers in an aside that he will be so near that Caesar's friends will wish he had been far away.

In Act III, Scene 1, before the Capitol, the Soothsayer tells him that the Ides have come but not yet gone, and Artemidorus asks him to read his letter first, because it concerns what touches him most nearly. Caesar answers that what touches himself will be served last, and enters the Senate. Metellus Cimber kneels for his banished brother, and he refuses: flattery melts fools, not Caesar, who is constant as the northern star, the only one without peer in the firmament. Brutus and Cassius join the plea, Cinna and Decius insist, and he asks Cinna whether he wants to lift Olympus. Casca cries that hands should speak for him and strikes the first blow at the neck, the others surround him, and the last is Brutus's. Caesar, on seeing his friend, says the line in Latin and falls: "then fall, Caesar."

Dead, he does not leave the play. In Act III, Scene 2, the body and the pierced robe are Antony's argument before the people. In Act IV, Scene 3, he appears as a ghost to Brutus, in the tent, says he is his evil spirit and promises to see him at Philippi. In Act V, Scene 3, Cassius dies with the sword that pierced Caesar and says that he is avenged, and Brutus exclaims, on seeing the bodies of Cassius and Titinius:

In Act V, Scene 5, Brutus tells Volumnius that the ghost appeared to him twice, at Sardis and at Philippi, and, as he throws himself on his sword, asks Caesar to rest.

Themes Embodied

Caesar speaks of himself as of an institution. "I am always Caesar" in Act I, Scene 2, "Caesar shall go forth" in Act II, Scene 2, "Caesar doth not wrong" in Act III, Scene 1: the name enters the sentence in place of the pronoun. In the same tone, he says he fears nothing and merely points out what is to be feared, and calls cowardice the misgiving that Calpurnia offers him.

Calpurnia's dream and the omens say one thing, and Decius says another. What makes him leave the house is the fear of seeming cowardly before the Senate and the promise of the crown, and he himself had said that death comes when it comes.

The title gives the play to the man who dies in the first scene of Act III, and the play knows it. After the assassination, he goes on acting by three routes: the body that Antony uses, the ghost that accompanies Brutus and the name that Cassius and Brutus still invoke as they die. His Power does not end with his life, and that is where the thesis of tyrannicide comes undone: the act that was meant to end Caesar multiplies him.

Relationships

• Julius Caesar: the historical man, the dictator assassinated on the Ides of March in 44 BC. What is described here is the character of the play, built by Shakespeare for the stage, and not the portrait of the Roman dictator.
• Calpurnia: the wife, who asks him to stay at home and is undone by Decius's flattery; he tells her to stand in Antony's path in the Lupercal race.
• Brutus: the friend who gives him the last blow, and whom the ghost promises to meet again at Philippi.
• Cassius: the lean and hungry man he points out as dangerous, and who dies with the sword that killed him.
• Mark Antony: the friend who runs the Lupercal, who offers him the crown and who buries him with words.
• Casca: strikes the first blow, and is the one who tells the scene of the crown.
• Octavius: the one he had sent for to Rome and who, at Philippi, swears that the sword will not return to its scabbard until Caesar's wounds are avenged.