What It Is
The blood of Julius Caesar and the open wounds in his body. Before the murder, he appears in the dream of Calpurnia, in which Caesar's statue gushes blood like a fountain; in the Senate, the conspirators bathe their hands in him; at the funeral, Mark Antony shows the crowd the body and the cloak torn by the daggers. The whole play debates what this blood is: a sacrifice for Rome, as Brutus wants it, or butchery, as Antony says.
Where It Appears
In Scene 1 of Act II, Brutus refuses to kill Antony along with Caesar, so that the killing does not look like butchery.
Let us be sacrificers, but not butchers, Caius.(II.1)
In Scene 2 of Act II, Caesar tells of his wife's dream, and Decius Brutus reinterprets it as a sign of glory.
She dreamt tonight she saw my statue, / Which like a fountain with an hundred spouts / Did run pure blood(II.2)
In Scene 1 of Act III, after the blow, Brutus orders the conspirators to bathe their arms in the blood; alone with the body, Antony calls the assassins butchers.
Stoop, Romans, stoop, / And let us bathe our hands in Caesar's blood(III.1)
O, pardon me, thou bleeding piece of earth, / That I am meek and gentle with these butchers.(III.1)
In Scene 2 of Act III, Antony comes down beside the body, shows the cloak and the wounds, and turns the crowd against the conspirators.
Show you sweet Caesar's wounds, poor poor dumb mouths, / And bid them speak for me.(III.2)
What It Means
The blood is the place where the play decides who is right. Brutus wants Caesar's death read as a rite, performed by sacrificers and not by butchers, and so he orders the men to bathe their hands in the blood and go out into the square shouting liberty. Yet the same gesture fulfills Calpurnia's dream to the letter, and Antony needs only to show the body for the rite to become a crime again. The wounds, which he calls dumb mouths, persuade more than any speech, and the crowd that cheered Brutus goes off to burn the conspirators' houses.
Brutus loses the dispute over the blood before he loses the war. He believed that a well-named gesture would be enough to change the meaning of what he did; Antony knows that in front of the body the name counts for nothing, and he lets the wounds speak.
Relationships
- Standard themes: Politics, Loyalty and betrayal, Language and narration.
- Characters: Brutus, Mark Antony, Calpurnia, Julius Caesar.
- Nearby symbols: the omens, among which is Calpurnia's dream, and Caesar's ghost, the dead man who returns.
- Julius Caesar, the play.