Blooms Literary Themes - THE HEROS ... - ymerleksi - home

104William Shakespearemany critics have pointed out, Shakespeare’s complex characterizationof Brutus and Caesar lends the play a moral ambiguity so thatthe reader, like the audience at Caesar’s funeral, does not know fullywhether to bury Caesar or to praise him. In this same vein, MildredHartsock has written that Julius Caesar is not just a problem play butrather “a play about a problem: the difficulty—perhaps the impossibility—ofknowing the truth of men and of history” (61). Onepivotal question that arises from such a reading of Julius Caesar isthis: Did Shakespeare intend for us to sympathize with Brutus andview him as a noble failure whose loyalty to the republic and concernfor the welfare of Rome transcend the disastrous consequences ofhis actions? Or are we to judge Brutus in more practical terms andtherefore condemn him as a walking political disaster whose intellectualhubris and miscalculations paved the way for the end of theRoman Republic? Commenting on this highly problematic question,William and Barbara Rosen have argued that Julius Caesaris a play in which “we judge a man not only for what he is but forwhat he does” and that “consequences are no less important thanintentions” (111). In a similar vein, Norman Rabkin interprets thepolitical message of this play as a warning that moral passion andhigh principles are irrelevant when confronted by the mercilessopportunism of a Mark Antony (116). Yet, for all these criticismsmade against Brutus, there is no clear evidence from the text thatShakespeare ever attempts to glorify the political success of MarkAntony and Octavius at the expense of Brutus’s idealism. While wemay think of Brutus’s pursuit of justice as being naïve and politicallyunfeasible, there is no reason to necessarily support the amoral pragmatismof Mark Antony, a Machiavellian demagogue who is definedby sheer political expediency and rhetoric, not high principles andgood intentions.In the end there are no easy solutions to the ethical dilemmas thatmust be faced by those who thrust themselves into the highest officesof the political arena. Unlike Shakespeare’s earlier history play HenryV, there is no hero worship in Julius Caesar, only real men tainted bytheir own political enterprises, regardless of whether their motivesare guided by envy, ruthless ambition, or the quest for justice. EvenBrutus, for all his good intentions, is no saint, a fact made clear byhis willingness to dehumanize Caesar by conceiving of his assassina-