Last week I examined whether William Shakespeare was a Christian playwright. That was the first entry in Streaming the Bard. Now let’s turn to single plays, to “lay apart their particular functions.” (Henry V, III, 7) First up? Julius Caesar. 

Importance of ‘Julius Caesar’

Why that one? It’s often ranked among Shakespeare’s best. Likewise for Marc Antony’s “friends, Romans, countrymen” speech. The play is often presented as politically relevant, 2,000 years after its events and 400 after it was written. (Especially when there’s a politician the Left despises.) And togas are much cooler in the Georgia summer than medieval garb. As yours truly can attest, having performed in Julius Caesar earlier this month.

The Play on the Big and Small Screen

The play has been done on film and TV. Notably the 1953 movie and the 1970 one. Both are star-studded. For example, Marc Antony is portrayed by Marlon Brando in the former, Charlton Heston in the latter. In 1979 the BBC did a TV version, part of its Shakespeare series. Most recently, 2012, the Royal Shakespeare Company’s adaption set in modern Africa was made into a film.

A Recap

If you’ve not read or seen it, here’s a brief recap. In 44 BC Julius Caesar is dictator in Rome, although Shakespeare doesn’t use that term. (That position was a legitimate one in the Republic, which the Senate could confer in emergencies. However, Caesar did have himself made “dictator-for-life,” an illegal office.) Characters refer to Caesar, rather, as a “tyrant.” Although some want to make him “king.” A conspiracy springs up to murder him for this “ambition.” The leaders are Brutus and Cassius. They, and others, do eventually stab Caesar to death on the Ides of March. (March 15, a day of religious observances and “a deadline for settling debts in Rome.”) Marc Antony stirs up the plebians at Caesar’s funeral, setting them against his killers. Brutus and Cassius then later lead an army against the pro-Caesar Triumvirate forces of Marc Antony, Octavius (Caesar’s grand-nephew and adopted heir) and Marcus Lepidus. The latter three win, with the conspirators all being killed or, in the cases of Brutus and Cassius, committing suicide.

A Tragedy, Not A History

This play is considered a tragedy, not one of the histories. Although it’s obviously based on Caesar’s assassination and the resulting political intrigue and war. (Shakespeare’s histories are considered only those that deal with English kings, not ancient Romans.) But how tragic is it? Maybe not so much, if an ambitious tyrant is being eliminated.

Was Caesar A Tyrant?

So how tyrannical was Julius Caesar? (Keep in mind that the play doesn’t faithfully follow actual history.) True, he had twisted the temporary, yet legal, office of dictator into a permanent one. In doing so Caesar finally broke the Republic, which for centuries had elected key leadership, like consuls and tribunes. But he was never emperor. Ironically, his heir Octavius would turn the Roman state into an Empire, and become its first leader. Julius Caesar was a patrician general and politician, but often governed to the benefit of the plebians. For example, he championed land reform (breaking up the patricians’ latifundia estates and giving land to the plebians). As for his alleged greatest fault, ambition, what Senator, consul, tribune or praetor in 1st century BC Rome was not guilty of this?

Brutus, the Hero of the Play

According to Shakespeare, there was one man. Brutus. That’s why he gets far more lines than anyone else. He’s actually the play’s central character. Or, perhaps it’s more accurate to say, Shakespeare found Brutus more interesting than Caesar. At least according to Irving Ribner, “Political Issues in ‘Julius Caesar,’” The Journal of English and German Philology, 56, 1 (Jan. 1957), pp. 10-22. The Bard treated Caesar as “the noble hero overthrown by his pride and ambition, and Brutus as the virtuous would-be saviour of his country who, through his own insufficiency and because of the depravity of the Roman people, brings only greater tragedy to Rome” (p. 22).

Yet A Flawed Hero

What “insufficiency?” Brutus is a man of ideas, not of action. He means well, thinking to restore the Republic by killing Caesar. But throughout the play he shows he’s not really able to grasp political necessities, and doesn’t really understand other men’s motivations. Brutus is principled, but not practical. So says John Palmer, Political and Comic Characters of Shakespeare (London, 1965), pp. 1-64. For example, when hatching the assassination plot, Decius suggests killing Marc Antony as well (II, 1). Cassius agrees. But Brutus high-mindedly talks them out of it. Big mistake.

Likewise, after they’ve killed Caesar, Cassius warns Brutus not to let Marc Antony speak at the funeral, lest he win over the people (III, 1). Brutus, oblivious as always, disagrees. He is convinced that “rational argument” will appeal to the mob more than Antony’s passion. Another choice Brutus and the conspirators will live to regret. “Brutus is still the political moralist who recoils from the realities of political leadership” (Palmer, p. 50). His final mistake is committing to battle too soon against Antony’s and Octavius’ forces — which results in his and Cassius’ defeat and death.

Flawed, But He Got Results

So is it really true, as Antony says over Brutus’ dead body at the play’s end, that “this was the noblest Roman of them all” (V, 5)? Who helped kill Caesar not from “envy” but for “the common good?” Palmer believed that “Brutus has precisely the qualities which in every age have rendered the conscientious liberal ineffectual in public life” (p. 1). But aside from observing that “liberal” meant something different 60 years ago, we must acknowledge that, however politically inept he proved after, Brutus did succeed in killing Caesar.

Is The Play Relevant to Political Leaders Today?

Thankfully, our system still allows for removing alleged tyrants peacefully. So modern liberal fantasies about violent removal of a Caesarian Trump are just that. (To be fair, in 2012 we saw a version of this play with an Obama-like Caesar — done in by a black Brutus.) Perhaps Biden, not Trump, is the real autocrat. In that case, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. becomes his aspiring Brutus. But maybe Julius Caesar holds more resonance for Vladimir Putin. Et tu, Yezgeny Prigozhin? But perhaps Shakespeare meant this 1599 play as a warning against regicide. Just 13 years earlier the Babington Plot had aimed at killing Queen Elizabeth I and restoring a Catholic realm. Six years in the future was the Gunpowder Plot, which aimed to do the same by killing King James I and blowing up Parliament. And England would erupt in civil war four decades hence, resulting in the execution of King Charles I.

Or Is the Mob the Real Villain?

Then again, maybe the Bard was warning against mob rule. Consider. The plebians start the play intending to “make holiday to see Caesar and to rejoice in his triumph” (I, 1). Then at his funeral the crowd agrees he was a “tyrant” and “blest that Rome is rid of him.” But before Marc Antony is even finished speaking they condemn his killers as “traitors” and storm off to burn their houses (III, 2). This isn’t just a “pack of fickle mush heads (in the immortal words of Simpsons’ character Joe Quimby). It’s a deadly mob. And indeed in the very next act it sets upon Cinna the poet and kills him — at first assuming he’s Cinna the conspirator, but simply not caring when they find out he’s not.

Patrick Henry Was Right

Ultimately, this is a play. It’s aimed to entertain. Shakespeare’s focus is how men and women act in certain challenging situations, not on political guidance. But he did set it in Republican Rome, and used real historical figures. Without sanctioning violence, allow me to paraphrase Patrick Henry: “Caesar had his Brutus, Charles I his Cromwell and modern politicians like Vladimir Putin…may profit from their example.”

Timothy Furnish holds a Ph.D. in Islamic, World and African history from Ohio State University and a M.A. in Theology from Concordia Seminary. He is a former U.S. Army Arabic linguist and, later, civilian consultant to U.S. Special Operations Command. He’s the author of books on the Middle East and Middle-earth, a history professor and sometime media opiner (as, for example, on Fox News Channel’s War Stories: Fighting ISIS). He currently writes for and consults The Stream on International Security matters.