Julius Caesar and his historical significance

¶ … Ethics of Julius Caesar

One of the greatest lessons we learn from William Shakespeare's play, Julius Caesar, is that things rarely work out the ways we intend. With Julius Caesar, we learn that people and things are not always how they appear to be.

The conspirators in the play feel justified with their fears and in their decision on how to deal with those fears. The mistake is theirs to bear as they face a triumvirate more tyrannical than Caesar. The result of the play also indicates that what they did was wrong, regardless of how justified they felt. Their reasons might have appealed to their ethical nature but the means to achieving that goal was more immoral than the worst of their fears. In the end, Caesar's conspirators' fears were on target but how they handle these fears is all wrong and unethical.

His conspirators were certain Caesar would have become a dictator because of his personality. Shakespeare hints that they may be just in their fears of Caesar's ambitions. He is, after all, very arrogant when it comes to his powers. He is just a man but he is prone to forget this fact when he is filled with pride. His arrogance is seen when he changes his mind about staying home as Calphurnia wishes. When confronted with the image of a crown, he calls her fears "foolish" (Shakespeare II.ii.105) and tells her that he is ashamed of himself for giving in to them and to her. The conspirators were not wrong in what they thought about Caesar. He was indeed an arrogant man and we cannot know what kind of ruler he would have been. We do know that he was stern and shrewd and these characteristics would not have faded under the crown. Harold Bloom claims that while Caesar "may idealize himself, and yet he is accurate. He is the northern star in of his world (Bloom 110). These characteristics fueled fear and Myron Taylor puts it succinctly when she states, "Playing the role of Caesar has cost Julius Caesar his life" (Taylor 306). Caesar's murderers had a clear conception of Caesar; it was their fear of that and their means of getting rid of him that brings them trouble.

The conspirators were wrong to take the action they did, regardless of how justified they felt. Ernest Schanzer maintains that the question regarding the conspirators and whether or not they are justified can only be answered with a "compulsive 'No'" (34). This is proven by the "persistent dissociation of Caesar's body as spirit" (34), which demonstrates the "foolishness and futility of the assassination" (34). Furthermore, the last two acts of the play are "more than a grim pun" (34) because while Caesar is murdered and dismembered the "still walks abroad, and exacts his revenge" (34). Here Shakespeare reinforces the notion that murder is not the way to go about solving one's problems. Myron Taylor notes that the play is filled with a "strong element of irony" (Taylor 307) because what they get after killing Caesar is worse than they imagined. The conspirators are convinced that Caesar will become a dictator because of his attitude regarding his power. When Brutus speaks to the people, he convinces them that his love for them and their country caused him to kill Caesar. When he asks them if they would rather die as slaves with Caesar living or die as free men with Caesar dead, we see his fears surface. Schanzer notes that the answer lies in Brutus' question. His accusation of Caesar was too ambitious is "vague" (Schanzer 48) but very clear. The characters' dispositions at the end of the play also illustrate the answer to the question of how ethical the murder of Caesar was. Maurice Charney notes that Brutus' opinion about the murder changes because at the beginning of the play, Brutus' opinion is based upon "unfounded, conditional reasoning" (Charney 215). After some time, however, he realizes that the murder was based upon possibilities rather than facts. She writes, "Seeing the ascension of a triumvirate more ruthless and tyrannical than Caesar ever was" (215) forces him to see the error of his ways. He, like the others, becomes his own victim of the law of unintended consequences. He would never have guessed anything to be worse than Caesar, but that was only because he did not allow himself to think that far ahead or beyond what the others were feeding him.