SOURCE: "Authority and Violence," in William Shakespeare: Julius Caesar, Northcote House, 1998, pp. 12-20.

Below, Hamer suggests that Caesar's triumph, his assassination, and the imminent destruction of the Roman republic are reflected in the tribunes' anxiety and their subsequent wish to enforce order on the plebeian class.

'Hence! Home, you idle creatures, get you home!' (1.1.1). How angry and hectoring are the words which open the play. But Murellus and Flavius, the speakers, are tribunes of the people; that is, magistrates that the people have elected to protect their interests. As he takes the first step into the world which is moving towards the crisis of Caesar's death, Shakespeare chooses to invite us to make our own entrance, with him, at a point of collision. We are thrown immediately off-balance into confusion. Wanting to extricate ourselves from that, we might be tempted to suppress what as educated people we...