Julius Caesar Essay | Critical Essay #6

Julius Caesar Critical Essay #6

[Wilson maintains that the sole theme of Julius Caesar is the conflict between liberty and tyranny. The critic demonstrates how Shakepeare manipulated his source, Plutarch's Lives of the Noble Grecianes and Romans. to portray Caesar as a contemptible despot by emphasizing his physical and moral weaknesses, his haughtiness, and his seemingly limitless appetite for conquest. Shakespeare clearly supports Brutus and the other conspirators in their difense of liberty, Dover Wilson asserts, and their failure to prevail in the struggle against tyranny is our tragedy as well as theirs, for "Caesarism," or dictatorship, remains a threat to modem society.]

Written in our day [Julius Caesar] might have been called Caesar and Crearism; but aDstract words were not then in vogue, and this particular one was not invented till 1857. Yet Shakespeare's title was adequate enough in view of what the name of Julius stood for in 1599. For the...
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