[Stirling discusses the significance of ritual and ceremony to the thematic design of Julius Caesar. According to the critic, the play is structured around a central ceremonial riteBrutus's attempt to raise Caesar's assassination to the level of formal sacrifice. Nearly every scene prior to Caesar's murder, Stirling asserts,features a ceremony, which is thenfollowed by a counter-ritual mocking it. The effect of these satirical scenes, the critic argues, is to reveal Brutus's self-deception in thinking he can purify Caesar's assassination through ceremony. After Caesar's death, Stirling continues, the hollowness of the ritual surrounding the murder and the savagery of the conpirators' act arefurther underscored by Antony in another series of counter-rituals. Stirling also notes that Shakespeare's portrait of Brutus is consistent with the sixteenth-century view of Roman history,for most Elizabethans acknowledged the figure's honorable intentions but questioned.....
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