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LANGUAGE

Gayle Greene (essay date 1980)

SOURCE: "The Power of Speech / To Stir Men's Blood': The Language of Tragedy in Shakespeare's Julius Caesar," in Renaissance Drama, Vol. XI, 1980, pp. 67-93.

[In the following essay, Greene argues that in Julius Caesar, Shakespeare equates language with power and creates a setting in which the fate of the characters is dependent on their ability to employ the art of rhetoric to their advantage.]

Eloquence hath chiefly flourished in Rome when the common-wealths affaires have been in worst estate, and that the devouring Tempest of civili broyles, and intestine warres did most agitate and turmoile them.

Montaigne, "Of the Vanitie of Words"

When Antony concludes his funeral oration by modestly disclaiming the powers of rhetoric he has so abundantly displayed—

I am no...

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3. Politics And Power
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5. Brutus
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1. Julius Caesar