Caesar, Julius | Wayne A. Rebhorn (essay date 1990)
Wayne A. Rebhorn (essay date 1990)
SOURCE: "The Crisis of Aristocracy in Julius Caesar," in Renaissance Quarterly, Vol. XLIII, No. 1, Spring, 1990, pp. 75-111.
[In the following essay, Rebhorn suggests that in Julius Caesar Shakespeare uses aspects of Roman history to reflect on the state of England and its aristocracy.]
In the late summer or autumn of 1599, … Shakespeare's company brought to the stage the tragedy of Julius Caesar. Although it is often read as a play about the killing of a king and expressing a real ambivalence on that score, it would be equally productive to see it as depicting a struggle among aristocrats—senators—aimed at preventing one of their number from transcending his place and destroying the system in which they all ruled as a class. In this perspective, then, the assassination is not regicide, but an attempt to restore the status quo ante. The conspirators strike down an individual,...
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