Home > Shakespearean Criticism > Julius Caesar (Vol. 85) - William R. Bowden (essay date winter 1966)

Julius Caesar (Vol. 85) - William R. Bowden (essay date winter 1966)

William R. Bowden (essay date winter 1966)

SOURCE: Bowden, William R. “The Mind of Brutus.” Shakespeare Quarterly 17, no. 1 (winter 1966): 57-67.

[In the following essay, Bowden describes Brutus as self-righteous and intellectually limited.]

A bothersome passage in Shakespeare's Julius Caesar is Brutus' accusation of Cassius in the celebrated quarrel scene:

                                                            I did send to you
For certain sums of gold, which you denied me:
For I can raise no money by vile means:
By heaven, I had rather coin my heart,
And drop my blood for drachmas, than to wring
From the hard hands of peasants their vile trash
By any indirection: I did send
To you for gold to pay my legions,
Which you denied me: was that done like Cassius?

(IV.iii.69-77)1

These lines have elicited a good deal of scholarly...

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