[In the following essay, Henze identifies the primary power struggle in the play as the conflict between Caesarism and Republicanism.]

In Shakespeare's Julius Caesar, Brutus tells the other conspirators that they will "stand up against the spirit of Caesar, / And in the spirit of men there is no blood" (The Complete Works of Shakespeare, George Lyman Kittredge, ed., 1936, II.i. 167-168). Then Brutus kills Caesar in order to get at that spirit, but the spirit survives the onslaught, inflames the mob, brings on civil war, and finally enters Brutus's tent at Sardis, and says it has become Brutus's "evil spirit." Caesar's spirit becomes Brutus's evil spirit—it changes its abode—but it does not change in symbolic value. The ghost, I suggest, represents power, the major force in the play, a force divided, with two sides at war with each other; it is a force that destroys Caesar, Cassius, and Brutus, and it promises continued conflict between Antony and Octavius.

Some critics feel that the political implications of the play are ambiguous; others declare that there are no political implications at all. Virgil Whitaker, like J. E. Phillips, considers Caesar the hero struck down by rebels who prevent the establishment of divine monarchy in a corrupt country. Irving Ribner, on the other hand, considers Caesar "an adventurer who, by force, has replaced another adventurer, Pompey"; Ribner believes that Caesar more nearly destroys the noble Roman republic than Brutus murders a divinely ordained king. I feel that neither of these views is exactly implied by the tragedy.

One conflict quite clearly develops between what we might call Caesarism and Republicanism, but Caesar alone does not destroy the noble Roman republic any more than Brutus saves it. Rather, the republic was destroyed before Caesar—even before Pompey. Caesarism is the result of that destruction. The cause lies within the nature of a republic itself, within the people who do not wish to have a republic and who utter a great deal of stinking breath, as the author says, crying for a Caesar. They make a republic impossible and a Machiavellian political structure inevitable.

The larger conflict in the play is not between Caesar and Brutus but between the two sides of the force of power. One aspect of power is that each man desires power over others. Caesar would be king; the tribunes would pluck feathers from the wings of Caesar; Brutus would decide who shall live and who shall die for the sake of Rome; Cassius would kill the weakling who cried in a fever. The commoners would burn and kill. Each man in the play, and by implication every man, desires power.

The other side of power is the need of each man to surrender to some force greater than himself. The commoners would worship Caesar; the tribunes would worship Pompey. Cassius, who cares not how low he is so long as others are no higher, nevertheless places Brutus higher. Cassius is the better conspirator, but because Brutus would have Antony live, Antony lives. Cassius is the better soldier, but because Brutus would fight at Philippi, Cassius dies at Philippi. The very power that Cassius cannot tolerate in the hands of Caesar he willingly surrenders to Brutus.

The opposing sides of power are presented immediately in the play in the conflict between the tribunes and the commoners, and the movement of the first scene is in miniature the movement of the play. The tribunes try, as Brutus does, to temper one man's power. They think that Caesar, when some feathers "are plucked," will fly nearer to earth. But the plucking is itself an act of power, a tribute to the spirit of Caesar.

Flavius and Marullus, like Caesar and then Brutus, are "put to silence" (I.ii.289) by a superior power that flies his turn near the sun. Flavius and Marullus fail because the commoners are determined to give Caesar power, to surrender to him. Rome can never be "free" because the people do not wish it to be free. They are, as Marullus says, blocks and stones, "worse than senseless things." Antony's opposing cry later that the people are not blocks or stones already possesses its ironic opposite.

The cobbler is attractive enough alone, or with a few of his holiday friends; but the cobbler in a mob is no longer so likeable. The mob will have what it likes; as Casca says later, the "tagrag people" will clap or hiss as they please (I.ii.261-263). The mob likes to give power to whom it chooses and, paradoxically, demands the power to surrender itself to its choice. The cobbler makes holiday "to see Caesar and to rejoice in his triumph" (I.i.35-36). He will have his hero; he rejoices in having him. Yet, if that hero is deposed, he will immediately accept another. The name does not matter to a commoner: Pompey, Caesar, Brutus, Antony, Octavius; whatever the succession, one will replace another.

As Cassius tells Brutus, if one conjures with names, '"Brutus' will start a spirit as soon as 'Caesar'" (I.ii.147). Brutus sees that power corrupts; he does not, however, anticipate the vacuum that the death of Caesar will create and that the mob will fill with another man whom the spirit of Caesar possesses. The cobbler will not weep purifying tears for Pompey, nor will he weep for Caesar or Brutus. Instead, the cobbler will react violently—burning and murdering—until another hero appears and orders him back to work. Such are the men that Brutus would save from Caesar.

The commoners demonstrate that the day of Caesarism is at hand, that Brutus's republican idealism will probably fail. With the seduction of Brutus by Cassius and Brutus's surrender to the temptation of power the failure is assured. Brutus asks Cassius, "Into what dangers would you lead me, Cassius,/ That you would have me seek into myself/ For that which is not in me?" (I.ii.63-65). The nail is his squarely. Cassius is leading Brutus into the danger of Caesarism—the exertion of power over others. Cassius would have Brutus strike the blow, exercise the power, that will make Brutus another Caesar.

Brutus would not seek that which he thinks is not within him, but the irony is that within Brutus too is the spirit of Caesarism—the ability to use power callously—for which Cassius serves as a mirror to "modestly discover to yourself / That of yourself which you yet know not of" (I.ii.69-70). Ironically, Cassius is a better mirror than he knows, for he also has the need to give someone power over himself. If Brutus were to see truth in the mirror, he would see the futility of killing one half of Caesar; "with himself at war," (I.ii.46) he should recognize the conflict within all men between the desire to control destiny for other men and the need to recognize some force to control oneself. But Brutus, the idealist who gives no thought to how another Caesar can be avoided, who never questions anyone's motives, who continually considers himself reasonable, lacks such practical vision.

Cassius, on the other hand, is eminently practical. He knows how to commit murder, knows how to select his confederates, knows how to influence other people in such a way as to lead them to do just what he is leading them to do. And Cassius for the most part succeeds in his aims. He cares not at all for Rome; he cares only for his own status. He wants to lower Caesar, and he succeeds. He fails finally because he is not Machiavellian enough, because he cares for Brutus and allows Brutus to make decisions that Cassius knows will bring trouble.

Antony, the one who most nearly succeeds in this play, practices Cassius's sort of political craft better than Cassius does. He is even more cunning, more expert in hypocrisy and indirection, and he is more practical. He has no difficulty convincing the butchers other than Cassius that he is "meek and gentle" (III.i.255), and, although he is shocked and angry at the death of Caesar, he remembers to warn Octavius to avoid Rome until he tries "In my orations how the people take / The cruel issue of these bloody men" (III.i.293-294). Perhaps one implication of the play is that, in this world of men who are stones and blocks, cunning practicality gets one much further than does idealistic vision.

Cassius, aware of the need to be a hypocrite, easily wins over Brutus with emotional leading (the same technique that Antrony uses on the mob) as he appeals to Brutus's patriotism and pride of name and family:

Well, Brutus, thou art noble; yet I see
Thy honourable mettle may be wrought
From that it is dispos'd …
For who so firm that cannot be seduc'd …
                                (I.ii.312-316)

The devil proves his point; all men are but men after all—except for Cassius himself; "If I were Brutus now and he were Cassius, / He should not humour me" (318-319). But Cassius is like other men too; Brutus does influence him. Cassius, like Brutus, is unaware of the other side of power: that after Cassius proves himself superior to Brutus, he must surrender himself to Brutus nevertheless. He has the power to free himself from bondage to Caesar by killing Caesar, but from all bondage the only escape is death. Life, "weary of these worldly bars, / Never lacks power to dismiss itself" (I.iii.96-97); but the very act of power that brings complete liberty is itself a surrender—the absolute, ultimate surrender to death. I have such power too, says Casca, "So every bondman in his own hand bears / The power to cancel his captivity" (II.iii.101-102). Men are at some times masters of their fates, but if complete mastery is, finally, the exertion of power by surrender to death, such mastery is pretty empty.

Brutus decides to exercise his mastery. He wants to return Rome to freedom, but it is to be his own particular brand of freedom. He is the one to have the power to decide when a general is attaining too much power and should be killed—murdered sacrificially, but murdered nevertheless. Brutus's attack on Antony's morality, on Caesar's power, later on Cassius's ethics, all stem from his belief that he is the oracle with the vision whereby other men must live. He never, not even at the moment of his death, recognizes that his is a tyranny no less damaging to freedom than is Caesar's.

Mary Louise Berneri, in Journey Through Utopia, calls every visionary political scheme authoritarian in that the creator of the scheme is his Utopia's highest power. Even Thomas More's Utopians are only as free as More allows them to be. No one may travel in Utopia without permission; punishment for disobedience is slavery. Everyone has to work when and where the state decides. As Thomas More perhaps jokingly said, one of the pleasantest dreams was that of himself as the ruler in his own utopia. Brutus's dream, while not formally Utopian, is much the same.

Yet Brutus knows that he has no personal reason to destroy Caesar, and even "the general" reason is somewhat shaky, for Caesar has not yet proved himself a tyrant. "He would be crowned," Brutus decides, and how that will "change his nature, there's the question" (II.i.13). But this is not the question. The question is whether Caesar's death through a brutal use of power will change the nature of Brutus and of the Rome that he thinks he represents. Brutus, not Caesar, is disjoining remorse from power and abusing greatness. Caesar may be ambitious, but one cannot murder all potentially ambitious men. Brutus's argument, instead of proving that he ought to murder Caesar, should prove that he ought to be very wary about murdering Caesar. He has the power to get Caesar murdered. The question is how that power might change Brutus's nature.

Brutus disjoins the personal realm from the general political realm and constructs a separate code of ethics for each realm. To pose as a friend in the personal realm when not a friend "The heart of Brutus yearns to think upon" (II.ii.129). But to murder a possible tyrant in the political realm, even though he be a friend, is matter of "good cheer" (III.i.89). Brutus, as well as Cassius, fails to recognize that the two realms depend on one another, that the death of human feeling in the political realm leads to disruption of all realms. One cannot arbitrarily murder a Caesar and then ride home to a pleasant dinner with one's wife. The exchange between Portia and Brutus, after he decides to murder his friend, emphasizes the human relationships that Brutus disrupts in order to become a Caesar himself.

Having decided to murder Caesar, Brutus attempts to make his decision honorable. He opposes Cassius' oath: "Do not stain / The even virtue of our enterprise, / Nor the insuppressive mettle of our spirits" (II.i.132-134) by swearing an oath, says Brutus. But the murder of a friend is hardly a virtuous matter, and the "insuppressive" spirit is that of Caesarism, not the spirit of "honorable" conspiracy.

And so the conspiracy proceeds. But Caesar might not come forth. Decius answers, "Never fear that. If he be so resolv'd, /I can o'ersway him" (II.i.202-203). Even with Caesar, the one who sways is overswayed. Brutus, who feels that the use of power is limitable, believes that murderers may be

  sacrificers, but not butchers, Caius.
We all stand up against the spirit of Caesar,
And in the spirit of men there is no blood.
O that we then could come by Caesar's spirit
And not dismember Caesar! But, alas
Caesar must bleed for it!
                               (II.i.166-171)

Brutus fails to recognize that, as one murders Caesar, one frees Caesar's "spirit" to range wide as hell. "In the spirit of men" there may be no blood, but in the spirit of Caesar and the use of power that it represents there is machinery for much blood. Purification fails because the spirit of Caesarism with its two-sided power requirement is not a force to be purified. Brutus could "come by" Caesar's spirit only by letting him live, by avoiding the exertion of power, by not dismembering Caesar. When Caesar, "must bleed for it" others must bleed for it too for power breeds power and the spirit of Caesar thrives on power. Brutus would carve Caesar as a "dish fit for the gods,/ Not hew him as a carcass fit for hounds" (II.i.173-174). The gods who would appreciate such a sacrifice to power are the very gods who would allow Cassius to kill himself in order to be "free"; Brutus would have the murderers be "called purgers, not murderers" (1.180). If men are to be purged of their inclination to use power by murdering them, after nine Indians have fallen the last one will have to shoot himself.

The murder scene itself is carefully orchestrated to make first Brutus, then Antony gain our sympathy. In the first part of the scene, Caesar is the arrogant tyrant who cannot be fooled, thawed, moved, or lifted up. Brutus is the preserver of liberty and slayer of the giant. But then Caesar is dead, bloody, and murderers are murderers after all. Brutus cries, "Let no man abide this deed / But we the doers" (III.i.94-95). Let no man pay but the guilty. But all must pay. The movement of power from man to man is inevitable now. The spirit is free.

The conspirators enjoy their moment of triumph, but it is only a moment. Cinna cries out "Liberty! Freedom! Tyranny is dead!" (1. 78). Brutus assures the people that no more will die, only Caesar. Metallus shows his fear for himself: "Stand fast together, lest some friend of Caesar's / should chance—" (1. 87). But "honorable" Brutus heads off the street fight: "Talk not of standing," and continues the ritual by bathing his hands in Caesar's blood. Let's walk forth, says Cassius. "Brutus shall lead, and we will grace his heels / With the most boldest and best hearts of Rome" (11. 120-121). That is the end of the triumph.

Antony requests an explanation, and Brutus, who thinks that all men are sincere because he is so himself, gives his word of honor that Antony will not be harmed. Antony immediately displays the eloquence that should warn Brutus from allowing him to speak at the funeral. He pleads that they kill him there by Caesar "whilst your purpled hands do reek and smoke" (1. 158). But Brutus, affected by Antony's emotionalism, begins to apologize:

O Antony, beg not your death of us!
Though now we must appear bloody and
cruel …
Our hearts you see not. They are pitiful;
And pity to the general wrong of Rome
(As fire drives out fire, so pity pity)
Hath done this deed on Caesar.
                                     (11. 164-172)

Again Brutus is separating the spheres of action, and again such separation is impossible. If Brutus were the sort of fellow who could engage in assassination with impunity, he would either be unmoved by Antony's emotion and would proceed very practically to kill him, or he would recognize the effect that emotion has on him, gauge the effect that such emotion in the hands of an effective orator might have on the crowd, and prevent Antony from ascending the pulpit. But Brutus is neither so practical nor so perceptive.

Antony's words remind us of another friendship, that between Antony and Caesar that parallels the friendship that Brutus talked about between himself and Caesar. And we see the sacrifice in another light:

O, pardon me, thou bleeding piece of earth,
That I am meek and gentle with these
 butchers!
Thou art the ruins of the noblest man
That ever lived in the tide of times.
                                   (11. 254-257)

Sacrifice becomes butchery, and the vain tyrant a noble man who inspired the love and respect of Antony. Brutus's action seems no longer so easily justified. Antony prophesies over the corpse of Caesar that civil strife will follow murder; that pity, denied by the conspirators, will disappear; that Caesar's spirit will range for revenge. Now that Caesar's spirit is free of the confines of Caesar's body, a naked struggle for power will ensue. Caesar's death was no sacrifice to freedom; it was a sacrifice to power.

We move to the forum where the funeral is to be held. The mob demands satisfaction, and Brutus promises that "public reasons shall be rendered / Of Caesar's death" (III.ii.7-8); but his "reasons" are little more reasonable and little less emotional than Antony's famous oration. Brutus appeals to the mob to respect him for his honor and to "Censure me in your wisdom" (III.ii.16). I killed Caesar, he cries, "not that I lov'd Caesar less, but that I lov'd Rome more. Had you rather Caesar were living, and die all slaves, than that Caesar were dead, to live all freemen?" (III.ii.23-26).

The noble, reasonable Brutus is begging the question. Then come the either-or assertions: Who is here so base that would be a bondman? If any, speak; for him have I offended. Who is here so rude that would not be a Roman? If any, speak; for him have I offended. Who is here so vile that will not love his country? If any, speak; for him have I offended. I pause for a reply" (11. 31-38). The mob answers "None, Brutus, none." Who wants to be a traitor? "Then none have I offended" answers the reasonable Brutus, having offered no reasons at all. Then comes the final, perfect touch: "as I slew my best lover for the good of Rome, I have the same dagger for myself when it shall please my country to need my death" (11. 49-51). The mob shouts "Live, Brutus! … Bring him with triumph home … Give him a statue with his ancestors" (11. 53-55).

Brutus shall have a statue with his ancestor, Lucius Junius Brutus, who drove the Tarquins from Rome and gave the people freedom and peace. Then comes the immediate, terribly ironical "Let him be Caesar." How far below Brutus's picture of the people that Romans really are is never clearer in the play. These people do not want freedom; they will have their Caesar, whether his name be "Caesar," "Brutus," or "Antony." Brutus's failure is already sufficient; the rest of the play makes, the failure complete.

Antony's oration is hardly less reasonable than Brutus's, but it is longer and more effective. He mentions his own bereavement; he appeals to patriotism and greed; he refers to Caesar's humility and generosity. And the citizen reflects: "Me thinks there is much reason in his sayings" (1. 114). "Poor soul," says another of Antony, "his eyes are red as fire with weeping" (1. 121). Then Antony mentions the will, and the mob demands to hear it.

It is not meet you know how Caesar lov'd
 you.
You are not wood, you are not stones, but
 men …
                                 (11. 147-148)

We see that Marullus was right after all. The mob is adamant. Antony gives in and has them make a ring "about the corpse of Caesar," a ritual gesture. The ritual now belongs no longer to Brutus's actions. The will is read; the mob demands revenge: "Seek! Burn! Fire! Kill! Slay!" These are the noble Romans that Brutus would have lead themselves. Antony has one more message: I am a "plain blunt man"

  But were I Brutus,
And Brutus Antony, there were an Antony
Would ruffle up your spirits, and put a
 tongue
In every would of Caesar that should move
The stones of Rome to rise and mutiny.
                                (11. 231-235)

And the stones do rise: "We'll mutiny."

After a flash of anarchy from the "citizens," the play moves on to the dry, sterile political reality of the dialogue between Antony, Octavius, and Lepidus as they coldly decide who must die. The language is different from Brutus's earlier when he decided who should die, but the political fact remains the same: those who have the power will use it. Each decision to kill a political opponent echoes Brutus's decision in his orchard, and the repetition of that decision without the rhetoric and faulty logic strips that disguise from Brutus's decision.

Brutus never realizes his fault. The same self-righteous morality that leads him to hope that Antony will "take thought, and die" because he is "given / To sports, to wildness, and much company" (II.i.187-189) gives rise to the pious but ignorant assertion later that

I shall have glory by this losing day
More than Octavius and Mark Antony
By this vile conquest shall attain unto.
                                    (V.v.36-38)

Brutus remains ignorant to the last, crying out that he is "Brutus, my country's friend" (V.iv.8). True only to his own vision, Brutus never recognizes that he has been used and that in the process he has become more of a tyrant than the man he killed for the freedom of Rome.

And once more the eloquent oratory of Antony, a Machiavellian politician (who knows what the right words are to men who followed Brutus), disguises the truth:

This was the noblest Roman of them all.
all the conspirators, save only he
Did that they did in envy of great Caesar;
He, only in a general honest thought
And common good to all, made one of them.
His life was gentle, and the elements
So mix'd in him that Nature might stand up
And say to all the world, "This was a man!"
                                           (V.v.68-75)

"This was a man" involved as all men in the play are in a struggle for power that destroys friendship, marriage, government, but a struggle that seems nevertheless inevitable. Although Brutus is "honest" and "noble," he is also very ignorant, emotional, and illogical. His actions do not suit his idealistic philosophy. He murders a friend in order to achieve a political structure that no longer fits Rome and her people, if it ever did. He never recognizes that his ideal is impractical, that the people demand a Caesar, that rulers are what the people will have them be, at least in Shakespeare's Rome.

Brutus is too self-confident, too full of pride in his own honesty, never aware that pride in one's virtue may be a fault. He attempts to destroy the physical Caesar in order to get at Caesarism, at tyranny—but succeeds only in destroying the body of Caesar. The spirit of Caesar lives on in the crowd's reply to Brutus's funeral speech ("Let Brutus be Caesar"), in the reaction to Antony's speech ("Let's mutiny, burn, kill"), in the sterile tyranny of the triumvirate ("These many then shall die"), and finally, the ghost tells Brutus, within Brutus himself—as "Thy evil spirit, Brutus."

Brutus does finally sense, however, the power of the ghost, even though he does not see his own fault:

O Julius Caesar, thou art mighty yet!
Thy spirit walks abroad and turns our
 swords
In our own proper entrails.
                                 (V.iii.94-96)

The spirit continues to give men the power to free themselves from bondage by killing themselves, but such freedom is meaningless after all.

The play Julius Caesar does not present a hero, finally, who is truly master of his fate. There may be, as Brutus says, "a tide in the affairs of men / Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune" (IV.iii.218-219); but Brutus misses the current and gets "bound in shallows and in miseries" (1. 220). Had he killed Antony or prevented the oratory that brought on the civil war; had he accepted the crown himself when the crowd cried "Let Brutus be Caesar"; had he then somehow managed to do away with the envious Cassius who could no more have borne a Brutus as a Caesar than he did a Caesar as one; the civil war might have been averted. But had he done any one of these things, Brutus would not have been the idealistic, often humane, republican that he thinks he is. Instead he would have been a Machiavellian schemer aware of the nature of power and no Brutus. And so Brutus misses the occasion, the tide that leads on to fortune.

The view of man that emerges in Julius Caesar is not very optimistic or encouraging. The best of men are members of the same ranks as the worst of men. The worst of men kill Cinna the poet because his name is "Cinna"; the best of men kill Caesar for scarcely better reasons—because he does not swim very well, because he gets fevers, because he is superstitious, because he might be as bad as those who kill him.

All too easily, the noblest Roman of them all disjoins remorse from power and murders his friend. Less hope remains for Romans who are not so noble.