Yesterday marked, once again, the Ides of March (well, okay, the Gregorian equivalent to the Ides of March), that famous date of Caesar’s death. Naturally, when speaking of that day, it is fair to bring up the Bard’s play. We were required to read and discuss this play in high school, and one of the things that struck me was just how different my reaction to the play was than the usual and anticipated reaction would be.
The normal reaction is to see Caesar as a decent and legitimate ruler who, as a result of his tragic flaw of arrogance and the belief of his invincibility, dies at the hand of the great betrayer, an old friend who turns against the protagonist as a result of greed (this time in the form of Senatorial power). Act 5, well after Caesar’s death, sees unification at the hand of Marc Antony and Octavian Caesar and the eventual destruction of Brutus and Cassius’ armies, thereby creating a new, rightful order of things. If you want, you could even attach a Christian allegorical meaning to the play, though I would argue that there are certain points at which it breaks down.
At any rate, that’s the standard reading of Julius Caesar, at least in my class. I, however, took exactly the opposite reading: I saw Brutus as the protagonist (which is hardly a heresy, I should point out). Brutus’ virtue was Rome’s: patriotic republicanism and a tradition of (relative) anti-authoritarianism. Brutus’ tragic flaw, I have held, is the tragic flaw of many a stoic: a detachment from and lack of understanding of passion and thereby that portion of human nature. Compare his logical, rational speech with Marc Antony’s barn-burner and you get Shakespeare understanding the dilemma of free government: Brutus’ actions and cause are the best, given the alternatives, but given a popular martyr, the public will happily throw it away to those who may incite the passions.
