The Importance Of Morality In Shakespeare's Julius Caesar

One of the most distinctive qualities of Machiavelli’s essay The Prince is its lack of interest in personal morality. Machiavelli’s primary interest is in the end justifying the means and how the ambition for power can be achieved and maintained, thus leaving little room for questions of morality. The distinctive quality of Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar is the play’s focus on the complex moral question of what would drive a good man to commit an evil act, believing he was doing it not for his own ambition but to curb the ambition of another. The reading of these two texts in relation to each other thus emphasises their distinctions rather than their similarities.

It is questionable whether Shakespeare read Machiavelli’s The Prince, but he would …show more content…
Julius Caesar is rather more complicated. There are
Machiavellian characters: Cassius, who manipulates Brutus for his own jealous purposes, Anthony, who knows how to dissemble and lie to gain his ends and Octavius, who plays the waiting game. However, the character who struggles with personal morality in this play, who lacks any Machiavellian characteristics, is Brutus. Machiavelli, enmeshed in the world of political intrigue of Florence, believed that ambition drove men to action, but Shakespeare explores a more complex idea. He creates a character, not driven by personal ambition but by idealism; someone who is not driven by emotion but by reason and who will act because he fears another’s ambition. In the process, Shakespeare recreates one of the traditions of Elizabethan theatre, the soliloquy.
These direct speeches to the audience had been a way to share the character’s motivation and prefigure their next move. Cassius’ soliloquy after he tries to persuade Brutus to join the conspiracy is a typical example. Now Shakespeare changes the purpose of such direct speech, so it can reveal the inner workings of a character’s …show more content…
The play is full of what might seem at first to be anachronisms, but may simply be ways of connecting this ancient story with contemporary London. This is how ancient
Romans viewing Pompeii’s entrance to the city are described: Have you climbed up to walls and battlements, To towers and windows, yes, to chimney tops,

Shakespeare’s contemporaries would have recognised in this the populace gathering for the processions through the city that Queen
Elizabeth instituted. The fact that an Elizabethan audience saw the play acted in contemporary rather than historical costumes must have given the point greater force. And there are many other connections. Caesar is old, deaf in one ear and without a direct heir, but has created the myth of ‘Caesar’. Elizabeth is also old and bald, without the youthful physical appearance she still demands in portraits, she too has no heir and she has created the myth of the ‘Virgin Queen’. It almost seems as if Shakespeare, in a time of uncertainty about who the next monarch may be, wishes to canvas questions about the type of political organisation a state might require and the kind of qualities a leader might need.

Both Julius Caesar and The Prince examine the notion of