The tragedy of Julius Caesar by William Shakespeare: violence and rhetoric in Ancient Rome

Abstract

Of the thirty-seven works attributed to the English author William Shakespeare, six of them deal with themes related to ancient Rome. We will studyThe Tragedy of Julius Caesar, which represents the death of the Roman leader (44 BC) at the hands of Brutus and Cassius. The purpose of this paper will beto reveal the Shakespearean Roman model staged during the pre-modern era. The drama analysis will includebrief historical-revisionist comments on Elizabethan-Jacobean England; and we will approach the text from Robert Miola´s ideas on Shakespeare’s Roman historical drama. In several works devoted to the study of ancient Rome, as seen during the Renaissance, Professor Miola reveals the tensions of classical ancient Rome characterized, in early modern time, by violence and rhetoric in relation to the historical, ideal and stereotyped construction of the past.