From the moment the conspirators pulled their swords from Caesar's body, their reasons for killing him were debated and documented with various spins, some accounts portraying Caesar's killers as heroes and others, like Dante, damning them to the deepest pit of hell. Shakespeare's account focuses largely on Brutus' internal conflicts between his loyalty to Caesar and to Rome, between his belief about what Rome should be and what it had become. He struggles to decide whether the demands of civic responsibility prevail over the ties of personal loyalty.

Caesar focuses on the lives of the great men, circulating among several characters, with the title character playing a smaller role than might be imagined. Brutus is most fully drawn of them. Unlike other characters, he appears in several roles throughout he p

Both Brutus and Caesar pay for their inflexibility with their lives. However their cohorts show greater range of motion. Cassius is much more alert to the workings of the world; he knows he can fool Brutus with a faked letter, whereas Brutus would never imagine that a letter could not be real. Antony shows off a malleable improvisatory tone in his speech over Caesar's body that allows him to win over the masses, because he is able to bend to suit public opinion rather than making the public match his beliefs.

The Roman world's distinction between public and private worlds has important resonance for the play. The public world is an all-male milieu of competition, rivalry, and bonds. The argument between Brutus and Cassius in Act IV shows the competitive intensity of such bonds. Beside these exclusive ties, connections with women are barely noticed. Portia begs Brutus to speak to her, presumably because he had been known to converse sometimes, but he ignores her. Caesar decides to humor Calpurnia and stay home, but as soon as Decius Brutus mentions the crown, Caesar speeds off to the Senate. Women are completely powerless, and even 'female intuition' is ignored.

Fate plays a curious role in the play. Cassius urges Brutus to consider fate doesn't control so much as does free will: "The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars / But in ourselves, that we are underlings" (I.ii.141-2). Yet fate seems to p

Some common words found in the essay are:
Senate Women, Caesar Rome, Julius Caesar, Brutus Caesar, Romans Inflexibility, Act IV, Caesar Brutus, Rome Octavius, Star' IIIi60, Decius Brutus, loyalty caesar, caesar's body, whereas brutus, public figure, public private, julius caesar, play public,
Approximate Word count = 951
Approximate Pages = 4 (250 words per page double spaced)