Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar: Letting the Past Speak to the Present
by Philip Pugh

What does the past have to do with us today? Some people don’t think it has anything to do with our lives. But they are forgetting George Santayana’s famous saying that, “'Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” If we would just take a moment to listen to the past, we may find that it gives us a perspective on our situation in the present. One of the great models of this kind of past-speaking-to-the-present attitude was William Shakespeare. While few today would consider him revolutionary, many of Shakespeare’s plays were edgy, even for the working-class audiences who originally watched his plays. Often these plays were concerned with political issues of the day disguised under the idea of a “tragedy” or “history” play. One of the greatest of these political plays was Julius Caesar.

Partly due to Shakespeare’s play, we have images of the death of Caesar that are more Elizabethan than Roman. For example, phrases like “Et tu Brute” or “Friends, Romans, and Countrymen” while memorable, were probably never spoken in Caesar’s Rome. Indeed, the text of the play contains many anachronisms to connect the events to the audience of the day. The events of the play, though, stay mostly true to what happened in 44 B. C. when Caesar was murdered.

Yet even though the events depicted in the play happened in Rome in the 1^st Century B. C., they were highly relevant in the England of 1599 (when it was most likely written). Elizabeth I had been on the throne for over forty years, but was nearing the end of her life. It was feared that whether by assassination or illness, her reign would end and chaos, such as that depicted after the death of Caesar, would ensue. The play clearly illustrates the fears of disorder and civil war of the time.

Another relevant theme is that of political theory. In the play, Caesar is accused of upsetting the traditional rights of the people and aspiring to be king, in other words, an absolute ruler. In 1598, James VI, the King of Scotland and next in line for the throne of England, published The True Law of Free Monarchies which argued for absolute monarchy based in the Divine right of kings. In the play Brutus, the protagonist and the murderer of Caesar, commits murder because of his dedication to the traditional rights of the people. Was Shakespeare issuing a warning to the next ruler? Or was the tragic figure of Brutus meant to be a warning to well-intentioned would-be regicides? Quite possibly both (Macbethand Hamlet also contain questions regarding Divine Right to rule).

Whatever the political messages that Shakespeare intended, the subject-matter of Julius Caesar was quite relevant to the England of his day. The themes of regicide and civil strife reflected the fears of a population who remembered only too well the uncertainty of “Bloody” Mary’s turbulent reign and the Spanish Armada of 1588. On the other hand, the idea of absolute rule was also unwelcome, a fact which would eventually lead to the English Civil War.

Julius Caesar is therefore a masterpiece of Renaissance literature because, while it remains true to the ideals of Ancient Rome, it recasts them so that they could speak to Elizabethan England. Even in more recent times, stories about the past can speak to us today. For example, Arthur Miller’s The Crucible used the story of the Salem Witch trials to make a point about the well-intentioned McCarthyism of his own day. Like The Crucible, Julius Caesar uses past events and ideals to speak to the present in a relevant way. This is the essence of Renaissance: using the wisdom of the past to address the issues of the present.  Here at the Center for Renaissance and Reformation, we believe that if we do this, we can spark a Renaissance in our own day in American cities, as Shakespeare helped to do in Elizabethan London.