Month: September 2015

Shakespeare presents Caesar’s death in Act 3 Scene 1 by using language devices and sentence structure to show how his hubris leads to his downfall.

Shakespeare uses a metaphor on the 3rd line (in the extract). Caesar says ‘But I am constant as the northern star, Of whose true-fix’d and resting quality’. I think the language used here describes Caesar’s arrogance and is what causes the other characters to despise Caesar because he compares himself to the Northern star; a star commonly used for navigation at sea but with a religious association to Jesus Christ. This may mean that Caesar is comparing himself to God (as Jesus is the human embodiment of God). Furthermore, I also think that Caesar is also saying that he will never die or be forgotten hence the use of the words ‘constant and fix’ed’.

An interesting sentence structure which Shakespeare uses comes after Brutus gives Caesar the final stab during the assassination and Caesar says ‘Et tu, Brute?– Then fall, Caesar’. The first thing I can notice is the Latin at the beginning of the sentence; Caesar says ‘and you?’. This is quite peculiar as most of the play is in English and Shakespeare decided to use Latin instead of English. The next thing I can notice is that Caesar says ‘Then fall, Caesar’. From this I can infer that Caesar has come to a realisation that even the people he believed to be close to him have turned against him but his hubris is also shown in his final moments as he speaks of himself in third person (whether or not he means himself or Caesar as in leader).

This is how Shakespeare presents Caesar’s death.

Caesar’s hubris is used against him in Act 2 Scene 2 where he is speaking to his wife and promises not to see the Senate that day. However once Decius Brutus arrives to collect Caesar, his mind changes because Decius tells him that ‘the Senate have concluded to give this day a crown to mighty Caesar’. The quotation can be explicitly interpreted to tell us that the Caesar may lose the crown if he does not turn up. Once he realised this, he went against his wife and said ‘How foolish do your fears seem now, Calpurnia! I am ashamed I did yield to them’. This suggests that Caesar puts his pride above everything as he goes against his word to ‘claim’ the crown. However, it was a lie created by the conspirators to get Caesar in the right place for them to murder him.

Shakespeare presents Brutus’ intentions by using metaphors to justify his thoughts and actions. He shows this in Act 2 Scene 1 where Brutus is speaking to Cassius and he says ‘To cut the head off and then hack the limbs’ and then a few lines later says ‘For Anthony is but a limb of Caesar’. Shakespeare uses the word ‘limb’ in the both the quotations and I think he uses it to describe Caesar and his group as pne entity. What I think Brutus explicitly means by this is that killing Caesar (the head) is enough and that killing the people around him is just unnecessary as they will no longer have power once Caesar is dead. However, I think that the quotation is a metaphor because the description resembles a hydra (a mythical creature which grows back twice the heads once one is cut off) and I think that once Caesar is killed , Cassius and Brutus may end up fighting for what’s left despite them being close.