Shakespeare's Julius Caesar
Theme
Loyalty vs Betrayal
William Shakespeare's tragedy Julius Caesar attempts to show the reader the effects of putting your loyalty into a friendship then in return being betrayed all throughout his literature using soliloquies and asides. The theme of Shakespeare's tragedy is how people can once be such good friends with people then they feel jealous of the one person who is getting what they want. Such as Brutus and Caesar, Brutus sees how much power Caesar has and will get in the future and convinces everyone else that Caesar is no good for Rome. When Brutus does this he also is involved with a group of men who also think that Caesar is no good as a ruler and death is the way that they will handle this situation. Brutus does this because he feels as if his “friend” is getting all this power (that Brutus does not have) over Rome. Caesar trusted Brutus like brothers trust one another and Brutus and the other men in the group circle around Caesar as he is was being welcoming to all of the men and friendly. Caesar had so much trust in Brutus and never thought that Brutus would be the last one to stab Caesar as they went around the circle. As Brutus was the last one to stab Caesar and kill him, Caesar says “Et tu, Bruté?” as in you too Brutus? Caesar is wondering why in his last moments of life would the most loyal man to him stab him to kill him off. But for Brutus he believed that their friendship did not matter because the power would have gone to Caesars head anyway so it was best for Rome if Caesar was dead. After Caesar's death Brutus made a “funeral speech” to where it was nothing like a funeral speech but instead seemed as if Brutus was justifying that killing Caesar was right too many civilians. While saying what seems to be a persuasive political speech Brutus still had blood all over himself. Brutus says in his speech “If then that friend demand why Brutus rose against Caesar, this is my answer: not that i loved Caesar less, but that i loved Rome more.” This quote is stating that yes Caesar and Brutus were friends but the “reason” Brutus gave for why he betray his loyal friend is because he loves Rome too much to see anyone destroy it, but not saying he loved Caesar any less than he did but Rome was more important. This made the civilians forgive Brutus because of his use of nationalism in his speech to somehow say that killing an honorable man that was potentially the leader of the plebeians is okay because “he did it for Rome”. This example is literal and emotional because you would never think that someone so important to you and loyal to you would kill you because you had too much power. The betrayal of a friend in William Shakespeare's Julius Caesar is unremarkably a main theme is this play because of the power of persuasion.