Character and action in Julius Caesar

Since Aristotle, the relationship between character and action has been considered essential to tragedy; but in Julius Caesar, this relationship has a special importance in the minds of the tragic characters themselves. For the ancient Romans of the republican era, moral character was an essential idea, as was the idea that a character must express itself in action, especially in political action aiming at the public good. Shakespeare, despite famously having been criticised for making his Romans “not sufficiently Roman”, in Julius Caesar has clearly absorbed from his sources a sense of this importance for the Romans of moral character and action, and makes his Roman characters act with these concerns squarely in mind.

But are these characters, who think and act according to a different set of cultural norms, capable of judging truly who they are and what they do, or are they blinded by the very ideas which they rely on to guide them? Does their acute sense of being ‘Roman’ blind them to their common humanity? And does their awareness of their own historical importance help them to see themselves and their deeds more clearly, or can the real significance of momentous actions only ever come to light in retrospect, such that the deeds themselves must take place in tragic ignorance and hubris? In raising such questions, Shakespeare makes the imagining of cultural difference a basis on which to explore wider questions of identity, self-knowledge, and destiny.