How Portents, Omens and Dreams Add to the Dramatic Tension Before Julius Caesar's murder in Julius Caesar

How Portents, Omens and Dreams Add to the Dramatic Tension Before Julius Caesar's murder in Julius Caesar

Julius Caesar is one of Shakespeare's greatest plays because in it he

deals powerfully and excitingly with the themes of power and

conscience. Particularly in 'Julius Caesar' Shakespeare uses

disruptions as portents, omens and predictions to give us a sense of

approach of terrible events. Shakespeare lived the Elizabethan period;

therefore like many Elizabethans he would have had the conception of

the divine order of the universe being mystical. Similar to the

characters in 'Julius Caesar' the Elizabethans would see storms as a

warning to some sort of disaster or calamity to be visited upon men,

pagan or Christian, by God. Also many Elizabethans were superstitious

about things, which explains Shakespeare's use of predictions and

omens in the play. The uses of these techniques allow Shakespeare to

create dramatic tension in the play, as shown in acts 1-3, before his

death.

Shakespeare starts of relatively early on in the play where in Act

one, scene two; a soothsayer approaches Julius Caesar. A soothsayer

can be described as a prophet-like being that has special abilities to

see what troubles or fortunes are forthcoming. In this case, the

soothsayer tells Caesar to 'beware the ides of March'; this is an

example of a bad omen, which predicts a bad outcome on the 15th March.

This would lead to the audience thinking that something bad was going

to happen in the middle of March. In Elizabethan times this would look

bad to them because they knew if anyone ignored the significant heaven

there would be trouble.

Caesar shows a grea...

... middle of paper ...

... death of Julius

Caesar.

Shakespeare shows in 'Macbeth', that Duncan dies due to a religious

offence and it was not greed and ambition that led to it, although

Julius Caesar is a different play in terms of themes, the style in

which portents are used are basically the same. For example in

'Macbeth', the witches warn Macbeth of the danger he'll come across,

similar to Caesar he ignores them. Also when Macbeth had the dream

when he had blood all over his hands after killing King Duncan, there

was a great build-up of dramatic tension. We find that some of

Shakespeare's play are linked, possibly due to that there might have

been based on the Elizabethan era, whereby people took portents and

omens quite seriously. So by using the style of writing with uses

these effects, Shakespeare creates great tension in his plays.