Julius Caesar Essay: Loyalty and Justice in Julius Caesar

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Loyalty and Justice in Julius Caesar

In Shakespeare's Julius Caesar, one must read the text closely to track the shifting motivations and loyalties of each character as the play progresses. An important factor that must be kept in mind while reading is the degree of loyalty, in other words, the degree to which characters act out of a motivation to help others. Throughout the play, each character's current degree of loyalty to others is clearly exhibited by words or behavior – this holds true for the characters of Brutus, Cassius, Antony, Portia, and Calpurnia. The focus on loyalty is critical because before the play ends an even-handed justice is meted out to a number of people who fail to live up to an expected standard of loyalty to others.

Mark Antony, for example, begins the play strongly loyal to Caesar, and his actions through the death of Caesar in Act 3 are clearly motivated by his desire to support Caesar's cause. Something goes wrong somewhere, though, as by 4.1 Antony is engaged in dividin...

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