A comparative essay on William Shakespeare’s tragedies, Romeo and Juliet and Julius Caesar.
This paper reviews two of Shakespeare’s tragedies, providing an outline of each play. The paper illustrates how both plays portray the tragedy of human life on a lavish scale. The central themes of each play – power in “Julius Caesar”, and young love in “Romeo and Juliet” – are discussed, and the tragic events of the plays are portrayed. The writer draws a comparison between these two plays.
“Thus, Shakespeare uses the character of Brutus to demonstrate the dangers of being so blindly focused and inward looking that one fails to recognize the less than ideal circumstances and pitfalls that prevent the realization of goals. In sharp contrast is Cassius, who is perhaps “the most accurate political calculator in the play. Recognizing that unknowable consequences attend all human action, “since the affairs of men rest still incertain, Let’s reason with the worst that may befall (5.1.95-96). Accordingly, Cassius advises that Antony be killed with Caesar, that Antony not be given the podium at Caesar’s funeral, that the conspirators not join battle at Philippi. In retrospect, it is clear that Cassius was right at every point? (Contra Mundum, 1995).