When the Elizabethans spoke of order, they didn't just mean
political or social order. Though they lived during what we
call today the English Renaissance, they still held many
medieval views about man and his relation to the universe. They
knew the world was round, and that the earth was one of many
planets spinning in space. And they knew from explorers that
there were continents besides their own. But most believed, as
people in the Middle Ages believed, that the universe was ruled
by a benevolent God, and that everything, from the lowest flower
to the angels on high, had a divine purpose to fulfill. The
king's right to rule came from God himself, and opposition to
the king earned the wrath of God and threw the whole system into
disorder. Rulers had responsibilities, too, of course: if they
didn't work for the good of the people, God would hold them to
account. No one in this essentially medieval world lived or
functioned in isolation. Everyone was linked together by a
chain of rights and obligations, and when someone broke that
chain, the whole system broke down and plunged the world into
chaos. What destroys the divine harmony in Julius
Caesar--Cassius' jealousy, Caesar's ambition, or the fickleness
of the mob--is something you'll have to decide for yourself.
But whatever the cause, the results offend the heavens and throw
the entire country into disarray.
Today a sense of hopelessness and despair hangs over us: a
mistake, a simple misunderstanding, and the bomb may drop and
destroy life on earth. Our fate, we feel, is out of our
control. But the Elizabethans were much more optimistic.
Forget chance: if something went wrong, then someone had broken
God's laws, the laws of the universe. Many would suffer, but in
the end the guilty would be punished and order restored.
Julius Caesar begins with a human act that, like a virus,
infects the body of the Roman state. No one is untouched; some
grow sick, some die. But in time the poison works its way out
of the system and the state grows healthy again. In
Shakespeare's world, health, not sickness, is the natural
condition of man in God's divine plan.
^^^^^^^^^^
JULIUS CAESAR: THE PLOT
The working people of Rome are overjoyed: Julius Caesar has
beaten Pompey's sons in battle, and everyone's getting a day off
from work to celebrate Caesar's triumphant return. But two
Roman officers, Flavius and Marullus, chase the crowds away:
how dare the citizens support a tyrant who threatens to
undermine hundreds of years of Republican (representative) rule!
Don't they know that Caesar wants to be king?
