are there any essays concerning analogy bet. julius caesar and richard II ?

Question

My exam will be about comparing the two plays and how they are similar in themes or symbols.. any help?

Answer 1

Hi! I tried my best to look for one but failed. I have, however, collected all this information which you might want to read and study. I hope this will help...

Julius Caesar (Cassius convinces Brutus that Julius Caesar is threat to Rome; Brutus talks with wife Portia; Brutus and Cassius murder Caesar on Ides of March although he had been warned by wife Calpurnia; Antony speaks at Caesar’s funeral and inflames citizens against murderers, Cassius and Brutus lose to Antony, Lepidus, and Octavius at Philippi and commit suicide).

The conspirators charge Caesar with ambition, and his behavior substantiates this judgment: he does vie for absolute power over Rome, reveling in the homage he receives from others and in his conception of himself as a figure who will live on forever in men’s minds. However, his faith in his own permanence—in the sense of both his loyalty to principles and his fixture as a public institution—eventually proves his undoing. At first, he stubbornly refuses to heed the nightmares of his wife, Calpurnia, and the supernatural omens pervading the atmosphere. Though he is eventually persuaded not to go to the Senate, Caesar ultimately lets his ambition get the better of him, as the prospect of being crowned king proves too glorious to resist.

Caesar’s conflation of his public image with his private self helps bring about his death, since he mistakenly believes that the immortal status granted to his public self somehow protects his mortal body. Still, in many ways, Caesar’s faith that he is eternal proves valid by the end of the play: by Act V, scene iii, Brutus is attributing his and Cassius’s misfortunes to Caesar’s power reaching from beyond the grave. Caesar’s aura seems to affect the general outcome of events in a mystic manner, while also inspiring Octavius and Antony and strengthening their determination. As Octavius ultimately assumes the title Caesar, Caesar’s permanence is indeed established in some respect.

CHARACTER ANALYSIS

Julius Caesar

Although Julius Caesar is a well-known public figure of ancient Rome, Shakespeare has molded the legendary figure to suit his own dramatic purposes, sometimes ignoring historic facts. Through the ages, Shakespeare's interpretation of the character of Caesar has provoked considerable critical controversy. Some critics feel that Caesar is portrayed as a typical braggart, characterized by pride, arrogance, foolish oblivion to any of his own weaknesses or to any impending danger. Others argue that despite some very human failings, including partial deafness in his left ear and some form of epilepsy, Caesar is a great man, proven in the play by the loyalty of Antony and the respect given him by most Roman citizens.

Shakespeare does not exalt Caesar to the status of a perfect, or even outstanding, ruler-a characterization that would have reduced the tragedy to a simplistic melodrama of blood and revenge, where evil self-seeking politicians plot the murder of a mighty leader for purely personal gain. Neither does he portray Caesar as an absolute tyrant-a characterization that would have provided unquestionable justification for Brutus' participation. Instead, Shakespeare's Caesar is a multidimensional tragic character who has fascinated audiences for centuries. He is a complicated mixture of strength and weakness, coupled with virtue and vice. He hints that he can be dictatorial, without ever proving himself to be a tyrant; he has proven that he was a good military leader without ever proving he would have been a good Emperor. Shakespeare intentionally portrays Caesar in shades of gray rather than in clearly black or white.

Caesar often allows his pride to get in his way, sometimes making him appear foolish. After his military victory over Pompey, he proudly rides into the city and enjoys the show of pomp given to him. It is obvious that he definitely wants to become Emperor of Rome and believes he can rise to the challenge. But Caesar can also be very wise. In order to win the populace to his side, he refuses the crown of the Roman State three times, but each time he reveals that he is less reluctant. Even in his refusal, Caesar seems pompous and false, relishing the attention he is given and glorying in his own false humility.

Caesar's pride also makes him ignore warnings that are given to him. His wife Calphurnia tells him about her bad dreams and begs her husband not to go to the Senate. The soothsayer calls out to him to "beware the Ides of March." Artemidorus tries to show him a list of the conspirators. He brushes off all the warnings. He does not ignore these things because he feels they are mere superstition, for Caesar himself proves he is superstitious when he encourages his wife to take part in a superstitious cure for infertility. It is Caesar's own arrogant sense of infallibility that makes him ignore these signs and warning. He does not believe he could possibly have an enemy in the world. He is too full of himself to see his own weaknesses.

Shakespeare's Caesar does not undergo any real change during the play. He is introduced as a great, but arrogant man, and he dies a great, but arrogant man; even the conspirators, who know his weaknesses, acknowledge his greatness. When Caesar is seen for the first time returning from his war victory, he is praised by the multitude. In return, he shows that he is proud, pompous, and self-confident. When he assumes a leadership role, he quickly shows that he has tyrannical tendencies. From the first warning given to him by the soothsayer, he proves he is too arrogant to listen to the advice of others. He is too sure of himself to believe that there are those who dislike or resent him. When he is stabbed, he is surprised that he has enemies who would want to kill him; when he sees that Brutus is among the conspirator, he can barely believe his eyes. Caesar dies in total disbelief.

It seems clear that Shakespeare intended Caesar to be the protagonist of the play, entitling the drama after him. More importantly, the entire play revolves around Caesar. The first three acts focus on the conspirators desire to get rid of him; the last two acts are a reaction to his death. Even after life is over for Caesar, he haunts the spirits of the assassins. Additionally, he physically appears to Brutus as a ghost. As a result, his early and untimely death in the play does not diminish his presence. Caesar is center stage from the very beginning to the very end of this tragedy. Both Brutus and Cassius address his being as they commit suicide.



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Richard II (King Richard banishes Henry Bolingbroke and Thomas Mowbray; Henry’s dad John of Gaunt dies and Richard confiscates inheritance to finance Irish war; Henry invades England and imprisons Richard, becoming King Henry IV; Sir Pierce of Exton murders Richard and Henry does penance in Holy Land).

Richard is a young man who has not matured much since his adolescence. Stately and poetic, he enjoys the trappings of kingship and has an extraordinary flair for poetic language. However, he is disconnected from his land and its people. He is overthrown by his cousin, Henry Bolingbroke, and eventually assassinated in the remote castle of Pomfret.

Early in the play, Richard exiles Henry Bolingbroke from England for six years due to an unresolved dispute over an earlier political murder. The dead uncle whose lands Richard seizes was the father of Bolingbroke; when Bolingbroke learns that Richard has stolen what should have been his inheritance, it is the straw that breaks the camel's back. When Richard unwisely departs to pursue a war in Ireland, Bolingbroke assembles an army and invades the north coast of England in his absence. The commoners, fond of Bolingbroke and angry at Richard's mismanagement of the country, welcome his invasion and join his forces. One by one, Richard's allies in the nobility desert him and defect to Bolingbroke's side as Bolingbroke marches through England. By the time Richard returns from Ireland, he has already lost his grasp on his country.

There is never an actual battle; instead, Bolingbroke peacefully takes Richard prisoner in Wales and brings him back to London, where Bolingbroke is crowned King Henry IV. Richard is imprisoned in the remote castle of Pomfret in the north of England, where he is left to ruminate upon his downfall. There, an assassin, who both is and is not acting upon King Henry's ambivalent wishes for Richard's expedient death, murders the former king. King Henry hypocritically repudiates the murderer and vows to journey to Jerusalem to cleanse himself of his part in Richard's death. As the play concludes, we see that the reign of the new King Henry IV has started off inauspiciously.

CHARACTER ANALYSIS

Richard II

Richard's character dominates the play. The transfer of power serves only as a kind of background to the figure of Richard himself. Shakespeare's chief interest lies in Richard's personality and his reaction to events. The play is in fact a personal tragedy, which focuses on the decline of the fortunes of its protagonist, rather than on the course of events or the development of any abstract philosophy or idea. At the beginning of the play, Richard is shown to be outwardly self-confident but inwardly corrupt, as he is implicated in the murder of his own uncle, Gloucester. He thus has the legal but not the moral right to govern because his hands are stained with royal blood. Richard is a poetic and intensely charming man but a fatally weak monarch. He is ill equipped to carry out the responsibilities of the office of kingship to which his birth has entitled him. He fails in the observance of his royal duties because he is unable to follow any decisive course of action and changes his mind arbitrarily. His character is essentially fixed from the start and is gradually revealed as the play progresses from scene to scene. There is not much significant development, as in the case of Bolingbroke.

Richard's character is closely modeled on the conventional features of a tragic protagonist as outlined by Aristotle. Richard's tragic flaw is his unshakable belief in his own quasi-divinity. He also suffers from self-destructive arrogance, which the Greeks called hubris (excessive pride).

At the beginning of the play, Richard's glamour is physical: he is like the king in a tapestry, dazzling and bewitching to everybody he looks upon. The opening scene of the play shows him in his dual roles as king and man trying to settle a quarrel between Bolingbroke and Mowbray over the question of Gloucester's death. This scene is very sketchy as far as Richard's character is concerned. He does not say much and what he does say is in his role as a king arbitrating between the warring lords. He conducts himself excellently at first, when he promises impartiality to both the men. Richard tries his utmost to seek a peaceful solution to the dispute and dissuades both Bolingbroke and Mowbray from accepting the challenge of a duel. But he suddenly changes his mind, showing his impulsive nature, and orders a trial by combat, thereby contradicting his earlier aim of avoiding bloodshed.

When the day of the duel arrives, Richard observes all the formalities associated with the tournament until the very last moment, when he dramatically throws down his warder as an indication to stop the proceedings. He has again abruptly changed his mind. The manner in which he stops the duel testifies to his love of drama. In a Machiavellian move Richard gets rid of both Bolingbroke and Mowbray by banishing them: Bolingbroke for ten years and Mowbray for life. Richard is both a bully and a coward. He cowers when faced with difficulties and banishes the two men for no concrete reason.

From this point onwards, Richard's character undergoes a decline. He is shown to be morally depraved and high-handed. He farms his realm for taxes and issues blank charters to the wealthy nobles. Richard behaves arrogantly to his dying uncle, Gaunt, and dismisses him as a "lunatic lean-witted fool." He unscrupulously confiscates the property that belongs by the laws of succession to Bolingbroke. As York points out, Richard is himself engineering his own downfall by violating the laws of primogeniture upon which his own claim to kingship depends. His seizure of Gaunt's property to finance the Irish wars seals his fate and marks the beginning of a decline from which there is no turning back.