David Bevington > Quotes

“Julius Caesar is an ambivalent study of civil conflict. As in Richard II, the play is structured around two protagonists rather than one. Cesar and Brutus are more alike one another than either would care to admit. This antithetical balance reflects a dual tradition: the medieval view of Dante and Chaucer condemning Brutus and Cassius as conspirators, and the Renaissance view of Sir Philip Sidney and Ben Johnson condemning Caesar as tyrant. Those opposing views still live on in various 20th-century productions which seek to enlist them play on the side of conservatism or liberalism.”
― David Bevington, The Complete Works of Shakespeare

“According to widely accepted mythology Elizabethans considered themselves descended from the Romans through another Brutus, the great-grandson of Aeneas.”
― David Bevington, The Complete Works of Shakespeare

“Rome's choice during her civil wars lay between a senatorial Republican form of government and a strong single rul although the monarchial English might incline to be suspicious of republicanism, they had no experience to compare it with. . . .On the other hand, Roman one-man rule as it flourished under Octavia Cesar lacked the English sanctions of divine right and monarchical primogeniture.”
― David Bevington, The Complete Works of Shakespeare

“Politics seems to require a morality quite apart from that of personal life, posing a tragic dilemma for Brutus as for Richard II or Henry VI.”
― David Bevington, The Complete Works of Shakespeare

“Opportunists prosper in the atmosphere of crisis, although fittingly even they are sometimes undone by their own scheming,”
― David Bevington, The Complete Works of Shakespeare