Examples Of Calpurnia In Julius Caesar

Julius Caesar starts out with the citizens of Rome celebrating Julius Caesar’s victory over Pompey. Pompey was the ruler of Rome before he went to battle against Caesar, where he was killed by Caesar. Caesar, happy to have control over Rome, returns home on February 15th, the day of the feast of Lupercal. While the citizens are celebrating Caesar’s return, nobles are beginning to worry that Caesar’s power will go to his head and he will soon become too ambitious. After Caesar has returned home, many nobles get together and plot against him. William Shakespeare has a lot of hidden meanings in Julius Caesar that are not always easy and clear to find. After reading Julius Caesar, Shakespeare wants the readers to learn how high self-confidence

Calpurnia tells Caesar, “Caesar, I never stood on ceremonies/Yet now they fright me. There is one within,/Besides the things that we have heard and seen,/A lioness hath whelpѐd in the streets,/And graves have yawned, and yielded up their dead;/Fierce fiery warriors fought upon the clouds/In ranks and squadrons and right form of war,/Which drizzled blood upon the Capitol;/The noise of battle hurtled in the air,/Horses did neigh and dying men did groan,/And ghosts did shriek and squeal about the street./O Caesar, these things are beyond all use,/And I do fear them” (2,2,13-26). Once again, Caesar blows this off by saying, “What can be avoided/Whose end is purposed by the mighty gods?/Yet Caesar shall go forth; for these predictions/Are to the world in general as to Caesar” (2,2,26-29). Eventually, Calpurnia gets Caesar to see that his high self-confidence is not letting him think straight or clearly, and Caesar decides not to go to the Capitol. However, Decius Brutus comes to Caesar’s house and reinterprets Calpurnia’s dream to make it sound good, and Caesar ends up going to the

Brutus immediately said, “You shall, Mark Antony” (3,1,231), but Cassius said, “You know not what you do; do not consent/That Antony speak in his funeral./Know you how much the people may be moved/By that which he will utter?” (3,1,232-235). Both Antony and Brutus end up giving speeches at Caesar’s funeral. The citizens agree more with Antony and his speech. The citizens get very angry at Brutus and the conspirators after hearing Antony’s speech. The citizens end up killing Cinna the Poet, originally because they thought he was Cinna the Conspirator, but then because his name was also Cinna. Hearing of the death of Cinna the Poet, Cassius and Brutus fleed Rome because the citizens were going to go after them next in order to get revenge for Caesar’s death from them too.
The final thing that Shakespeare wanted his readers to learn was that ambition and jealousy can turn a lot of things sour. Cassius was jealous that Caesar was going to take the crown and become king, so he did what he had to do to form a conspiracy to kill Caesar. Cassius started with Antony by saying, “Brutus and Caesar: what should be in that “Caesar”?/Why should that name be sounded more than yours?” (1,2,142-143). Cassius is trying to make Brutus jealous by making him want to kill Caesar so that he [Brutus] could be the ruler of