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Julius Caesar Analysis

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Does loyalty to your people or its leader come first? In William Shakespeare’s “Julius Caesar,” written in 1599, loyalty to your people came first. William Shakespeare's play “Julius Caesar” explores the changing loyalty between the people and leader through Brutus’s conflicting motivations and interactions. Like all of Shakespeare’s characters, Brutus evolves throughout the play and his conflicting motivations change from one side to the other. The changing of Brutus’s loyalty between the people and leader show his conflicting motivations while his soliloquy in Act II Scene I shows his conflicting interactions. In the course of these, Brutus demonstrates a theme of the need for open mindedness by not listening or taking in the ideas of his fellow peers.
William Shakespeare beautifully crafts the character of Brutus by showing his conflicting and changing loyalty between the people and the leader. “If there be any in this assembly, any dear friend of Caesar’s, to him I say that Brutus’ love to Caesar was no less than his. If then that friend demand why Brutus rose against Caesar, this is my answer: Not that I loved Caesar less, but that I loved Rome more” (54.19.24). The conflicting loyalty of Brutus is excellently laid out in this quote. Brutus begins by saying that his love and loyalty towards Caesar is great but his love and loyalty towards the people of Rome is greater. At first, Brutus’s loyalty towards Caesar convinces him not to assassinate him, but as the time

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