Between Henry V and Hamlet

This chapter argues that if Julius Caesar can be read as an examination of the dangers inherent in the particular political moment of the summer and autumn of 1599, and of the internal contradictions and temptations exposed by that moment within the Essexian project and synthesis, then the decisions reached by Brutus and Cassius, under the influence of the best wisdom of the ancients, and in emulation of the Roman virtue of their ancestors, become, in their turn, a warning to contemporaries not to repeat their mistakes, even as they sought to emulate their examples and virtue. On this reading, the play compounds its central message about the unwisdom of violent insurrection and assassination with another equally salient warning about the further unwisdom of seeking to base political and ethical decision-making in a Christian monarchy on the principles, precepts, and examples of pagan republicans.