“That every like is not the same”

Language is, of course, extremely important in all of Shakespeare’s plays; often the action turns on a single word—“nothing” in King Lear, “indeed” in Othello, “done” in Macbeth, “boy” in Coriolanus, and “if” in As You Like It, for example. But in Julius Caesar, language is the central concern, the play’s subject, more so than in any other play of the canon. Much of the criticism on this play demonstrates its concern specifically with the art of rhetoric and the way rhetoric determines politics in the Roman world of Julius Caesar. Most recently Richard Burt has illustrated what he calls “the Discursive Determinism of Cultural Politics” that constitutes “a dangerous Rome.” ¹ The play declares its focus on rhetoric with the cameo appearance of Cicero, whom Anne Barton describes as the “acknowledged grand master of the art of persuasion, the greatest orator and rhetorician of the ancient world.” ² Barton also observes that Shakespeare’s Rome is a city “of orators and rhetoricians: a place where the art of persuasion was cultivated, for better or for worse, to an extent unparalleled in any other society.” ³ For worse, the play’s negative perspective on the art of rhetoric echoes Montaigne’s in his essay “On the Vanitie of Words.” ⁴ In what I consider the finest essay on this play, Gayle Greene shows that the play reflects not only Montaigne’s but also Bacon’s deep distrust of rhetoric. Greene states: “In the Rome of Julius Caesar, language is power and characters rise or fall on the basis of their ability to wield words … rhetoric … is integral to characterization, culture, and to the central political and epistemological concerns.” ⁵