ABSTRACT
The use Shakespeare makes of the crowd in his well-known Roman play is different from the one in the second part of Henry VI. Critics have argued that the crowd is the play's central character: Indeed, it may not be an overstatement to assert that the mob is the play's real protagonist, for they control not only Caesar and the other aristocratic characters but virtually the entire course of events. If the play demonstrates that Caesar and Brutus depend on the whims of crowd, the actors of Julius Caesar depend on the audience in a similar fashion. Richard Wilson argues that in Julius Caesar's holiday scene, carnival is mastered by those in power and that Caesar has appropriated it to legitimize his coronation. Adopting the view that in the early modern age, theatricality is one of power's essential modes, he argues that Caesar turns politics into theatre with the help of carnival in order to utilize it for authoritarian populism.
