In addition to the big five, Shakespeare wrote three other powerful tragedies, which are lumped together as the Roman plays. There was in fact another Roman play, Titus Andronicus, but that was early and is bloody and ghoulish and will not repay analysis. The interesting three deal with important historical figures, two of them with those who exercised the most lasting influences of European history, namely Julius and Augustus Caesar. The latter however has only a minor role in Antony and Cleopatra, which deals with his rival for absolute power in what was to become the Roman Empire. Augustus won out, but the play is primarily about love rather than power.
One can indeed see the three Roman tragedies as also looking at what I have suggested are the primary human motives, love and power and identity. The first part of Julius Caesar is about power in itself, and the characterization of Caesar, brief though it is before he is murdered, vividly lays bare the corrupting impact of unbridled power. The rhetoric with which he rejects the plea for mercy that provides the pretext for his assassination illustrates the insensitivity of arrogance that feels no restraining factors. –
I could be well moved, if I were as you;
If I could pray to move, prayers would move me:
But I am constant as the northern star,
Of whose true-fix’d and resting quality
There is no fellow in the firmament.
The skies are painted with unnumber’d sparks,
They are all fire, and every one doth shine;
But there’s but one in all doth hold his place:
So in the world; ’tis furnish’d well with men,
And men are flesh and blood, and apprehensive;
Yet in the number I do know but one
That unassailable holds on his rank,
Unshaked of motion: and that I am he,
Let me a little show it, even in this,–
That I was constant Cimber should be banish’d,
And constant do remain to keep him so.
And if Caesar deludes himself into believing in his indispensability, equally powerful is Shakespeare’s exposition of a different approach to personal power, Antony’s revengeful determination. Continue reading