Shakespeare and Caesar and Contradiction: “Elements so mix’d.”

Alicia Rasley
March 22, 2026

Last week, I discussed how Shakespeare used the Ides of March assassination of Julius Caesar to explore human complexity—moving through skepticism and beyond cynicism to show that it’s in the contradictions that we see the real person.

In JC, Shakespeare uses characters’ actions and reactions to reveal their character’s real intent. But more subtly (and sometimes not so subtly), he shows their complicated mix of motives and conflicts by juxtaposing their actions with their words and declarations. That doesn’t mean the character speaks the intent clearly, rather that the truth has such power that it will influence the speech and action in ways that we can understand. That is, Shakespeare’s voice “gives voice” to the truth, but not in some obvious way. His world view is not transparent– nothing is clearly clear, and he starts, I think, with acknowledging the complexity of humans.

Late in the play, Antony remarks of Brutus, but he could be talking about Caesar also:

His life was gentle, and the elements
So mix’d in him that Nature might stand up

And say to all the world ‘This was a man!’

That is, the measure of a man is the mixing of elements— the depth is in the contradictions. Shakespeare’s skill, however, took contradictions and never allowed them to become incoherence. That’s because, I think, his view was that the contradictions made the character– he respected the contradictions as having meaning.

So, for example, Mark Antony was a libertine, a cynic, a manipulator. (I admit to being overly influenced by the performance of James Purefoy, not in the Shakespeare play but in the TV show Rome— he did an amazing job of showing Antony’s complexity.) But there was one thing noble about Antony– he actually, truly, deeply loved and esteemed Caesar. That was not an act, and not just a triviality. It was the core of him. He loved Caesar. Caesar’s murder fired him to revenge– but his way of revenge was characteristically manipulative. The nobility, however, was what fired him to action.

That privileging of the single “off” or contradicting characteristic is, I think, part of Shakespeare’s approach– that “off” trait might actually be closer to the center of the character than all that nice consistent stuff. Antony, for all his faults, is a lover. He loves life, he loves Caesar, he is soon to love Cleopatra– and all with an abandon that shows that love really is the most important thing to him.

In the excellent 2009 performance of the play I saw in Stratford, Ontario, Antony insists on shaking the hands of each and every conspirator, thereby covering his own hands with Caesar’s blood. But as he goes from one to the next, their glee at killing their enemy begins to change to something not quite shame, but at least embarrassment, at being so clearly revealed as conspirators. This was, even more than the great funeral oration, the pivotal moment in the play, when these little men symbolically confessed to killing a far greater man.

While Antony’s willingness to shake the hands of the murderers might seem to show his cynicism and corruption, a deeper view might be that it shows that love is more important than his self-respect and honor, for this is the only way he’ll be able to insure that Caesar gets an appropriate burial (and it also sets up for his vengeance).

(Brutus, a betrayer with yet some honor (more about that next week), accedes to this request for a proper sendoff to the dictator– against his co-conspirators’ wishes. More on him next week.)

Antony takes advantage of what was supposed to be a discreet ceremony to grandstand, with one of the grandest funeral orations ever, you know:

Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears;

I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him.

Notice how adroitly Shakespeare uses contradiction—setting up a “truth”, then immediately negating it. (He’s definitely going to praise Caesar.)

The evil that men do lives after them;

The good is oft interred with their bones;

So let it be with Caesar.

This rhetorical device of assertion and then immediate refutation sets up the crowd to know later that Antony is insulting Brutus when he calls him “noble” and “honorable”—over and over and over.

The noble Brutus

Hath told you Caesar was ambitious:

If it were so, it was a grievous fault,

And grievously hath Caesar answer’d it.

Here, under leave of Brutus and the rest–

For Brutus is an honourable man;

So are they all, all honourable men–

Come I to speak in Caesar’s funeral.

Antony’s speech is, of course, highly manipulative. But there are moments of such love and anguish:
Come I to speak in Caesar’s funeral.
He was my friend, faithful and just to me:

===

When that the poor have cried, Caesar hath wept:
Ambition should be made of sterner stuff:

You all did love him once, not without cause:
What cause withholds you then, to mourn for him?
O judgment! thou art fled to brutish beasts,
And men have lost their reason.
Bear with me; My heart is in the coffin there with Caesar,
And I must pause till it come back to me.

In Shakespeare’s world view, the truth always comes out in one way or another, usually in a character’s words and actions. And so even here, when Mark Antony is trying his damnedest to manipulate the mob, the anguish keeps surfaces. There’s always a “bursting out,” even in as careful a speech as Antony’s funeral oration. (That the emotional burst-outs help his cause doesn’t mean they aren’t real.)

So consider that as an aspect of Shakespeare’s voice– that characters reveal, whether they want to or not. Dialogue in Shakespeare is never on one level, meant simply to convey external information. It’s also meant to conceal and deceive, and while it’s doing that (with the other characters), it’s also revealing (to the audience) the truth about this person. This is part of his voice, part of his world view– humans are complicated, but they are not incomprehensible. Caesar can be ambitious, but also altruistic. Mark Antony can be obsequious, but also courageous. Brutus can be noble, but also a traitor.