Shrawan K. Sharma
Satendra Kumar

Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar:  Application of Indian Theory to Western Thought

The language of poetry is highly innovative and creative. It represents the most delightful and unique expression of human soul. It is in this language that a poet preserves and perfects his thought and feelings. It is this language, which enables the poet to transform his basic concept into an effective and meaningful message. There has been a marked awareness of the language of poetry in the recent decades. The study of language in Western literary criticism begins with the contribution of the New Critics. They hold that the business of a composition is to provide fresh insight into an ordinary thing or event by a unique and original use of language. They concentrate on the ‘form’, the ‘structure’ and ‘texture’ of composition. ‘Irony’, ‘paradox’, ‘tension’ and ‘ambiguity’ are some of the concepts used by them to emphasize the transformation which language undergoes in composition.

It is remarkable that Sanskrit Ācāryās were really aware of the language of poetry, which they called oblique speech or deviant utterance. They defined it as a striking mode of speech. They hold that obliquity operates at six levels in a piece of literature. They are phonetic, lexical, grammatical, sentential, episodic and compositional.

The present study attempts to analyze how Shakespeare makes oblique use of language in the play, Julius Caesar. The study categorically concentrates on the oblique use of phoneme, words, grammar, sentences, episodes and composition as a whole. Let us first deal with the oblique use of language at phonetic level. In phonetic level, similar or identical phonemes are arranged artistically in order to contribute to the high poetic charm to the expression. It has many sub-varieties like when similar or identical phonemes are repeated at varying intervals; when similar or identical phonemes are repeated without intervals; when novel phonemes are employed. This obliquity also includes alliteration. In Julius Caesar, the repetition of words and sentences is very important. Almost the first speech of Marullus is pregnant with such repetitions. Here the onomatopoeic effect produces musical and intellectual ambience and supports meaning by making emphasis and emotionalizing climax. The plosive sounds contribute to the short action, emotion and explosion:

Wherefore rejoice? What conquest brings he home?
What tributaries follow him to Rome?
To grace in captive bonds his chariot wheels?
You blocks, you stones, you worse than senseless things!
O you hard hearts, you cruel men of Rome,
Knew you not Pompey? Many a time and of
Have you climbed up to walls and battlements,
To see great Pompey pass the streets of Rome:
Have you not made a universal shout?
That Tiber trembled underneath her banks...
And do you now cull out a holiday?
And do you now strew flowers in his way,
That comes in triumph over Pompey’s blood?
Be gone!

Act I, Sc.i, 32-52

This speech bears the repetition of the words ‘what’, ‘you’ and the sentences ‘And do you now put on your best attire?/And do you now call out a holiday?/And do you now strew flowers in his way, that comes in triumph over Pompey’s blood?’ Like above-mentioned example, there are many such repetitions in the play. Antony’s speech before the funeral, in this regard, is very important. It goes in the following way:

Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears,...
The noble Brutus
Hath told you Caesar was ambitious.
If it were so, it was a grievous fault
And grievously hath Caesar answered it.
Here under leave of Brutus and the rest-
For Brutus is an honourable man,
So are they all, all honourable men-
Come I speak in Caesar’s funeral.
He was my friend, faithful and just to me
But Brutus says he was ambitious
He had brought many captives home to Rome,
Whose ransom did the general coffers fill;
Did this in Caesar seem ambitious?...
Yet Brutus says he was ambitious
And Brutus is an honourable man...
I thrice presented him a kingly crown,
Which he did thrice refuse. Was this ambition?
Yet Brutus says he was ambitious
And sure he is an honorable man.

Act III, Sc.ii, 74-100

Here the repetition of flaps/trills/are employed in order to draw the attention. Thereafter the repetition of the ‘grievous’ and the sentences ‘Caesar was ambitious’ and ‘Brutus is an honorable man’ are obliquely employed. As a whole the above mentioned examples impart emphasis, quickness, intellectual and emotional climax which contribute to the tension of the play. The repetition of the words also anticipates the future conflict and tension. In the speech of Antonio, the repetition predicts ironically the bloody course of future. Besides the repetition of similar or identical phonemes at varying intervals and without intervals in the play has potent use of novel phonemes which removing the monotony, beautifies the work.

The second level which operates in a piece of literature is lexical level. It functions through various sub-varieties in which a word in common usage is employed so as to include an attribution of associate meanings other than the primary meanings. There are many sub level like obliquity of usage, obliquity of synonyms, obliquity of fancied identification, obliquity of concealment and obliquity of verb. Shakespeare has not used this obliquity fondly. However, he uses this obliquity whenever is necessary. The obliquity of fancied identification on resemblance is used adequately in the play. Some examples are given below:

Passion, I see, is catching, for mine eyes,
Seeing those beads of sorrow stand in thine,

Began to water

Act III, Sc.i, 283-85

Danger knows full well
That Caesar is more dangerous than he.
We are two lions littered in one day,
And I the elder and more terrible,
And Caesar shall go forth.

Act II, Sc.ii, 44-48

Here the obliquity of fancied identification on resemblance concretizes sorrow and danger. In these speeches of Antonio and Brutus, Shakespeare attributes human faculty to abstract emotions. By putting together abstract and the concrete Shakespeare makes the reader experience the reality. In the speeches the ‘tears’ and the ‘danger’ are personified. The dramatist observes tear standing and danger moving like a lion in the street. Thus in both the speeches the inanimate objects are conceived in terms of human beings. This treatment undoubtedly imparts beauty to the expression. Besides, both the comparisons express symbolically violence and its consequent emotions.

Obliquity of adjective also evokes images of conflict and violence. They underline the basic and personal conflicts in the play, knitting them together and providing each with additional perspectives. There is an example of this obliquity where the two personalities - Brutus and Caesar- are contrasted by the use of adjectives: ‘Brutus is noble, wise, valiant and honest; / Caesar was mighty, bold, royal and loving’. Act III, Sc.ii, 126-27. Similarly in Casca’s speech an image, indicative of foul human acts, is evoked in the following way:

O Cicero,

I have seen tempests, when the scolding winds

Have rived the knotty oaks, and I have seen

The ambitious ocean swell, rage and foam,
To be exalted with the threatening clouds.

Act I, Sc.iii, 4-8

Here the ‘scolding winds’, ‘knotty oaks’ and ‘threatening clouds’ express the violence, which creeps as the sinistrons patterns in the mind of conspirators. This image of violence is changed into the image of blood caused by the brainish transformation of the characters. The adjectives employed in the text are self-evident to demonstrate this image of blood. It is worth mentioning that Shakespeare employs in the play the present participles frequently, which provides movement to the action of the play. Let’s exemplify the use of present participles in the following speech of Decius who misinterprets the dream of Calphurnia. In the speech the use of ‘spouting blood’, ‘smiling Romans’ and ‘reviving blood’ adds to the movement of the play:

It was a vision fair and fortunate;
Your statue spouting blood in many pipes,
In which so many smiling Romans bathed,
Signifies that from you great Rome shall such
Reviving blood and that great man shall press
For tinctures, strains, relies and cognizance,

Act II, Sc.ii, 84-89         

In the play,   the adjective, besides adding to the movements of the action, evokes an image of blood. The same image of blood emerges out in another speech of Brutus: ‘Stoop Romans, stoop,/And let us bathe our hands in Caesar blood/Upto the elbow, and besmear our swords’;

Act III, Sc.i, 105-07

The image of blood is very important in the play as it is invested with multiple associations. For Antony, it is the want only-split blood of the noblest man in the tide of times; as such it is at once the sign of guilt smeared on the conspirators’ aroma ‘upto the elbows’ and the tincture which will make sacred handkerchiefs dipped in it. To Brutus, it is the blood, which let regrettably, in a necessary sacrifice to save the Roman body politic, which has grown rank. In many speeches it is linked with metallic images of hacking and cutting, or with those of value; and these in turn are connected with animal imagery of stag-hunting and bleeding carcasses, all of which are given additional power by the presence of Caesar’s mutilated body which lies in the audience’s view during the two climax-scenes of the play.

Another sub level of lexis which enriches the play, is obliquity of concealment. Now the subject of description is screened by the use of pronouns and so on. The purpose of the use of pronouns is to enhance the beauty of the object. The play bears this obliquity in abundance right from its beginning to the end. The speech of Cassius is self-evident in explaining the role of pronouns how they beautify the subject of description. Here the pronouns ‘why’ and ‘all’ enhance the beauty of the expression:

You look pale, and gaze,
And put on fear, and cast yourself in wonder,
To see the strange impatience of the heavens;
But if you would consider the true cause
Why all these fires, why all these gliding ghosts,
Why birds and beast from quality and kind,
Why old man, fools, and children calculate,
Why all these things change from their ordinance
Their natures, and pre-formed faculties
To monstrous quality….

Act I, Sc.iii, 59-68

In the above lines two pronouns ‘why’ and ‘all’ are employed by the dramatist obliquely at varying intervals. Here the use of pronouns, arrangement of phonemes and use of adjectives mutually help each other in contributing to the meaning. There are number of examples of obliquity of concealment which demonstrates the role of pronouns in achieving excellence of expression:

O mighty Caesar! Dost thou lie so low?

Are all thy conquest, glories, triumphs, spoils

Shrunk to this little measure?

Act III, Sc.i, 148-50

I shall not find myself so apt to die;
No place will please me so, no mean of death,
As here by Caesar....

Act III, Sc.ii, 160-62

How ill this taper burns! Ha! Who comes here?
I think it is the weakness of mine eyes
That shapes this monstrous apparition.
It comes upon me. Art thou any thing?
Are thou some God, some angel, or some devil;
That makest my blood cold, and my hair to stare?

Act IV, Sc.iii, 273-78

In the first two examples, Antonio expresses his grief to have seen mighty Caesar’s dead body lying on the ground. Here Shakespeare encounters the contrast between Caesar’s past and present by employing the pronouns. In the first speech, they express the reality of this world. In its continuation in the second speech of Antonio, Shakespeare, by the use of pronouns, delineates the grief stricken heart of Antonio. In the third example, Shakespeare employs pronouns, ‘how’ and ‘some’ which express how Brutus is perturbed to have seen the ghost of Caesar. They measure his shock and brainish transformation. These uses of pronouns give a free play to the imagination of the reader to measure the tension in the play.

The use of grammar forms the third kind of obliquity. It functions through tense, case, number, person, voice and particle. He defines grammatical obliquity that when several forms of literary turns occur together in such a way as to enhance the beauty of one another, they produce artistic charm reminiscent of myriad-faced beauty. In Julius Caesar obliquity of particle is very important as it dramatizes various events in the play. It is also important for the reason that it creates scope for the obliquity of person. The emotional state of the character is delineated by the oblique use of particles. It is remarkable to note that the particles give a special dramatic ambience to the play by adding to it the emotion of horror and pity. In Act III, Sc.i, the use of particle ‘O’ displays the emotional sincerity of Antonio, arousing the emotions of pity. He gives fuller expression when he is left alone with Caesar’s corpse: ‘O! Pardon me, thou bleeding piece of earth / That I am meek and gentle with these butchers’. Act III, Sc.i, 255-56. Just a cursory look can gather a number of particles in the play. The following examples given below from Antonio’s address to the crowd after Caesar’s murder exhibit this trait explicitly:

O judgment! thou art fled to brutish beasts
And men have lost their reason…

Act III, Sc.ii, 105-06

O masters! If I were disposed to stir,
Your hearts and minds to mutiny and rage
I should do Brutus wrong, and Cassius wrong
Who, you all know, are honourable men

Act III, Sc.ii, 122-25

For Brutus, as you know, was Caesar’s angel,
Judge, O you gods, how dearly Caesar loved him!

Act III, Sc.ii, 182-83

O, what a fall was there, my countrymen!

Act III, Sc.ii, 191

In response to the address, the plebeians express, their emotional charge in which obliquity of particles becomes conspicuous:
First Plebeian        :         O piteous spectacle!
Second Plebeian    :         O noble Caesar!
Third Plebeian       :         O woeful day!
Fourth Plebeian     :         O traitors! Villains!
First Plebeian        :         O most bloody sight!
All                         :         Revenge! About! Seek! Burn! Fire! Kill! Stay! Let        
not a traitor live.

Act III, Sc.ii, 199-206

In the above examples the emotional shock or conflict or tension is delineated. Shakespeare could have given this tragic information without the use of the particles but it is certain that the real tragic effect would have not been expressed. Here the dramatist makes skilful use of particles in order to cease the loss of tragic effect, which contributes to the conflict or violence.

The fourth level operates at the level of sentence. As it deals with the subject of the composition, so it is also called obliquity of subject matter, which has two sub-varieties: imposed obliquity and natural obliquity. When the subject matter is described in a way conducive to beauty by means of exclusively artistic expression, we have imposed obliquity and when the subject matter is described in a way conducive to beauty by its own infinite natural charm, we have natural obliquity. Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar lacks metaphorical richness and uses, to some extent, direct strong prose. It has structural clarity of single line. However, the speeches are juxtaposed with the sudden vividly pictured metaphor. An example to exhibit this characteristic of Julius Caesar is given below:

Villian! you did not so, when your vile daggers
Hacked on another in the sides of Caesar:
You showed your teeth like apes and fawned like/hounds,
And bowed like bondmen, kissing Caesar’s feet;
While dammed Casca, like a cur, behind
Struck Caesar on the neck, O you flatterers!

Act V, Sc.i, 39-45

In the above speech, Antonio paints the metaphorical picture of the conspirators how inhumanly they behaved with Caesar. Once again a juxtaposed metaphorical picture of Brutus’s vision of Caesar as an emerging ‘adder’ is presented in the following way:

It must be by his death; and for my part
I know no personal cause to spurn at him
But for the general - He would be crowned,
How that might change his nature, there’s the question.
It is the bright day that brings forth the adder,
And that cranes wary walking,…

Act II, Sc.i, 10-15

There is one more interesting metaphorical picture of Caesar, Brutus says that after becoming the king, Caesar with ‘a serpent egg’ in his soliloquy: ‘And therefore think him as a serpent egg / Which, hatched, would, as his kind, grow mischievous, / And kill him in the shell’. Act II,Sc.i, 32-34.

In delineating the event Shakespeare does not use any artificial device in the beginning. He employs direct straight prose. But at various intervals the direct strong prose is juxtaposed by the imposed obliquity as is exemplified in the lines below:

Let us be sacrificers, but not butchers, Casius,
And in the spirit of men there is no blood
And gentle friends,
Let’s kill him boldly, but not wrathfully;
Let’s carve him as a dish fit for the gods,
Not know him as a carcass fit for hounds.
And let our hearts, as subtle masters do,
Stir up their servants to an act of rage
And after seem to chide them. This shall make
Our purpose necessary, and not envious;
Which so appearing to the common eyes,
We shall be called purgers, not murderers.

Act II, Sc.i, 166-77

Thus Shakespeare evokes the image of violence and conflict by the use of both natural and imposed obliquity. He describes the subject conducive to beauty by means of exclusively similes and metaphors and by its own natural charm. In addition to the similes and metaphors, he also skillfully makes use of adverbials, which go to qualify the verb. In this way the direct object, though concealed, gets charmingly communicated.

The fifth level i.e. episodic obliquity lies in the treatment of the intended object which is capable of maintaining suspense all along and is the product of unique, boundless poetic skill, underlying it. The play is rich with the sub-variety of episodic obliquity. The first sub-level of this obliquity is the reaction of emotional utterances, which the dramatist creates in the episodes for aesthetic transport. There are number of such utterances in the play. The first utterance is made by Marullus who rebukes commoners for their rejoicing in Caesar’s triumph over Pompey’s sons. He is one of the remaining men of Pompey and so is against Caesar. When he finds commoners celebrating Antonio’s victory, he bursts out emotionally and speaks in a rhetoric manner. Another emotionally charged utterance takes place, when Portia tries to know the cause of Brutus’s brainish transformation. Brutus, in order to conceal his restlessness caused by the conspiracy against Caesar, pretends to be not in good health. His wife Portia understands that he tells a lie. There is a long argument over the issue and in the end she kneels down before Brutus to know the real cause. When further Brutus avoids to unlock the sinister design which lies in his heart, Portia bursts out:

Within the bond of marriage, tell me Brutus,
Is it expected I should know no secrets?
That appertains to you? Am I your self
But, as it were, in sort or limitation,
To keep with you at meals, comfort your bed,
And talk to you sometimes? Dwell I but in the suburbs
Of your good pleasure? If it be no more,
Portia is Brutus’ harlot, not his wife.

Act.II, Sc.i, 280-87

There are number of emotional utterances made by Brutus, Cassius and Antonio in the play but it is not possible to encounter them all here. Antony’s speeches after Caesar’s murder are worth mentioning in this regard. After Caesar’s murder he is emotionally charged but tries to control his emotions so as to take revenge upon the conspirators. But the undertones witness his grief-stricken heart: ‘O mighty Caesar! Dost thou lie so low?/ Are all thy conquests, glories, triumphs, spoils / Shrunk to this little measure? Fare thee well’. Act III, Sc.i, 149-51. His control over his emotional state loses its grip when he is left all alone where Caesar is lying dead on the ground:

O pardon me, thou bleeding piece of earth,
That I am meek and gentle with these butchers.
Thou art the ruins of the noblest man
That ever lived in the tide of times,
Woe to the hand that shed this costly blood!
Over thy wounds now do I prophesy -
Which like dump mouths do open their ruby lips,
To beg the voice and utterance of my tongue-
A curse shall light upon the limbs of men;
Domestic fury and fierce civil strife
Shall cumber all the parts Italy;
Blood and destruction shall be so in use,
And dreadful objects so familiar,
That mothers shall but smile when they behold
Their infants quartered with the hands of war,
All pity choked with custom of fell deeds;
And Caesar’s spirit, ranging for revenge,
With ate by his side, come hot from hell,
Shall in these confines with a monarch’s voice
Cry havoc and let slip the dogs of war,
That this foul deed shall smell above the earth
With carrion men, groaning for burial.

Act.III, Sc.i, 255-75

All the utterances are masterly blend of emotional appeal. They causing aesthetic transport, contribute to the subject of the play.
The play also has universal appeal in the modified source story. Shakespeare makes the source story poetically striking by modifying it with his predominant imagination. Shakespeare’s play Julius Caesar is based on Plutarch’s Lives of the Noble Grecians and Romans which was translated in English in 1599 by Sir Thomas North. In fashioning the play, Shakespeare uses three of Plutarch’s lives: Marcus Brutus, Julius Caesar and Mercus Antonio. He changes the details of the source story to make the characterization more consistent.

As far as the characters are concerned, Shakespeare adopting many features from the source applies his imagination in order to create them. For example, the Cassius of the play is every bit as personally hysterical and politically acute as he is in Plutarch; but Shakespeare also introduces a warmth and desire for friendship into his nature which are lacking in the prose account. With Caesar too, he was able to capture the combination of man and ‘Worthy’ that Plutarch depicts; but he intensifies this complexity by focusing the audience’s attention upon more starkly contrasted extremes of personal weakness and super human claims. Brutus’s idealistic and selfless devotion to his cause are as clear in the play as they are in the source, but in the former his gentleness is made a more positive and personal quality, and his idealism is tinged with an unattractive self-righteousness.

The account of the events immediately preceding Caesar's death and those subsequent to it are common to all three, with only the narrative. For the general shape of his plot, Shakespeare follows Plutarch’s ordering of the narrative closely, using that life which offered the most lively and striking description of the scene he wished to dramatize, while taking note of colourful or significant details in the other. Thus, for example, for the scenes at Philippi, Brutus provides the most detailed descriptions of the battles fought and the deaths of Brutus and of Cassius. Shakespeare draws on these events most heavily for his fifth act. At certain points he naturally compresses events that the narrative form permitted Plutarch to dwell on at length.

In fact, Shakespeare created more than he borrowed; the Antony emerging in Act III is a unique complex creation inter-woven from dedicated friendship, grief and political opportunism; Casca, about whom Plutarch has only a handful of observations, comes to life in the lay as a character as skillfully observed and psychologically credible as any minor figure in the Shakespeare’s canon; and the portraits of Calphurnia and Portia are convincing characterizations in a small compass created by Shakespeare out of the few actions, which Plutarch records them as performing.

Another important sub variety of episodic obliquity is the presentation of interesting or delighting allusions. Shakespeare, instead of using allusion, enlarges the interesting speeches in order to produce striking graceful qualities, alluring charm, tasteful sentiments and elegance of style. However at times he employs such allusions too:
But its common proof,

That lowliness is young ambition’s ladder,
Whereto the climber upward turns his face;
But when he once attains the upmost round,
He then unto the ladder turns his back,
Looks in the clouds, scorning the base degrees
By which he did ascend: so Caesar may;

Act II, Sc.i, 21-27

This simile is a Brutus’ vision of Caesar. It amuses the reader and relaxes his mind by disengaging him from the too painful attention to the principle subject i.e. Caesar’s murder. In Act I, the interaction of Brutus and his wife, Portia is no less better than an interesting allusion in which Shakespeare, by his oblique use of particles, phonemes and rhetoric devices gives an aesthetic feast of the reader.

In the play, there are secondary episodes also which are arranged integrally within the main episode to contribute to the main purpose. The introduction of Flavious, Marullus and commoners is nothing more than a secondary episode. It has been obliquely employed by the dramatist as it refers to what is to follow, particularly the speeches of Marullus and Flavious explicitly prepare an antagonistic atmosphere to Caesar. Another important secondary episode takes place in Act II, Sc.i, where Brutus, with his disturbed inner-self over the issue of the murder of Caesar, enters his orchard. Please mark, how beautifully his servant Lucius delineates his master’s heart:

Brutus :        Get me a taper in my study, Lucius;
When it is lighted, come and call me here.

Act II, Sc.i.7-8

Lucius :        (After some time enters)
The taper burneth in your closet, sir
Searching the window for a flint.

Act II, Sc.i, 35-36

Here the poetic expression of Lucius is indicative of Brutus’s sick heart which contributes to the main story.

The obliquity of organic unity also lies in the structure of the play. The variegated structure of events in the play is embodied of Caesar’s victory, conspiracy against Caesar, assassination and funeral and aftermath. The play presents one of Shakespeare’s most profound explorations of political action, viewed, as such action must always be, in close connexion with the characters of the men who perform it, and its relationship to the wider subject of morality itself. At the opening of the play, the city of Rome and its people are engaged in the celebration of Caesar’s victory in a civil war. This event prepares us also for the future event (some thing foul) with the appearance of the two Tribunes, Flavious and Marullus who rebuke the commoners for their rejoicing in Caesar’s triumph. Shakespeare dramatizes this encounter by employing rhetoric device, particle and adjectives obliquely. It is evident in the speech of Marullus. The future event, which the reader senses here, is further predicted by the soothsayer’s warning to Caesar: ‘Beware of ideas of March’. The second event, conspiracy is hatched by Cassius who easily tempts Brutus as he has fear from Caesar for the country. Shakespeare obliquely draws a line of demarcation between their characters’ motive and intention. For Cassius the drive to murder Caesar is deeply written into his very nature. Caesar’s remarks about his character can reasonably be expected within its small compass. This conspiracy against Caesar is also sensed in Act II, Sc.i. Shakespeare dramatizes the conspiracy indirectly in the dialogues between Brutus and his wife and between Brutus and his servant Lucius. The assassination and funeral, the third event of the play, is explicitly revealed in Calphurnia’s cry in dream. It further can be seen in the conversation of Caesar with the soothsayer about the latter’s warning. It comes true in Act III, when the conspirators stab Caesar and immediately he dies. The funeral speeches of Brutus and Antonio are very important to make the composition a complete whole. Here too the murder of Caesar continues to be the main subject. The effects of these speeches lead the play to further action, which we may call the aftermath.

The remaining part, i.e. aftermath, bears the second civil strife, and the nature of the two parties in conflict. All three major characters Antonio, Brutus and Cassius carry the effects of Caesar’s murder with them. Cassius and Brutus die with the after effects of Caesar’s murder. Cassius dies with the words: ‘Caesar thou art revenged, / Even with the sword that killed thee’, Act V, Sc.iii, 45-46. Similarly Brutus says ‘mighty yet!/ Thy spirit walks abroad, and turns our swords / In our own proper entrails’.  Act V, Sc.iii, 93-95. He holds in the last words: ‘Caesar, now be still; / I killed not thee with half so good a will’. Act V, Sc.v, 50-51. In Julius Caesar, the obliquity of organic unity is self-evident. The supremely well-proportioned plot is Shakespeare’s own, from its opening on the celebration of a thriving city which has just emerged from a civil war, through the gradual knitting of the conspiracy, to the climax of the double defeat in Act III, and on to the rapid events of the second civil strife, the divisions and bickering in both parties, and the finale of victory and defeat, death and tribute.

The compositional obliquity is the last level of obliquity. It blends the beauty of the combined complex of the phoneme, lexis grammar, sentence and episodic. It has not only a natural power of persuasion and of giving pleasure but also a marvellous power of exalting the soul and swaying the heart of the reader. The sub level of compositional obliquity is also discernible in the play. The dominant emotion of the play is fear, which continues, in the whole play. With the fear of causing monotony to the play, Shakespeare alters the dominant emotion of fear with the auxiliary emotion of pathos, which mutually agrees to the emotion of fear. The speeches of Portia, Antony and a few speeches of Brutus impart emotion of pathos as auxiliary emotion mutually contributing to the dominant emotion of fear.

In the play, Julius Caesar, the oblique use of language as poetic structure enriches the principal meaning of the play. Certainly the most immediately striking feature of the play is the clash between the personalities of the great central figures as they wrestle with huge national issues and their own inner lives. Shakespeare, however, wrote poetic drama, and it is by poetic as well as dramatic means that the many other themes are incorporated into the whole, and by which the politico-personal tension is set in a far wider context. It is true that Shakespeare created for this play a largely un-metaphorical and un-lyrical style, which derives its power from strong sentence structure and simple rhythms rather than from any associative richness. Clarity and dignity are its qualities. It has no complexity and allusiveness, which are most used in Shakespeare. Never- theless, the poetry of the play is threaded through with patterns of obliquity at all levels: phonetic, lexical, grammatical, sentential, episodic and compositional.

 

References

All the textual references to Julius Caesar are from William Shakespeare (Ed. Norman Sanders, New Penguin Shakespeare, 1967)

Our understanding of Kuntak’s Vakrokti is based on K.Krishanmurthy’s Vakroktijivitam (Dharwar: Karnatak University, 1977) and R.S Pathak’s Oblique Poetry in Indian and Western Poetics (Delhi: Bahri Pub. Ltd, 1988).