Tragic Heroes In Julius Caesar

Doing research on these tragedies was a great experience for me since I got the chance to learn many new things about these famous Shakespeare’s tragic heroes. Even though these plays are based on real historical figures, they are classified as tragedies. Julius Caesar was one of his early tragedies that linked his history plays with the mature tragedies as Macbeth and Coriolanus. What is with Shakespeare’s plays that they are studied even after 400 years? Maybe is for his unmatched style and language, or for his imagination. I was impressed the most by how Shakespeare masterfully created his characters. He gave the readers a chance to get an insight into their personality through their speeches, acts, and sometimes even from their soliloquies. After reading his plays, I was left with the impression that he truly understood human personality; and how would people act in certain situations.

Nowadays, we would say, “He succeeded in his career because he was ambitious,” thus we consider ambition a positive trait. However, when we understand that a certain character in Shakespeare’s plays is ambitious, we just expect his/her downfall. Ambition in the Renaissance, the time when Shakespeare wrote, had a negative connotation. People who were called ambitious were thought to be power-hungry, selfish, and a threat to the others. These three tragic heroes possess tragic flaw that leads them to their downfall; all of them were stabbed to death. The reason for that was that they