SOURCE: Hamer, Mary. “Portia and Calpurnia.” In William Shakespeare: Julius Caesar, pp. 30-41. Plymouth, U.K.: Northcote House Publishers Ltd., 1998.

In the following essay, Hamer studies the characters of Portia and Calpurnia in Julius Caesar, and examines the ways in which the education of women and the Roman conception of marriage contribute to their fate.

When Portia enters and starts to speak, it is the first time, as we realize, that the voice of a woman has been heard. In public Calpurnia expressed only acquiescence and stood silent. Or perhaps we haven't even thought that was odd, for to some people the life we are shown in Shakespeare's Rome is perfectly natural and of interest only because it is such a good imitation of normal behaviour as we meet it in real life, rather than Shakespeare's play being a way of confronting us with questions about what we...