SOURCE: Rose, Mark. “Conjuring Caesar: Ceremony, History, and Authority in 1599.” English Literary Renaissance 19, no. 3 (autumn 1989): 291-304.

In the following essay, Rose compares the political strife in Julius Caesar with the divisiveness that roiled the Protestant church in Elizabethan England. The critic contends that the late sixteenth-century Puritan campaign against church rituals and ceremonies is analogous to the anti-authoritarianism of Cassius, Casca, and the tribunes.

Julius Caesar opens with Marullus and Flavius rebuking the plebeians for transferring their allegiance from Pompey and making a holiday to celebrate Caesar's triumph. It is commonplace to remark that the plebeians in this scene, the cheeky cobbler who makes puns about mending bad soles and the other workmen, are more Elizabethan than Roman. But it is not usually noted that the tribune Marullus sounds strikingly like an indignant Puritan calling sinners to repent:

O you hard hearts, you cruel men of Rome, Knew...