Language and Politics: Prose as a Medium of Societal Apartheid in Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar

Abstract

This paper studies the use of prose in Julius Caesar as a tool of political and social apartheid and class discrimination. Usually, Shakespeare assigns blank verse to upper-class characters and prose to lower class ones. The study analyzes three occasions in which prose is used by two patricians and an eloquent cobbler. The paper means to explain the diversion of patricians to prose and add another voice to the already heaping interpretations given in criticism. It argues that the diversion of the two patricians to prose has two functions. Firstly, it shows that prose is indigenous to the poor and the patricians use it when they address the poor or talk about them. Secondly, Shakespeare shows that the diversion of the patricians to prose is a wrong choice and leads to moral depravity or failure of mission. In contrast, the cobbler uses prose effectively because it is indigenous to him and he feels at home using it. The study uses the contextual approach to analyze the three speeches. Keywords: Prose, blank verse, patricians, plebeians, Aristotelian rhetoric, republican politics.