Abstract

Written during a period of some political unrest, in Elizabethan England, William Shakespeare’s Tragedy of Julius Caesar explores the political consequences resulting from the conflict between private and public virtues exemplified in the person of its tragic hero, Marcus Brutus. The development of the plot is based on the series of more or less contradictory interpretations coming from a number of important characters, among whom Cassius figures prominently. Interpretations, as Friederich Nietzsche observes, are all we have in our vain pursuit of the truth – an affirmation that now, in the age of post-truth, seems ever more adequate. The validity of an interpretation would have to be given by arguments rooted in facts, but the German philosopher argues that even what we call ‘facts’ are actually only interpretations. Shakespeare’s deep understanding of the fact that tragedy is meant “to reveal some particular truth in every agent and at the same time the limitations of this truth” (Jaspers, 1952: 53) is seen in his allowing of various alternative visions to compete with each other in what is apparently a futile quest for the truth. In this paper we analyse some of the discursive strategies the playwright uses to enact his poetic justice and to hint at the true location of truth, beyond the many alternative facts that menace and even temporarily destroy it.