 Hello and welcome. Now I'll be discussing the character of Brutus. Do bear in mind that although the play Julius Caesar, which I've mentioned in my previous video, is a historical play based on the events around Julius Caesar's death and of course the events that follow after he passed away as a Roman Emperor, do understand that when it comes to this play by William Shakespeare, the main protagonist or the main character of this play actually is Brutus. He speaks far more than Julius Caesar. He's actually presented as a very honourable man. Do bear in mind that he's a judicial magistrate in this play and of course also in real life he was a judicial magistrate who actually had Julius Caesar assassinated. He participated in the assassination and the killing of Julius Caesar as a way of protecting democracy. So he was actually fighting for honorable aims. He was very worried and very concerned about how imperious Julius Caesar had become. He was worried that Julius Caesar would ultimately make himself emperor and dictator so actually the killing that he and other senators planned and carried out against Julius Caesar was really to protect the virtues of democracy and the honour that goes with running a democratic state. So he's presented as a protagonist. He also comes across as a very tragic character. Now, if you're studying this play as part of your course of course exams, you do need to be able to discuss the character of Brutus in lots of detail to what extent he's a tragic character. In other words, when I talk about a tragic character, he's essentially a good man at heart. However, he has some fatal flaws. So I would say the fatal flaw for Brutus is that he is too committed to ideals. He sometimes is so committed to the ideals that he is detached from reality and this of course leads him to make a series of errors and mistakenly some would argue kill Julius Caesar because ultimately Mark Antony argues that Julius Caesar did not want to make himself emperor. Now, if you're discussing Brutus's character, these are the key quotations that I've suggested. You should try to memorise and become really familiar with when writing about his character. So what we're going to do is we're going to go through each of the quotations and I will explain what the quotations mean but also the word level analysis you need to do when you're writing about Brutus's character of course Julius Caesar generally in the play and when you're writing it for your course of course exams. So let's get started with the first quotation. Now, here in the first quotation Brutus states, I love the name of honour more than I fear death. Now, this opening quotation within the play illustrates the honourable ideals that Brutus really is prepared to die for. And what this quotation illustrates to us is that Brutus is actually a very honourable man, he's actually a very good man and he is prepared to fight for these virtues to his death. He's prepared to literally sacrifice his own life for these virtues and of course other virtues include democracy. Now the word level analysis you want to do for this quotation is firstly the repetition of the pronoun I when Brutus is talking about himself. Of course what this is showing is that he's very self-aware but also he's willing to self-sacrifice for his country's sake. The other word level analysis you want to do when it comes to Brutus's quote is the two abstract nouns honour and death. And here of course what this sets up, Brutus, is him being this character who's very committed to these almost abstract ideals. Remember the idea of abstract means something you can't touch, taste, see or feel. He's really committed to these ideals almost to a fault and he does indeed die for this. So also this quotation foreshadows his eventual death. The second quote to remember for Brutus's character is when he states and this is when he's talking to Cassius. So when he reveals that he has participated in a plot where he's going to be killing Julius Caesar and the Ides of March and the 15th of March and he states and he tells Cassius, let us be sacrifices but not butchers, Caius. We all stand up against the spirit of Caesar. Now here he is basically saying look we definitely need to kill Caesar but we don't need to enjoy the process of killing. We're actually not butchers, we're not terrible people. We're just killing him because we stand against the spirit of him being a dictator and taking away the democracy that has really flourished in Rome. Now the word level analysis you want to do here and of course again this is showing him as being very honorable. The killing that he's doing is just purely to protect ideals not because of jealousy or anything over Caesar. Now the word level analysis you want to do is firstly the word sacrifices and butchers belong to a semantic field of killing. Also the sibilant stand and spirit this illustrates how Brutus is very very intent and very focused on not forgetting the importance of the ideals that they're fighting for and the ideals that they're killing Caesar for. Not purely because they have anything against Caesar himself, Caesar as the man. The third quotation to bear in mind for Brutus' character is when he states and this is after of course they have assassinated and killed Julius Caesar. Bear in mind that Julius Caesar dies halfway through the play so even if he is one of the main characters in the play named after him he actually dies very early on okay. Now Brutus and Mark Antony is very upset about this and Brutus is justifying his decision to participate in killing and assassinating Caesar he states oh Antony ellipsis we must appear bloody and cruel ellipsis our hearts ellipsis are pitiful. Now here what he's saying is Antony I know we look really really bad for having killed Caesar I know we look like you know all we did was just do this horrible brutal cruel thing but actually our hearts are really clean we actually purely care about Rome we weren't actually killing Caesar because we're being bad men. Now the word love analysis you want to do here and of course again this is showing that Brutus is really convinced that what he did was right. The word love analysis you want to do here is first thing when he's saying bloody and cruel these words belong to semantic field of evil and then when he describes their hearts being pitiful this adjective is an interesting contrast with this kind of hard language okay so this idea of being bloody and cruel the idea that actually even if they did this terrible action this killing actually within their hearts and within Brutus' own hearts is actually somebody who really has pity for others and of course he has pity for others he wants democracy he wants a country that's run by lots of people by majority vote rather than just one man. The next quotation to bear in mind for Brutus' character is when he states and he is justifying why he killed Julius Caesar so he on the one hand describes how he does see the good qualities that Julius Caesar had however on the other hand he also states that Julius Caesar was becoming too imperious and too ambitious. Now he justifies this by saying as he was valiant I'll honour him but as he was ambitious I slew him okay so here of course he's basically stating look I understand Julius Caesar was really brave in fact you know he has won all of these battles however he was too ambitious and that was a problem for our country. The word love analysis you want to do for this quotation is firstly the alliteration of H and he honour and of course he as well as him and the repetition of the pronouns he and you can see he's used here as well as here now what this illustrates of course is Brutus is basically justifying why he had to assassinate Caesar okay and he's basically saying on the one hand he had no hard feelings against Caesar in fact he was one of Caesar's supporters he was supporter of Caesar because he was very valiant he was very brave however he stopped supporting Caesar once he realised that he was becoming too ambitious and he wanted Rome to remain a democracy. The other quotation to bear in mind with Brutus's character is when he now sees an apparition a vision of Caesar's ghost remember William Shakespeare uses ghosts in all of his plays and of course Brutus and Julius Caesar to represent the feelings of intense guilt that character space okay so now Brutus when he sees what he believes is the ghost of Caesar he states I think this is the weakness in my eyes that sees that shapes this monstrous apparition ellipsis that's some gods some angels some devil so here of course we can see that Brutus is really horrified when he sees Caesar's ghost and he's really haunted by it but equally also what this illustrates is Brutus is maybe starting to have second thoughts doubts perhaps he's experiencing a solution because he's now realising maybe he made the wrong decision in planning plotting and killing Julius Caesar. The word level analysis you want to do for this quotation especially the essence of I think it is in and mine also the other word level analysis you want to do is of course the adjective monstrous to describe the apparition that Brutus sees of Julius Caesar and separately you want to look at and point out the listing of god angel and devil this is rule of three that Shakespeare uses and finally the words apparition god angel and some devil this belongs to the semantic field of the supernatural the final quotation to remember when it comes to Brutus's character is when before he commits suicide of course his commission of suicide is because he realises that the battle will be lost and he'd rather die than be taken prisoner by Mark Antony and Octavius now he states and this is now when he's realising that he's going to die and he's just you know he's still proud to die for his country and of course this brings to full circle what he had stated in this first quotation when I was saying he was foreshadowing his death he states Brutus my country's friend know me for Brutus okay and this is in exclamatory sentence now the other word level analysis you want to do here is a repetition of the word Brutus here we can see that he's dying a valiant hero okay so of course this sets him up as a tragic character in our eyes we really empathise with the character of Brutus and we also ultimately see that what he had in terms of his intentions when he killed Julius Caesar he actually was doing it for the good of the country and for the protection of democracy which is something that we admire as the audience okay so that's it when it comes to Brutus's character and the key things to remember when writing or discussing him as part of the play Julius Caesar