hese are historically the concerns of men, who are associated with the larger-than-life issues of politics and the structure of civilization itself. This is neatly summed up by Cassius's characterization of himself and his fellow conspirators as the heroes of the age and of civilization itself: "So often shall the knot of us be called / The men that gave their country liberty" (III.i). Well, maybe, but probably not by the women who have to clean up after the mess the men have made. Caesar's judgment of Cassius as a particular "type" of political man is equally apt, that he has a lean and hungry look. Such an appellation would be inconceivable for a woman, either in Caesar's or Shakespeare's age. What men do and the evil that lives after them, the tide that is-taken in their affairs (hence in the affairs of all)-these are the principal concerns of the play, and they are first and always centered on men as such. The most action that women can take in this environment is to observe and learn, to read, and profit thereby.
Such women characters as are in the play appear in comparatively perfunctory roles, chiefly to decorate the scenes of state, as for example in the first entry of Caesar into the forum with his wife, Antony, and Brutus and his wife, and to illuminate the personal ironies of character of the principals by the elaboration of their own. Both Portia (Brutus's wife) and Calpurnia (Caesar's wife) discourse on their own moral probity in associating with their men, and their characters basically illuminate the character development of their husbands. Decidedly, the women are minor characters in a play that overlooks the emotional consequences of women's opinions or input into the moral dilemma of a given situation.
Unlike Antony and Cleopatra, Shakespeare's mature work, Julius Caesar cannot be seen manifestly as a play that is "about" women or remotely concerned with the feminist goal of achieving recognition of the ...