n individual and a collective idea of the state, embodied in this person of the leader. Caesar is not the central character in this play even through the play uses his name in the title. Rather, Brutus is considered by many critics to be the central figure in the play because "Brutus's moral dilemma about whether or not to turn on his friend, Caesar, and join the conspiracy, constitutes the play's dramatic core" (Simmons 61). Brutus is a high-born Roman expected to uphold the higher traditions of honor in public life. However, honor has different meaning to people at different times, though Shakespeare implies that there should rather be an accepted meaning that derives from a recognition of reality. As Traversi notes, "'Honour' is the way of becoming a trap set for those who, like Brutus, fail to temper idealism with a proper sense of self-awareness" (Traversi 12). On the one hand, Brutus is not an evil man, but he undertakers an action which will unleash evil in the kingdom:
Brutus, not himself an evil man, is about to perform an act which will release evil impulses whose true nature he persistently fails to grasp; the discrepancy between what he is and what he does is reflected in his recognizable effort to persuade himself, against convictions immediately present in his nature, that the resolve he is about to take is necessary and just (Traversi 12).
Again, Caesar is throughout this play both a public and private figure, but more than this, the name Caesar refers both to the private man and the public title (Garber 52). In destroying the private man, Brutus and the conspirators fail to see the symbolic nature of their action in attacking the public figure, in attacking the Caesar, and so in challenging the natural order of things. Caesar himself is accused of the same thing. Cassius makes it clear that envy is one of the reasons for the antipathy he and others feel toward Caesar:
Why, man, he doth bestride the...