His
difficulties arise from this limitation of insight. He begins to write
the play by making Brutus an idealized portrait of himself; he,
therefore, dwells on Brutus' perfect nobility, sincerity, and
unselfishness, but does not realize that the more perfect he makes
Brutus, the more clear and cogent Brutus' motive must be for undertaking
Caesar's assassination.
In this confusion Shakespeare's usually fine instinct is at fault, and
he blunders from mistake to mistake. His idealizing tendency makes him
present Brutus as perfect, and at the same time he uses the historical
incident of the anonymous letters, which goes to show Brutus as
conceited and vain. If these letters influenced Brutus--and they must be
taken to have done so, or else why were they introduced?--we have a noble
and unselfish man murdering out of paltry vanity. In Plutarch,
where Brutus is depicted as an austere republican, the incident of the
letters only throws a natural shade of doubt on the rigid principles by
which alone he is supposed to be guided.
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