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Modern readers are prone to find the tragedy of Brutus in his incorruptible devotion to high principle and fair play. Many members of the Globe audience, however, could see in him not only magnanimity but rich complications of misplaced sincerity and self-deception. For in sixteenth-century views of Roman history the conspiracy against Caesar often exemplified a flouting of unitary sovereignty, that prime point of Tudor policy, and thus was bound to end in the anarchy thought to accompany “democratic” or constitutional checks upon authority. Certain judgments of Elizabethan political writers who refer to Brutus are quite clear upon this point. Although naturally aware of the honor and liberality shown by Brutus, Shakespeare's contemporaries could thus perceive in him a conflict between questionable goals and honorable action, a contradiction lying in his attempt to redeem morally confused ends by moral clarity of means. As with Othello, the Elizabethan tragedy of Brutus is one of confusion, of integrity and plain dealing which not only accompany the protagonist into evil but continue to reassure him in his error.
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