After studying Shakespeare’s background, and sonnets, we studied Shakespeare’s, Julius Caesar as part of our rhetoric literature studies.
MARLON BRANDO MOVIE
My kids were familiar with this play, because we had seen the movie with Marlon Brando when we studied Ancient Rome last year.
At that time we studied the play in context with historic assassination of Caesar.
This time we studied the play from a literature viewpoint, while pulling in history and government of both the Roman and Elizabethan eras.
ANNOTATING JULIUS CAESAR
Inside our Folgers Classics copies of Julius Caesar, we annotated away the main themes, symbols, and famous quotations which familiarized us with the key literary elements.
COLLOSUS OF RHODES
When marking one of the major quotes of the play, he doth bestride the narrow world like a Colossus, and we petty men walk under his huge legs and peep about to find ourselves dishonorable graves, (Act 1 Sc 2 L142-145) my daughter asked, “What is a colossus?”
My son replied, “It’s one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World.”
Since she couldn’t remember what it looked like, we searched for an image of it on-line, which led to a discussion of its history.
Rhodes, located in Ancient Greece, was attacked in 305BC.
From abandoned war machines the people of Rhodes built a statue 110 feet high on a fifty-foot pedestal in the harbor entrance to represent liberty.
It is thought it might have had a spiked crown, and the figure might have raised its arm, holding a torch. to the sky.
Pliny the Elder wrote about this in his Natural History, and the Greeks catalogued the Colossus of Rhodes as one of their Seven Wonders of the Ancient World.
THE COLOSSUS AS A METAPHOR
Better understanding the word colossus helped us understand that these conspirators didn’t feel liberated by Caesar’s many victories.
The play opens with Caesar returning from battle victoriously, but the conspirators question the nature of the battle and whom he conquered.
Obviously, Shakespeare was not the only one inspired by the Colossus of Rhodes.
THE STATUE OF LIBERTY
In the late 19th century, France gifted America a statue a little more than 110 feet tall with her hand holding a torch, arm raised to the sky, to represent liberty.
On the pedestal can be found Emma Lazarus’ poem, The New Colossus.
The New Colossus
Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
“Keep ancient lands, your storied pomp!” cries she
With silent lips. “Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”
And by the way, this poem is a Petrarchan sonnet.
