Act 2 Scene 1

I am enjoying Julius Caesar more than I expected! While advancing in the reading of the play, I have also peeked at Marjorie Garber's chapter and listened to the whole Bloom lecture in my car. Garber makes a fantastic observation about how relevant this play was to Shakespeare's (and Elizabeth I's) time. The queen of England did not have descendants. Caesar did not have descendants. How does a monarchy (or an empire) deal with the transfer of power without the nation unraveling into civil war? 

On the other hand, Bloom, who is forever interested in the psychology of the character goes deeply into Marcus Brutu's psyche (versus Garber, who always maintains a three-prong approach: the historic time where the play takes place, the time when the play was written and performed and, last but not least, our time, when we read and analyse the plays enriched by our own referents and biases). Well, Bloom is fascinated by the fact that Shakespeare did not make any reference in the play of what Plutarch says was common knowledge in Caesar's day, that Brutus may have been the natural child of Caesar. Bloom spins a complete analysis of how this unspoken nexus would inform Brutus' decision to join the conspiracy to murder Julius Caesar.