Pity, Singular Disability, and the Makings of Shakespearean Tragedy in Julius Caesar

Abstract:Scholars often struggle to account for the many corporeal impairments in Julius Caesar. This article considers them constitutive to the play’s tragic poetics. As the falls of its great men prove inextricable from the falls, or failures, of their imbricated bodies and minds, unpitied psychosomatic downturn both precipitates and becomes a microcosm of its tragic counterpart. Attending to this convergence with the help of disability theory shines new light on Julius Caesar’s circular unity, the conspirators’ plot, and the quarrel scene. More importantly, it also situates the tragedy as a primer to the mutable interplay between pity and disability that subtends Shakespeare’s mature tragic praxis.