A very racy (but scholarly) interpretation of JC (this is probably PG13 or higher)
Ok, take a deep breath. I blushed reading this, so be warned! :blush: In all seriousness, though, do you guys think this has any merit as an interpretation? I feel like some of these puns are quite a stretch. I think it would be hilarious if they staged the play with all of the words that she inserts in brackets included, though ;)
The article is "The Whore of Babylon and Shakespeare's Julius Caesar" by Barbara L. Parker.
Here is her basic thesis: "It is this concept-prodigious or unnatural love--which, I will argue, constitutes the subtextual theme of the play. Conveyed primarily through a pervasive pattern of sexual puns, this theme is part of a larger satire on papal Rome, with Caesar the parodic savior or Antichrist."
Here is an excerpt:
Caesar's marital frigidity is affirmed in his dialogue with Decius, which pointedly juxtaposes that with Calphurnia. The conspirators' chief concern is "Whether Caesar will come . . . to-day" (II.i.194), a double entendre repeated six times in the first fifteen lines of dialogue between Decius and Caesar. Caesar, however, declines to "come," not, he insists, because he "cannot" or "dare not" but because he "will not" (II.ii.62-4). Caesar qualifies this refusal with a further sequence of sexual puns that, together with Decius's explication of Calphurnia's dream, reveal the full significance of Caesar's "femaleness." Caesar claims that the cause of his refusal is in his "will" (penis) and that this reason should "satisfy" (sexually gratify) the Senate. However, for Decius's "private [genital] satisfaction," and because, as he assures Decius, "I love you," he reveals Calphurnia's dream of his statue...
...Caesar's phallic enormity is at once the root of Cassius's jealousy ("Such men as he be never at heart's ease / Whiles they behold a greater than themselves" [I.ii.205-6]) and of Caesar's political power. "Common suitors" (II.iv. 35; the phrase applies equally to the patricians), attracted by his hugeness, perpetually throng around him, jockeying for his favor in a ceaseless ritual of Petrarchan adulation. The journey to the Capitol is accordingly construed as a series of rival solicitations, all of which Caesar, true to his vow of sexual abstinence, rejects. The first is that of Artemidorus:
Here will I stand [maintain an erection] till Caesar pass along, And as a suitor [wooer] will I give him this.
The missive is signed "Thy lover, Artemidorus" (II.iii.7-10).[18] Caesar, however, insists that "What touches [erotically caresses] us ourself shall be last serv'd" (III.i.8), a statement presaging his posthumous union with the mob. He likewise declines the "suits" of Trebonius (III.i.4-5), Metellus Cimber (III.i.33-5), Brutus (III.i.52-4; note also II.iv. 42-3), and Cassius (III.i.55-7), all conceived in Petrarchan terms: Brutus kisses Caesar's hand and Metellus proffers "curtsies" and "sweet words" (III.i.42-3), Metellus, Cassius, and Brutus each bowing or kneeling to Caesar in a show of abject adoration (III.i.36, 56, 75).
The article is quite long, but if you would like more of it, I would be happy to post it. She talks about the "group marriage of the Conspirators" and the "Friends, Romans, Countrymen" speech as "subtextually replicat[ing] all the stages of the sex act, from arousal to coitus to orgasm."
All I can say is...oh my goodness
