Rhetorical Identification in Shakespeare's Roman Republics

Shakespeare's Julius Caesar and Coriolanus are instructive to consider in tandem as parallel explorations of the conflicts between autocratic, oligarchic, and populist notions of government. In these dramas, we have titular characters who can be characterised as potentially tyrannical and who encounter resistance, but these are two antithetical kinds of tyrant and antithetical forms of resistance. The two plays also foreground the political force of the masses and their potential for enacting change, but at the same time demonstrate how the power of the people can be harnessed by a demagogue for his own ends. Both dramas are therefore ambiguous: scholars differ about whether the plays are conservatively monarchical or progressively republican in their ideology. Engaging with Krista Ratcliffe's rhetorical theories, I will suggest that one of the ways in which these plays generate ambiguity is by opening multiple paths for audience (or reader) identification with characters; that is, instead of identifying primarily or exclusively with a protagonist, several possibilities for identification are opened by the text, across socio-economic strata. In doing so, the dramas do not merely foster ambiguity, they also create multiple stories for multiple audiences.