Two Emblems in Brutus' Orchard

Two difficult passages in the second act of Shakespeare's Julius Caesar can be illuminated if each is interpreted as an emblem. Brutus’ troublesome first soliloquy and the strange dialogue among three conspirators about where the sun rises are both moments of great moral intensity; Brutus meditates on the necessity of assassinating Caesar in the first passage and commits himself to the conspiracy during the second. We might plausibly look to iconography as a perspective on such morally intense moments; emblems, certainly, are in keeping with the pageantry, symbolic statuary, ritual, and solemn moral utterance which permeate this play

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