Julius Caesar: Honor and Virtue of Brutus & Portia in Shakespeare's Play

Jan 28, 2026

They explore how masculine honor and feminine virtue drive Julius Caesar's characters. They unpack Brutus’s pursuit of honor, his public persona, and moments of self-deception. They trace how editors and productions have altered Portia’s language, wound, and portrayal to police female virtue across history.

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INSIGHT

Honor as Rhetorical Performance

Shakespeare stages honor as a rhetoric problem where public performance can mask inner motives.
Julius Caesar dramatizes how persuasive speech, simulation, and self-deception vie for political dominance.

INSIGHT

Brutus's Stoicism Is Performed

Brutus models himself on Stoic ideals but repeatedly fails to live them in public and private.
His performance of indifference is often form rather than substance, revealing cracks under pressure.

INSIGHT

Brutus Misreads Stoic Suicide

Brutus condemns Cato's suicide but his view contradicts famous Stoic authorities who accepted self-slaughter.
This contradiction further exposes Brutus's selective or mistaken Stoicism.

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In Julius Caesar, Shakespeare repeatedly reminds us that Brutus is an honorable man. In this episode we will explore if this is true, how Shakespeare depicts both masculine honor and its early modern counterpart, feminine virtue, in the characters of Brutus and Portia, and how Portia's characterization by editors and theatremakers has changed over time.

First, we unpack how honor was defined for Shakespeare's audiences and how the play incorporates Early Modern anxieties about rhetoric throughout the plot. We then closely examine Brutus's desire to be perceived as honorable, how that shapes his choices, and whether or not he is ultimately honorable.

Then we will turn to Portia, tracing how editors and theatremakers have altered her language and characterization across time in order to make her virtue more palatable to the moral expectations of their moment. We look at what gets changed, what gets softened or erased, and what those choices reveal about how women are policed on stage and on the page.

Content Warning: Discussions of suicide and self-harm. If you are in crisis, please call, text or chat with the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline at 988, or contact the Crisis Text Line by texting TALK to 741741.

Shakespeare Anyone? is created and produced by Kourtney Smith and Elyse Sharp.

Music is "Neverending Minute" by Sounds Like Sander.

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Works referenced:

GRAY, PATRICK. "CONCLUSION TO PART I: SHAKESPEARE'S PASSION PLAY." Shakespeare and the Fall of the Roman Republic: Selfhood, Stoicism and Civil War, Edinburgh University Press, 2019, pp. 145–74. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.3366/j.ctv7n09n2.9. Accessed 19 Jan. 2026.

Sacharoff, Mark. "Suicide and Brutus' Philosophy in Julius Caesar." Journal of the History of Ideas, vol. 33, no. 1, 1972, pp. 115–22. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.2307/2709060. Accessed 19 Jan. 2026.

Scott, Sarah K. "Portia and the Circulation of Virtue: 'Men May Construe Things after Their Fashion.'" Medieval & Renaissance Drama in England, vol. 32, 2019, pp. 219–38. JSTOR, https://www.jstor.org/stable/26800556. Accessed 20 Jan. 2026.

Xiao, Xinyao. (2018). "Oxymoronic Ethos: the Rhetoric of Honor and Its Performance in Shakespeare's Julius Caesar." Philological Quarterly. 97. 263-285.