Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-dh8gc Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-09T15:08:44.787Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Chapter 11 - The Four Cardinal Virtues

Caesar’s Mantle and Practical Wisdom

from Part II - Shakespeare’s Virtues

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  19 January 2023

Julia Reinhard Lupton
Affiliation:
University of California, Irvine
Donovan Sherman
Affiliation:
Seton Hall University, New Jersey
Get access

Summary

This chapter considers the role of Shakespearean theater in fostering the cardinal virtues: prudence, justice, temperance, and courage. Shakespeare offers an especially compelling site for investigating this topic in act 3.2 of Julius Caesar. Here, Mark Antony addresses the plebeians in the wake of Caesar’s assassination using the latter’s bloody mantle (i.e. cloak) as an object lesson in civic and moral failure. This scene, the chapter argues, has something important to teach us about the theatricality of the cardinal virtues, including, especially, the object-specific way in which particular things enable general moral insights. As this suggests, the cardinal virtues do not so much offer scripts for the cultivation of inner qualities as they do a community-oriented set of practices grounded in the capacity of humans to think, feel, and discern together. Put another way, the cardinal virtues are a social logic or dynamic, rather than personality traits or individual moral attributes. Like theater itself, they provide a linked set of frameworks for physical, emotional, and ethical participation in the world.

Type
Chapter
Information
Shakespeare and Virtue
A Handbook
, pp. 113 - 124
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2023

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×