Power relations in Shakespeare's Julius Caesar, Antony & Cleopatra and Coriolanus

This study focuses on Shakespeare's three "Roman Tragedies", including Julius Caesar, Antony and Cleopatra and Coriolanus. The main objective of this thesis is to discuss how far the decisions and the behaviour of Shakespeare's characters are affected by power relations. Each of the aforementioned tragedies is based on historical facts, like most of Shakespeare's plays and is centred upon the political and social atmosphere of Ancient Rome. However, apart from the historical background shared by these three tragedies, the factor that associates them with one another is that they all deal with the same theme: power struggle. It can be easily seen that the protagonists of these tragedies turn into those who are in a power struggle with government, with society or with another character. Eventually, they hopelessly drift into an inevitable downfall at the end of their tragedies. What is tragic is that none of the characters wants consciously to be in a struggle for gaining power. In fact, they get into a kind of power struggle in which they never expect to be. In this sense, it could be stated that power struggle is a tragic flaw that leads the specific characters to their destruction. In order to understand the desperate situation the protagonists are in, Niccolo Machiavelli, Thomas Hobbes, Friedrich Nietzsche and Michel Foucault's ideas on power are examined in this study. Their ideas on power are very similar, and apparently a continuation of each other. Machiavelli and Hobbes approach the concept of power as a political term. According to them, power is the most remarkable element that affects people's political decisions. As for Nietzsche and Foucault, they extend the scope of power by turning it from a political term into a sociological concept. They redefine power by stating that power cannot be limited to a mere political term. Instead, it is a phenomenon that can be observed in every facet of life, and it is impossible to escape from it. In this case, Julius Caesar, Antony and Cleopatra and Coriolanus involve characters who are highly affected by the concept of power which is a natural outcome of both political and social aspects of life.