Julius Caesar
The Tragedy of Julius Caesar is a tragedy by William
Shakespeare, believed to have been written in 1599. It is one of several plays
written by Shakespeare based on true events from Roman history, which also
include Coriolanus and Antony and Cleopatra.
Although the title is Julius Caesar, Brutus speaks more than
four times as many lines, and the central psychological drama of the play
focuses on Brutus' struggle between the conflicting demands of honor,
patriotism, and friendship.
The play opens with the commoners of Rome celebrating
Caesar's triumphant return from defeating Pompey's sons at the battle of Munda.
Two tribunes, Flavius and Marrullus, discover the commoners celebrating, insult
them for their change in loyalty from Pompey to Caesar, and break up the crowd.
There are some jokes made by the commoners, who insult them back. They also
plan on removing all decorations from Caesar's statues and ending any other
festivities. In the next scene, during Caesar's parade on the feast of
Lupercal, a soothsayer warns Caesar, "Beware the ides of March." This
warning he disregards.
The action then turns to the discussion between Brutus
and Cassius. In this conversation, Cassius attempts to influence Brutus's opinions
into believing Caesar should be killed, preparing to have Brutus join his
conspiracy to kill Caesar. They then hear from Casca that Mark Antony has
offered Caesar the crown of Rome three times and that each time Caesar refused
it, fainting after the last refusal. Later, in act two, Brutus joins the
conspiracy, although after much moral debate, eventually deciding that Caesar,
although his friend and never having done anything against the people of Rome,
should be killed to prevent him from doing anything against the people of Rome
if he were ever to be crowned. He compares Caesar to "A serpents egg/
which hatch'd, would, as his kind, grow mischievous,/ and kill him in the
shell." He then decides to join Cassius in killing Caesar.
The play was likely one of Shakespeare's first to be
performed at the Globe Theatre. Thomas Platter the Younger, a Swiss traveller,
saw a tragedy about Julius Caesar at a Bankside theatre on 21 September 1599,
and this was most likely Shakespeare's play, as there is no obvious alternative
candidate. (While the story of Julius Caesar was dramatised repeatedly in the
Elizabethan/Jacobean period, none of the other plays known are as good a match
with Platter's description as Shakespeare's play.)
After the theatres re-opened at the start of the Restoration
era, the play was revived by Thomas Killigrew's King's Company in 1672. Charles
Hart initially played Brutus, as did Thomas Betterton in later productions.
Julius Caesar was one of the very few Shakespearean plays that was not adapted
during the Restoration period or the eighteenth century.
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