Here's the plot: a demagogue threatens democracy and his own allies in the Senate have to decide whether to remove him. So you can see why the Public Theater's minds went to recent events when they staged Julius Caesar in Central Park. Their version, set in modern times and featuring a familiar-looking Caesar, has made some headlines, and I won't lie: the murder scene was disturbing to watch. Art often tries to be dangerous, but it rarely succeeds. This production, which we attended on its final weekend, felt dangerous. From that point, it is a short journey toward yet another Roman civil war – Brutus and Cassius lead one side; Antony, the future emperor Octavian, and Lepidus lead the other. In a classic Shakespearean pattern, violence with a target leads to untargeted violence in which innocents die. The conspirators are divided by their own differences, and their side lurches toward defeat. Brutus can declare that “There is a tide in the affairs of men/Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune”; but it is clear enough that the tides of fortune have turned against Brutus’ and Cassius’ side – even before the ghost of Caesar appears to Brutus, identifies himself as “Thy evil spirit, Brutus”, and assures Brutus that “thou shalt see me at Philippi.” When the poor of the city suffered, Caesar wept with pity for them. Hardly the actions of an ambitious man, who should be harder-hearted than this! But Brutus says Caesar was ambitious, and Brutus is honourable, so … it must be true … right? Note how Antony continues to sow the seeds of doubt in the crowd’s mind. But "Alas," protesters outside, "Thou hast misconstrued everything." The knives are metaphors. We're talking about the dangers of tyranny here. The central question of the play is, were the conspirators right to remove Caesar? And Shakespeare, who, let's not forget, was paid by kings to play for kings, isn't exactly antiauthoritarian. You should not expect him to endorse kingslaying, and he doesn't. Although the play is named Julius Caesar, Brutus speaks more than four times as many lines as the title character; and the central psychological drama of the play focuses on Brutus' struggle between the conflicting demands of honor, patriotism, and friendship. ...

Wilson, John Dover, ed. Julius Caesar. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1949. Vol 15. The Works of Shakespeare. 39 vols. 1921-66. Mark Antony brings his ‘Friends, Romans, countrymen’ speech, a masterly piece of oratory, to a rousing end with an appeal to personal emotion, claiming that seeing Rome so corrupted by hatred and blinded by unreason has broken his heart. He concludes, however, with a final line that offers a glimmer of hope, implying that if Rome would only recover itself, he would be all right again. Cox, John D. and David Scott Kastan, eds. A New History of Early English Drama. New York: Columbia UP, 1997. But there is no evidence of the historical Julius Caesar saying anything of the sort when he was assassinated. But nor was the line Shakespeare’s invention. It had already been used in an earlier history play which was performed in London in the 1590s, just a few years before Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar was first staged in 1599. In the anonymous play The True Tragedy of Richard Duke of York, which was printed in 1600, Prince Edward utters the line: ‘Et tu, Brute? Wilt thou stab Caesar too?’

About this text

DECIUS: Okay, I'll just tell the guys that you're a pussy who lets his wife tell him what to do. They'll understand. He apparently retired to Stratford around 1613, where he died three years later on day of Saint George, his 52nd birthday. Few records of private life of Shakespeare survive with considerable speculation about such matters as his sexuality, religious beliefs, and whether he wrote all attributed literature.

People widely regard William Shakespeare (baptized 26 April 1564) as the greatest writer in the language and the pre-eminent dramatist of the world. They often call him simply the national "bard of Avon." Surviving writings consist of 38 dramas, two long narratives, and several other books. People translate them into every major living language and performed them most often. Punctuation was not regularized in the late sixteenth century, and Hinman demonstrated that punctuation in the Folio was often produced by the compositors who set the type, so a modern editor has considerable latitude in creating a text that assists modern readers with punctuation that they expect. "Considerable latitude" is far from "complete latitude," however. Punctuation can affect meaning, as linguists and grammarians well know, and editors have to choose which meaning is preferable. Daniell argues that the Folio's use of colons is in this category (Arden 3, 130-31), and his edition therefore retains colons that most modern editions (including this one) either delete or replace with some other punctuation. Arden Shakespeare has also published a Complete Works of Shakespeare, which reprints editions from the second and third series but without the explanatory notes. Act three, Scene 1. ANTONY: And Caesar's spirit, ranging for revenge, with Ate by his side come hot from hell, shall in these confines with a monarch's voice cry havoc and let slip the dogs of war, that this foul deed shall smell above the earth with carrion men, groaning for burial. Bate, Jonathan and Eric Rasmussen, eds. The Royal Shakespeare Company Shakespeare. New York: Modern Library, 2007.Beware the Ides of March. Beware to those that have aspirations to rule. You may encounter many enemies. People who will thwart your plans. People quite possibly afraid of your genius. People suffering from delusions of grandeur. Shakespeare wrote throughout the span of his life. He started writing in 1589 and afterward averaged 1.5 dramas a year. From 1590, Shakespeare produced most of his known literature. He early mainly raised genres to the peak of sophistication and artistry before 1601. Next, he wrote mainly Macbeth and similar dramas, considered some of the finest examples in the language, until 1608. In his last phase, he wrote also known romances and collaborated until 1613. The first editions in this series were published by Routledge, before moving to Thomson. They then moved to Cengage Learning. In December 2008, the series returned to Methuen, becoming part of Methuen Drama, its original publisher. From February 2013, the titles appeared under the Bloomsbury imprint. [10] Shakespeare, William, and David. Daniell. Julius Caesar. London: Arden Shakespeare, 2003. (streaming)

For a modern interpretation of the fall of Caesar and the fall of Rome, look no further than Mean Girls. This cinematic classic sees Regina George as a dictator-like queen bee in suburban Chicago high school and her inevitable fall from power at the hands of betrayal from her friends. Et tu, Brute indeed. For one thing, signaling the shared pentameter as a single metrical line distinguishes it for readers and actors from the independent short line. In the passage quoted above, five of the eight lines are short in the Folio, but only two ( TLN 90 and 93) are independent short lines (i.e., they cannot be combined with another partial line to form a pentameter). Chambers noted that Shakespeare tended to increase the number of short lines as his writing matured, so that A Midsummer Night's Dream, for example, has five, whereas King Lear has 191, and Julius Caesar, written in mid-career, has 108 (Wright, 294-95). The pattern is not invariable ( Cymbeline and The Tempest have fewer short lines than Julius Caesar), but it is nonetheless an important stylistic marker. Moreover, the metrical pattern is much harder for the reader and actor (who must speak the lines with an awareness of their verse pattern) to detect, if independent short lines are not distinguished typographically from shared pentameters. The collision between high idealism and pragmatism, corruption and politics, reason and irrational expectations, and the recurrent theme of preordained fate versus free will sets the frame for the characters to unfold Shakespeare’s unyielding grasp of the ambiguity –or the twisted nature?- that defines human nature.Cassius’ ambition invalidates him as a valid, fair leader and Marc-Antony’s loyalty is but a dull reflection of the gullibility of the populace, an undistinguishable mass of fervent venerators that can easily be transformed into a barbarous mob. au where this whole thing takes place on tumblr and Antony's speech is just a callout post and no one stays in their lane Anne bore him Susanna Shakespeare, and twins Hamnet Shakespeare and Judith Shakespeare. Between 1585 and 1592, he began a successful career in London as an actor, writer, and part-owner of the Lord Chamberlain's Men, the company, later known as the King's Men. To celebrate William Shakespeare on his birthday in April, I'll be studying three of the Bard's plays which I've not yet seen. My Shakespeare plan is to locate a staging of the play, listening to and watching it on my Macbook while I follow along to as much as of the original text as is incorporated in the production. Later, I read the entire play in the modern English version. A good friend I've had since high school recommended this system to me and I think this has been a very good system for delighting the mind in Shakespeare. This month, I plan to dive into three of Shakespeare's political dramas.