Somehow, I got through high school and two college Shakespeare courses without ever reading Julius Caesar. I'm only just correcting this oversight now.

This is one of Shakespeare's histories. It tells of the assassination of Julius Caesar in ancient Rome. Though Caesar is the title character, we get a lot more lines from Brutus, Caesar's good friend, and Cassius, Brutus's brother. Cassius is the main instigator, and seems driven by jealousy to get everyone in on killing Caesar. He appeals to Brutus's loyalty to Rome, itself, convincing him that Caesar is motivated by power.

The death of Caesar happens early in the narrative. The first half is a lot of omens and conspiring. The second half is the funeral, then the political fallout. Brutus manages to convince the populace the senators were right to kill Caesar, but then Caesar's best friend, Antony, speaks, and turns public sentiment against the conspirators. The Roman citizenry rages about, burning the homes of the conspirators and killing the ones involved who didn't escape in time, The ones who get away muster their armies. In the end, the people who killed Caesar wind up dead, killed at their own hands rather than fall prisoner to their political rivals.

There are similarities to Macbeth, in the ominous signs and the political machinations. Brutus's guilt has some echo in Macbeth's. Julius Caesar came first, so apparently Shakespeare was warming up to the "greed as the worst reason to kill a ruler" theme.

I'll want to revisit this play at some point in the near future. This run-through was a surface reading, and I didn't capture a fraction of the themes or imagery.

I listened to this play as an audio performance, which is the next best thing to watching it performed. I'm convinced that Shakespeare's plays can only be fully captured through performance. Reading them on a page sucks the life out of them. It was a good performance, though it was hard to keep track of the characters.

4.6/5 stars, full review to come! alexa play still hurting from the last five years. this was so good

Though worthy actors, difficult to hear

Cry havoc and let slip the dogs of war!

This is a play abut possibilities and how we rationalize our behavior. It also displays how we are cowed by our penchant for narrative, especially such with a catchy refrain. I first read this decades ago in high school. I had wanted to parse it at Uni regarding Nietzsche but my prof sagely advised against such. Thus what remained was largely maintained by my repeated viewings of the 1953 adaptation starring Marlon Brando as Marcus Antony. While faithful, the film ignores much of the interior conflict within Brutus and Portia, key machination in the play. We are left with thirty-three mortal wounds, a funeral oration for the ages and ultimately a crushed conspiracy. Was the assassination noble? Is Brutus indeed an honorable man?

I believe I have shared a memory from the time of my initial reading of the play. A scuffle had developed at the playground where I spent most of my after school time immersed in basketball. The fight quickly became divided along racial lines and I stood there more indifferent and confused than anything else. One of the black guys pointed at me, and asked what about Jon? Another guy, who happened to be in my English class said, Nah, man, he's all right, he's Cinna the poet.

Oh I loved this one. Antonius' speech at caesar's funeral was so good I almost started clapping myself