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Julius Caesar is a tragedy by William Shakespeare. It portrays the conspiracy against the Roman dictator Julius Caesar, his assassination and its aftermath. It is one of several Roman plays that he wrote, based on true events from Roman history, which also include Coriolanus and Antony and Cleopatra.

Although the title of the play is Julius Caesar, he is not the central character in its action; he appears in only three scenes and dies at the beginning of the third act. The protagonist of the play is Marcus Brutus and the central psychological drama is his struggle between the conflicting demands of honour, patriotism, and friendship.

The play reflected the general anxiety of England due to worries over succession of leadership. At the time of its creation and first performance, Queen Elizabeth, a strong ruler, was elderly and had refused to name a successor, leading to worries that a civil war similar to that of Rome's might break out after her death.

Contents 1 Date and text 1.1 Deviations from Plutarch 2 Characters 3 Synopsis 4 Themes 4.1 Male Friendship and Sexual Undertones 5 Criticism 6 Performance history 7 Notable performances 7.1 Stage performances 7.2 Screen performances 8 Adaptations and cultural references 9 See also 10 External links 11 References 11.1 Footnotes 11.2 Editions of Julius Caesar 11.3 Secondary sources

Scholars believe that Julius Caesar was performed in 1599.^[1] A number of contemporary allusions support this date:

1. Ben Jonson's play Every Man Out of His Humour (acted 1599, published 1600) paraphrases Shakespeare's line "O judgment, thou art fled to brutish beasts" (Julius Caesar, III,ii,114) as "reason long since is fled to animals" in III,i. Jonson's play also includes "Et tu, Brute" in V,iv.
2. The anonymous play The Wisdom of Dr. Dodipoll (published in 1600) gives its own paraphrase, "Then reason's fled to animals, I see."
3. A passage in John Weever's Mirror of Martyrs, published in 1601, makes clear reference to the speeches of Brutus and Mark Antony in Julius Caesar. John Weever stated that he'd written his poem two years earlier, which (presumably) fixes the date as 1599.

Julius Caesar was first published in the First Folio in 1623, that text being the sole authority for the play. The Folio text is notable for its quality and consistency; scholars judge it to have been set into type from a theatrical prompt-book. The play's source was Sir Thomas North's translation of Plutarch's Life of Brutus and Life of Caesar. ^[2]

The play contains many anachronistic elements from the Elizabethan period. The characters mention objects such as hats, doublets (large, heavy jackets), and cloaks - none of which existed in ancient Rome. Caesar is mentioned to be wearing an Elizabethan doublet instead of a Roman toga. At one point a clock is heard to strike.

• Shakespeare makes Caesar's triumph take place on the day of Lupercalia instead of six months earlier
• For greater dramatic effect he has made the Capitol the venue of Caesar's death and not Curia Pomperiana (Theatre of Pompey).
• Caesar's murder, the funeral, Antony's oration, the reading of the will and Octavius' arrival all take place on the same day in the play. However, historically, the assassination took place on March 15 (The ides of March), the will was published three days later on March 18, the funeral took place on March 20 and Octavius arrived only in May.
• Shakespeare makes the Triumvirs meet in Rome instead of near Bolonia, so as to avoid a third locale.
  
• He has combined the two Battles of Phillipi although there was a twenty day interval between them.
• Shakespeare gives Caesar's last words as "Et tu, Brute? Then fall, Caesar!" ("And you, Brutus? Then fall, Caesar."). Plutarch says he said nothing, pulling his toga over his head when he saw Brutus among the conspirators.^[3]. However, Suetonius reports his last words, spoken in Greek, as "καί σύ τέκνον" (transliterated as "Kai su, teknon?"; "You too, child?" in English).^[4].

Shakespeare deviated from these historical facts in order to curtail time and compress the facts so that the play could be staged without any kind of difficulty. The tragic force is condensed into a few scenes for the heightened effect.

• Julius Caesar
• Octavius Caesar, Marcus Antonius, M. Aemilius Lepidus: Triumvirs after the death of Julius Caesar
• Cicero, Publius, Popilius Lena: Senators
• Marcus Brutus, Cassius, Casca, Trebonius, Ligarius, Decius Brutus, Metellus Cimber,Cinna: Conspirators against Julius Caesar
• Flavius and Marullus: Tribunes
• Artemidorus: a Sophist of Cnidos
• A Soothsayer (Also called Fortuneteller)
• Cinna: a poet, who is not related to the conspiracy
• Lucilius, Titinius, Messala, Cato the Younger, Volumnius: Friends to Brutus and Cassius
• Varro, Clitus, Claudius, Strato, Lucius, Dardanius: Servants to Brutus
• Pindarus: Servant to Cassius
• Calpurnia: wife to Caesar
• Portia: wife to Brutus

Marcus Brutus is Caesar's close friend; his ancestors were famed for driving the tyrannical King Tarquin from Rome (described in Shakespeare's earlier The Rape of Lucrece). Brutus allows himself to be cajoled into joining a group of conspiring senators because of a growing suspicion—implanted by Caius Cassius—that Caesar intends to turn republican Rome into a monarchy under his own rule. Traditional readings of the play maintain that Cassius and the other conspirators are motivated largely by envy and ambition, whereas Brutus is motivated by the demands of honour and patriotism; other commentators, such as Isaac Asimov, suggest that the text shows Brutus is no less moved by envy and flattery.^[5] One of the central strengths of the play is that it resists categorising its characters as either simple heroes or villains.

The early scenes deal mainly with Brutus' arguments with Cassius and his struggle with his own conscience. The growing tide of public support soon turns Brutus against Caesar (This public support was actually faked. Cassius wrote letters to Brutus in different handwritings over the next month in order to get Brutus to join the conspiracy). A soothsayer warns Caesar to "beware the Ides of March," which he ignores, culminating in his assassination at the Capitol by the conspirators that day.

Caesar's assassination is perhaps the most famous part of the play, about halfway through. After ignoring the soothsayer as well as his wife's own premonitions, Caesar comes to the Senate. The conspirators create a superficial motive for the assassination by means of a petition brought by Metellus Cimber, pleading on behalf of his banished brother. As Caesar, predictably, rejects the petition, Casca grazes Caesar in the back of his neck, and the others follow in stabbing him; Brutus is last. At this point, Caesar utters the famous line "Et tu, Brute?" ("And you, Brutus?", i.e. "You too, Brutus?"). Shakespeare has him add, "Then fall, Caesar," suggesting that Caesar did not want to survive such treachery. The conspirators make clear that they did this act for Rome, not for their own purposes and do not attempt to flee the scene but act victorious.

After Caesar's death, however, Mark Antony, with a subtle and eloquent speech over Caesar's corpse—the much-quoted Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears...—deftly turns public opinion against the assassins by manipulating the emotions of the common people, in contrast to the rational tone of Brutus's speech. Antony rouses the mob to drive the conspirators from Rome. Amid the violence, the innocent poet, Cinna, is confused with the conspirator Cinna and is murdered by the mob.

The beginning of Act Four is marked by the quarrel scene, where Brutus attacks Cassius for soiling the noble act of regicide by accepting bribes ("Did not great Julius bleed for justice' sake? / What villain touch'd his body, that did stab, / And not for justice?", IV.iii,19-21). The two are reconciled, but as they prepare for war with Mark Antony and Caesar's adopted son, Octavian (Shakespeare's spelling: Octavius), Caesar's ghost appears to Brutus with a warning of defeat ("thou shalt see me at Philippi", IV.iii,283). Events go badly for the conspirators during the battle; both Brutus and Cassius choose to commit suicide rather than to be captured. The play ends with a tribute to Brutus by Antony, who has remained "the noblest Roman of them all" (V.v,68) and hints at the friction between Mark Antony and Octavius which will characterise another of Shakespeare's Roman plays, Antony and Cleopatra.

Julius Caesar shows homosocial bonds among males and there is evidence to support that these relationships have highly sexual elements to them.

In the essay, "Passions of some difference": Friendship and Emulation in Julius Caesar," Coppelia Kahn discusses the relationships among the men in Shakespeare's Julius Caesar. She calls upon G. Wilson Knight's theory of eroticism as emulation as well as Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick's ideas about homosociality. In the context of Julius Caesar, emulation can mean a combination of admiring someone, striving to be like that person, as well as trying to dominate them ^[6]. Similarly, a homosocial relationship involves people of the same sex sharing a bond that does not necessarily have to be sexual. However, the line between sexual and social is one that is often blurred ^[7]. The relationships shared by the men in Julius Caesar obviously share a bond. However this homosocial bond appears to exceed mere friendship. The blurring of the friends/lovers line and the moving from social to sexual can be supported by Barbara L. Parker's article, The Whore of Babylon and Shakespeare's Julius Caesar." She argues that implicit theme in Julius Caesar is unnatural love among Roman men.

Brutus and the conspirators kill Caesar for the same reasons that Brutus and Cassius argue at the end of the play: admiration has turned to domination ^[8]. Their actions seem to fit perfectly with the eroticism as emulation theory. Parker agrees that the men in Julius Caesar have strong and erotic bonds. However, she also points out that then men are highly feminized and represent the "Whore of Babylon" view as seen by Protestants in Shakespeare's time ^[9]. She makes note that Caesar wishes only for the company of men and that women are very sidelined characters in the play; each man engages in loving conversations with the men in their lives but there is no such affection when talking with their own wife ^[10]. In fact, Parker portrays the relationship between Brutus and the rest of the conspirators to be more like a group marriage than simply a friendship ^[11]. These similarities between Caesar and Brutus suggest the emulation aspect discussed by Kahn.

Parker finds that the funeral scene is both the climax of the action of the play as well as the sexual climax. The very sexualized, fertile Antony uses his funeral oration to seduce the crowd from Brutus back to Caesar (whose naked body is also very sexualized). The wounds in his naked body, for the author of the article, represent vaginal orfices where tongues can and should be inserted ^[12]. In Antony's speech, he mentions Caesar's will several times. It signifies both his actual will as well as his will (chastity) that kept him from coming at the conspirators' request ^[13]. The funeral represents all the stages of sex, finally with the burning of Rome representing orgasm. Antony has re-energized the Romans and Brutus and Cassius have to leave the city. While they are gone, they get into a fight and behave as if in a lover's spat^[14] rather than simply friends arguing. Here, once again, it seems that the homosocial bond could have homosexual implications.

Critics of Shakespeare’s play Julius Caesar differ greatly on their views of Caesar and Brutus. Many have debated whether Caesar or Brutus is the protagonist of the play. Intertwined in this debate is a smattering of philosophical and psychological ideologies on republicanism and monarchism. One author, Robert C. Reynolds, devotes attention to the names or epithets given to both Brutus and Caesar in his essay “Ironic Epithet in Julius Caesar”. This author points out that Casca praises Brutus at face value, but then inadvertently compares him to a disreputable joke of a man by calling him an alchemist, “Oh, he sits high in all the people’s hearts,/And that which would appear offense in us/ His countenance, like richest alchemy,/ Will change to virtue and to worthiness” (I.iii.158-60). Reynolds also talks about Caesar and his “Colossus” epithet, which he points out has its obvious connotations of power and manliness, but also lesser known connotations of an outward glorious front and inward chaos ^[15]. In that essay, the conclusion as to who is the hero or protagonist is ambiguous because of the conceit-like poetic quality of the epithets for Caesar and Brutus.

Myron Taylor, in his essay “Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar and the Irony of History”, compares the logic and philosophies of Caesar and Brutus. Caesar is deemed an intuitive philosopher who is always right when he goes with his gut, for instance when he says he fears Cassius as a threat to him before he is killed, his intuition is correct. Brutus is portrayed as a man similar to Caesar, but whose passions lead him to the wrong reasoning, which he realizes in the end when he says in V.v.50-51, “Caesar, now be still:/ I kill’d not thee with half so good a will” ^[16].

Joseph W. Houppert acknowledges that some critics have tried to cast Caesar as the protagonist, but that ultimately Brutus is the driving force in the play and is therefore the tragic hero. Brutus attempts to put the republic over his personal relationship with Caesar and kills him. Brutus makes the political mistakes that bring down the republic that his ancestors created. He acts on his passions, does not gather enough evidence to make reasonable decisions and is manipulated by Cassius and the other conspirators ^[17].

The general conclusion among critics is that Brutus is in fact the protagonist of the play Julius Caesar, although some have tried to prove otherwise.

The play was performed in the Globe Theatre.

Thomas Patter, a Swiss traveller, saw a tragedy about Julius Caesar at a Bankside theatre on September 21, 1599. This was most likely Shakespeare's play. There is no immediately obvious alternative candidate. (While the story of Julius Caesar was dramatized repeatedly in the Elizabethan/Jacobean period, none of the other plays known are as good a match with Patter's description as Shakespeare's play.)^[18]

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.^[19]

• 1864: Junius, Jr., Edwin and John Wilkes Booth made their only appearance onstage together in a benefit performance of Julius Caesar on November 25, 1864, at the Winter Garden Theatre. Junius, Jr. played Cassius, Edwin played Brutus and John Wilkes played Marc Antony. This landmark production raised funds to erect a statue of Shakespeare in Central Park, which remains to this day.
• 1926: By far the most elaborate performance of the play was staged as a benefit for the Actors' Fund of America at the Hollywood Bowl. Caesar arrived for the Lupercal in a chariot drawn by four white horses. The stage was the size of a city block and dominated by a central tower eighty feet in height. The event was mainly aimed at creating work for unemployed actors. Three hundred gladiators appeared in an arena scene not featured in Shakespeare's play; a similar number of girls danced as Caesar's captives; a total of three thousand soldiers took part in the battle sequences.
• 1937: Orson Welles' famous production at the Mercury Theatre drew fervoured comment as the director dressed his protagonists in uniforms reminiscent of those common at the time in Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany, as well as drawing a specific analogy between Caesar and Mussolini. Opinions vary on the artistic value of the resulting production: some see Welles' mercilessly pared-down script (the running time was around 90 minutes without an interval, several characters were eliminated, dialogue was moved around and borrowed from other plays, and the final two acts were reduced to a single scene) as a radical and innovative way of cutting away the unnecessary elements of Shakespeare's tale; others thought Welles' version was a mangled and lobotomised version of Shakespeare's tragedy which lacked the psychological depth of the original. Most agreed that the production owed more to Welles than it did to Shakespeare. However, Welles's innovations have been echoed in many subsequent modern productions, which have seen parallels between Caesar's fall and the downfalls of various governments in the twentieth century. The production was most noted for its portrayal of the slaughter of Cinna (Norman Lloyd). It is the longest-running Broadway production of this play at 157 performances. Welles's Julius Caesar opened at the Comedy Theater in the fall of 1937, and then was transferred to the National Theater on West 41st Street, later renamed the Neiderlander Theater, where Rent plays today (as of 11/25/07). This famous production also toured the country in 1938.
• 1950: John Gielgud played Cassius at the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre under the direction of Michael Langham and Anthony Quayle. The production was considered one of the highlights of a remarkable Stratford season, and led to Gielgud (who had done little film work to that time) playing Cassius in Joseph L. Mankiewicz' 1953 film version.
• 1977: John Gielgud made his final appearance in a Shakespearean role on stage as Julius Caesar in John Schlesinger's production at the Royal National Theatre.
• 2005: Denzel Washington played Brutus in the first Broadway production of the play in over fifty years. The production received universally terrible reviews, but was a sell-out because of Washington's popularity at the box office.

See also Shakespeare on screen (Julius Caesar)

• Julius Caesar (1950), starring Charlton Heston as Antony and Harold Tasker as Caesar.
• Julius Caesar (1953), starring Marlon Brando as Antony and Louis Calhern as Caesar.
• Julius Caesar (1970), starring Charlton Heston as Antony and John Gielgud as Caesar.

The Canadian comedy duo Wayne and Shuster parodied Julius Caesar in their 1958 sketch Rinse the Blood off My Toga. Flavius Maximus, Private Roman I, is hired by Brutus to investigate the death of Caesar. The police procedural combines Shakespeare, Dragnet, and vaudeville jokes and was first broadcast on the Ed Sullivan Show. ^[20]

In 1973 the BBC made a television play Heil Caesar, written by John Bowen, an adaptation of the play put into a modern setting. ^[21]

In 1984 the Riverside Shakespeare Company of New York City produced a modern dress Julius Caesar set in contemporary Washington, called simply CAESAR!, starring Harold Scott as Brutus, Herman Petras as Caesar, Marya Lowry as Portia, Robert Walsh as Antony, and Michael Cook as Cassius, directed by W. Stuart McDowell in the Shakespeare Center.^[22]

In 2006, Chris Taylor from the Australian comedy team "The Chaser" wrote a comedy musical called "Dead Caesar" which was shown in at the Sydney Theatre Company in Sydney.

In the popular Channel 4 sitcom "Green Wing," Guy Secretan expresses his feelings of betrayal by saying, 'Et tu Caroline?' a reflection of Caesar's dying words, 'Et tu Brute?'

• Assassinations in fiction
• Mark Antony's Funeral Speech

• All Julius Caesar Provides a summary of the play; and background on Shakespeare and Julius Caesar including historical background on Julius Caesar and a character analysis of Caesar.
• Julius Caesar - searchable, indexed e-text
• Julius Caesar - Full text play by William Shakespeare.
• Julius Caesar - plain vanilla text from Project Gutenberg
• Julius Caesar - by The Tech
• http://nfs.sparknotes.com/juliuscaesar/
• Julius Caesar in modern English
• Lesson plans for Julius Caesar at Web English Teacher

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