Julius Caesar (play)

Julius Caesar is a tragedy by William Shakespeare probably written in 1599. It portrays the conspiracy against the Roman dictator, Julius Caesar, his assassination and its aftermath. It is one of several Shakespeare plays that are based on true events from history.

The Plot

Marcus Brutus is Caesar's close friend (there are suggestions that he was his illegitimate son) whose ancestors were famed for driving the tyrranical Tarquin kings from Rome. Brutus allows himself to be cajoled into joining a group of conspiring senators because of a growing suspicion - implanted by Gaius Cassius - that Caesar intends to turn 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 motived by the demands of honour and patriotism; in fact one of the central strengths of the play is that it resists categorising its characters as either simple heroes or villains.

Related Topics:
Marcus Brutus - Tarquin kings - Senators - Gaius Cassius - Monarchy - Envy - Ambition - Honour - Patriotism

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The early scenes deal mainly with Brutus's arguments with Cassius and his struggle with his own conscience. After Caesar's death, however, another character appears on the scene, in the form of Caesar's devotee, Mark Antony, who, by a rousing speech over the corpse -- the much-quoted Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears... -- deftly turns public opinion against the assassins and rouses the mob to drive them from Rome.

Related Topics:
Conscience - Mark Antony - Public opinion - Rome

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The beginning of Act Four is marked by the quarrell 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). The two are reconciled, but as they prepare for war with Marc Antony and Caesar's great-nephew, Octavian, Caesar's ghost appears to Brutus with a warning of defeat ("thou shalt see me at Philippi", IV.iii). Events go badly for the conspirators during the battle; both Brutus and Cassius commit suicide rather than be captured. The play ends with a tribute to Brutus, who has remained "the noblest Roman of them all" (V.v) and hints at the friction between Mark Antony and Octavian which will characterise another of Shakespeare's Roman plays, Antony and Cleopatra.

Related Topics:
Regicide - Marc Antony - Octavian - Brutus - Mark Antony - Octavian - Antony and Cleopatra

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Julius Caesar was first published in the First Folio in 1623. The play's source was Sir Thomas North's translation of Plutarch's Life of Brutus and Life of Caesar.

Related Topics:
First Folio - 1623 - Sir Thomas North's - Plutarch

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