Download Julius Caesar (1599) For a play named after him, Julius Caesar

Julius Caesar (1599)
For a play named after him, Julius Caesar himself has a relatively small part. He appears (alive) in only three scenes. The setting is Rome in 44 B.C.
so it is considered one of Shakespeare’s “Roman” plays.
The date of 1599 comes from an account by a Swiss visitor to London that autumn. The traveler said that he saw a drama about the death of Julius
Caesar at a theatre with a thatched roof near the Thames. This play was probably one of the first to be performed at the Globe Theatre, and was
very popular in Shakespeare’s day. The story of Caesar’s death, a turning point in Roman history, was well-known to the English, and people of the
Renaissance viewed the Ancient Roman world with awe. Shakespeare’s play was preceded by others on the subject. The Renaissance British were
worried about a possible civil war themselves as Queen Elizabeth I was elderly and had not named a successor.
The source for all Shakespeare’s “Roman” plays was Sir Thomas North’s The Lives of the Noble Grecians and Romans, first published in 1579, which
was a translation of Plutarch’s Lives of the Noble Greeks and Romans (also known as Parallel Lives) a work by Plutarch. Shakespeare’s play first
appeared in print in the First Folio in 1623. The play’s main theme is power and its abuse, and the mainl psychological drama of the play focuses on
Brutus' struggle between the conflicting demands of honor, patriotism, and friendship. The hero of the play is variously seen as Brutus, Caesar, or
Rome itself, depending on whether one is in favor of a monarchy or a republic.
Julius Caesar is referenced twice in Hamlet; in Act 1, sc. 1:
In the most high and palmy state of Rome,
A little ere the mightiest Julius fell,
The graves stood tenantless and the sheeted dead
Did squeak and gibber in the Roman streets
As stars with trains of fire and dews of blood,
Disasters in the sun, and the moist star
Upon whose influence Neptune’s empire stands
Was sick almost to doomsday with eclipse.
And in Act III, Sc. 2
Hamlet: My lord, you played once i' the university, you say?
Polonius: That did I, my lord; and was accounted a good actor.
Hamlet: What did you enact?
Polonius: I did enact “Julius Caesar.” I was killed i’ the Capital. Brutus killed me.
Hamlet: It was a brute part of him to kill so capital a calf there.
In America in 1864, the three Booth brothers: Edwin (Brutus), Junius (Caesar) and John Wilkes (Marc Antony), starred in a production of Julius
Caesar at the Winter Garden Theatre in New York. It was the only time all three appeared onstage together. John Wilkes wanted to play Brutus,
but Edwin was the better actor. John Wilkes’ resulting jealousy led to the plot to kill President Abraham Lincoln.
Filmed versions include:
Julius Caesar (1950), starring Charlton Heston as Antony, David Bradley as Brutus, and Harold Tasker as Caesar.
Julius Caesar (1953), starring James Mason as Brutus, Marlon Brando as Antony and Louis Calhern as Caesar.
Julius Caesar (1970), starring Jason Robards as Brutus, Charlton Heston as Antony and John Gielgud as Caesar.
Julius Caesar (1978; TV), BBC Television Shakespeare adaptation starring Richard Pasco as Brutus, Keith Michell as Antony and Charles Gray as Caesar.