WS ABC Julius Caesar
Julius Caesar has been probably the most (and first) studied Shakespearean play by millions of students throughout the world. Why? According to Norrie Epstein in The Friendly Shakespeare, this play - one of the Bard's 'most austere and static' - was regularly foisted upon students when Latin was part of the curriculum and it was thought to have been useful in helping the poor students with their Latin studies. Even though few students learn Latin today, it remains 'embedded in the curriculum like a fly in amber.'
In addition, Julius Caesar is a short play (only Macbeth and The Comedy of Errors are shorter) and it's easy for teachers to teach. The plot is easy to follow and it doesn't contain a single nudge-'nudge-wink-wink' sexy pun or allusion.
However, despite the above, it has remained one of the most popular of WS's plays and George Bernard Shaw has described it as 'the most splendidly written political melodramas we possess.'
Another fan of this play was Adolf Hitler. He drew many sketches for its stage setting and his pet architect, Albert Speer, based his grandstand of the Zeppelinfeld on these sketches. It was from this grandstand that Hitler made his infamous Nuremburg speeches before the Second World War. Perhaps this staging also influenced Orson Welles. In 1937 in New York, he opened his production of Julius Caesar in a style that strongly reflected both Nazi Germany and Mussolini's Italy.
In connection with its popularity, according to Eddie Salmon'sShakespeare: A Hundred years on Film, up to the year 2000, WS's plays have been filmed and adapted, either loosely or closely, 479 times! Julius Caesar comes in sixth, with 24 films and is preceded by Romeo & Juliet (77), Hamlet (75), Othello (43) The Taming of the Shrew (42) and Macbeth (32). Note: this list doesn't contain any of the Histories.
As for the silver stage, according to the Royal Shakespeare Company (www.shakespeare.org.uk), Julius Caesar has been performed 54 times as opposed to Hamlet (82), Twelfth Night (81), As You Like it (80), The Merchant of Venice (75), Macbeth (64) andRomeo and Juliet (61).
The play was probably written in 1599 (Why, O why didn't WS date his manuscripts? It would have made life a lot easier for me and the other million Bardolators.) and was based on Sir Thomas North's translation of Plutarch's Lives. The play appears in theFirst Folio, (1623) and its first performance at the Globe Theatre was recorded on 21 September 1599. It has been regularly performed since then in both Roman and Elizabethan style as well as in modern dress.
As for Caesar himself, WS paints him as an ambiguous figure. On the one hand we see him as a demi-god, a tyrant and as Marc Antony says, "the noblest man that ever lived." But on the other hand, Shakespeare also depicts him as an infirm old man who suffers from deafness, epilepsy and who is a poor swimmer.
It should also be noted, that much of what we learn about this Roman ruler is influenced not by the man himself (after all, he is physically removed from the stage half-way through the play) but by the conspirators responsible for his assassination. What motivates them of course is their jealousy of his ruling position and their ambition which drives them to kill him.
Even Cassius who derides Caesar for being a weakling, 'a man of feeble temper' and not fit to rule admits that:
...he doth bestride the narrow world
Like a Colossus, and we petty men
Walk under his huge legs, and peep about
To find ourselves dishonourable graves (i.ii)
Finally, one of the characters who is studied as deeply as Caesar himself is Brutus. This unwilling conspirator emerges as the play's most complex character and tragic hero. He is a powerful public figure, a military leader and a loving husband. On the other hand, he is an assassin. As Cork Milner says in The Everything Shakespeare Book, 'His rigid idealism becomes both his greatest virtue and his tragic flaw.'
Next time: Juliet of "Romeo and..."
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