Main Characters

Julius Caesar — a great Roman general and senator

Marcus Brutus — the tragic hero of the play; a Roman senator

Mark Antony — Caesar's friend

Cassius — a conspirator against Caesar

Octavius Caesar — Caesar's adopted son and appointed successor

Calphurnia — Caesar's wife

Portia — Brutus's wife

Flavius and Murellus — civil servants

Decius Brutus — a member of the conspiracy

Cicero — a famous Roman orator

Cinna — one of the conspirators

Cinna the poet — an innocent man killed by the mob because he has the same name as Cinna the conspirator

Casca, Metellus Cimber, Trebonius, and Caius Ligarius — conspirators against Caesar

Aemilius Lepidus — the third member of the triumvirate with Antony and Octavius

Artemidorus — he tries to warn Caesar of the conspiracy

Soothsayer — he warns Caesar about the Ides of March, but Caesar ignores him

Lucilius, Titinius, Pindarus, and Messala — soldiers in Brutus's army

Varrus and Claudio — Brutus's attendants

Introduction

Julius Caesar is one of Shakespeare's shortest plays. (The Comedy of Errors and Macbeth are both just a bit shorter). It was written around 1599 and performed at the Globe Theatre, a playhouse owned by Shakespeare's increasingly successful company, the Lord Chamberlain's Men. The only authoritative text of the play is the 1623 First Folio edition. The stage directions suggest this text is based on the theater company's promptbook rather than Shakespeare's manuscript.

Julius Caesar was the earliest of Shakespeare's three Roman plays. As are Antony and Cleopatra (which is a sort of sequel) and Coriolanus, Julius Caesar is a history in that it dramatizes real events. The play is clearly a tragedy because of the tragic character of Brutus, the noble Roman whose involvement in the conspiracy to save the state plunges both him and his country into chaos.

Rome was sharply divided into the patrician citizens, senators, and the growing but under-represented plebeians, or common folk. Citizens who favored republican democratic rule were afraid that Julius Caesar's power would lead to their enslavement. A group of conspirators assassinated Caesar, and the civil war they hoped to avoid erupted anyway. The play follows events leading up to Caesar's death and the civil war.

Elizabethans would have been quick to pick up on the parallels between Ancient Rome becoming an imperial power, and Elizabeth's ability to consolidate the powers of the monarchy.

By 1599, Queen Elizabeth I had been queen for close to forty years and had enlarged her powers at the expense of the aristocracy and the House of Commons. At age sixty-six, particularly old for her time, and with no heirs or named successor, many feared her death would plunge England into the kind of chaos suffered during the fifteenth century. The story of Caesar's downfall provided a perspective on what might happen when accepted methods of distributing power were disrupted.

The Play

Julius Caesar enters as a hero having defeated the Gauls, then Pompey's army. Mark Antony attempts three times to crown Caesar king; however, some senators take this as a threat to Rome. Cassius, in particular, has serious misgivings about Caesar's ambition and is clearly jealous of his achievements. To offset Caesar's popular support, Cassius approaches Marcus Brutus, a nobleman known for his integrity. If Brutus were to support a coup, it will be more acceptable to the citizens of Rome, and equally important, Brutus is also a close friend of Caesar.

During a great storm, Brutus considers his options, realizing that the conspirators may well have to assassinate Caesar. Caesar, already warned by the Soothsayer and Calphurnia, his wife, ignores all advice to the contrary and pays a visit to the Senate. There, he is stabbed to death by Brutus, Cassius, and the others.

Brutus dissuades the conspirators from slaying Antony with Caesar. After the assassination Antony asks to accompany Caesar's body and speak at his funeral. Brutus agrees, and at the funeral he delivers a stirring oratory that explains the reasoning for the assassination. Antony follows with his famous “Friends, Romans, countrymen” speech, and through his masterful use of irony stirs the crowd to the point where they call for the blood of Cassius, Brutus, and anyone else associated with Caesar's death.

Antony then joins Octavius (Caesar's nephew) and Lepidus to wrest control of Rome by force of arms. Brutus and Cassius raise armies against them. In a final battle, with many of his coconspirators now dead, Cassius kills himself when facing defeat, and he is quickly followed by Brutus, who takes his own life rather than allowing himself to be taken captive. Upon discovering the body, Antony laments the tragic fall of Brutus, calling him the noblest of them all.

Commentary

In a world of self-serving ambition, Brutus is truly “the noblest Roman of them all,” but his commitment to principle repeatedly causes him to miscalculate. He ignores Cassius's suggestion to kill Antony as well as Caesar, and then, again against Cassius's advice, he allows Antony to speak a funeral oration over Caesar's body, plunging the city and the country into chaos.

Antony is strong where Brutus is weak. He is impulsive and quick-witted, and he is able to save himself by convincing the conspirators he is on their side, then in enraging the mob against the conspirators. Brutus is noble, to be sure, but Antony proves himself the consummate politician.

Shakespeare explores several themes in Julius Caesar. The play raises questions about what in our lives is determined by fate and how much free will we have. Cassius, for example, says, “The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves, that we are underlings.” On the other hand, Caesar tells his wife, “Death, a necessary end, will come when it will come.” The text explores public self versus private self and inflexibility versus compromise.

Brutus interprets his defeat as the work of Caesar's ghost — empowered by the people's devotion to Caesar — and the legacy of a man who somehow transcended fate. Both Brutus and Caesar are stubborn men who ultimately suffer fatally for it. It is the adaptable people, the ones who have the will to compromise, who survive.

Famous Lines

“The live-long day” (Act I, Scene I).

“Beware the ides of March” (Act I, Scene II).

“Let me have men about me that are fat, Sleek-headed men, and such as sleep o' nights: Yond Cassius has a lean and hungry look; He thinks too much: such men are dangerous” (Act I, Scene II).

“A dish fit for the gods” (Act II, Scene I).

“Cowards die many times before their deaths; The valiant never taste of death but once. Of all the wonders that I yet have heard, It seems to me most strange that men should fear; Seeing that death, a necessary end, Will come when it will come” (Act II, Scene II).

“Et tu, Brute!” (Act III, Scene I).

“O, pardon me, thou bleeding piece of earth, That I am meek and gentle with these butchers! Thou art the ruins of the noblest man That ever lived in the tide of times” (Act III, Scene I).

“Cry ‘Havoc,' and let slip the dogs of war” (Act III, Scene I).

“Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears; I come to bury Cæsar, not to praise him. The evil that men do lives after them; The good is oft interred with their bones” (Act III, Scene II).

“If you have tears, prepare to shed them now” (Act III, Scene II).

“This was the most unkindest cut of all” (Act III, Scene II).

“Great Cæsar fell. O, what a fall was there, my countrymen! Then I, and you, and all of us fell down, Whilst bloody treason flourish'd over us” (Act III, Scene II).

“There is a tide in the affairs of men Which taken at the flood, leads on to fortune; Omitted, all the voyage of their life Is bound in shallows and in miseries” (Act IV, Scene III).

“His life was gentle, and the elements So mix'd in him, that Nature might stand up And say to all the world, ‘This was a man!'” (Act V, Scene V).