Julius Caesar: Third Series (The Arden Shakespeare Third Series)

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Part 2 focuses on the play’s key interpretive questions: how we are invited to judge the central characters. Is Caesar, in Shakespeare’s story, really a tyrant who needed to be killed? Is Brutus a noble political hero or a misguided egoist? With Professor Dobson, you’ll discover how Shakespeare restructured this familiar story to make easy judgments impossible. Professor Dobson also discusses the Roman values that the characters strive to embody and how these values generate friendships, rivalries, and violence. Although the play is named Julius Caesar, Brutus speaks more than four times as many lines as the title character; and the central psychological drama of the play focuses on Brutus' struggle between the conflicting demands of honor, patriotism, and friendship. ...

Daniell, David, ed. Julius Caesar. Walton-on-Thames: Thomas Nelson for the Arden Shakespeare, 1998. no picture-taking was allowed so these are media images - you'll have to take my word for it that I was there At the end, Brutus knows that his dream of restoring the republic through violence has failed. Hearing of the suicide of a fellow leader of his own side, he reflects that “O Julius Caesar, thou art mighty yet;/Thy spirit walks abroad and turns our swords/In our own proper entrails.” His beloved wife Portia – who, earlier in the play, knelt before Brutus as Calpurnia knelt before Caesar, in another linkage between the characters of Caesar and Brutus – has taken her own life, and in a particularly horrifying way. though his hypothesis seemed to be, Bowers's "hard bibliographical evidence' for it has not stood the test. John Jowett subsequently pointed out that variants in copy can be determined only after eliminating "the possibility of a mechanical explanation in terms of printing-house practice" (245), and he found such an explanation in a limited supply of ligature types for the Italic letters ssi in combination. This is an unusual combination to begin with, and Jowett was able to establish precisely how many ligatures were available in cases x and y to print ssi as an Italic combination (including the speech prefix " Cassi."), when the compositors were setting type for Julius Caesar (245-46). Working closely from the evidence assembled by Hinman, and taking all printing house factors into consideration, Jowett reached an inescapable conclusion: "Shortage of ssi ligatures, not authorial revision, explains the speech-prefix variant on ll3" (252). In sum, Jowett found harder bibliographical evidence than Bowers's, and Jowett's evidence undermined Bowers's argument for revision in the copy for Julius Caesar. You fell for that first man of Rome, the republic is your responsibility, and all that. As it turns out, you aren’t the only dagger maestro in your family. Gaius Servilius Structus Ahala, a distant relative of yours, saved Rome from another tyrant named Spurius Maelius. Of course, that is all in the far distant past and might even be a myth, but Cassius knows the right buttons to push.Shakespeare, William. Julius Caesar. Edited by David Daniell. The Arden Shakespeare. London: Bloomsbury Publishing Plc, 1998, reprinted 2018. Maus, Katharine Eisaman, “Introduction,” Julius Caesar, in Shakespeare, William. The Norton Shakespeare. Edited by Stephen Greenblatt, Walter Cohen, Suzanne Gossett, Jean E. Howard, Katharine Eisaman Maus and Gordon McMullan. 3rd ed. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2016. When the poor of the city suffered, Caesar wept with pity for them. Hardly the actions of an ambitious man, who should be harder-hearted than this! But Brutus says Caesar was ambitious, and Brutus is honourable, so … it must be true … right? Note how Antony continues to sow the seeds of doubt in the crowd’s mind. Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears”, Antony says to the crowd. I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him./The evil that men do lives after them;/The good is oft interred with their bones.” Yet praise Caesar is exactly what Antony does. In response to the charges that Caesar was acting out of an ambition to be a king of Rome, Antony points out Caesar’s repeated acts of generosity toward the Roman people, and suggests that “Ambition should be made of sterner stuff.” He weeps as he declares that if any Roman fails to mourn for Caesar, then “O judgment, thou art fled to brutish beasts,/And men have lost their reason.” The crowd starts to turn away from Brutus’ point of view, and toward Antony’s. Punctuation was not regularized in the late sixteenth century, and Hinman demonstrated that punctuation in the Folio was often produced by the compositors who set the type, so a modern editor has considerable latitude in creating a text that assists modern readers with punctuation that they expect. "Considerable latitude" is far from "complete latitude," however. Punctuation can affect meaning, as linguists and grammarians well know, and editors have to choose which meaning is preferable. Daniell argues that the Folio's use of colons is in this category (Arden 3, 130-31), and his edition therefore retains colons that most modern editions (including this one) either delete or replace with some other punctuation.

A sourcebook of documents regarding what we know about the historical figure Cleopatra. She was very closely tied to Caesar, so if you’ve ever wanted to learn more about her and what the historical sources say about her look no further (actually, please look further–more research is always better!) Similarly, Brutus puts his public self before his private self; he talks himself into becoming an assassin by persuading himself that he can do so in a manner that will be congruent with his well-known reputation for honourable behaviour. Reminding himself that “I know no personal cause to spurn at [Caesar]”, Brutus states that saving the Roman Republic "must be by [Caesar’s] death." Considering (as Cassius has taken pains to remind him) that his ancestor, another Brutus, dethroned the last king of Rome 500 years before, Brutus succumbs to his own form of hubris or fatal pride that leads him to a moment of fatal decision or hamartia. Once he joins with the conspirators, he has set himself in a path that will lead him to destruction. Here's the plot: a demagogue threatens democracy and his own allies in the Senate have to decide whether to remove him. So you can see why the Public Theater's minds went to recent events when they staged Julius Caesar in Central Park. Their version, set in modern times and featuring a familiar-looking Caesar, has made some headlines, and I won't lie: the murder scene was disturbing to watch. Art often tries to be dangerous, but it rarely succeeds. This production, which we attended on its final weekend, felt dangerous.It is a tense time in Rome; strange phenomena manifest themselves in the streets. Acclaimed by the people after all his military victories, Caesar seems poised to become king of a Roman Republic where “king” has been a dirty word ever since Tarquin the Proud, the last king of Rome, was deposed in 509 B.C. Caesar makes a show of refusing the crown, but not a very convincing one. In this menacing setting, wise people keep their own counsel. The great orator Cicero, whom the conspirators vainly hope to welcome into their ranks, slyly dismisses both Caesar's denying-the-crown charade and the conspirators’ blandishments by speaking in Greek; and future conspirator Casca, evidently a unilingual Roman, can only say that "it was Greek to me." It's also a really good play as characters go. Every character parallels around three other characters in interesting ways; Brutus especially is a foil to all of the other three leads. All the relationships between the characters are so interesting and heartbreaking. Julius Caesar’s tragedy is so closely bound up with that of his friend-turned-assassin Brutus that perhaps William Shakespeare should have titled this play Caesar and Brutus. His 1599 play’s title, The Tragedy of Julius Caesar, draws the reader's or playgoer's focus to one of history’s truly seminal moments: Caesar’s assassination on March 15 (“the Ides of March”) in the year 44 B.C. Yet for all the title’s focus on Caesar alone, Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar is very much a twinned tragedy, with not one but two tragic heroes following the Aristotelian cycle of hubris (fatal character flaw), hamartia (fatal decision), and anagnorisis (the hero's after-the-fall recognition of their place in the cosmos). And it is a play that gains further resonance from considering the English historical context within which Shakespeare lived and wrote. As he was valiant," says Brutus, "I honor him. But as he was ambitious, I slew him." And how ambitious was he? Was Brutus right to fear for democracy? There's a key scene that answers that question. In it, Caesar, who "would not be a wolf / but that he sees the Romans are but sheep," is offered a crown, three times, and refuses it. The smartest person in Rome, Cicero, then gives a brilliant speech. And here's the funny (and quintessentially Shakespearean thing) about that scene: we don't see it. It's narrated to us by Casca, a conspirator, who tells us that he thinks Caesar was just holding out for a better crown. And that speech by Cicero? Well, it was in Greek. Casca didn't understand a word of it. The famous phrase, "It was Greek to me," represents Shakespeare allowing you to decide. These lines have haunted audiences and readers for centuries, since The Bard first presented the play, believed to be in 1599, when Shakespeare would have been 35. Bringing to life scenes from Roman history, this tragedy, more than presenting a biography of the leader, instead forms a study in loyalty, honor, patriotism and friendship.

Shakespeare, William. Julius Caesar. Edited by Arthur Humphreys. The Oxford Shakespeare. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1984, reissued 2008. au where this whole thing takes place on tumblr and Antony's speech is just a callout post and no one stays in their lane Julius Caesar (100 B.C.-44 B.C.), Roman general and statesman is the namesake for July. Before 44 B.C, July was called Quintilis (5th month, Originally there were 10 months in a year then the Roman calendar changed to 12 making Quintilis the 7th month but it kept its name–until it was changed in 44BC). However, the Roman Senate decided to honor Julius Caesar after his death by renaming Quintilis, his birth month, to Julius, eventually becoming July. Be patient till the last. Romans, countrymen, and lovers! Hear me for my cause, and be silent that you may hear. Believe me for mine honor, and have respect to mine honor that you may believe. Censure me in your wisdom, and awake your senses that you may the better judge. If there be any in this assembly, any dear friend of Caesar’s, to him I say that Brutus' love to Caesar was no less than his. If then that friend demand why Brutus rose against Caesar, this is my answer: not that I loved Caesar less, but that I loved Rome more”Cassius’ ambition invalidates him as a valid, fair leader and Marc-Antony’s loyalty is but a dull reflection of the gullibility of the populace, an undistinguishable mass of fervent venerators that can easily be transformed into a barbarous mob. There are two female roles in the play: Brutus' wife Portia and Caesar's wife Calpurnia. They're almost the same part, wary of the danger to their powerful husbands and not wanting them to leave the house. Of course, neither Brutus or Caesar pay any attention, going to capitol and getting their fool selves killed, ultimately. I was compelled here or there by Shakespeare's facility with witty dialogue, particularly the opening scene of the play featuring Roman rabble marching