Where Caesar Had It Coming

Julius Caesar by William Shakespeare
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Catching up on all the Shakespeare I never read, I was a little surprised to realize I never read or studied Julius Caesar in any college class or on my own to teach in high school. I kinda thought I had, but nope--this was definitely the first time through the whole thing, despite so many lines being familiar.

And just because I want to, I'm reviewing this as if it's a random play come to hand by an unknown author. Seen that way--I give this 4/5 stars.

A modern reader can dip into this play pretty well, IMO, understanding it well enough to follow the story without maybe keeping all the characters straight. And it's reasonably entertaining that way. Seeing men of renown trying to decide if it's better to commit murder than let a populist undermine their republican institutions and destroy generations of custom and tradition to become a tyrant is brilliant. You think, if you don't know the actual history, that maybe it will work out. The people will see that they are defenders of the Law even if they break the small "l" law to uphold it, since no one else was going to save them. Not the courts, amirite?

The murder comes surprisingly early in the narrative. We get the public reaction in the middle, and then we turn to the resulting war in the end. I miss seeing the part where Brutus and Cassius end up in Greece with their own armies--how'd they do that? Suddenly, without benefit of that explanation, we're somewhere near Philippi, and four armies are ready to face off. Cassius and Brutus are angry and then they're not, which I didn't understand and I haven't researched to have it explained, and they're facing Antony and Octavius, who aren't exactly seeing eye to eye either.

I'd like to see the fighting scenes on the stage, see how it works, because it doesn't sound very satisfying. A natural effect of producing such stories on a literal stage is that you can't get an actual army together (like you can in a movie) so most of the important stuff must happen offstage, with somebody narrating what they're seeing or what has just passed. It feels less immediate, but you can see why it must be that way.

Shakespeare has Cassius commit suicide when he mistakenly believes his friend has been captured, and then his friend follows him. I kinda hate that. Cassius really did commit suicide, though, however it happened, which makes it pretty anticlimactic when Brutus does the same thing. In real life, apparently, Cassius and Brutus each killed themselves after different battles near Philippi, and all Shakespeare did was bring them closer in time. Either way, it's not great drama to have the main characters just tap out at the end. Real life sucks.

I kinda wonder if Elizabethan audiences thought their own government was closer to the Roman Republic of old or the Roman Empire that came after. Did they see the parliament of that day as a sort of modern senate with republican pretensions? Or did they view their sovereign as a tyrant who ruled without much public pressure to counterbalance their power?

Which team were they rooting for? That's what I wonder.

Mostly fun to read. Not too long. Some memorable lines, even if you're not reading for that purpose. Antony's speech is very clever; it took a good writer to make that work the way it did. The ending disappoints a bit, kinda petering out, but overall it's still entertaining after all these years.

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