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    Julius Caesar
    Julius Caesar
    Julius Caesar
    Ebook214 pages2 hours

    Julius Caesar

    By William Shakespeare

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    About this ebook

    Based on Plutarch's account of the lives of Brutus, Julius Caesar, and Mark Antony, Julius Caesar was the first of Shakespeare's Roman history plays. Presented for the first time in 1599, the play reveals the great dramatist's consummate ability to explore and express the most profound human emotions and instincts. So clearly and urgently does it impact its insights into history and human behavior, Julius Caesar is traditionally among the first of Shakespeare's plays to be studied at the secondary-school level.
    In addition to its compelling insights into the human condition, Julius Caesar is also superb drama, as Brutus, Cassius, and the other conspirators hatch a plot to overthrow Caesar, dictator of Rome. After Caesar is assassinated, Mark Antony cleverly turns the crowd against the conspirators in one of the most famous speeches in literature. In the civil war that follows, the forces of Mark Antony and Octavius Caesar eventually win out over the armies of Cassius and Brutus. Humiliated and desperate, both conspirators choose to end their lives. These tragic events unfold in a riveting dramatic spectacle that also raises profound questions about power, government, ethics, and loyalty.
    Now this great tragedy is available in this inexpensive edition, complete and unabridged with explanatory footnotes.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherDover Publications
    Release dateMar 12, 2012
    ISBN9780486113661
    Author

    William Shakespeare

    William Shakespeare was born in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, in 1564. The date of his birth is not known but is traditionally 23 April, St George's Day. Aged 18, he married a Stratford farmer's daughter, Anne Hathaway. They had three children. Around 1585 William joined an acting troupe on tour in Stratford from London, and thereafter spent much of his life in the capital. A member of the leading theatre group in London, the Chamberlain's Men, which built the Globe Theatre and frequently performed in front of Queen Elizabeth I, Shakespeare wrote 36 plays and much poetry besides. He died in 1616.

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    Reviews for Julius Caesar

    4/5

    19 ratings17 reviews

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    • 4/5
      I liked this one. There is some good banter at the beginning, the speeches over Caesar’s body are wonderful, and the scenes set at the battle of Philippi felt appropriately hopeful or despondent. Caesar is a bit of a non-entity, though, and I’d have wanted a little more friction between Mark Antony and Octavian Caesar. But a very enjoyable play on the whole.
    • 5/5
      This was great fun, although it was quite hard keeping all the characters straight in my mind because so many of them had unfamiliar Roman/Latin names.
    • 3/5
      This is the best William Shakespeare that I have ever read. I haven't read much but this one was really appealing to me. Even though I knew the ending, I couldn't put the book down until the end.
    • 5/5
      I love the Folger editions w awesome illustrations from the library. This is a larger sized paperback which is easy on the eyes. I have to say that Shakespeare is fairly neutral in presenting the main characters.Was happy to see "Let loose the dogs of war", though I previously thought that was from one of the Henry's.
    • 4/5
      "Yon Cassius has a lean and hungry look." This was one of Shakespeare's more excellent books in my opinion. While historical it wasn't as bad as one of the Richard books--it had a timeless story without being too historical or too political, especially British-ly political. One of the original eponymous tragedy, a story of a man's success and betrayal. A wonderful masterpiece and underrated.
    • 4/5
      Good story.
    • 5/5
      I hope to see this again soon. The first time I saw it as a high school play, the next time in 1997 at a Pub theater (more members of the cast than the audience) next to the railroad station in Greenwich England...with a wonderful redo as a Mafia, Chicago script.
    • 2/5
      I read this play during my Sophomore year of high school. I loved it! "Et tu, Brute!" I thought of it again because I'm reading "A Long Way Gone", and this play is referenced frequently.
    • 3/5
      Great Play, could easily see this as a modern re-telling set in the Italian Mob or as hotile financial take over...I see Macbeth the same way.But betrayal is a hell of a thing.
    • 3/5
      I read this due to my interest in HBO's Rome series (which has been cancelled after only 2 seasons - why TV gods, WHY???). Anyway, as an English major I read tons of Shakespeare, so it wasn't a challenging read for me and I found my mind analyzing language/passages as I would have been required to do in school. Let's just say the history plays have never been my favorites; maybe knowing the ending spoils the play?
    • 5/5
      One begins to understand cultural references the more one reads Shakespeare, and Julius Caesar is no exception to this rule (this is perhaps especially true for Star Trek fans). The fault being not in our stars but in ourselves is a great bit of poetry that everyone should heed.
    • 3/5
      Had to read the play, cause I love the history. Im not a big fan of Shakespeare, but the loved the play because of the charectors.
    • 5/5
      A wonderful classic that truly speaks to the duality of man and his eternal search for not only power, but those that are truly pure at heart. Amazing how many quotes and sayings have come from this piece of literature.
    • 3/5
      Not Shakespeare's best, but then even his lesser works are better than 99% of the rest out there. Not my favorite, but still recommended.
    • 4/5
      One of the most powerful of his plays. Yes, the characters are set in black and white in true Shakespearean style and there is no room for hman error, but therein lies the beauty and power of this drama.
    • 4/5
      It's Shakespeare, so pretty much everyone dies.
    • 5/5
      At this point (I've not yet read King Lear or Othello), this is my favorite of Shakespeare's tragedies. Unlike the essentially silly situation of Romeo and Juliet or the artificially dragged out events of Hamlet, Brutus' struggle to reconcile patriotism and friendship, passion and honor mesmerized me right from the beginning.This is a high point in my quest to read/re-read all of Shakespeare's plays.

    Book preview

    Julius Caesar - William Shakespeare

    e9780486113661_covere9780486113661_i0001.jpge9780486113661_i0002.jpg

    At Dover Publications we’re committed to producing books in an earth-friendly manner and to helping our customers make greener choices. Manufacturing books in the United States ensures compliance with strict environemental laws and eliminates the need for international freight shipping, a major contributor to global air pollution.

    And printing on recycled paper helps minimize our consumption of trees, water and fossil fuels. The text of Julius Caesar was printed on paper made with 30% post-consumer waste, and the cover was printed on paper made with 10% post-consumer waste. According to Environmental Defense’s Paper Calculator, by using this innovative paper instead of conventional papers, we achieved the following environmental benefits:

    Trees Saved: 20 • Air Emissions Eliminated: 1,916 pounds

    Water Saved: 9,230 gallons • Solid Waste Eliminated: 560 pounds

    For more information on our environmental practices, please visit us online at www.doverpublications.com/green

    DOVER THRIFT EDITIONS

    GENERAL EDITOR: STANLEY APPELBAUM

    EDITOR OF THIS VOLUME: SHANE WELLER

    Performance

    This Dover Thrift Edition may be used in its entirety, in adaptation or in any other way for theatrical productions, professional and amateur, in the United States, without fee, permission or acknowledgment. (This may not apply outside of the United States, as copyright conditions may vary.)

    This Dover edition, first published in 1991, contains the unabridged text of Julius Caesar as published in Volume XV of The Caxton Edition of the Complete Works of William Shakespeare, Caxton Publishing Company, London, n.d.

    Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

    Shakespeare, William, 1564-1616.

    Julius Caesar / William Shakespeare.

    p. cm.—(Dover thrift editions)

    9780486113661

    ISBN-10: 0-486-26876-4

    1. Caesar, Julius—Drama.

    2. Rome—History—53-44 B.C.—Drama.

    I. Title. II. Series.

    PR2808.A1 1991

    822.3’3—dc20

    91-14338

    CIP

    Manufactured in the United States by Courier Corporation

    26876418

    www.doverpublications.com

    Note

    FIRST PERFORMED in the fall of 1599 at the newly built Globe Theatre in London’s Southwark district on the south bank of the Thames, Julius Caesar marks the midpoint of William Shakespeare’s (1564—1616) career as a dramatist. As his historical source on the assassination of the great Roman statesman, general and author Julius Caesar in 44 B.C., and the subsequent defeat of the conspirators on the battlefield at Philippi, Macedonia, in 42 B.C., Shakespeare relies upon Sir Thomas North’s Lives of the noble Grecians and Romanes (1579). North’s work is an English translation (based on Jacques Amyot’s French version) of the Greek biographer Plutarch’s Parallel Lives. It is interesting to note that Shakespeare follows North’s phraseology far more closely than he had that of Raphael Holinshed, whose Chronicles (1587) had been his principal source when writing the English history plays.

    Julius Caesar is in many respects an epilogue to the English histories of the 1590’s and a prologue to the great tragedies of the first decade of the seventeenth century. It shares many of the themes of the earlier histories, exploring the genesis and effects of popular unrest, struggles for political power and civil war. The play is also, however, a moving and ambiguous study of personal tragedy in the figure of Marcus Brutus, and of the seemingly irreconcilable conflicts between friendship and duty, moral integrity and political strength.

    Table of Contents

    Title Page

    Copyright Page

    Note

    Dramatis Personae

    Act I—

    Act II—

    Act III—

    Act IV—

    Act V—

    DOVER THRIFT EDITIONS

    Dramatis Personae

    JULIUS CAESAR.

    e9780486113661_i0003.jpg

    FLAVIUS and MARULLUS,tribunes.

    ARTEMIDORUS of Cnidos, a teacher of Rhetoric.

    A Soothsayer.

    CINNA, a poet. Another Poet.

    e9780486113661_i0004.jpg

    PINDARUS, servant to Cassius.

    CALPURNIA, wife to Caesar.

    PORTIA, wife to Brutus.

    Senators, Citizens, Guards, Attendants, &c.

    SCENE: Rome; the neighbourhood of Sardis; the neighbourhood of Philippi

    Act I—

    Scene I—Rome

    A STREET

    Enter FLAVIUS, MARULLUS, and certain Commoners.

    FLAV

    Hence! home, you idle creatures, get you home:

    Is this a holiday? what! know you not,

    Being mechanical, ¹ you ought not walk

    Upon a labouring day without the sign

    Of your profession? Speak, what trade art thou?

    FIRST COM.

    Why, sir, a carpenter.

    MAR.

    Where is thy leather apron and thy rule?

    What dost thou with thy best apparel on?

    You, sir, what trade are you?

    SEC. COM.

    Truly, sir, in respect of² a fine workman, I am but, as you would say, a cobbler. ³

    MAR.

    But what trade art thou? answer me directly.

    SEC. COM.

    A trade, sir, that, I hope, I may use with a safe conscience; which is indeed, sir, a mender of bad soles.⁴

    MAR.

    What trade, thou knave? thou naughty knave, what trade?

    SEC. COM.

    Nay, I beseech you, sir, be not out⁵ with me: yet, if you be out,⁶ sir, I can mend you.

    MAR. What mean’st thou by that? mend me, thou saucy fellow!

    SEC. COM.

    Why, sir, cobble you.

    FLAV.

    Thou art a cobbler, art thou?

    SEC. COM.

    Truly, sir, all that I live by is with the awl: I meddle with no tradesman’s matters, nor women’s matters, but with awl. I am indeed, sir, a surgeon to old shoes; when they are in great danger, I re-cover them. As proper men as ever trod upon neats-leather⁷ have gone upon my handiwork.

    FLAV.

    But wherefore art not in thy shop to-day?

    Why dost thou lead these men about the streets?

    SEC. COM.

    Truly, sir, to wear out their shoes, to get myself into more work. But indeed, sir, we make holiday, to see Caesar and to rejoice in his triumph.

    MAR.

    Wherefore rejoice? What conquest brings he home?

    What tributaries follow him to Rome,

    To grace in captive bonds his chariot-wheels?

    You blocks, you stones, you worse than senseless things!

    O you hard hearts, you cruel men of Rome,

    Knew you not Pompey? Many a time and oft

    Have you climb’d up to walls and battlements,

    To towers and windows, yea, to chimney-tops,

    Your infants in your arms, and there have sat

    The live-long day with patient expectation

    To see great Pompey pass the streets of Rome:

    And when you saw his chariot but appear,

    Have you not made an universal shout,

    That Tiber trembled underneath her banks

    To hear the replication⁸ of your sounds

    Made in her concave shores?

    And do you now put on your best attire?

    And do you now cull out a holiday?

    And do you now strew flowers in his way

    That comes in triumph over Pompey’s blood?⁹

    Be gone!

    Run to your houses, fall upon your knees,

    Pray to the gods to intermit the plague

    That needs must light on this ingratitude.

    FLAV.

    Go, go, good countrymen, and, for this fault,

    Assemble all the poor men of your sort;

    Draw them to Tiber banks and weep your tears

    Into the channel, till the lowest stream

    Do kiss the most exalted shores of all. ¹⁰

    [Exeunt all the Commoners. ]

    See, whether their basest metal be not moved;

    They vanish tongue-tied in their guiltiness.

    Go you down that way towards the Capitol;

    This way will I: disrobe the images,

    If you do find them deck’d with ceremonies.¹¹

    MAR.

    May we do so?

    You know it is the feast of Lupercal.¹²

    FLAV.

    It is no matter; let no images

    Be hung with Caesar’s trophies. I’ll about,

    And drive away the vulgar from the streets:

    So do you too, where you perceive them thick.

    These growing

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