3.5 

Julius Caesar

By William Shakespeare
Julius Caesar by William Shakespeare digital book - Fable

Publisher Description

After defeating enemies in battle, Roman citizens celebrate in the streets as Julius Caesar and his entourage make their way through the city. As Caesar passes a soothsayer, he receives an ominous warning: “Beware the ides of March,” which he immediately disregards. Meanwhile, some of his closest followers are convinced their leader has become too powerful and plot his removal. Plutarch’s Lives of the Noble Grecians and Romans was Shakespeare’s primary source for Julius Caesar.

This Standard Ebooks production is based on William George Clark and William Aldis Wright’s 1887 Victoria edition, which is taken from the Globe edition.

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Julius Caesar Reviews

3.5
“I legitimately appreciate how there are so often ghosts, bad omens, and dramatic, preventable suicides in these plays. I kept thinking about Mean Girls lol. And I totally would've been a soothsayer. Beware the ides of March!”
“‘Is it come to this?’ ‘All pity choked with custom of fell deeds: / And Caesar’s spirit, ranging for revenge, / With Ate by his side come from hot hell, / Shall in these confines with a monarch’s voice / Cry “Havoc,” and let slip the dogs of war.’ ‘Not that I loved Caesar less, but that I loved Rome more.’ ‘Speak, hands, for me!’ ‘Cowards die many times before their deaths.’ ‘Let us swear our resolution.’ — ‘No, not an oath: if not the face of men, / The sufferance of our souls, the time’s abuse,— / If these be motives weak, break off betimes, / And every man hence to his idle bed; / So let high-sighted tyranny range on, / Till each man drop by lottery. But if these, / As I’m sure they do, bear fire enough / To kindle cowards […] then, countrymen, / What need we any spur, but our own cause, / To prick us to redress?’ ‘And why should Caesar be a tyrant, then? / Poor man! I know he would not be a wolf, / But that he sees the Romans are but sheep: / He were no lion, were not Romans hinds. / Those that with haste will make a mighty fire / Begin with the weak straws: what trash is Rome, / What rubbish, and what offal, when it serves / For the base matter to illuminate / So vile a thing as Caesar!’ // GOD I loved this. the first & second acts set against the blood-fire rain, with a silent lioness stalking the capitol; mark anthony swaying the masses with his disingenuous populism in the third act; the ghost of caesar visiting brutus on the eve of battle; the breaking of epicureans into superstition; the running from fate felt, by the end, to be futile. of course the brutality is distinctly roman — & obviously appealed to a younger shakespeare in titus andronicus — but there’s so much here about contemporary political expediency. the tenuousness of brutus & cassius’s affiliation, the equal tenuousness of anthony & octavius’s ‘triumvirs’ (from whom lepidus is immediately & callously expelled). these loose seams give the play a real vitality, & lend every death weight. would love to see a grand, surreal adaptation.”

About William Shakespeare

William Shakespeare (bapt. 26 April 1564 – 23 April 1616) was an English playwright, poet and actor, widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's greatest dramatist. He is often called England's national poet and the "Bard of Avon" (or simply "the Bard"). His extant works, including collaborations, consist of some 39 plays, 154 sonnets, three long narrative poems, and a few other verses, some of uncertain authorship. His plays have been translated into every major living language and are performed more often than those of any other playwright. His works continue to be studied and reinterpreted.

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