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The Oxford School Shakespeare has become the preferred introduction to the literary legacy of the greatest playwright in the English language. This...
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Oct 09, 2011
Madeline
rated it: 
Julius Caesar, abridged:
BRUTUS: I love Caesar!
CASSIUS: He's a power-hungry bastard. I think we should kill him.
BRUTUS: Dude, we totally should.
DECIUS: Happy Ides of March, Caesar. Ready to go to the Senate?
CAESAR: I dunno. My wife just had a dream about you and the rest of the senators washing their hands in my blood, so I think I'm going to call in sick today.
DECIUS: Okay, I'll just tell the guys that you're a pussy who More...
BRUTUS: I love Caesar!
CASSIUS: He's a power-hungry bastard. I think we should kill him.
BRUTUS: Dude, we totally should.
DECIUS: Happy Ides of March, Caesar. Ready to go to the Senate?
CAESAR: I dunno. My wife just had a dream about you and the rest of the senators washing their hands in my blood, so I think I'm going to call in sick today.
DECIUS: Okay, I'll just tell the guys that you're a pussy who More...
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Mar 18, 2011
Bird Brian
rated it: 
William Shakespeare obviously had a fondness for Classical history and literature. Here's a[n] (incomplete?) list of antiquity-themed works he wrote:
-Antony and Cleopatra
-Coriolanus
-The Phoenix and Turtle
-Julius Caesar
-Pericles
-Cymbeline
-Timon of Athens
-Troilus and Cressida
-Venus and Adonis
-The Rape of Lucrece
-Titus Andronicus
But the Bard left school at age fourteen, so how'd he learn so much history of antiquity? Was More...
-Antony and Cleopatra
-Coriolanus
-The Phoenix and Turtle
-Julius Caesar
-Pericles
-Cymbeline
-Timon of Athens
-Troilus and Cressida
-Venus and Adonis
-The Rape of Lucrece
-Titus Andronicus
But the Bard left school at age fourteen, so how'd he learn so much history of antiquity? Was More...
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May 05, 2011
Bill
rated it:
In the course of teaching high school sophomores for thirty years, I have read Julius Caesar more than thirty times, and I never grow tired of its richness of detail or the complexity of its characters. Almost every year, I end up asking myself the same simple question--"Who do I like better? Cassius or Brutus?--and almost every year my answer is different from what it was the year before. On one hand, we have Cassius--the selfish, manipulative conspirator who, after the assassination, sh
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Mar 26, 2009
Manny
rated it:
I once performed the whole of Mark Anthony's "Friends, Romans, Countrymen" speech on the steps outside the Great Hall in Trinity College, Cambridge, wearing a bedspread as a toga and with a bucket chained over my head. It's a long story. I think I still know the speech by heart.
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Jun 23, 2009
Greg
rated it: 
My tenth grade teacher killed this play, not Caesar style though, that would be the treatment my eleventh grade English teacher did in poor Macbeth, with lots and lots of daggers and bloodshed. I don't have a good literary reference to how Julius Caesar got killed by a teacher.
Supposedly the teacher was fucking at least one guy on the football team, and she was showing signs of being knocked-up by the end of the year. So maybe she had other things on her mind. In later years I'd More...
Supposedly the teacher was fucking at least one guy on the football team, and she was showing signs of being knocked-up by the end of the year. So maybe she had other things on her mind. In later years I'd More...
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May 21, 2011
Gorfo
rated it:
I didn't expect to like Julius Caesar. For some reason I expected it to be one of Shakespeare's history, in fact it was actually a tragedy. After reading Julius Caesar I've come to realize that there is no way on earth that I will ever be able to pick my favorite Shakespeare play! It just isn't possible! How could one man create so much amazing work (of course there is speculation about whether he wrote it all, but I don't care much for doubting Thomas's).
Julius Caesar is not so muc More...
Julius Caesar is not so muc More...
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May 27, 2011
Jeanette
rated it:
Final body count = 6
I've not read many of Shakespeare's plays dealing with actual history. This was not only a gripping story, but educational as well. A handful of Roman patricians plot to kill Julius Caesar, claiming that he is to be crowned king, which goes against the ideal of the Roman Republic. Treacherous plans never come to a good end, and this story is no exception. There's an excellent "Modern Perspective" piece at the end of this version of the play. It fills More...
I've not read many of Shakespeare's plays dealing with actual history. This was not only a gripping story, but educational as well. A handful of Roman patricians plot to kill Julius Caesar, claiming that he is to be crowned king, which goes against the ideal of the Roman Republic. Treacherous plans never come to a good end, and this story is no exception. There's an excellent "Modern Perspective" piece at the end of this version of the play. It fills More...
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Aug 12, 2007
Samyuktha
rated it:
When we study texts we learn to look deeper into a word. Of course, that depends on the teacher and personal interest. Literature studies is one of my favourite hobbies. I always like to see what is behind a word and draw it out.
Julius Caesar tested my abilities. It also unviersally made me understand that everyone is ambiguous in nature. It changed the way I relate to people. Surprisingly, a hard hitting tragedy made me learn to forgive whole heartedly.
This play increas More...
Julius Caesar tested my abilities. It also unviersally made me understand that everyone is ambiguous in nature. It changed the way I relate to people. Surprisingly, a hard hitting tragedy made me learn to forgive whole heartedly.
This play increas More...
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Dec 28, 2008
Alex
rated it:
I played Cicero and Titinius sophomore fall. Perhaps I am not qualified to accurately rate this play, as I have never read it cover-to-cover, but only seen it acted. It works decently as a play, especially the first four acts; act five, with its mind-numbing series of death-inducing battles, runs too long and too dryly.
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Jun 07, 2011
Techniquely, I didn't completely finish, but I had two pages left and I already knew what was going to happen. It was a good story, but I really only started to like it until Caesar dies and Mark Antony gives his speech. I'm not really a fan of Shakespeare's tragedies, anyways. It was a good story though.
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Jan 02, 2012
Amy
rated it:
I've been avoiding The Tragedy of Julius Caesar for years. I'm not sure why; maybe becuase I was never much interested in the actual Julius Caesar (that's changed as I've aged), maybe because I didn't much enjoy some of Shakespeare's other historical dramas (I'm looking at you King Henrys and King Richards), or maybe it's just because it never made more than a tiny blip on my radar (school readings of Shakespeare were taken up by Romeo and Juliet, Macbeth, King Lear, and A Midsummer Night's Dre
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Oct 19, 2011
Lillie
rated it:
So far this my third reading for Shakespeare and so far this is my favourite for its historical true events..
Since the play is named after Julius Caesar I expected lots of him, but I was surprised that he gets assassinated at only the beginning of the third act!
There's some parts that are completely unbelievable and just crazy like when Caesar's ghost appears to Brutus and Brutus talk with him so normally as if that isn't scary enough! and how all of them died at the end,well most of More...
Since the play is named after Julius Caesar I expected lots of him, but I was surprised that he gets assassinated at only the beginning of the third act!
There's some parts that are completely unbelievable and just crazy like when Caesar's ghost appears to Brutus and Brutus talk with him so normally as if that isn't scary enough! and how all of them died at the end,well most of More...
Aug 03, 2011
Matthew
rated it:
Julius Caesar was not my favorite Shakespeare by a long shot. It lacked the technical depth of something like Tempest, the wit of something like Midsummer Night's Dream, and the action of Titus Andronicus, but there were moments within Caesar that were fantastic. The "Cry Havoc" soliloquy was just as good as it is made out to be, absolutely.
There were times that I felt Shakespeare was relying on his audience's knowledge of the events to tell the story. The pillaging scene was a mess More...
There were times that I felt Shakespeare was relying on his audience's knowledge of the events to tell the story. The pillaging scene was a mess More...
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Oct 22, 2010
Venus
rated it:
اگر برای بررسی آثار هر نمایشنامهنویسی قائل به یک انگیزه خاص باشیم، برای شناخت آثار ویلیامشکسپیر انگیزهها و ویژگیهای فراوانی وجود دارد، چون زبان خاص خود را دارد و از این لحاظ شبیه هیچ نمایشنامهنویس دیگری نیست. او در نمایشنامه «تراژدی قیصر٭» به کمک دیالوگهای عمیق، فلسفی و یا حتی روانشناسانه، تمام آنچه را که در اعماق ذهن و روح پرسوناژها نهفته است، به سطح میآورد. از این رو این اثر بیشتر بر دروننگری و درونجویی پرسوناژها و ذهنیتهایی که رویکردی به افسانه، اسطوره و اعتقادات تأویلپذیر دارند، شکل
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Oct 21, 2010
Prof. Mohamed
rated it:
Teaching Julius Caesar
Paper presented at the Sambalpur University, Orissa,August, 2002.
Teaching Julius Caesar at the Degree level has its own unique problems which I would like to present in this short paper on English Language Teaching. The degree students of Kerala state have three papers in English—Two during the first year and a third one (i.e. Shakespeare) during the second year. Their exposure to English literature is, in fact, very limited since they study on More...
Paper presented at the Sambalpur University, Orissa,August, 2002.
Teaching Julius Caesar at the Degree level has its own unique problems which I would like to present in this short paper on English Language Teaching. The degree students of Kerala state have three papers in English—Two during the first year and a third one (i.e. Shakespeare) during the second year. Their exposure to English literature is, in fact, very limited since they study on More...
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Jun 03, 2010
Rowland
rated it:
Julius Caesar takes place in ancient Rome in 44 B.C., when Rome was the center of an empire stretching from Britain to North Africa and from Persia to Spain. Yet even as the empire grew stronger, so, too, did the force of the dangers threatening its existence: Rome suffered from constant infighting between ambitious military leaders and the far weaker senators to whom they supposedly owed allegiance. The empire also suffered from a sharp division between citizens, who were represented in the sen
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Dec 17, 2009
Georgia_W
rated it:
"Beware the Ides of March". This is one of the most famous quotes in the Shakespearean drama, Julius Caesar. William Shakespeare's play, Julius Caesar, mesmerized me with its unique writing style and supernatural elements.
William Shakespeare's style of writing differs in so many ways from other authors. He writes his plays in a way that requires a deeper thinking. Some stories are more straight forward, however in the play Julius Caesar, Shakespeare turns the words around t More...
William Shakespeare's style of writing differs in so many ways from other authors. He writes his plays in a way that requires a deeper thinking. Some stories are more straight forward, however in the play Julius Caesar, Shakespeare turns the words around t More...
Dec 15, 2009
Crist
rated it:
What really happened in the minds of the conspirators that murdered Caesar? What could have resulted from this tradgedy? Shakespeare's Julius Caesar took me back to the days of the Romans, and showed me an intersting possible story behind the actual events surrounding Julius Caesar's death.
The theme of Julius Caesar is that every action has a reaction, or consequences, and we must deal with them, weather good or bad. Throughout the play, Brutus, the main character, is constantly face More...
The theme of Julius Caesar is that every action has a reaction, or consequences, and we must deal with them, weather good or bad. Throughout the play, Brutus, the main character, is constantly face More...
Dec 13, 2009
Julius Caesar, like many other works of famous literature by Shakespeare, is one of those books that everyone has to read at one point or another. It's a play that is considered to be a classic, like most of Shakespeare's works, and was a fairly decent book. The language used by the characters and the writing style were very outdated, but this was actually a book that was a decent read. Julius Caesar by Shakespeare was better than I expected it to be and was also a fairly good book.
T More...
T More...
Dec 11, 2009
Laureng
rated it:
Many people think that dramas written by William Shakespeare are dull and boring. This is not the case with Julius Caesar. I loved the historical action that Julius Caesar provided.
Julius Caesar tells the story of the demise of Julius Caesar and the consequences of his death. In an act for the common good, Marcus Brutus plots with a group of patricians to kill Caesar. They believe that with his death, a tyranny will be ended. Their plan begins to backfire when Mark Antony, a friend o More...
Julius Caesar tells the story of the demise of Julius Caesar and the consequences of his death. In an act for the common good, Marcus Brutus plots with a group of patricians to kill Caesar. They believe that with his death, a tyranny will be ended. Their plan begins to backfire when Mark Antony, a friend o More...
Aug 22, 2009
Darcy
rated it: 
I had to read this book in English. It was somewhat accurate and somewhat not. William Shakespeare writes a lot of plays about real and fictional characters. What I dislike the most is how it is written in Old English. Even his revised copies are difficult to read. I can't relate to any of the characters. I don't even find this play entertaining. I hate how you have to read so much William Shakespeare. I'm not a fan of him at all. All the rhythmic makes it too confusing. I know it was for them t
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Jan 12, 2012
Vicki
rated it:
After reading Rome and Rhetoric: Shakespeare's Julius Caesar, I watched the DVD version with Marlon Brando as Mark Antony, and thought I should read the whole play. It was interesting how often Caesar refers to himself in the third person, as in his Commentaries (The Conquest of Gaul). I was struck by the number of familiar phrases in the play. Not only "Beware the Ides of March" and "Friends, Romans, Countrymen..." but also "The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our star
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Dec 13, 2009
Nelson_h
rated it:
Julius Caesar, written by greatest English playwright ever, William Shakespeare is a captivating drama showcasing the downfall of Julius Caesar.
The main theme of Julius Caesar is do not kill people because the deed will come back to haunt you. This theme is portrayed throughout most of the novel.
William Shakespeare's writing style is different from current writing styles but not so different from writing styles of his time. Because Shakespeare wrote plays, Julius Caesar More...
The main theme of Julius Caesar is do not kill people because the deed will come back to haunt you. This theme is portrayed throughout most of the novel.
William Shakespeare's writing style is different from current writing styles but not so different from writing styles of his time. Because Shakespeare wrote plays, Julius Caesar More...
May 05, 2009
Mitchell
rated it:
book club choice
This time around I was struck by a few things:
1- How much this play is about the power of rhetoric, especially rhetoric used to persuade. Cassius persuading Brutus, Antony persuading the crowd. Brutus' lack of rhetoric that indicates his guilelessness. Compare his flat-footed speech at the funeral to Antony's brilliant oration. The rhetoric defines the character.
2- This is a play of what happens after giants fall. Octavius/Antony and Cassius/B More...
This time around I was struck by a few things:
1- How much this play is about the power of rhetoric, especially rhetoric used to persuade. Cassius persuading Brutus, Antony persuading the crowd. Brutus' lack of rhetoric that indicates his guilelessness. Compare his flat-footed speech at the funeral to Antony's brilliant oration. The rhetoric defines the character.
2- This is a play of what happens after giants fall. Octavius/Antony and Cassius/B More...
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Aug 19, 2009
James
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Even people who haven’t read the play can recite lines from Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar: “Et tu, Brute;” “I come not to praise Caesar but to bury him.” But the well-worn quotations produce a simplified sense of the plot, evoking an atmosphere of tyranny and retribution instead of the quickly shifting political landscape that makes up the drama’s core.
Shakespeare’s presentation of the political backstory is a model of economy, as he skillfully sums up the players, their alliances and More...
Shakespeare’s presentation of the political backstory is a model of economy, as he skillfully sums up the players, their alliances and More...
Jun 13, 2011
Toby
rated it:
Ever so slightly disappointing. While the first three acts are absolutely terrific, full of cracking speeches and dramatic tension (the raging, fiery tempest in Acts I and II is particularly powerful), I felt the play trailed off rather badly in Acts IV and V. The conclusion lacked the emotional punch of Hamlet or King Lear, and ultimately simply wasn't that... well, tragic. The sudden conflict and equally sudden reconciliation between Brutus and Cassius in Act IV felt a little contrived, and Br
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Jun 30, 2010
Dan
rated it:
This has got to be melodrama, generously globbed over (some) gorgeous poetry and (utterly) gnarly politics. While I can't even begin to understand Shakespeare's stance towards Brutus and Caesar, I can without any hesitation say, fuck mobs. Also, it's obvious, isn't it: Caesar's greatest strength was making everyone think if he fell, Rome fell. Holy shit. Note well, however, this play is not about that process; nor about how Caesar and Brutus came into their relationship, though the rumour was, b
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Jun 03, 2009
Eleanor
rated it:
Hell yes I love Shakespeare. This Folger edition is pretty snazzy too, the intro chapters about word omissions, sentence structures, and old colloquialisms helps me sail through this stuff. Plus they assume you're awesome and don't need reiterations of footnotes, so they keep them to a minimum.
Reading Shakespeare is always like drinking honey that is also alcohol that is also clean gasoline for your brain and heart. I want to devour it as slowly as possible.
******* More...
Reading Shakespeare is always like drinking honey that is also alcohol that is also clean gasoline for your brain and heart. I want to devour it as slowly as possible.
******* More...
Dec 13, 2009
Natasha
rated it:
Julius Caesar, penned by English playwright William Shakespeare, hooked my attention and presented a controversial issue in a different way.
When this play was handed out to my English class, I was a bit wary because I didn't think it would be good at all. We started reading, and to my surprise, I actually liked it. Though in my opinion Romeo and Juliet was better, I still enjoyed Julius Caesar, and part of that was probably because it was easier to understand than Romeo and Juliet wa More...
When this play was handed out to my English class, I was a bit wary because I didn't think it would be good at all. We started reading, and to my surprise, I actually liked it. Though in my opinion Romeo and Juliet was better, I still enjoyed Julius Caesar, and part of that was probably because it was easier to understand than Romeo and Juliet wa More...
Nov 16, 2011
matt
rated it:
Re-reading it for a class I'm taking, I was surprised to see that it's not the hoary, near-cliched, armchair statesman-like story I'd snored through in high school.
It's actually a taut, crackling, suspenseful political thriller which is more compelling, dire, complex, and profound than I'd originally noticed.
It's about revolution, revolutionaries, and the price one pays for irrigating the tree of liberty with the blood of tyrants. You get the restless, brittle, i More...
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