Julius Caesar—Study Guide

Julius Caesar was published first in the 1623 Folio, though it seems to have been written about 1599 and was one of the first plays performed at the Globe and proved popular (as the number of contemporary references makes clear). A Swiss visitor, Thomas Platter, saw it at the Globe on 21 September 1599. The play’s source is Thomas North’s translation of Plutarch’s Lives of the Noble Grecians and Romans, which includes ‘Lives’ of both Caesar and Brutus. Rome and Roman history was a constant interest of Shakespeare, starting with Titus Andronicus and The Rape of Lucrece, and extending to the very end of his career with Antony and Cleopatra and Cymbeline.

1. Look carefully at the first scene. Why are Flavius and Murellus so contemptuous of the assembled commoners? What is the play’s attitude toward the common people/

2. How does the second scene introduce Caesar to the audience or a reader? Is Caesar the play’s hero or villain? Is he a tyrant?

3. What is the source of Brutus’s fear of Caesar? (Look carefully at Brutus’s speech at 2.1.10ff; think about its rhetoric).  Are his motives the same as Cassius’s? Is Brutus the play’s hero or one of its villains/--or put differently, does the play present Caesar’s death as justified? Is it a tyrannicide or a murder?

4. Compare the staging of the beginning 1.2 and the beginning of 2.1? They seem oddly parallel and certainly could be played to emphasize this. What might be achieved by this?

5. What is the role of women in this play?

6. Why are there so many references to time in the play? What do these do to define or clarify the play’s central concerns?

7. Compare Brutus’s speech in the forum (3.2.12ff) with Marc Antony’s famous speech (3.2.74ff); how do they differ? What do these stylistic and rhetorical contrasts tell us about the two men?

8. Why are we shown the scene of the mob’s destruction of Cinna the poet (3.3)?

9.  How adequate an expression of the play’s design is the five-act structure?  Are there other structures at work in the play?

10. Who is left at the end as the most powerful person in the play? Look at 5.1. What does the ending suggest about the play’s political vision?