I’m sure most people have a mental image of the assassination of Julius Caesar, and I don’t think that it would be quite as well known as it is without this Shakespeare play. I imagined that that scene would be the grand finale of the play, but as it happens, it actually occurs around the middle, so Julius Caesar himself is actually dead for quite a lot of the play that is named after him.
What I quite enjoyed about this play was that it had political commentary that I found to be quite entertaining in a way that I don’t often feel Shakespearean stuff is. Specifically I’m talking about a scene where, just after Caesar is murdered, Brutus delivers a speech to explain how he and his co-conspirators justified the assassination, which gets all the common people on his side, only for Mark Anthony to give a speech immediately afterwards that explains why he thinks it was awful – which then prompts the general public to then find the assassination abhorrent. It gave me a good laugh.
Also, as much as I did not think that Caesar himself was a sympathetic character, I do find his line of “Et tu, Brutus?” (translated, that means “you too, Brutus?”) which he says just before being killed, when he notices that his friend Brutus is among the assassins, quite moving. It seems there’s a good chance that Shakespeare just took this quote from another source (and I suppose it’s possible that it came from history) but I thought there was something kind of profoundly sad about that and it stuck with me
I have to admit though, that I did start to find the story a little less interesting as it went on. I was invested at the start, and when Caesar is killed, and then when the public are being told how to feel about it – but the political upheaval that follows his death wasn’t quite as engaging for me as the first half of the story. It wasn’t awful by any means, but it did feel like the main thing I was reading the play for had already happened.
All things considered though, this is definitely one of the better Shakespeare plays that I have read and one that I definitely recommend if you’re interested in the Roman Empire, or want to read more of Shakespeare’s historicals.
Rating: 7.8/10
