The Death of Julius Caesar

Julius Caesar

William Shakespearec. 1599
Influence21st pct
Popularity61st pct
Shakespeare

Read this if you…

  • love Shakespeare and Rome
  • want a depiction of one of the most famous assassinations of all time
  • want Shakespeare's shortest tragedy

Skip this if you…

  • aren't willing to go slow, read notes, look up analyses of famous passages (only way to "get" shakespeare)
  • foolishly think shakespeare is overrated

The Groblé Take

Classic story, great. Beware the ides of march. The cloak with all the wholes in it. Red blood when dying like the red of the sun going beneath the horizon. The honor of all the characters. Nobody is slimey. Banger

Connections

The lineage through Julius Caesar

Built Onwhat came beforeJulius CaesarPlutarch's Lives

  • Plutarch's Lives by Plutarch. Julius Caesar built on it. - *Julius Caesar* follows Plutarch's *Lives* of Caesar, Brutus, and Antony so closely it's effectively the play's source code, read through North's 1579 translation - The assassination, the funeral, the falling-out at Philippi — all are Plutarch's events, dramatized in order - Read the three *Lives* and you'll see how much of the play Shakespeare found already waiting in the prose
See the full map
Gallery

Depicted in Art

Caesar, robed in white, recoils as a tight ring of conspirators in red and ochre togas close in with raised daggers; one senator at center grips Caesar's cloak.

Vincenzo Camuccini, 1805

The aftermath: Caesar's body lies bloodied beside a toppled gilt throne in the empty foreground while the conspirators rush up the senate steps, daggers brandished overhead.

Jean-Léon Gérôme, 1867

Caesar, crowned and in a scarlet toga, struggles as Tillius Cimber pulls at his cloak and Casca lunges with a dagger from behind; the senate floor is dim and theatrical.

Karl von Piloty, 1865

Caesar at the center, half-rising from his curule chair, as Brutus drives in the killing blow; surrounding senators frame the action in a frieze-like neoclassical arrangement.

Heinrich Friedrich Füger, 1818

Caesar collapses at the base of Pompey's statue as the conspirators cluster around him with bloodied daggers; staged from the Shakespearean text rather than Roman history.

William Holmes Sullivan, 1888

Two side-by-side panels: at left the senators stab Caesar in an open colonnade; at right his body is carried to the funeral pyre while figures mourn — a quattrocento cassone narrative.

Workshop of Apollonio di Giovanni, 1455

Caesar's body is laid out on a raised bier; conspirators and senators react in two opposing groups while the senate hall opens onto a stormy sky.

Guillaume Guillon Lethière, 1818

Brutus rises from his desk in a low-lit campaign tent as the ghost of Caesar enters in a white robe spattered with blood from the multiple stab wounds.

Edwin Austin Abbey, 1905

Editions

Recommended Editions

#1Top Pick$6.99$6.51

Folger Shakespeare Library

2004

Folger's the readable one. Text on one page, notes on the facing page, written in plain English instead of textbook-speak. Catches every word and reference you'd otherwise Google, without breaking the scene to do it.

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Notable Quotes

Et tu, Brute? Then fall, Caesar.

Caesar, Julius Caesar
All 22 quotes, with sources →
Adaptations

Screen & Stage

Posters via The Movie Database (TMDB)

AcclaimPraised by 4 notable voices
  • Orson Welles, filmmaker & theatre director, 1915–1985: "Our Julius Caesar gives a picture of the same kind of hysteria that exists in certain dictator-ruled countries of today."
  • Nelson Mandela, anti-apartheid leader; President of South Africa, 1918–2013: "I quoted to him a verse which I often repeat, especially when I am faced with the situation of having to say goodbye to somebody."
  • Winston Churchill, British statesman; Prime Minister, 1874–1965: "I am going to-night to see Julius Caesar which I have looked forward to for a very long time."
  • Harold Bloom, literary critic; Sterling Professor of Humanities, Yale, 1930–2019: "The more often I reread and teach it, or attend a performance, the subtler and more ambiguous it seems, not in plot but in character."

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