The assassination lands mid-play — what follows is the real subject: how the killers lose the argument over what the killing meant. Antony’s funeral oration is the greatest demonstration of political rhetoric ever staged.
Lean, quotable, and endlessly restaged in modern dress, it is among the most accessible tragedies. Read Brutus closely: a good man reasoning his way into catastrophe, one careful step at a time.
Which edition?
1Arden Shakespeare, Third Series
Ed. David Daniell · Bloomsbury, 1998
Daniell’s political reading is the fullest case for the play’s greatness.
2Oxford World’s Classics
Ed. Arthur Humphreys · Oxford University Press, 1984
A classic edition, lucid on the play’s balance of sympathy.
3The New Cambridge Shakespeare
Ed. Marvin Spevack · Cambridge University Press
Compact and dependable, with good attention to Plutarch.
4Folger Shakespeare LibraryFirst read? Start here
Ed. Barbara Mowat & Paul Werstine · Simon & Schuster
The funeral orations, unencumbered — the speeches carry you.
Julius Caesar on screen
1Julius Caesar (1953)
Film · dir. Joseph L. Mankiewicz
2Caesar Must Die (2012)
Film · dir. Paolo Taviani, Vittorio Taviani · inspired by Julius Caesar
Staged inside Rebibbia prison; Golden Bear winner
Reading Julius Caesar this year?
Mark it in your record when you finish — one seat, kept for decades.