Julius Caesar

Al Letson’s play Julius X acts as a sort of Venn diagram that allows us to twice witness a familiar text (Julius Caesar), with a harsh and violent moment of American history that marked a significant contest waged by Black Americans for freedom and equality.

Discover books, costume sketches, and theatrical props for Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar in the Folger collection along with items from Folger Theatre’s production of Al Letson’s Julius X: A Re-envisioning of The Tragedy of Julius Caesar by William Shakespeare. 

Challenge yourself with this new quiz about Shakespeare’s play Julius Caesar.

Shakespeare’s tragedy is filled with memorable lines, including Mark Antony’s speech that begins “Friends, Romans, Countrymen, lend me your ears.” Explore some of the play’s most well-known quotes.

We ask theater artists across the country to tell us why it isn’t.

Interested in politics and communication? Try our quiz and rearrange the lines of Mark Antony’s “Friends, Romans, countrymen” speech from Julius Caesar, a famous passage from Shakespeare’s plays and a brilliant example of political oratory.

Early 19th-century American students would study speeches from Shakespeare’s plays as examples of good public speaking, not as literature. How did Shakespeare’s place in the school curriculum change?

Don’t let the title fool you! William Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar is about the death of a tyrant, but its title character is not its central protagonist. Shakespeare’s play focuses instead on two of the leaders of the conspiracy: Gaius Cassius and Marcus Brutus.

Artist Paul Glenshaw describes drawing the Folger bas-relief of “Julius Caesar,” in which assassins with their knives start to turn away as Caesar dies. He pairs the image with a painting by Jean-Léon Gérôme at the Walters Art Museum in…

Read an excerpt from actor Paterson Joseph’s book about playing the role of Brutus in the Royal Shakespeare Company’s acclaimed 2012 production of Julius Caesar.

Perhaps if Caesar had paid attention to the Soothsayer and to his wife Calpurnia’s premonitions, he might not have been killed—but that would be re-writing history.