Julius Caesar

Rosa Joshi joins us to discuss her bold new staging of Julius Caesar at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, now in its 90th season. Performed entirely by women and nonbinary actors, the production—a partnership with Seattle’s upstart crow collective—reframes Shakespeare’s political thriller for today’s fight against autocracy. Folger Theatre audiences will remember Joshi’s production of Henry IV, Part 1 a few years ago with Edward Gero as Falstaff.

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?

Brutus (Anthony Cochrane, left) and Julius Caesar (Michael Sharon, right), Julius Caesar, directed by Robert Richmond, Folger Theatre, 2014. Photo by Teresa Wood. In 1599, in the 40th year of Queen Elizabeth’s reign, when she had no heir or obvious…

In 2012, London’s Donmar Warehouse opened an all-female production of Julius Caesar, starring Dame Harriet Walter as Brutus and directed by Tony Award-nominated director Phyllida Lloyd. The production was set in a women’s prison, and it was the first of a trilogy of all-female productions, all starring Walter, that The Guardian would call “one of the most important theatrical events of the past 20 years.”

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…

In 2012 the Royal Shakespeare Company staged the first-ever, high-profile, all-black British Shakespeare production, Julius Caesar, set in Africa. The actor who played Brutus, Paterson Joseph, wrote a book about the experience. He also talks about his early work, his thoughts about race in the British theater, about the proper way to play Brutus, and much more.

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.

*Beware the ides of March…and join us for our live-streamed Master Class on teaching Julius Caesar! Since Caesar is in the air these days, we’re bringing you a special post on teaching meter in this play. Enjoy—and let us know…