Julius Caesar

In an excerpt from her new book about when literature spoke truth to power during the Red Scare, critic Marjorie Garber looks at how Shakespeare inspired journalist Edward R. Murrow and the role it continued to play in his reporting.

“Beware the Ideas of March!” But what are the Ides of March? And how did Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar help cement them in the popular imagination?

Two new productions, Al Letson’s Julius X and the Q Brothers Collective’s Rome Sweet Rome, explore contemporary themes of political upheaval and personal betrayal while illuminating aspects of Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar we might have missed. 

Scholar Carla Della Gatta looks at the growth of Latinx-inspired Shakespeare productions in the US beginning with West Side Story on Broadway in 1957. She finds the performances as richly diverse in form as they are in content.

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. 

Journalist, playwright, and poet Al Letson talks about Julius X, his play that borrows lines, characters, and plot from Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar to tell the story of Malcolm X. He shares the play’s origins and his approach to creating art.

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

Rosa Joshi’s bold staging of Julius Caesar at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, performed entirely by women and nonbinary actors, reframes Shakespeare’s political thriller for today’s fight against autocracy.

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.