Category: Before the Show

As the play opens, enthusiastic citizens are celebrating the return of the heroic Julius Caesar, a general who is returning to Rome after being victorious in multiple foreign wars. A Soothsayer emerges from the crowd to warn Caesar to “beware the Ides of March.” At the celebration, the citizens, through Caesar’s dear friend Mark Antony, offer Caesar the crown, but he refuses … three times.

Cassius, a fellow general, is envious of the popularity Caesar seems to enjoy, and by the idea that he might gain absolute power. His friend Brutus is a supporter of the Republic who believes strongly in a government guided by the votes of senators. While he, too, is a friend of Caesar’s, his fear of one person gaining too much power makes him vulnerable to Cassius’s maneuverings to convince him to join in the plot to bring down Caesar before he can gain too much power.

That night, a tormented Brutus debates with himself whether to join the conspiracy. His fear that Rome may lose its freedom wins out over his admiration for Caesar, and, after a late-night visit by a group of conspirators, including Cassius, he agrees own in the plot to assassinate Caesar the next day. He’s been so caught up in his plight that his loyal wife Portia confronts him and demands to know what has been preoccupying him.

The next morning is March 15, the Ides of March, and Calphurnia, Caesar’s wife, recounts her frightful dreams and insists that her husband to avoid danger and stay home from the senate that day. At first, Caesar fears that he will appear frightened or ignoble by staying home, and just as it seems that he will give in, the conspirators, acting as friends and supporters, show up, and convince him to come to the Capitol.

In the capitol, the conspirators surround Caesar on the pretext of discussing business with him—and each, in turn, stabs him. Seeing Brutus’s thrust, Caesar exclaims “et tu, Brute” (you too, Brutus) and dies. Mark Antony, Caesar’s friend, confronts the conspirators; and they seem to convince him that their actions were right, and they agree that Antony may speak at the funeral, as long as he does not condemn the conspirators.

A crowd gathers to mourn their beloved Caesar, but Brutus speaks first at the funeral and says that love of Rome alone made the murder necessary. The crowd seems to be swayed to his opinion, but then Antony follows, praising Caesar, while calling Brutus and the conspirators “honorable men.” He masterfully manipulates the crowd, without placing any blame on the conspirators, and moments after the crowd cheered Brutus as their deliverer, they turn on a dime, and are inflamed with rage and the desire for revenge on Caesar’s murderers. Indeed things become so chaotic that a poet named Cinna, who had nothing to do with Caesar’s death, is killed by the mob just because his name is the same as one of the conspirators.

In Rome, Antony, Octavius, and Lepidus, the ruling triumvirate formed after Caesar’s death, gather to plot revenge and organize a military force to fight the armies of Brutus and Cassius. The opposing armies gather on the battlefield of Phillipi.

Meanwhile, the relationship between Cassius and Brutus has deteriorated, and they quarrel. After the argument is settled, Brutus reveals to Cassius that his wife, Portia, has committed suicide. Later that night, unable to sleep, Brutus is stunned to see Caesar’s ghost, who warns that he will meet him again at the battlefield of Philippi.

That morning the armies meet and as the forces of the triumvirate appear to be winning, Cassius, unwilling to endure defeat, asks his bondsman Pindarus to stab him. After several other key players on his side, Brutus is devastated by the dishonor he feels, and he, too, asks one of his soldiers to stab him. Antony vows to give Brutus the funeral of a noble Roman and calls him “the noblest Roman of them all,” since he was the only conspirator whose motive was not envy of the powerful Caesar.