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Rome, 44 BC. Julius Caesar returns in triumph, the crowds cheer, and a soothsayer warns him to beware the Ides of March. Cassius, jealous and afraid that…
Rome, 44 BC. Julius Caesar returns in triumph, the crowds cheer, and a soothsayer warns him to beware the Ides of March. Cassius, jealous and afraid that Caesar will make himself king, draws the honourable Brutus into a conspiracy, and on the Ides the senators stab Caesar to death at the Capitol. Brutus explains to the people why it had to be done; then Mark Antony, allowed to speak at the funeral, turns the crowd against the killers with a speech of brilliant irony, 'Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears', and civil war follows to the battlefield of Philippi.
Context and significance
Shakespeare wrote the play around 1599, perhaps for the opening of the new Globe theatre, taking his story from Plutarch's Lives in Thomas North's translation. This edition reproduces the text of the First Folio of 1623, with its original spelling, which takes a scene or two to get used to. The story of Antony continues in Antony and Cleopatra.
About the author
William Shakespeare (1564–1616), born in Stratford-upon-Avon, actor, playwright and shareholder of a London company, wrote about thirty-seven plays and 154 sonnets.