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kailey_luminouslibro 's review for:
Julius Caesar
by William Shakespeare
So many wonderfully quotable lines! What strong and powerful characters! This goes on my list of favorite plays of the Bard.
Surprisingly easy to read, with very few "flights of fancy" or long descriptive poetry about the moon. Lots of focus on the action, with (relatively) concise to-the-point dialogue from each character.
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I love the secret meetings and cryptic notes and sneaking around; it makes for great drama. Brutus has some really marvelous speeches about honor and comradeship and the glory of Rome. Antony fairly breaks your heart eulogizing Julius Caesar. Each of these men are charismatic in their own way with plenty of flair.
I could have done without all the "honorable" assisted suicides on the battlefield, but of course, it works within the history, and you can't have a tragedy unless 90% of the cast is dead at the end. Especially pathetic is Cassius who commits suicide by mistake. He thinks that he sees his friend being overrun by the enemy on the battlefield, when actually he is being welcomed by his own troops. But Cassius assumes the worst and kills himself. What an idiot! It almost makes me sad for him.... almost.
"Great Caesar's Ghost!" I love the added touch of all the supernatural events forewarning of Julius Caesar's death, the superstitious dreams and prophecies, and then the sinister ghost haunting Brutus on the battlefield. It makes the play so much darker and portentous.
I wish there were more lines for the few female characters, but the scenes they do have are powerful and memorable. I like how Portia reprimands Brutus for not telling her all the things he is planning when he is conspiring to kill Julius Caesar. She can tell he is up to something, and she's really angry with him for not including her.
And I love Calpurnia convincing Caesar to stay at home because she had a bad dream about him dying. She is very persuasive, and she would have saved his life that day if weren't for that meddling traitor Decius.
I really like the exploration of different philosophical viewpoints. Brutus is a Stoic, and Cassius is Epicurean. Their philosophies are tested to the limit. Brutus hears of his wife's suicide, and philosophically says that we all have to die sometime so why not now. But he is obviously distraught over his wife's death and questioning his own philosophy. In the end, Cassius is disillusioned with his philosophy as well. They both lose hope because their philosophies are not based on truth.
Out of all the conspirators, Brutus was the only one who killed Caesar out of patriotism. The others all had some sort of jealousy or feud against him, but Brutus acted to preserve the freedom of his country. Both Brutus and Antony are honorable, but their perspectives are so widely different that they end up as enemies. Brutus was convinced that Julius Caesar was a tyrant, but Antony saw him as a just and wise and generous ruler.
I love that this play shows both perspectives. We get to see such a wide range of qualities from all these characters.