Free Julius Caesar by William Shakespeare

red spot as one by one his enemies perish.” 86
    Many productions have been more visceral in their depiction of Caesar’s influence after death. In 1987 his reanimated corpse was seen on the battlefield:
    The ghost of Caesar, as promised in the tent scene, reappears at Philippi walking slowly among Brutus’s forces and forcing him to back stage left in horror. When Brutus finally runs onto the sword held by Strato kneeling on the edge of the stage with his back to the audience, the triumphant ghost begins to march down centre stage slowly. 87
    More chillingly, in David Thacker’s 1993 production one of the soldiers killing prisoners after the battle removes his balaclava and reveals himself to Brutus as the Ghost of Caesar. 88
    “The Work We Have in Hand, Most Bloody, Fiery, and Most Terrible”
    Every decade has its despots and you always wonder how did society fall for these people and obey them. But
Julius Caesar
is about more than that. It is a play about power and what happens if that power is toppled. It looks at what happens if you kill a leader. It is very easy to say we should assassinate Hitler or Saddam Hussein but what does that unleash? 89
    As we know, regime change can unleash violence, hatred, and extremism. If, as Brutus says, “There is a tide in the affairs of men,” one mustquestion if he has chosen his time wisely. Regardless of his underestimation of Antony, behind the conspiracy and plot, which is executed in the rational world, there lies a supernatural inevitability in the working out of fate. Even Cassius toward the end of the play questions his edict that it is “not in our stars, but in ourselves” that we are thus. Tragically, Brutus’ vision of the purification of Rome by ritual bloodletting, a role enacted by his ancestors, has the adverse effect—a “vile contagion” follows which will destroy Rome and all that he lives for:
    By the end of the play, Brutus has killed all those he loves. He kills Caesar and he kills his wife and Cassius, by his behaviour on the battlefield which brings about the defeat of the army. It is a very much more mysterious play than is often assumed. What about the soothsayer, whom Caesar hears above the hubbub and din of the crowd, the question of the barrenness of Caesar’s wife, her dreams of Caesar’s statue spouting blood, the ghosts, the suicides, the portents, the mob which tears to pieces a man who coincidentally bears a conspirator’s name? Is this about anything as banal as politics? We are talking about a lurid and very romantic study of the effects of passion in a male-dominated world.
    Then again, the ghost of Caesar describes himself as Brutus’s ‘evil spirit.’ Why does he not say that he is the ghost of Caesar? We can speculate as to what he means by Brutus’s evil spirit. Is it Brutus’s ability to kill the things he loves? 90
    Is Brutus’ act like Macbeth’s? Was Caesar destined to be king and has Brutus usurped divine right and committed a sacrilegious act by his murder? There are similarities but, unlike Macbeth, we cannot call Brutus a villain as his intents are for Rome and the ideals it signifies. However, the effectiveness of Shakespeare’s writing of the assassination scene, in which an all-too-mortal and defenseless man is brutally stabbed in front of our eyes, cannot help but make our attitude ambivalent to the conspirators’ actions. The similarities lie in what “regicide” unleashes, and this has become a major concern of the modern director. Could the conspirators ever succeed with such a murder on their hands and conscience? In the last fifty years therehas been increased savagery in the depiction of violence and the use of blood as the major symbol of the play’s thematic concerns. From a play that was considered Stoic and wordy,
Julius Caesar
has progressed into something much more visceral. In 1991 Steven Pimlott’s production paid service to modern and recognizable depictions of physical horror:
    Pimlott