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Julius Caesar, most historians agree, was first performed in 1599. The first person to record having seen the play was a Swiss traveler, Thomas Platter, who provided a positive review of a performance given on September 11 of that year. Indeed, most of the original audiences, like Platter, enjoyed the play. In 1637, the play was reportedly staged for royalty, namely, Charles I. As time passed, Julius Caesar became one of Shakespeare's more popular plays, drawing audiences well into the seventeenth century in England. As the eighteenth century approached, changes were sometimes made to the play in performance. For example, Brutus's character was adapted into a more prominent role, as critics and audiences debated the nature of Brutus's involvement in the assassination of Caesar; those who believed the assassination to be politically warranted emphasized the nobility of Brutus, while those who considered the murder to be the work of a misdirected man portrayed Brutus as corrupt. Other changes made Caesar appear more ruthless and likened Antony to a leader of the common people. Also in the eighteenth century, Julius Caesar was first performed in the United States. In 1864, John Wilkes Booth, the man who assassinated President Abraham Lincoln, acted with two of his brothers in a New York production of Julius Caesar, with John playing the role of Mark Antony.

The politics of the play are discussed at length by Allan Bloom in an essay in his book Shakespeare's Politics. Bloom describes some of the political sentiments at the time of Shakespeare's writing of Julius Caesar, stating, ''The political life of ancient Rome began to attract interest and admiration.'' Bloom notes that Shakespeare's ''Roman plays present us with the essential Rome, and in them he tried to re-create those elusive qualities that made the Romans what they were.'' Bloom adds, ''In Shakespeare's day, the remnants of the Roman Empire were still alive, and it was still remembered that Britain itself had been a part of it.'' This situation partly explained the popularity of Shakespeare's play, according to the critic. Toward the end of his essay, Bloom writes, ''In these last scenes of the play, what was a rigid opposition between Brutus and Cassius dissolves under the pressure of Caesar's unrelenting spirit.'' Further, the critic asserts that Shakespeare depicts the two conspirators as ''good but erring men. Shakespeare does all of this very delicately so as not to disturb the superficial and roughly true structure of his message,'' which Bloom says ''demonstrates the inadequacies of ordinary men to overcome the force of a man like Caesar.''

In the essay ''Shakespeare and Political Thought,'' published in A Companion to Shakespeare, Martin Dzelzainis focuses on the funeral speeches of Brutus and Antony, using them to exemplify Shakespeare's great skills in writing, especially his gift of crafting arguments about great issues. Dzelzainis writes of Shakespeare's era that ''pupils at grammar schools were expected to acquire proficiency in arguing . . . and routinely honed their dialectical skills by composing orations on controversial themes,'' such as the assassination of Caesar. Dzelzainis concludes that Shakespeare's ''unrivalled ability to stage situations requiring the expression of opposed views is displayed to full effect in the competing funeral oration, in prose and verse, of Brutus and Mark Antony.''

G. K. Hunter, in his essay, ''Shakespeare and the Traditions of Tragedy,'' published in Shakespeare Studies, focuses on Brutus and Antony, as well. Hunter writes, ''In the famous scene of Caesar's funeral Brutus's speech has only ethos to recommend it; he more or less tells the assembled populace that, being himself, he cannot make a speech. Antony, however, has no such inhibitions. The personae he manipulates--Caesar's friend, your friend, humble suitor, grieving follower, outraged victim, angry vindicator--each of these is calculated to have a precise effect in a calculated sequence of effects. The brilliant political orator and the tongue-tied visionary--such contrasts show the complexity with which Shakespeare has developed his basic contrast.'' Hunter goes on to discuss the problems that arise when attempting to determine whether Brutus did the right thing for the wrong reasons or the wrong thing for the right reasons. Hunter thus classifies Julius Caesar not merely as a tragedy or as a ''Roman play'' but also as a ''problem play.''

Bibliography:

1) Bloom, Allan, ''The Morality of the Pagan Hero: Julius Caesar,'' in Shakespeare's Politics, University of Chicago Press, 1964, pp. 75-112.

2) Dean, Leonard F., ed., Twentieth Century Interpretations of Julius Caesar: A Collection of Critical Essays, Prentice-Hall, 1968, p. 120.

3) Dzelzainis, Martin, ''Shakespeare and Political Thought,'' in A Companion to Shakespeare, edited by David Scott Kastan, Blackwell Publishers, 1999, pp. 100-16.

4) Hunter, G. K., ''Shakespeare and the Traditions of Tragedy,'' in Shakespeare Studies, Vol. 25, 1997, pp. 123-41.

5) ''Julius Caesar,'' in The Oxford Companion to Shakespeare, 3rd ed., edited by Michael Dobson and Stanley Wells, Oxford University Press, 2005, pp. 229-32.

6) Knights, L. C., ''Shakespeare and Political Wisdom: A Note on the Personalism of Julius Caesar and Coriolanus,'' in Sewanee Review, Vol. 61, No. 1, Winter 1953, pp. 43-55.

7) Shakespeare, William, Julius Caesar, edited by David Bevington, Bantam Books, 1988.

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