29:38 Julius Caesar

Day 29 of 38:38
Julius Caesar

I love this play. Some people claim this play is "talky." I have always found it tightly plotted and very exciting both on the page and on the stage. I love the characters and their interactions. It would be incredibly hard to rank every Shakespeare play according to how I feel about them, but if I struggled through enough to create a top ten, Julius Caesar would for sure be on it.

But here's the aspect of Julius Caesar that gets lost for me in production -- the idea that these men of Rome, these Senators are highly invested in a equitable form of government. They believe it is better to give their lives than suffer tyranny. They are the American Revolution. Freedom is the word. This always sort of gets lost for me in performance. As an audience member I forget about this and get caught up in everything else. I would like to direct this play to see if I could keep that connection. But, I'm not sure if this idea gets lost in the play because of characters being played too nefariously, or if this, indeed, is the entire point. That these men start with noble ideas, and an iron-clad commitment to Freedom, and they lose this idea and themselves along the way. I suspect this is the case, in which case I would want to work to make that fall absolutely clear.

I just read this before heading off to SAA, so I was speaking to my travel mates about this play and specifically the character of Cassius. How interesting is it that Shakespeare gives Cassius the "who so firm but can be seduced" speech! This is the only moment in the play which reveals any sort of villainous and purposeful manipulation. Without it, Cassius is a man of strict principles, fighting to the death to defend those principles. This speech is what makes us Cassius's nobility. And for me, it someone questionably undercuts how deep the friendship with Brutus is. But as my friend Kavita pointed out, maybe it just demonstrates how much this means to him - that he is willing to use a friend, perhaps even sacrifice a friendship, and not just any, but his most important one, in order to achieve his goals.

-----------------------------
Favorite Female Character:
Portia
Favorite Male Character:
Cassius

Laugh out loud:
Octavius You may do your will;
But he's a tried and valiant soldier.
Anthony So is my horse, Octavius

"That's what she said!":
Portia Dwell I but in the suburbs
Of your good pleasure?

How insulting:
Murellus You blocks, you stones, you worse than senseless things!

Shakey loves his meta:
Cassius How many ages hence
Shall this our lofty scene be acted o'er
In States unborn and accents yet unknown!

Oh, misogyny:
Cassius And we are govern'd with our mothers' spirits;
Our yoke and sufferance show us womanish.

Boys are silly:
Decius But when I tell him he hates flatterers,
He says he does, being then most flattered.

Favorite Moment/Line:
Everything that Cassius says

also

Brutus Between the acting of a dreadful thing
And the first motion, all the interim is
Like a phantasma or a hideous dream:
The genius and the mortal instruments
Are then in council; and the state of man,
Like to a little kingdom, suffers then
The nature of an insurrection.