The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 9.0100  Tuesday, 3 February 1998.

From:           Andrew Walker White <
 This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
 >
Date:           Sunday, 1 Feb 1998 19:40:36 -0500 (EST)
Subject:        30's JC

To begin with Orson Welles released a series of Shakespeare production
texts, and I'm pretty sure his mafia-style Julius Caesar is among them.
Should be able to get it through interlibrary loan if it's not available
at your school.

For what it's worth, Brutus may be a subtle way of mourning the
execution of the Earl of Essex (a good friend of the Globe company) for
treason.

That, and: Antony could really mean it when he says he respects the guy,
there's no need to turn the winner of this play into a monster.  The
assassination and the war that followed was all inside baseball, a
privileged class pretending to be in a republic when everybody knew it
was an oligarchy.  Caesar was ambitious, but so was nearly everyone
else.  Brutus was, to a certain extent used by the boys whose "youths
and wildness" were the real driving force behind the action.  He was a
poster boy for the revolution, utterly useless as soon as his purpose
had been fulfilled.

Just my two cents,

Andy White
Arlington, VA