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I am very excited to teach The Tragedy of Julius Caesar this week. I love this play!

We finished up quite a bit of historical context last week and will begin Act I on Wednesday. The opening scene is so dense introducing some of the play’s major themes while injecting humor, word play, and emotion into the dialogue.

When Marullus shouts down to the commoners, ending the frivolities, “You blocks, you stones, you worse than senseless things! Knew you not Pompey?” the kids are stunned at the sudden shift in tone. In that one moment the students begin to grasp that this play and the characters will be complex.

Here are a couple other quotations from the play that I love:

“Why, man, he doth bestride the narrow world
Like a Colossus; and we petty men
Walk under his huge legs, and peep about
To find ourselves dishonourable graves.
Men at some time are masters of their fates:
The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars,
But in ourselves, that we are underlings.”

“O conspiracy!
Sham’st thou to show thy dangerous brow by night,
When evils are most free?”

“And Caesar’s spirit, ranging for revenge,
With Ate by his side come hot from hell,
Shall in these confines with a monarch’s voice
Cry ‘Havoc,’ and let slip the dogs of war;
That this foul deed shall smell above the earth
With carrion men, groaning for burial.”

“This was the most unkindest cut of all;
For when the noble Caesar saw him stab,
Ingratitude, more strong than traitors’ arms,
Quite vanquished him: then burst his mighty heart;
And, in his mantle muffling up his face,
Even at the base of Pompey’s statua,
Which all the while ran blood, great Caesar fell.
O! what a fall was there, my countrymen;
Then I, and you, and all of us fell down,
Whilst bloody treason flourished over us.
O! now you weep, and I perceive you feel
The dint of pity; these are gracious drops.”