Julius Caesar

Julius Caesar is a Roman tragedy about the conspiracy to assassinate Caesar in 44 BC, and the civil war that follows as Brutus and Cassius face Mark Antony and Octavius.

Main characters

• Julius Caesar
• Marcus Brutus, an idealistic conspirator
• Caius Cassius, the plot's instigator
• Mark Antony, Caesar's loyal friend
• Casca and other conspirators
• Portia, Brutus's wife
• Calpurnia, Caesar's wife
• Octavius Caesar, Caesar's heir
• A Soothsayer

Plot summary

This summary gives away the ending.

Caesar returns in triumph to Rome and the people want to make him king. A Soothsayer warns him to 'beware the ides of March'. Cassius, resentful of Caesar's power, works on the honourable Brutus, arguing that Rome's freedom is at stake. Brutus, after a sleepless night, joins the conspiracy, but insists that Mark Antony be spared.

On the ides of March, despite his wife Calpurnia's terrifying dreams, Caesar goes to the Senate and is stabbed by the conspirators, Brutus last of all. Brutus lets Antony speak at the funeral. Antony, repeating that Brutus is 'an honourable man' until the words sound like an accusation, turns the crowd into a mob that drives the conspirators from Rome.

Antony, Octavius and Lepidus form a triumvirate. Brutus and Cassius quarrel in their camp; Brutus learns that Portia has killed herself and is visited by Caesar's ghost. At the Battle of Philippi both conspirators kill themselves rather than be captured, and Antony pays tribute to Brutus as 'the noblest Roman of them all'.

Themes

• Power, tyranny and republic
• Honour and self-deception
• Rhetoric and persuasion
• Fate and omens

Famous lines

Beware the ides of March.

Soothsayer, Act 1 Scene 2

The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, But in ourselves, that we are underlings.

Cassius, Act 1 Scene 2

Cowards die many times before their deaths; The valiant never taste of death but once.

Caesar, Act 2 Scene 2

Et tu, Brute? Then fall, Caesar!

Caesar, Act 3 Scene 1

Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears; I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him.

Mark Antony, Act 3 Scene 2

This was the noblest Roman of them all.

Mark Antony, Act 5 Scene 5

More in our collection of famous Shakespeare quotes.

Sources

Plutarch's Lives of Caesar, Brutus and Antony, in Sir Thomas North's English translation (1579).

On stage and screen

A Swiss traveller, Thomas Platter, saw it performed across the Thames on 21 September 1599, probably at the newly built Globe, making it one of the first plays staged there. Orson Welles's 1937 production set it in a fascist state, and it has been used to comment on politics ever since.

See where Julius Caesar sits in Shakespeare's career on the timeline, or read about the playhouses it was written for.