Julius Caesar by William Shakespeare Read Free Book Online Page A

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    1. Herbert Beerbohm Tree, 1898, Her Majesty’s Theatre, with Lewis Miller as Brutus and Evelyn Millard as Portia.
    Beerbohm Tree’s hundred-strong crowd dominated the Forum scene and Beerbohm Tree himself played Antony, orchestrating the crowd in a remarkable display of rhetoric and choreography. His choice to centralize Antony necessitated Charles Fulton’s “sympathetic and reformist Caesar,” 17 so that Antony’s loyalty could be laudable. The dynamic between Antony and the crowd has often since been choreographed to great effect, notably in Peter Stein’s epic 1992 Salzburg production.
    Frank Benson directed several productions at Stratford between 1892 and 1915, also playing Antony: “his action was dignified, his delivery was marked by intensity, intellectual keenness, and impressiveness, and altogether it was a fine study and a striking example of effective and impassioned oratory.” 18 Otho Stuart was his best-received Brutus, his “dignified self-possession and measured diction” 19 pairing especially well with Henry Ainley’s vehement Cassius.
    Beerbohm Tree and Benson’s productions were pro-establishment in their sympathetic treatment of Caesar, and this conservative reading was effectively given royal approval on May 2, 1916. Shakespeare’s tercentenary was celebrated with a Royal Matinee at Drury Lane, during which Benson—playing Caesar “with consummate dignity” 20 —was called to the Royal Box and knighted.
    William Bridges-Adams succeeded Benson at Stratford in 1919 and was the first director to restore a completely uncut text. Reviewers appreciated the additions: where Act 3 Scene 1 had traditionally ended with “Cry havoc and let slip the dogs of war,” the restored scene with Octavius’ servant “gives the key to the future action of Mark Antony,” 21 and allowed Bridges-Adams to begin questioning Caesar’s motivations. Later developments included Stanley Lothbury’s “querulous, snarling, decrepit old man” of a Caesar and Baliol Holloway’s Antony as “fawning demagogue” in 1922. 22 By 1934, John Wyse’s Brutus “seemed never more noble,” while Eric Maxon’s Caesar succeeded through “restrained force of expression in making Caesar bigger than the Caesar Shakespeare drew.” 23 Iris Guillaume’s Calpurnia was cast as a Mary Magdalene figure, though reviews still complained that “women have little place in
Julius Caesar
.” 24 An “interpolated picture of Antony viewing a burning Rome while a beggar clutches at his legs” 25 was, however, ridiculed.
    The most influential stage production of the century, Orson Welles’s
Julius Caesar: The Death of a Dictator
, opened at New York’s Mercury Theater in November 1937. Welles “set about to arouse the passions of his audience with a simulation of the chaos then overtaking Europe,” 26 rendering the play terrifyingly relevant. The script was severely pared down to focus on Caesar, Brutus, and the mob. One notable inclusion was the restoration of the lynching of Cinna the Poet: “The Mercury audience made Cinna’s experience their own, representing as it did their worst fears for themselves and for those dearest to them abroad.” 27 Welles’s self-consciously theatrical production was performed in modern dress, deliberately evoking Mussolini and fascism to generate a sense of pity and horror at atrocities across the Atlantic. The production’s backstage story was turned into a 2009 Hollywood movie,
Me and Orson Welles
. Antidictatorial readings of the play have since been commonplace: a 1969 production in Minneapolis was set in Latin America with Caesar as “an aspiring sun-god in white and gold,” 28 while in Miami in 1986 audiences were “brought to their feet by the spectacle of the assassins bathing their hands in the blood of Caesar as Fidel Castro.” 29
    Also influential was Joseph L. Mankiewicz’s 1953 motion picture starring James Mason (Brutus), John Gielgud (Cassius), and Marlon Brando