Read Julius Caesar for Free Online Page B

expectation that audiences would be familiar with the recent play is an early indication of the extraordinary popularity of
Julius Caesar
, a popularity that rarely diminished over the centuries.
    Julius Caesar
was first performed at the Globe, and may even have opened the company’s new home. The Swiss scholar and writer Thomas Platter provides a rare eyewitness account of a Globe performance, though it is the closing jig that commands his attention:
    In the strewn roof-house [I] saw the tragedy of the first Emperor Julius with at least fifteen characters very well acted. At the end of the comedy they danced according to their custom with extreme elegance. 1
    Evidence of court performances in 1613, 1637, and 1638 suggests ongoing popularity through the reigns of James I and Charles I. It was the relationship between Brutus and Cassius, particularly the “quarrel scene” of Act 4 Scene 3, that appears to have captured the public’s imagination:
    So have I seen, when Caesar would appear,
    And on the Stage at half-sword parley were
    Brutus
and
Cassius:
oh how the Audience,
    Were ravish’d, with what wonder they went thence. 2
    The play’s later production history is characterized by strikingly varied political appropriations, both inciting and warning against revolution. This inherent adaptability allowed
Caesar
to flourish in an unusually intact form: the text published “As it is now ACTED/AT THE/Theatre Royal” 3 around 1684 closely followed the Folio withthe exception of some reassigning of speeches. Most notably, Casca replaced Murellus in the opening scene, strengthening the prominence of this perennially popular character.
    The play was assigned to Thomas Killigrew’s King’s Company following the reopening of the theaters after the Restoration of Charles II in 1660. The earliest cast list shows Charles Hart as Brutus, Michael Mohun as Cassius, and Edward Kynaston, formerly celebrated for his female roles, as Antony. This was probably the cast that performed before royalty in 1676. By the 1680s, Thomas Betterton was playing Brutus at Drury Lane, a role he continued in until 1707. Betterton’s role-making performance was described as of “unruffled Temper … his steady Look alone supply’d that Terror which he disdain’d an Intemperance in his Voice should rise to.” 4
    By 1707, the play was at the Queen’s Theatre, subtitled “With The Death of Brutus And Cassius.” Betterton was succeeded by Barton Booth, playing opposite Robert Wilks’s Antony. The popularity of
Caesar
, however, transcended individual playhouses or actors. Politically, its “message” of liberty and personal justice cast Brutus as patriot, as acknowledged by a 1707 prologue spoken by “The Ghost of Shakespear”:
    Then I brought mighty Julius on the stage,
    Then Britain heard my godlike Roman’s rage,
    And came in crowds, with rapture came, to see,
    The world from its proud tyrant freed by me.
    Rome he enslav’d, for which he died once there;
    But for his introducing slav’ry here,
    Ten times I sacrifice him ev’ry year. 5
    Caesar was understood as a tyrannous villain while Brutus was a hero of righteous action, and it was his conflicts—both internal and with Cassius—that increasingly generated interest. In 1710, the “quarrel scene” was even performed as a stand-alone piece at Greenwich. 6
    The adaptation by John Dryden and William Davenant published in 1719 touched the play “comparatively lightly,” cutting those sections “which would tend to lower the heroic tone of the leading characters,” 7 and Brutus in particular benefited from added lines thatcast his dying moments as a patriotic suicide: “Thus
Brutus
always strikes for Liberty.” 8
    Covent Garden dominated the play during the 1740s and ’50s, with Lacey Ryan a consistent Cassius playing alongside James Quin and Thomas Sheridan, among others, as Brutus. These illustrious names, however, couldn’t prevent a sudden decline in the play’s fortunes.