Julius Caesar

Written by William Shakespeare

Narrated by A Full Cast

TOO MUCH POWER IN ONE MAN’S HANDS

Julius Caesar is a marked man. Adoring commoners celebrate his battlefield victories, but those higher up the Roman political ladder worry that his ambition has grown too large. On a stormy night full of alarming sights and ominous portents, Cassius persuades Caesar’s friend Brutus to help him with a momentous task: assassinate Caesar for the good of the Republic. But death doesn’t stop Caesar, whose spirit haunts the destinies of his friends and enemies, threatening the republican ideal for which they murdered him.

Shakespeare’s political thriller explores powerbrokers’ strategies—honorable and not—and their unexpected, violent consequences.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Blackstone Publishing
• Release date: Apr 10, 2018
• ISBN: 9781538522103

William Shakespeare

William Shakespeare was an English poet, playwright, and actor. He is widely regarded as the greatest dramatist in the English language. Shakespeare is often called England’s national poet and the “Bard of Avon.”  

Reviews for Julius Caesar

[a.godhelm · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

On the Naxos recording: Fantastic production of the play with great performances, clear sound and supporting sound effects. This is a proper audio capture and not just the sound from a play as performed (as many other audio versions are).

[smashbasile · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Shakespeare really has a knack for showing us all how stupid people are. Of course, it's good, it's Shakespeare. I enjoyed this more as an adult (I'm sure I read it in high school, but I blocked it out). But honestly, why does everyone have to die in his plays?

[gmillar_8 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

The editor suggests that Shakespeare has kept the story close to Plutarch's truth. I haven't read any Plutarch, but this is a good yarn, better than I expected. If we accept it as history, humans have always been stupid, and we need not be too frightened by today's whacked out world - someone will survive to reinvent another stupidity. This book includes a useful Introduction and several elucidating commentaries to help explain its construction. It's a treasure.

[heggiep · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This was a re-read from high school days. While certainly a classic, filled with memorable passages, it's hard to give a play a high reading rating. The joy and wonder of it is in its performance.

[pgchuis · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This was great fun, although it was quite hard keeping all the characters straight in my mind because so many of them had unfamiliar Roman/Latin names.

[bell7_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This is one of two of Shakespeare’s better-known plays that I somehow missed in high school and college (the other is [King Lear], which I have yet to read). Despite the title, most of the action centers around Brutus, his decision to throw in with the conspirators, Caesar’s death, and the aftermath.

Perhaps the most famous lines in this play come from Mark Antony, mourning Caesar’s death and allowed by the conspirators to eulogize, as long as Antony does not blame them for the act. He does so, brilliantly getting the plebeians on his side while he talks about his friend, all the while repeating variations of “But Brutus says, he {Caesar} was ambitious; / and Brutus is an honorable man.” A couple of other phrases I was delighted to discover were “it is Greek to me” and “give up the ghost,” neither of which I realized were so old. I read it in one sitting, as is my wont, with a fair amount of help from the notes. I have the “Wordsworth Classics” edition which, instead of having notes on the opposite page or footnotes, had them in the back, so I had to keep a finger there and keep glancing back and forth. The glossary was separate and alphabetically rather than by line number, which was irritating, but despite that I mostly followed the meaning on my own from the context.

I would include the play among the history plays rather than calling it an all-out tragedy. Certainly there is a lot of death, but unlike [Hamlet] where audiences have sympathy for the main character yet everybody dies, no one comes out completely sympathetic in [Julius Caeser]. The conspirators are not great people, yet Antony and the others taking over government after Caesar’s death can also be ruthless and bicker among themselves. All in all, it’s rather unsettling and as modern as any current book with unlikable characters. The introduction to my edition discusses this and also has some pointed things to say about politics that could have been written today rather than 2004: “To this day, human beings are, all too often, sacrificed pointlessly on the altar of one political ideology or another. Again and again, men of slogans and ambition seduce and delude their more decent auditors; the many are swayed by the hypocritical rhetoric of the few. Repeatedly, violence generates yet more violence.” Not much has changed since 1599 - or 44 BCE, for that matter.

[angelalam-300700 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I am doing some preliminary research and decided to start with Shakespeare.

[datrappert · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

One of Shakespeare's greatest and most accessible plays. Marc Antony's speech is one of Shakespeare's best, especially as it follows what would otherwise seem a pretty good speech by Brutus. Cutthroat politics goes back a long way....

[scottcholstad · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Not Shakespeare's best, but then even his lesser works are better than 99% of the rest out there. Not my favorite, but still recommended.

[sean191 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

It's Shakespeare, so pretty much everyone dies.

[petroglyph_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I liked this one. There is some good banter at the beginning, the speeches over Caesar’s body are wonderful, and the scenes set at the battle of Philippi felt appropriately hopeful or despondent.

Caesar is a bit of a non-entity, though, and I’d have wanted a little more friction between Mark Antony and Octavian Caesar. But a very enjoyable play on the whole.

[clancy.coonradt · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

A wonderful classic that truly speaks to the duality of man and his eternal search for not only power, but those that are truly pure at heart. Amazing how many quotes and sayings have come from this piece of literature.

[jhudsui_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Enh I don't know what I can tell you about this. Antony's funeral oration is fairly amusing.

[cbl_tn · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

“Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears. Et tu, Brute. Beware the ides of March.” I'm a little embarrassed to admit that this is all I knew of Shakespeare's Julius Caesar up to this point in my life. There's so much more to this play. Shakespeare captures the tension and drama of the last years of the Roman Republic and the role of Julius Caesar's ambition in hastening its end. The L.A. Theatre Works audio production is outstanding. The cast includes Richard Dreyfuss, Kelsey Grammar, Stacy Keach, John De Lancie, and JoBeth Williams. I will listen to this recording again. Next time I will plan to do my listening when I'm able to follow along in the printed text.

[coach_of_alva · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Shakespeare’s dissection of the damage that idealism can do in politics is still relevant.

[mstrust · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Cassius is quickly able to plant the idea of overthrowing Julius Caesar in the mind of Brutus, a man who claims to love Caesar. Cassius and Brutus gather a group of the Caesar's friends, who they join together to murder the leader, then tell each other that they did the man a favor and will be remembered for their courage in removing a tyrant. But then Marcus Antony gives a clever eulogy at the funeral, which causes the public to question the motives of the assassins, the conspirators no longer trust one another and Brutus finds his position threatened.

A good example of how power corrupts, as even the good guy, Antony, tries to manipulate his friends to gain more for himself.

[locriian · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

My favourite part of this play is the "Antony is an honest man" speech. Excellent.

[aliceanna-1 · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

So dry. What a mistake to cram this down 15-year old throats just because it's short. How many 10th graders have been completely turned off by Shakespeare because this is over their head. I really didn't care much for this. Many of his history plays are far superior. Should've been called "The Rise and Fall of Brutus" because Caesar is such a minor character -- no development either.

[seraphinac.b4 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

In the book Julius Caesar, a group of conspirators lead by a man named Brutus plot to kill Julius Caesar. After succeeding in killing him, Brutus sees Julius Caesar's ghost who promises to see him in Philippi. On a battlefield in Philippi, Brutus fights with Cassius's army. Cassius being overthrown, commits suicide. When one member of Cassius's army finds Cassius dead, he then also kills himself. Brutus is defeated and runs upon his sword. Conflict in Rome is at an end.

As a twelve year old this wasn't the best book I've ever read. It was a little confusing with a lot of characters and action. I thought the book was going to be about Julius Caesar but it was more about the conspirators getting rid of him. One of the morals was don't murder anyone because you will have to live with the guilt the rest of your life. This play taught me a little about Rome and war. I really enjoy reading Shakespeare. Overall this was a good book.

[lhlogan1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Good story.

[tanya8dogearedcopy · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Cassius and Brutus and a handful of other Roman senators close to Julius Caesar perceive that Julius Caesar's ambitions are a threat to the Republican ideals - as remembered from the Golden Era of Pompey's reign. Cassius is the key dissenter, recruiting the others into a conspiracy to depose Caesar via assassination and install the naive and idealistic Brutus as the new Caesar. The time is the year 44 B.C.; but the interplay of politics are still relevant today.

Political Assassination: Cause and Effect

The point is made that Julius Caesar was killed not for what he had done; but for what he might have done and yet, clearly the Roman Republic represented in the persons of Cassius and Brutus felt compelled to move against Julius Caesar personally, and at this time. What was the flash point?Julius Caesar had already crossed the Rubicon, defeated the Republican forces under Pompey, and consolidated his position by marginalizing Republican politicians (and thereby repudiating Republican ideals.) Was it the Lupercalian festival conflated with Caesar's triumphal procession the "final straw;" to see the public fickleness or sheep-like willingness to go along with the prevailing authority despite their disenfranchisement? But this does not address Caesar's ambitions, which were ostensibly part of the faulty logic used to justify the assassination. Did Shakespeare, in moving the time of the declaration of Caesar as "dictator perpetuo," seek to plant this intention as the act of Caesar's ambition, vanity and arrogance to which the audience would react? Historically, the trigger was when Caesar failed to rise to meet a senatorial delegation that had come to inform him of new honors that had been bestowed upon him (he was already "dictator perpetuo.") Interestingly, Shakespeare has removed this much clearer example of Julius Caesar's exaggerated sense of self and opted for the much subtler exemplification of supposed intent.

If it is true that Shakespeare wrote this play so that Elizabethan audiences could draw parallels between their own situation (For Elizabethan audiences, the English Settlement was a bone of contention as the Emancipation Proclamation was for 19th century Confederates and, the Patriot Act for many 21st century Americans. These are issue of civil liberties and rallying points for action) and that of the Roman Republic, he fails to make clear that critical "thing" upon which the play's action is impelled. In justifying the murder of Julius Caesar upon "what might be," the assassination becomes an act of envy and cowardice (Cassius) as well as naivete (Brutus.) The assassination is not a proactive move to defend democratic principles, but the last ditch effort of the fearful and desperate to gain traction with the public. It becomes more personal and less political. The assassination becomes, not the wrong thing done for the right reasons; but the wrong thing done for the wrong reasons.


Julius Caesar (by William Shakespeare; performed by a full cast starring Ralph Richardson) was performed in the theater's heyday of the 1960's. Theater had embraced the Stanislavski "method" of performance which brought a better sense of realism and believable emotions to the stage (as opposed to the more formal declamatory style favored in the 19th century.) This performance is a preserved example of this acting style; but the listener should be prepared for a lot of emoting which may seem over the top to 21st century ears. Certain lines are delivered with a very low intensity which recommends a more intimate listening environment than a car allows [I ended up listening on headphones.] For those not closely familiar with Shakespeare's works, the plays in audio format can be difficult to follow without visual cues such as the stage or even the text on hand and, this audio is no exception.

*The paragraphs on "Political Assassinations: Cause and Effect" was originally created and posted by me to a Barnes & Noble forum/board on Shakespeare/The Tragedy of Julius Caesar.

*Redacted from the original blog review at dog eared copy, Julius Caesar; 03/15/2012

[jwhenderson_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This is one of my favorite Shakespeare plays and one that I have read and reread over the years in addition to seeing several performances of the play. The classic story is informed by history as we know from Roman accounts about the life and death of Julius Caesar. Shakespeare adhered closely to the version of the story in Plutarch's Lives of the Noble Grecians and Romans. In comparing prominent figures from Greek and Roman history , Plutarch presented history as a compendium of the deeds of great men, portraying the characters with all the ambiguities and idiosyncrasies that were present in their lives. The writings of Marcu Tullius Cicero also informed Shakespeare. Cicero was a staunch republican and his dislike of Caesar preceded the conspiracy that led to his assassination, which conspiracy Cicero did not directly participate in. A final source for Shakespeare was the Roman historian Appian who chronicled the civil wars as part of his longer history of Rome. All of these sources inform the dramatic tension within this play adding a historical realism to Shakespeare's own dramatic genius. I especially like the relationship between Caesar and his wife. I also found the psychology of the characters, particularly Brutus, an important aspect of the drama. This helps make many of the characters from Brutus and Cassius to Mark Antony as memorable as the title character. It is one of the great Roman plays in Shakespeare's works, and it is both an historical and a dramatic achievement.

[john257hopper · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I read this play just after finishing Goldsworthy's excellent biography of Caesar. The play focuses much more on the conspirators, especially Brutus and Cassius, rather than the titular subject, who indeed hardly appears in person and is only about three scenes, one of them as a ghost. It is splendid stuff, largely, at least in the initial acts based on the premise that the conspirators were freeing Rome of a tyrant through their act; only, when Antony makes his famous "friends, Romans, countrymen" speech does a more nuanced view of Caesar's positives and negatives enter the scene. Not one of the meatier plays, but a good supplement to other reading about the period.

[milti_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

One of the most powerful of his plays. Yes, the characters are set in black and white in true Shakespearean style and there is no room for hman error, but therein lies the beauty and power of this drama.

[carterchristian1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I hope to see this again soon. The first time I saw it as a high school play, the next time in 1997 at a Pub theater (more members of the cast than the audience) next to the railroad station in Greenwich England...with a wonderful redo as a Mafia,
Chicago script.

[bookomaniac-1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

1599, meest klassieke tragedie, bron is Plutarchus; perfecte tekst (bijna helemaal rijm), later verketterd als schooltekst
Brutus is de hoofdrolspeler, maar Caesar beheerst wel de handeling. Brutus is een idealist die ten onder gaat door een gebrek aan praktisch doorzicht; het tegendeel is Cassius, maar toch meer medevoelen met hem; Antonius is de gehaaide opportunist, demagoog.
Brutus’ motieven: II,1 (p 820)
Moord III,1
Verheven pathetiek van Marcus Antonius na de moord, p 826, 827 (maar wel vals)
Redevoeringen bij begrafenis III,2 vormen het hoogtepunt, vooral die van Antonius (p 828-29): opruiend door details over de dood van Caesar en een verwijzing naar zijn testament, tegelijk vriendelijk ten aanzien van de samenzweerders.

[rfewell_3 · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

I read this play during my Sophomore year of high school. I loved it! "Et tu, Brute!" I thought of it again because I'm reading "A Long Way Gone", and this play is referenced frequently.

[tadad_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

At this point (I've not yet read King Lear or Othello), this is my favorite of Shakespeare's tragedies. Unlike the essentially silly situation of Romeo and Juliet or the artificially dragged out events of Hamlet, Brutus' struggle to reconcile patriotism and friendship, passion and honor mesmerized me right from the beginning.

This is a high point in my quest to read/re-read all of Shakespeare's plays.

[bibliophile26 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I read this due to my interest in HBO's Rome series (which has been cancelled after only 2 seasons - why TV gods, WHY???). Anyway, as an English major I read tons of Shakespeare, so it wasn't a challenging read for me and I found my mind analyzing language/passages as I would have been required to do in school. Let's just say the history plays have never been my favorites; maybe knowing the ending spoils the play?

[msnikki · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Great Play, could easily see this as a modern re-telling set in the Italian Mob or as hotile financial take over...I see Macbeth the same way.

But betrayal is a hell of a thing.