Julius Caesar: The 30-Minute Shakespeare: The 30-Minute Shakespeare

By William Shakespeare

Nick Newlin has broad experience marketing the Nicolo Whimsey Show to high school and library systems, and will incorporate The Thirty Minute Shakespeare into the Nicolo Whimsey website, mailings, school fairs, etc. We have purchased and successfully used theater mailing lists from MDR in the past, and will purchase new MDR lists aimed at the target users of The Thirty Minute Shakespeare for the initial launch, and annually or biannually thereafter. We expect that the abridgements will also be prominently cited by the Folger Shakespeare Library’s very active Folger Education program, recognized and used extensively by thousands of high school and college educators and including blogs, webinars, lesson plans, and conferences.

There are other "cuttings" of Shakespeare plays, but the only series with any trade visibility is "Sixty Minute Shakespeare" by Cass Foster, with six plays published by Five Star Publications. Nick Newlin's "Thirty Minute Shakespeare" series is publishing 12 plays in 2010, all "road tested" at the Folger's annual Student Shakespeare Festival, and superior to the competition on many levels: better stage directions and performance notes, more professional page design, a competitive pricing structure, and better visibility in Bowker, Amazon, key wholesalers, etc.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Nicolo Whimsey Press
• Release date: Jun 19, 2012
• ISBN: 9781935550310

William Shakespeare

William Shakespeare was born in April 1564 in the town of Stratford-upon-Avon, on England’s Avon River. When he was eighteen, he married Anne Hathaway. The couple had three children—an older daughter Susanna and twins, Judith and Hamnet. Hamnet, Shakespeare’s only son, died in childhood. The bulk of Shakespeare’s working life was spent in the theater world of London, where he established himself professionally by the early 1590s. He enjoyed success not only as a playwright and poet, but also as an actor and shareholder in an acting company. Although some think that sometime between 1610 and 1613 Shakespeare retired from the theater and returned home to Stratford, where he died in 1616, others believe that he may have continued to work in London until close to his death.

Book preview

  NO EXPERIENCE NECESSARY

I was not a big actor type in high school, so if you weren’t either, or if the young people you work with are not, then this book is for you. Whether or not you work with actor types, you can use this book to stage a lively and captivating thirty-minute version of a Shakespeare play. No experience is necessary.

When I was about eleven years old, my parents took me to see Shakespeare’s Two Gentlemen of Verona, which was being performed as a Broadway musical. I didn’t comprehend every word I heard, but I was enthralled with the language, the characters, and the story, and I understood enough of it to follow along. From then on, I associated Shakespeare with fun.

Of course Shakespeare is fun. The Elizabethan audiences knew it, which is one reason he was so popular. It didn’t matter that some of the language eluded them. The characters were passionate and vibrant, and their conflicts were compelling. Young people study Shakespeare in high school, but more often than not they read his work like a text book and then get quizzed on academic elements of the play, such as plot, theme, and vocabulary. These are all very interesting, but not nearly as interesting as standing up and performing a scene! It is through performance that the play comes alive and all its academic elements are revealed. There is nothing more satisfying to a student or teacher than the feeling of owning a Shakespeare play, and that can only come from performing it.

But Shakespeare’s plays are often two or more hours long, making the performance of an entire play almost out of the question. One can perform a single scene, which is certainly a good start, but what about the story? What about the changes a character goes through as the play progresses? When school groups perform one scene unedited, or when they lump several plays together, the audience can get lost. This is why I have always preferred to tell the story of the play.

The 30-Minute Shakespeare gives students and teachers a chance to get up on their feet and act out a Shakespeare play in half an hour, using his language. The emphasis is on key scenes, with narrative bridges between scenes to keep the audience caught up on the action. The stage directions are built into this script so that young actors do not have to stand in one place; they can move and tell the story with their actions as well as their words. And it can all be done in a classroom during class time!

That is where this book was born: not in a research library, a graduate school lecture, a professional stage, or even an after-school drama club. All of the play cuttings in The 30-Minute Shakespeare were first rehearsed in a D.C. public high school English class, and performed successfully at the Folger Shakespeare Library’s annual Secondary School Shakespeare Festival. The players were not necessarily actor types. For many of them, this was their first performance in a play.

Something almost miraculous happens when students perform Shakespeare. They get it. By occupying the characters and speaking the words out loud, students gain a level of understanding and appreciation that is unachievable by simply reading the text. That is the magic of a performance-based method of learning Shakespeare, and this book makes the formerly daunting task of staging a Shakespeare play possible for anybody.

With The 30-Minute Shakespeare book series I hope to help teachers and students produce a Shakespeare play in a short amount of time, thus jump-starting the process of discovering the beauty, magic, and fun of the Bard. Plot, theme, and language reveal themselves through the performance of these half-hour play cuttings, and everybody involved receives the priceless gift of owning a piece of Shakespeare. The result is an experience that is fun and engaging, and one that we can all carry with us as we play out our own lives on the stages of the world.

NICK NEWLIN

Brandywine, MD

March 2010

CHARACTERS IN THE PLAY

The following is a list of characters that appear in this cutting of Julius Caesar.

For the full breakdown of characters, see Sample Program.

SOOTHSAYER

CHORUS

JULIUS CAESAR: A great Roman general

CALPURNIA: Caesar’s wife

ANTONY: A loyal friend of Caesar

BRUTUS: A high ranking nobleman

PORTIA: Brutus’s wife

CINNA THE POET

GHOST OF CAESAR

PINDARUS: Slave to Cassius

NARRATOR

  SCENE 1. (ACT I, SCENE II)

A public place.

Enter NARRATOR from stage rear, coming downstage center. Enter CHORUS from stage right and stage left, making a V shape behind NARRATOR.

NARRATOR

A soothsayer warns Caesar of a dangerous day for him. Cassius is afraid that Caesar will become king and urges Brutus to oppose him. An ill wind blows. (CHORUS wave arms to emulate wind.)

Exit NARRATOR stage left.

Enter SOOTHSAYER from stage left, blindly feeling his way forward. Enter CINNA THE POET from stage left to guide SOOTHSAYER to CHORUS at center stage.

Enter JULIUS CAESAR, ANTONY, CALPURNIA, PORTIA, DECIUS BRUTUS, BRUTUS, CASSIUS, CASCA, TREBONIUS, and METELLUS CIMBER from stage right.

Reviews for Julius Caesar

[cjyurkanin · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I won this as part of a Goodreads giveaway and what a fantastic set of short books they are, 15 of them so far, in which Shakespeare's plays are broken down to the essentials so that short (30 minute) plays can be pulled from them without losing the story. These books are intended for drama/acting teachers in schools and they retain the original language and intent. Each book contains a full 30 minute script with stage direction and a prop list as well as notes on performing Shakespeare, sample programs, and additional resources. They really seem to take away a lot of the intimidation that faces those first attempting Shakespeare and makes it very very simple. I wholeheartedly give them 5 stars. The only ones I've fully read as of this review were Romeo and Juliet, Julius Caesar, and also the Tempest since it was also the most recent complete Shakespeare play I've read and it also happens to be my favorite. Here is an example of how it cuts to the core of the scenes:

Original unedited opening of Shakespeare's "The Tempest", Act II, Scene II:

CALIBAN
1 All the infections that the sun sucks up
2 From bogs, fens, flats, on Prosper fall and make him
3 By inch-meal a disease! His spirits hear me
4 And yet I needs must curse. But they'll nor pinch,
5 Fright me with urchin—shows, pitch me i' the mire,
6 Nor lead me, like a firebrand, in the dark
7 Out of my way, unless he bid 'em; but
8 For every trifle are they set upon me;
9 Sometime like apes that mow and chatter at me
10 And after bite me, then like hedgehogs which
11 Lie tumbling in my barefoot way and mount
12 Their pricks at my footfall; sometime am I
13 All wound with adders who with cloven tongues
14 Do hiss me into madness.

Enter TRINCULO.

14 Lo, now, lo!
15 Here comes a spirit of his, and to torment me
16 For bringing wood in slowly. I'll fall flat;
17 Perchance he will not mind me.

TRINCULO
18 Here's neither bush nor shrub, to bear off any
19 weather at all, and another storm brewing; I hear it
20 sing i' the wind: yond same black cloud, yond
21 huge one, looks like a foul bombard that would shed
22 his liquor. If it should thunder as it did before, I know
23 not where to hide my head: yond same cloud cannot
24 choose but fall by pailfuls. What have we here?
25 a man or a fish? dead or alive? A fish: he smells
26 like a fish; a very ancient and fish-like smell; a kind of
27 not of the newest Poor-John. A strange fish! Were I
28 in England now, as once I was, and had but this fish
29 painted, not a holiday fool there but would give a piece
30 of silver: there would this monster make a man;
31 any strange beast there makes a man: when they will
32 not give a doit to relieve a lame beggar, they will lay
33 out ten to see a dead Indian. Legged like a man and
34 his fins like arms! Warm o' my troth! I do now let
35 loose my opinion; hold it no longer: this is no fish,
36 but an islander, that hath lately suffered by a thunderbolt.

Thunder.

37 Alas, the storm is come again! my
38 best way is to creep under his gaberdine; there is no
39 other shelter hereabouts: misery acquaints a man with
40 strange bed-fellows. I will here shroud till the dregs of
41 the storm be past.

Enter STEPHANO, singing,
[a bottle in his hand].

STEPHANO
42 "I shall no more to sea, to sea,
43 Here shall I die ashore—"
44 This is a very scurvy tune to sing at a man's
45 funeral: well, here's my comfort.

Drinks.

(Sings.)

46 "The master, the swabber, the boatswain and I,
47 The gunner and his mate
48 Loved Mall, Meg and Marian and Margery,
49 But none of us cared for Kate;
50 For she had a tongue with a tang,
51 Would cry to a sailor, Go hang!
52 She loved not the savour of tar nor of pitch,
53 Yet a tailor might scratch her where'er she did itch:
54 Then to sea, boys, and let her go hang!"
55 This is a scurvy tune too: but here's my comfort.

Drinks.

ETC ETC ETC

And here is the shortened version which loses nothing in the storyline:

Narrator:

Having escaped the apparently sinking ship, Trinculo hides under a cloak to weather the storm, where he discovers the island's ornery monster, Caliban. Drunk Stephano finds them both and shares his bottle with them, which livens things up!

Exit Narrator stage left.

Enter Caliban from stage right, carrying a bundle of wood.

Sound Operator plays Sound Cue #9 (Thunder).

Caliban
All the infections that the sun sucks up
From bogs on Prosper fall.

Enter Trinculo from stage right.

Lo, now, lo!
Here comes a spirit of his, I'll fall flat.
(hides under his cloak)

Trinculo
Another storm brewing;
I know not where to hide my head:
What have we here? A man or a fish? Dead or Alive?
(lifts up the cloak)
A fish: he smells like a fish.
A strange fish! Legged like a man (noticing
Caliban's arms) and his fins like arms!
Warm o' my troth!

Sound Operator plays Sound Cue #10 (Thunder)

Trinculo panics at the sound of the storm.

Alas, the storm is come again! My best way is to
creep under his gaberdine.

Trinculo holds his nose to block the smell and crawls under the cloak. Caliban immediately sticks his head out from under the cloak with a startled look.

Enter Stephano from stage left, singing, with a flask in his hand.

Stephano
I shall no more to sea, to sea,
Here shall I die ashore- (drinks)
This is scurvy tune too: but here's my comfort.
(drinks)

ETC ETC ETC

I donated these wonderful books to the Theater Program at my daughter's school and hope to see her performing in one of them before too long :)