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Title: Julius Caesar by William Shakespeare, Marvin Spevack, Brian Gibbons, A. R. Braunmuller ISBN: 0-521-29408-8 Publisher: Cambridge University Press Pub. Date: 28 July, 1988 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.38 (34 reviews)
Rating: 3
Summary: Julius Caesar
Comment: I loved "Romeo and Juliet", "Hamlet" and other Shakespeare novels, so I thought that I might try a history Shakespeare had written for my advanced English class. However, I wasn't very impressed. I had thought that Shakespeare's beautiful poetry would add much needed excitement to the book, but, alas, it prevailed. However, if one does not try to interpret what Shakespeare is saying and just reads the words aloud in rhythm, it sounds so eloquent and put together. Thus, I give it three stars.
Rating: 4
Summary: Et tu Brute? Betrayal, Power and Pride
Comment: We've all heard how great Shakespeare is, how the 'experts' say he is the undisputed King of English Literature. Many books have been written about his plays and sonnets, explaining the intricacies of his verse and the subtlety in the lines. His command of the English language is phenomenal and his works have been rightfully showered with praise. To me, however it is not Shakespeare's technical genius that draws people, rather it is his keen insight into human nature. This makes his plays still relevant in our modern age.
Some would argue about with the need to read plays that have outdated words and a style of speaking that is so foreign to our day and age. Now, I am definitely not an English scholar, but I'm pretty sure that the majority of the people that attended Shakespeare's play did not speak in the way that Shakespeare's characters do, but they still loved it not so much for the style of speaking but for the way Shakespeare was able to speak what many people had trouble grasping in their own mind. This is what made Shakespeare a genius in my opinion.
I read this play some years back and loved it then, but just recently I decided to read the play aloud with my girlfriend. I thoroughly enjoyed it, and I think this is the way the play was meant to be 'absorbed'; by listening to the characters speak. Find someone with whom you can read the play aloud, failing that try reading it aloud rather than in your mind, (although this is not as much fun).
Julius Ceasar, as you have no doubt divined from the other reviews is about (you guessed it) Julius Ceasar and his triumph over Pompey, and about the band of conspirators who would remove him from power. There are a lot of memorable lines in the play, which you must have heard elsewhere such as "Cowards day many times before their deaths" or the excellent passage about seizing the opportunity "There is a tide in the affairs of men, which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune..." Read the play to find these and many more other gems.
Julius Ceasar is a very short play; only a few pages and shouldn't take long to read. The joy from reading it outweighs whatever difficulties there may be in comprehension due to the language. I recommend this book to everyone wanting to find out why Shakespeare is the greatest playwright ever.
Rating: 5
Summary: Roman political intrigue meets Elizabethan drama
Comment: Not much is more sensational than the assassination of a major public figure; reading Act 3, Scene 1 of Shakespeare's "Julius Caesar," in which the title character is stabbed and hacked to death by half a dozen conspirators, I feel like I'm depriving myself of a thrilling theatrical spectacle that must be seen to be appreciated. It is not necessary to know much about Caesar to sense the power of the drama; the play provides just enough background and information about Caesar's personality to suggest the reason for his murder and its consequences.
In historical actuality, Caesar's murder was in some ways the pivot around which Rome transformed from a republic into an empire, and the play, which Shakespeare bases faithfully on Plutarch's histories, is ultimately about the political struggle that drives this transformation. The main conspirator against Caesar, and the one to deal him the final blow, is Brutus, who foresees nothing but tyranny if Caesar is made a king. There is something atavistic about his attitude, for he is descended from the family that was instrumental in turning the kingdom of Rome into a republic five centuries earlier.
The scenes leading up to Caesar's murder build with forceful tension. We see Brutus discussing with his co-conspirator Cassius the dangers of Caesar's ascension and Cassius's sympathetic response, the conspirators meeting at night to plan their attack on Caesar in the Capitol, Caesar's disregard of a soothsayer's prophecies of doom, and then the bloody climax, even after which the drama loses not a bit of momentum: Brutus appeals to the people (the Plebeians) that the assassination of Caesar, whom they loved and did not at all consider a potential tyrant, was only for their own good; while Mark Antony, one of Caesar's triumvirate and an eloquent orator, cajoles the people with demagogic irony into suspecting the murder happened for no reason other than malice.
Shakespeare fashions Caesar and Brutus more or less as two sides of the same denarius. Caesar is physically frail and deaf in one ear, but that doesn't preclude his triumphant success as a general and a military strategist. He is also pompous and fatuously vain -- there is nothing he fears more than to appear cowardly to his peers. Brutus is cut out of the same stock of hubris, but his motivations are purely altruistic. He loves Rome -- as a republic -- and will do anything to save it from a dictator, even kill a man he considers a friend and attempt to ally himself with foreign nations to wage a civil war against the armies of the now-empowered Roman triumvirate. Shakespeare brings all of this to light in a humanistic portrait of one of the most fascinating figures from history and his idealistic destroyer.
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Title: Julius Caesar (Cliffs Notes) by Martha Perry, James E. Vickers ISBN: 0764585959 Publisher: Cliffs Notes Pub. Date: 15 May, 2000 List Price(USD): $5.99 |
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Title: Hamlet (Shakespeare Made Easy: Modern English Version Side-By-Side With Full Original Text) by William Shakespeare, Alan Durband ISBN: 0812036387 Publisher: Barrons Educational Series Pub. Date: February, 1986 List Price(USD): $6.95 |
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Title: ROMEO AND JULIET by William Shakespeare ISBN: 0671722859 Publisher: Washington Square Press Pub. Date: 01 August, 1992 List Price(USD): $4.99 |
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Title: Othello by William Shakespeare ISBN: 0671722816 Publisher: Washington Square Press Pub. Date: 01 July, 1993 List Price(USD): $3.99 |
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Title: The TEMPEST by William Shakespeare ISBN: 0671722905 Publisher: Washington Square Press Pub. Date: 01 May, 1994 List Price(USD): $3.99 |
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