Julius Caesar

The play about how a republic talks itself into murder.

Caesar returns to Rome in triumph, and the city's most respected men begin to fear a crown. Cassius works patiently on the noble Brutus until Brutus is persuaded that killing his friend is the only way to save the republic — and on the Ides of March, the conspirators strike.

Then Mark Antony asks permission to speak at the funeral, and in the greatest political speech in English drama turns a crowd, and a city, and the course of history. Julius Caesar is Shakespeare's coolest and most modern play: about rhetoric, self-deception, and how easily good intentions are harvested by other people's ambitions.

Ideal for

• School and university syllabus reading — a perennial set text
• Readers interested in politics and persuasion
• Theatre-goers preparing for a production