The first scene of the third act of Julius Caesar is extraordinary, endless, dark. It begins with Caesar strolling into the Capitol on the top of the world ("The ides of March are come") and ends with his corpse being dragged out.
Every word uttered becomes ironic. Caesar goes on about being the unmovable North Star a minute before he’s assassinated. Cinna cries, "Liberty! Freedom! Tyranny is dead!" as if he knows already that they are precisely what has just been murdered. Mark Antony’s expressions of compliance are so transparently fake that it becomes a demonstration of the fatuousness of Brutus and the other conspirators.
What could republican Rome matter to audiences and writers in Elizabeth’s monarchy? Base self-seeking disguised with noble rhetoric. All familiar stuff.
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