Book Club Guide

Julius Caesar

by William Shakespeare · 1599 · Classics

Key themes

Honourable motives and catastrophic consequences
Oratory, persuasion and the manipulation of public feeling
Tyranny and the price of resisting it

About this book

The Roman senator Cassius persuades the noble Brutus to join a conspiracy against Julius Caesar, whose growing power seems to threaten the Republic. The assassination and its turbulent political aftermath — particularly Mark Antony's speech to the crowd — test whether honourable motives can survive the realities of power.

Written around 1599, Julius Caesar was one of the first plays performed at the Globe Theatre. Shakespeare drew on Plutarch's Lives and took significant liberties with the historical record to create his dramatic argument.

Discussion questions

Brutus joins the conspiracy against Caesar out of genuine principle. How does Shakespeare make him sympathetic while also showing his political naivety?
Mark Antony's funeral speech is one of the most studied passages in English literature. What specific rhetorical techniques does he use — and how does Shakespeare show the crowd being turned against Brutus in real time?
Caesar is both the play's title character and its least psychologically developed figure. Is he a tyrant who deserves his fate, a great man brought down by envy, or something the play refuses to resolve?
The play raises the question of whether political assassination can ever be justified. How does Julius Caesar answer this — and does it change depending on which character you follow?
The play has been staged in almost every political context imaginable — as pro-Republican, anti-Republican, fascist, anti-fascist. What in the text allows such radically different productions?