One of the earliest cultural references to the play came in Shakespeare's own Hamlet. Prince Hamlet asks Polonius about his career as a thespian at university, and Polonius replies: "I did enact Julius Caesar. I was killed in the Capitol. Brutus killed me." This is a likely meta-reference, as Richard Burbage is generally accepted to have played leading men Brutus and Hamlet, and the older John Heminges to have played Caesar and Polonius.
In 1851, the German composer Robert Schumann wrote a concert overture Julius Caesar, inspired by Shakespeare's play. Other musical settings include those by Giovanni Bononcini, Hans von Bülow, Felix Draeseke, Josef Bohuslav Foerster, John Ireland, John Foulds, Gian Francesco Malipiero, Manfred Gurlitt, Darius Milhaud, and Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco.[32]
The Canadian comedy duo Wayne and Shuster parodied Julius Caesar in their 1958 sketch Rinse the Blood off My Toga. Flavius Maximus, Private Roman Eye, is hired by Brutus to investigate the death of Caesar. The police procedural combines Shakespeare, Dragnet, and vaudeville jokes and was first broadcast on The Ed Sullivan Show.[33]
In 1984, the Riverside Shakespeare Company of New York City produced a modern dress Julius Caesar set in contemporary Washington, called simply CAESAR!, starring Harold Scott as Brutus, Herman Petras as Caesar, Marya Lowry as Portia, Robert Walsh as Antony, and Michael Cook as Cassius, directed by W. Stuart McDowell at The Shakespeare Center.[34]
In 2006, Chris Taylor from the Australian comedy team The Chaser wrote a comedy musical called Dead Caesar which was shown at the Sydney Theatre Company in Sydney.
The line "The Evil That Men Do", from the speech made by Mark Antony following Caesar's death ("The evil that men do lives after them; The good is oft interred with their bones.") has had many references in media, including the titles of:
- A song by Iron Maiden.
- A politically oriented film directed by J. Lee Thompson in 1984.
- A novel in the Buffy the Vampire Slayer series.
The 2008 movie Me and Orson Welles, based on a book of the same name by Robert Kaplow, is a fictional story centered around Orson Welles' famous 1937 production of Julius Caesar at the Mercury Theatre. British actor Christian McKay is cast as Welles, and co-stars with Zac Efron and Claire Danes.
The 2012 Italian drama film Caesar Must Die (Italian: Cesare deve morire), directed by Paolo and Vittorio Taviani, follows convicts in their rehearsals ahead of a prison performance of Julius Caesar.
In the Ray Bradbury book Fahrenheit 451, some of the character Beatty's last words are "There is no terror, Cassius, in your threats, for I am armed so strong in honesty that they pass me as an idle wind, which I respect not!"
The play's line "the fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves", spoken by Cassius in Act I, scene 2, is often referenced in popular culture. The line gave its name to the J.M. Barrie play Dear Brutus, and also gave its name to the best-selling young adult novel The Fault in Our Stars by John Green and its film adaptation. The same line was quoted in Edward R. Murrow's epilogue of his famous 1954 See It Now documentary broadcast concerning Senator Joseph R. McCarthy. This speech and the line were recreated in the 2005 film Good Night, and Good Luck. It was also quoted by George Clooney's character in the Coen brothers film Intolerable Cruelty.
The line "And therefore think him as a serpent's egg / Which hatched, would, as his kind grow mischievous; And kill him in the shell" spoken by Brutus in Act II, Scene 1, is referenced in the Dead Kennedys song "California über alles".
The title of Agatha Christie's novel Taken at the Flood, titled There Is a Tide in its American edition, refers to an iconic line of Brutus: "There is a tide in the affairs of men, which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune." (Act IV, Scene III).
The line “There is a tide in the affairs of men, which taken at the flood, leads on to fortune. Omitted, all the voyage of their life is bound in shallows and in miseries. On such a full sea are we now afloat. And we must take the current when it serves, or lose our ventures” is recited by Jean-Luc Picard at the end of the Star Trek: Picard series finale, “The Last Generation.” The play was previously discussed in a conversation between Julian Bashir and Elim Garak in the Star Trek: Deep Space Nine episode "Improbable Cause".
Film and television adaptations
Julius Caesar has been adapted to a number of film productions, including:
- Julius Caesar (Vitagraph Company of America, 1908), produced by J. Stuart Blackton and directed by William V. Ranous, who also played Antony.[35]
- Julius Caesar (Avon Productions, 1950), directed by David Bradley, who played Brutus; Charlton Heston played Antony and Harold Tasker played Caesar.[36]
- Julius Caesar (MGM, 1953), directed by Joseph L. Mankiewicz and produced by John Houseman; starring James Mason as Brutus, Marlon Brando as Antony and Louis Calhern as Caesar.[36]
- An Honourable Murder (1960), directed by Godfrey Grayson;[37] depicted the play in a modern business setting.[38]
- The Spread of the Eagle, a 1963 BBC series comprising Coriolanus, Julius Caesar, and Antony & Cleopatra.
- Julius Caesar (Commonwealth United, 1969), directed by Stuart Burge, produced by Peter Snell, starring Jason Robards as Brutus, Charlton Heston as Antony and John Gielgud as Caesar.[36]
- Heil Caesar (BBC, 1973), a three-part television play written by John Griffith Bowen that was "a modern-dress modern-dialogue rewrite of the play, updated to an unnamed present-day regime that's about to switch from democracy to dictatorship unless Brutus and his conspirators act to prevent it." It was intended as an introduction to Shakespeare's play for schoolchildren, but it proved good enough to be shown on adult television, and a stage version was later produced.[39] The British Universities Film & Video Council database states that the work "transforms the play into a modern political conspiracy thriller with modern dialogue and many strong allusions to political events in the early 1970."[40]
- Julius Caesar (BBC/Time-Life TV, 1978), a television adaptation in the BBC Television Shakespeare series, directed by Herbert Wise and produced by Cedric Messina, starring Richard Pasco as Brutus, Keith Michell as Antony and Charles Gray as Caesar.[36]
- Julius Caesar (2010), is a short film starring Randy Harrison as Brutus and John Shea as Julius Caesar. Directed by Patrick J Donnelly and produced by Dan O'Hare.[41]
- Caesar Must Die (2012), is an Italian film about a group of prison inmates rehearsing a play. Ultimately, the prison life and the play become indistinguishable and Mark Antony's Friends, Romans... speech is delivered in a prison courtyard with hundreds of prisoners peeking from their cell windows taking the role of Roman citizens. While the film is fictional, the actors are actual prison inmates playing themselves.[42]
- Julius Caesar (2012), a BBC television film adaptation of the Royal Shakespeare Company stage production of the same year directed by Gregory Doran with an all-Black cast, sets the tragedy in post-independence Africa with echoes of the Arab Spring. The film stars Paterson Joseph as Brutus, Ray Fearon as Antony, Jeffery Kissoon as Caesar, Cyril Nri as Cassius and Adjoa Andoh as Portia.[43]
- Zulfiqar (2016), a Bengali-language Indian film by Srijit Mukherji that is an adaptation of both Julius Caesar and Antony and Cleopatra and a tribute to the film The Godfather.[44]
Contemporary political references
Modern adaptions of the play have often made contemporary political references,[45] with Caesar depicted as resembling a variety of political leaders, including Huey Long, Margaret Thatcher, and Tony Blair,[46] as well as Fidel Castro and Oliver North.[47][48] Scholar A. J. Hartley stated that this is a fairly "common trope" of Julius Caesar performances: "Throughout the 20th century and into the 21st, the rule has been to create a recognizable political world within the production. And often people in the title role itself look like or feel like somebody either in recent or current politics."[46] A 2012 production of Julius Caesar by the Guthrie Theater and The Acting Company "presented Caesar in the guise of a black actor who was meant to suggest President Obama."[45] This production was not particularly controversial.[45]
In 2017, however, a modern adaptation of the play at New York's Shakespeare in the Park (performed by The Public Theater) depicted Caesar with the likeness of then-president Donald Trump and thereby aroused ferocious controversy, drawing criticism by media outlets such as The Daily Caller and Breitbart and prompting corporate sponsors Bank of America and Delta Air Lines to pull their financial support.[45][49][50][51] The Public Theater stated that the message of the play is not pro-assassination and that the point is that "those who attempt to defend democracy by undemocratic means pay a terrible price and destroy the very thing they are fighting to save." Shakespeare scholars Stephen Greenblatt[52] and Peter Holland agreed with this statement.[46] Pallotta stated that "I have never read anyone suggesting that 'Julius Caesar' is a play that recommends assassination. Look what happens: Caesar is assassinated to stop him from becoming a dictator. Result: civil war, massive slaughter, creation of an emperor, execution of many who sympathized with the conspiracy. Doesn't look much like a successful result for the conspirators to me."[46] The play was interrupted several times by right-wing protesters, who accused the play of "violence against the right", and actors and members of theatres with Shakespeare in the name were harassed and received death threats, including the wife of the play's director Oskar Eustis.[53][54][55][56] The protests were praised by American Family Association director Sandy Rios who compared the play with the execution of Christians by damnatio ad bestias.[57]
