The Tragedy of Julius Caesar

If you are just starting to read Shakespeare on your own, and want a good starting point, look no further than this Folger Library treatment of his great political drama. It was the Folger edition of "Julius Caesar" that grabbed me back in the ninth grade, when I was failing all my classes and hardly hitting my assigned reading. This has it all: Indelible characters, hard-hitting action scenes, tricky "what-would-you-do" moments, and text that you can grasp readily thanks to the Folger practice of laying out the tricky parts on the opposite page. Guess what: There aren't so many "tricky parts" in "Julius Caesar" as you might expect from reading "Hamlet" or even "Midsummer Night's Dream." There are many, many great lines, some quite famous and instantly recognizable to anyone with a bit of cultural awareness. "Beware the ides of March!' "The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars,/But in ourselves..." "Yond Cassius has a lean and hungry look." "...it was Greek to me." "Cowards die many times before their deaths;/The valiant never taste of death but once..." And that's just in the first two acts. The great speech everyone remembers, the one which begins "Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears," is especially powerful when read in context. It is delivered by the play's most fascinating character, Mark Antony. At this point in the play, the title character is [Big Spoiler Coming] terminally indisposed, and most of the people who have been doing the talking are fine with this. Then Mark Antony comes on stage, and with that line, and the next several that follow, he effects a tremendous turnabout in the storyline, among the most memorable ever devised. It's a riveting, passionate, and snarkishly satirical scene, as the cynical-yet-somehow-admirable Mark Antony winds up a crowd of passive Romans into complete bloodlust. The scenes are sharp like that throughout, something that can't always be said of Shakespeare. He's often ambiguous, but seldom as effectively as here. The dilemma of Brutus, who sees a man whose power is going to his head, is one we can relate to, as we see that side of Caesar, too, but is the prescribed cure better than the sickness, or is Brutus just the wrong physician? We get one unalloyed villain in Cassius, whose very name is snakelike and who seems to operate on Brutus like a proto-Iago, but different readers will come away with different perspectives on his plotting. Probably written in 1599, just as Shakespeare was entering his decade of greatest accomplishment, "Julius Caesar" may be with "Romeo & Juliet" and "MacBeth" the safest bet for a high-school or junior-high-school English teacher. I can't think of an easier play of Shakespeare's to read, or maybe even enjoy. Add to that the levels of deception, subtle characterization, and satirical realpolitik to be discovered, and you have a play that satisfies as much as it draws you in.

Referring to the form, no doubt, the size of the book stands a little more compact, yet it's accordant with its price. But when I come in lieu of its contents, I really have been overwhelmed with that. I first time enjoyed studying it to the core with utmost ease. One can meet the best things related to Shakespearean plays if they are seeking a comprehensive and comprehensible comprehension of the real text with clarity and without obscurity avoiding much of the unnecessary padding which other editions include.

Nello studio di Shakespeare la consultazione di diverse edizioni è fondamentale, per poter approfondire aspetti critici specifici e questo testo è uno de fondamentali per arrivare a una conoscenza adeguata dell'opera.

This is my favouite single-volume modern edition of Shakespeare. Great to hold and read from with notes on the left page and the play on the right.

A Folger deve ser a pior edição que já encontrei das peças de Shakespeare. Encadernação ruim, tinta de baixa qualidade, notas com poucas informações sobre as peças, papel ruim (10 reais seria um bom preço para o produto, não 20-50). Melhor tentar as edições já famosas: Norton, Arden, Oxford (na versão individual, comentada), Riverside etc.