Trivia - Analysis, Julius Caesar | Julius Caesar- Summary, Themes & Characters - Novels PDF Download

Brain Snacks: Tasty Tidbits of Knowledge

Julius Caesar (c. 1599) was likely the first play performed at the Globe Theater (source).

Blooper alert: In the middle of Act 2, Scene 1, a clock strikes, and Brutus shouts "Peace! count the clock."  This is an anachronism, because clocks didn't exist in ancient Rome, when the play is set (source).

In the 1998 film Free Enterprise, William Shatner (Captain Kirk from the original Star Trek) satirizes himself by playing an actor who's trying to gain legitimacy by doing a one-man musical version of Julius Caesar. The film is written in part by Mark Altman, who also brought us House of the Dead and House of the Dead 2. (Source.)

Suetonius, in his Lives of the Caesars, charged that when Caesar defeated the Gauls (now the French), the soldiers sang, "Caesar may have conquered the Gauls, but Nicomedes conquered Caesar." This refers to Nicomedes IV, King of Bithynia, with whom Caesar was rumored to have had an affair. Of course these rumors were mainly brought up by political rivals, but that's politics for you (source).

Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra is based on the affair between Antony (when he's in the triumvirate) and Egypt's queen. But Cleopatra had also been intimately involved with Julius Caesar, who was 20 years older than Antony (source).

The three Booth brothers – Junius Jr., Edwin, and John – made their only appearance together on stage in an 1864 production of Julius Caesar. Edwin played Brutus, Junius played Cassius, and John played Antony. It was one year later, on April 14, 1865, that John Wilkes Booth carried out his own conspiracy and assassinated President Abraham Lincoln (source).

Orson Welles staged a Broadway version of Julius Caesar in which the main actors wore costumes reminiscent of those of Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany – not so subtly connecting Mussolini with Caesar (source). And we found it kind of interesting that Orson Welles' dog's name was Caesar (source).