欧宝娱乐

I very much enjoyed that character summary. I would love your opinion on an analysis I wrote on this play. check it out if you have a moment!

I too taught this play repeatedly. I agree with your assessment of Brutus and Cassius . You fail to mention Caesar . He at ted seems the power hungry villain , yet again the uncertain trembling puffed up fool. It is hard to see the great warrior and general.
The great controversy for my fellow teachers was what to do with acts four and five. Many thought these act were too hard. The kids didn't get the shifting locals. The kids got bored. Some teachers skipped them. Some showed a video. Some assigned the reading as homework. I loved them because they showed more clearly than any lecture I gave the movement on the Shakespearean stage. So I got the kid up and acted out on our feet with the hie and take, the flow from stage left to right.
It didn't always work. It often ended in hysterical chaos, ah but when it did work, it was beautiful.
I don't recall how many sections I had in a day. Perhaps the most was three. But I. Also taught R&J to 9th graders and those classes were five times a day. That was bliss.

I feel exactly the same. I've only taught it a couple of years- but I love it more each time u read it.

This is my first year teaching this play to my sophomore students, and so far they seem to be enjoying it for the most part. I look forward to when they discover how different some characters are from how they initially seem.

Concise review Bill and to the point.

I am a freshman and I read the book this year. For our seminar regarding which man was the noblest, even I could not choose who I liked better.

what's your favorite line ?

I've read this so many times for teaching that the big speeches no longer impress me that much. If I had to choose, it would probably be Brutus' "it is the bright day that brings forth the adder/ and that craves wary walking." Nowadays, I react more to revelation of character and sudden, dramatic effects. Three favorites that come to mind:

1) Antony's "Fortune is merry/ and in this mood will give us anything."

2) Cassius when Brutus tells him of Portia's death: "How 'scaped I killing when I crossed you so?"

3) Antony emphasizing the eagerness of Caesar's assassins by saying how their "vile daggers hacked one another in the sides of Caesar". Ugh!

The question I have though, is how do your students respond to the play?

Mixed. Only a few--mostly boys--like it a lot. The politics bore them, they like the battles okay, and enjoy the way Antony manipulates the crowd. The play confuses them because they want to easily separate good guys from bad guys, and the play won't let them.

I taught this to my fifth grade resource room children in the inner city. They all loved it. Since they were so young I had to give them hooks to get into the play. The first thing I had them do was write a letter to Julius Caesar warning him not to go out on the Ides of March using contextual material to make their case.

Kay wrote:"The first thing I had them do was write a letter to Julius Caesar warning him not to go out on the Ides of March using contextual material to make their case."

An excellent assignment!

I had my best success by reading it aloud. I took the part of Antony, and, somewhere early on in Antony's speech over the newly-killed body of Caesar, I would walk out from behind the lectern, showing them that I had it all memorized. I particular enjoyed victimizing anyone on the verge of sleeping by shouting in their ear:

A curse shall light upon the ears of men!
Domestic fury and fierce civil strife
Shall cumber all the parts of Italy!

I invariably received an ovation.

That sounds like a lot of fun. I always read SHAKESPEARE aloud with the kids. They each took a part. That way they were all paying attention. I also had them illustrate the plays. I still laugh when I think of one girl's drawing of Claudius speaking and a thought bubble of Hamlet saying "Oh Lordy!" Another girl draw Caesar's ghost looking like Casper the Ghost. But they always came back to visit when they were older to tell me how they lived SHAKESPEARE.

Bill wrote: "Kay wrote:"The first thing I had them do was write a letter to Julius Caesar warning him not to go out on the Ides of March using contextual material to make their case."

An excellent assignment..."

This brings back memories. The Shakespeare unit of my 10th grade English class was reading Julius Caesar, and one of our big assignments was standing up in front of the class and reciting Antony's funeral speech from memory. If we messed up, we were allowed to do it again, but I'm proud to say I got it on my first try. I remember enjoying the story a lot even at that age, and about 2 years ago, I bought my own copy, the Folger Shakespeare Library edition. I'm proud to have it in my collection.

Bill wrote: "Mixed. Only a few--mostly boys--like it a lot. The politics bore them, they like the battles okay, and enjoy the way Antony manipulates the crowd. The play confuses them because they want to eas..."

Yes, the boys. All the Sh plays in HS curriculum used to be guys', and even in college, with the emphasis on H4, a great play, but guy-heavy; whereas, my woman mentors like Annabel Patterson, Harvard's Garber and Georgia's Fran Teague point out how the comedies tend to feature strong women. At my comm coll, most students (60+%) were female, so I emphasized comedies and pays like Measure for Measure.
Now our local good theater is gender-bending, but it did NOT work casting a woman Hotspur, and now they've cast a great comic female actress as Lear. Doubt that'll work, either.

Alan wrote: "Bill wrote: "Mixed. Only a few--mostly boys--like it a lot. The politics bore them, they like the battles okay, and enjoy the way Antony manipulates the crowd. The play confuses them because th..."

When I was in high school, we did Merchant of Venice. Portia is a fine woman's part, but Shylock tends to be a problem, so they don't do it much anymore. Measure for Measure is wonderful--one of my favorites--but I'm not sure it would work well in high school. The problem with the comedies in general is that the jokes don't wear that well, and the tragedies--with notable exceptions--are deeper, richer plays. Midsummer's Night's Dream is marvelous, though, an exception. And I think The Tempest is too. I urged a junior teacher to start her American Lit course with the Tempest--which takes place in the Americas--and she told me it worked out very well.

Gender-bending, and race-bending, for that matter can often work, but only if you are sensitive to what the play is about. Speaking of the Tempest, Helen Mirren's Prospera was a great idea (and helped set up a little witchcraft resonance for the junior American Lit class that was studying The Crucible later on), but that doesn't violate the play's inner logic. For example, a white Othello might be very interesting, but it would only work if the rest of the cast was black.

I have to reread it! Thanks! So many wonderful comments too.

Sabah wrote: "Have as yet to read this yet but am now looking forward to it all the more becuse of this review, thank you."

And thanks for your comment!

A great play. I always find myself wondering about Calpurnia. I also always wonder about the other conspirators like Decius Brutus. There's enough material there for dozens of plays.

Never read it (would need A LOT of help...) but it sounds a great deal like Black Sails. Someone described BS as being "a show filled with characters you hate to love."

I had to recite Antony's "O, pardon me, thou bleeding piece of earth..." in H.S. freshman English. I tried to emulate Brando's film performance without much success, but at least I didn't choke or flub my lines. Speaking of Brando, I read that Gielgud, an outstanding Cassius, generously helped the young star with his diction, and it shows.

I remember that Edward R. Murrow borrowed from Julius Caesar in castigating Sen. Joseph McCarthy suggesting that he did not create the environment of fear & hostility but merely exploited it, ending with Shakespeare's word's..."Cassius was right dear Brutus, the fault is not in our stars but in ourselves." This would appear to be a newly drafted review but in looking at the comments, some go back to 2011. Do you resend the reviews to every so often to gain new comments & further "Likes"?

Quo wrote: "Do you resend the reviews every so often to gain new comments and further likes?"

Yes. I resend: 1) if somebody likes it at least two months after it has been last updated, and 2) if nobody has liked it for at least a year. And I usually take the opportunity to perfect a phrase or two while I am at it.

If you look above, you will see the reading date for Caesar is March 2011. I always write my reviews within two months of the reading.

I recently read the North translation of Plutarch's Lives, available on bartleby.com. I had never realized exactly how much of Julius Caesar and Antony and Cleopatra is to be found there. If a modern playwright followed a single source so closely to produce a drama, there would be much hooha about lack of originality and plagiarism. But this was an age when a playwright could take a play, such as the theorized Ur-Hamlet of Kyd, rewrite it wholly or partially, and claim it as his own. What a ferment of creativity, with the background of political conflict, outbreaks of the plague, and government surveillance and censorship!

Thp wrote: "If a modern playwright followed a single source so closely to produce a drama, there would be much hooha about lack of originality and plagiarism...What a ferment of creativity, with the background of political conflict, outbreaks of the plague, and government surveillance and censorship! "

Yes, the age of Elizabeth is fascinating, and offer their own commentary on the plays.

On the subject of Shakespeare's use of North's translation of Plutarch. First of all, it is an excellent example of Elizabethan prose considered in itself. Secondly, it is astonishing to see how shameless S. is in stealing from it, often word for word, when it suits him. And yet...he always engages in intelligent theft, leaving out whole incidents, combining similar historical characters, and compressing many years into what seems like little more than a month of tragic time. It is piracy, sure, but it is also the creation of a completely original work of art.

Marlon Brandon, even when surrounded by other great actors in what must be the best movie of Shakespeare, convinced me to like Antony best.

Welp, I have it from a good source that Brutus was an honourable man :)