Dramaturg's Note on “Julius Caesar”

Shakespeare wrote Julius Caesar in 1599. Elizabeth I sat on the throne, over 40 years into her reign, without children or a succession plan. It’s easy to connect that succession anxiety to a play about the death of a leader snowballing into civil war; it’s harder to connect any specific dots from Shakespeare’s mind to the leaders who populated 16th-century politics.

More recent theatre artists have been less shy. Royal Shakespeare Company artistic director Greg Doran found resonance in the recent history of many African nations as they gained independence from colonial powers; he set a 2012 production in an unnamed African nation, ruled by a charismatic tyrant. Decades earlier, Orson Welles staged a 1937 Mercury Theatre production with Nazi-influenced costumes to connect Caesar to Mussolini. Oskar Eustis, Public Theater artistic director, controversially drew direct connections in 2017 between Caesar and the recently inaugurated President Trump. His intent was to warn that the violent removal of a leader, no matter how dangerous, never ends well. Right-wing protestors interpreted the choice differently, interrupting performances and attempting to storm the stage. Sponsors pulled funding in fear of the controversy.

Caesar has also been linked with progressive-leaning leaders; John Wilkes Booth, a talented actor of his day, saw Lincoln as a tyrannical Caesar and himself as a heroic Brutus. After assassinating Lincoln at Ford’s Theatre, Booth was devastated that public opinion didn’t support him. He wrote: “With every man’s hand against me, I am here in despair … for doing what Brutus was honored for.”

As much as we want to know who Shakespeare may have sided with, the reality is probably less dramatic; his grammar school education leaned into rhetoric and the ability to convincingly argue both sides of any argument. Orson Welles believed that duality is what makes Julius Caesar such a compelling play: “Shakespeare has feelings for and against everyone in it.” Perhaps Shakespeare recognized the longevity of a political moment with so many potential interpretations when he wrote Cassius’ line: “How many ages hence / Shall this our lofty scene be acted o’er / In states unborn and accents yet unknown.”

Tickets for CSF’s 2026 production of Julius Caesar are on sale now at coloradoshakes.org.