[In the following essay, Vaughan looks at Julius Caesar from the point of view of performance, discussing such elements as setting, stage design, casting, and directorial modifications to the play.]

Shakespeare's Julius Caesar is both tragedy and history play, but however readers and critics approach it, stage directors must deal with it as a play written for performance in the theatre.

The Setting

The author of a play to be played in the neutral, architectural theatre of Shakespeare's day had only, in order to set place and time of day, to provide indications early in the dialogue of each scene as to when and where the new unit of action was occurring. Thus, scene design was a matter of words.

Notice how, in the first scene of Julius Caesar, Flavius says (1. 3) " . . . ought not walk/upon a labouring day," and later (1. 27) says, " . . . lead these men about the streets?" When the time of day changes, at the beginning of Act I, Scene iii, Cicero's first words are, "Good even, Casca." At 1. 3 ff., Casca and Cicero both describe the "tempest," setting the scene further, and Cassius, entering later, is greeted by Casca saying, "What night is this!" And so it goes through the plays, with verbal description doing the jobs of defining place and time.

With only an occasional bench or chair to bring on, the action could flow from scene to scene without those stops which the scene changes of the modern theatre so often demand. Also, this neutral stage was utterly flexible, instantly taking on whatever guise the playwright required. At the beginning of Act II, when Brutus enters calling his servant and asking for a taper in his study, we sense right away that we are "at home" with Brutus, and when he talks about the "progress of the stars," we know he is outside and it is still night, as it had been in the previous scene. Shakespeare's audience in the theatre had no need for the written description "in his orchard" which precedes this scene, or for any of the other scenic descriptions which have been placed at the beginnings of scenes to help the reader. The speed and flexibility of Shakespeare's stage allowed him a dramatic structure of swift development and unfettered imagination.

At the Restoration of the monarchy in 1660, Charles II and his courtiers came back from their travels in exile wanting to see plays on the new-fangled Italianate proscenium, or "picture frame," stage. From that time until very recently, proscenium stages were the standard and expected stages for all sorts of dramatic and musical entertainments requiring a theatre. This stage, with its "open mouth," demands scenery to fill it. The art of perspective painting was quick to answer. An interest in archaeology led to "authentic" period settings and costumes for Shakespeare in the 19th Century. Realism and the proscenium theatre abetted one another on into the 20th Century. After World War II, the British director Tyrone Guthrie, having created a production in a Tudor church hall, realized the advantages of the open stage and the three-sided auditorium for Elizabethan drama. At Stratford, Ontario, and later in Minneapolis, he inspired the building of such theatres. Since then, open stages confronting three-sided auditoriums have sprung up across the United States.

For Shakespeare production, that has been a very good thing. The absence of a curtain behind which scenery can be changed forces Shakespeare's speed, flexibility, and scenic neutrality on the modern director and frees him from the constraints of proscenium staging.

This open stage, with the audience on three sides, pushes the director into special choreographic solutions. In the proscenium theatre, actors are arranged in what amounts to a line across the stage so they are all visible from the house simultaneously. With the open stage, if people on thesides are to see, the movement must be circular, like a wheel, instead of back and forth. Too, there must be enough circulation for all the members of the audience to see what is important most of the time. This makes for exciting visual compositions, flowing into each other with ceaselessly vigorous movement. Instead of "tricking" the actors into a straight line, the director can place the important elements center and group the other actors around that center in a much more natural way. Indeed, on such a stage, one can "block" a whole Shakespeare play in one day, by simply telling the actors to stand in a circle and walk toward whomever they are addressing.

Take the assassination scene in Julius Caesar (II.i). On the picture frame stage, one would probably place Caesar on a center platform three or four steps tall, with the conspirators and other senators spread out on either side of him. How much more interesting this can look on the open stage, using the same central platform for Caesar, but placing the others in a full circle around him. Each one can speak to Caesar from where he is without regard to "opening up the picture." Casca, who has been deputed to strike first, can get into place behind Caesar without the maneuvering necessary on a picture frame stage, and the confusion after Caesar falls can be arranged much more spectacularly. Then, after Antony enters, he can move to Caesar's body and later to each of the conspirators, ranged in their circle, without the unnatural parading back and forth which the proscenium stage enforces.

Modern directors of Shakespeare must be prepared to mount their productions on both types of stages, or "in-the-round" as well, and very different productions will result, in terms of amount of scenery, nature, and number of properties, and the shape of the stage pictures and movement patterns. While "in-the-round" and the open stage may not be suitable for all types of plays, most modern directors prefer the open stage for Shakespeare.

Historical Period

Julius Caesar is placed in Roman times and is about historical figures from that period. It deals with major events of that time which actually occurred, even though Shakespeare has compressed and interpreted as his artistic needs dictated. It might appear at first glance that no question would then arise as to the period in which the play would be set and costumed.

Since at least the 1920s, however, directors have been transplanting classics, and especially Shakespeare's plays, from their ostensible period to other times, political climates, and modes of behavior.

Today, finding a "resonance" between some other historical time and the play's stated period offers a basis for transplanting period: "as if," say, The Merchant of Venice were to take place in a country very like Nazi Germany, with SS men, and concentration camps, and yellow arm bands, and the trappings of "the final solution." Orson Welles, as Maurice Charney notes, set his famed Mercury Theatre production of Julius Caesar in a Fascist state, with Brutus and Cassius as reformers bent on overthrowing a dictator. A recent Julius Caesar turned Rome into a "banana republic" under the yoke of a Noriega-like strongman.

Such comments on the text can indeed be revealing. Often, however, the attempt to establish relevance to today only obscures the play's special connection with its own time and the way that time can speak to ours. What seems to me important is that, regardless of directorial or design concepts, the play convey its essential meaning, speak in its own voice clearly, and accomplish for today's audience, insofar as is possible, what its author hoped to do with his.

Visual Elements Essential for Julius Caesar

Whatever historical period the director chooses for Julius Caesar, or whether he is to work on a proscenium stage, an open stage, or "in-the-round," he must reckon with certain scenic demands the play itself imposes. From its opening through the unleashing of the mob and the following quiet scene with the triumvirs (IV.i), we are in Rome. Suggesting the various places—Brutus' garden, streets, Caesar's house, the Capitol—will probably involve structural elements, realistic or not, which can contain the action. Columns, arches, walls, hangings—these can be turned, closed in, opened up, changed in relationship to one another. After IV.i, the play moves out of Rome. The action seems to require open spaces. Brutus' tent (IV.ii) will surely be a portable affair, brought on by soldiers, to be set up at the beginning of the scene and taken away as they leave the tent to go to battle. For the rest of the play, that battlefield is the scene. So, from the end of IV.i, the physical structures which contained Rome must be cleared away, leaving the stage more bare, more open. Solving this need for a transition from containment to openness dictates the physical production for Julius Caesar. Not working in the theatre for which Shakespeare's plays were written demands adjustments and compromises which irrevocably individualize each director's production of each of the plays.

What Julius Caesar is About

Maurice Charney, in his introduction to the play, has admirably situated Julius Caesar among Shakespeare's history plays in terms of a "regicide" upsetting "order" and the play ending with the restoration of that order. He also discusses how Shakespeare gives us an ambiguous picture of Caesar himself in order not to "stack the deck" of the conflict at the outset.

This play is special in that audience interest is divided among three or four chief figures, rather than being focused on a single hero like Hamlet or Macbeth. Brutus, Caesar, Antony, and, though not to quite the same extent, Cassius all occupy the foreground of our interest. This division of interest, I believe, helps to focus audience attention on "process" rather than on "sympathy." Shakespeare apparently wants us to be concerned with "hows" and "whys" rather than with our identification with "who." This, I think, is why we get a Caesar who is alternately imperious and heroic, monumental and human. Antony is not just a classic "hero" but underneath this surface an astute politician. Cassius is a manipulator, too, with a resemblance to Iago, but he is a passionate admirer of Brutus and patriotically devoted to their cause. Brutus and the rest share noble Roman virtues, but, though Brutus may be "the noblest Roman of them all," Shakespeare gives us here a man attempting to act ethically from an ethically flawed position.

Shakespeare's tragedies and histories usually illuminate through their action some simply-stated moral precept. In the case of Julius Caesar, I think the play shows us that "no end is justified which must be attained by evil means." Brutus is the protagonist through whose struggle this thesis is demonstrated. We see him resisting and then being propelled by faulty logic and the influence of others into a course of action which he tries to justify. He falls apart, committing serious practical errors, as he realizes that what he did was wrong. The action of the first part of the play builds through the forming of the conspiracy toward Caesar's murder and its immediate consequence, Antony's swaying of the crowd against the conspirators. The second part of the play deals with the downfall of Brutus and Cassius, which occurs, in part, as a result of Brutus' loss of heart.

Casting

The reader's imaginary enactment of the play will be enhanced by keeping in mind some sense of how its roles might be cast for a production. One need not visualize specific movie greats in particular roles, but being aware of appropriate physical type and emotional tone for the principal parts will help the reader "see" the play as he reads.

Caesar's lean face, thinning hair, his fifty or so years will be familiar to most readers from pictures of busts in history books. The role demands a robust voice and a commanding physical presence, along with enough charisma to mark a leader of men.

Brutus would seem to be in his thirties—athletic, solid, clear-eyed. His speeches would benefit from the round tones of a low baritone voice, secure and masculine.

Cassius, with his "lean and hungry look," is described by Shakespeare. He is the same age as Brutus, and surely tall, with a hawk face. He needs a flexible and resonant voice, probably somewhat more tenor than Brutus', to ensure musical variety in their scenes. There is a mercurial, passionate side of him, too, which the actor must achieve.

Antony must deceive us. "Antony, that revels long a-nights," Caesar calls him. We meet him ready to race in the Lupercal, probably in his late twenties. He is the Antony with whom Cleopatra fell in love. He should look like a glorious, heroic, brainless, Greek statue. He is seen by the others as a mere "play-boy," and only Cassius senses something dangerous beneath the pose. In the young Prince Hal, Shakespeare gives us such a person, but there the audience is shown glimmers along the way of the king who is to come. Antony reveals himself only when he is left alone with the corpse of Caesar, and only after the oration does the audience grasp how astute he really is. Act IV, Scene i shows him as not only clever but ruthless.

Octavius is not introduced until that scene, and we find him young, probably just turned twenty. He is quiet and watchful, and yet his shrewd assessment of Antony at the end of that first scene tells something about the cold and canny young man who will later battle Antony for the known world in Antony and Cleopatra.

This is a man's play, and the two women in it are there to shed light on their husbands, who occupy the center of our author's attention. One senses in Portia a woman as much her husband's equal as Shakespeare's time (the time of Queen Elizabeth) would allow. She is meant to embody all those steadfast virtues of the Roman matron literature had made familiar to Elizabethans. Calphurnia, on the other hand, is the younger wife of an older man. Caesar is alternately indulgent and dismissive with her, but he seems to need to appear decisive in her eyes.

Other characters in the play will be cast in relation to their function as conspirators, servants, soldiers, etc., and casting questions of interest will be dealt with in the commentary as they enter.

Does this casting chart seem to suggest a bias toward "type casting"? Certainly it does, if one means that an informed reader would find such choices obvious, because they are the choices suggested by the author's text, his descriptions, and the conflicts in which the characters find themselves. Good casting involves finding actors who can clearly embody the characteristics and tensions in the play, and putting those actors together in a resonant way. No wonderful actor is right for all the wonderful parts. A play is telling a story, and just as it must take place in an appropriate physical environment, so it must be inhabited by people emotionally and physically suitable for the author's characters. Please note that the castings described above are racially color-blind. In today's society and today's theatre, the case has been won for using the best actor available for the part, without regard to racial stereotypes. This does not mean that Antony can be successfully played by a 5' 6" wimp, without regard for the physical and emotional attributes Shakespeare wants for his man. The balances and contrasts of the emotional forces within the play must be understood and respected if the casting of the play is to "work."

Other Production Problems

Julius Caesar, like most of the other plays of Shakespeare, offers some problems in production specific to itself. How much blood should there be in which the conspirators bathe their swords? If the actors are in white togas, how do they keep the blood off them? How does one handle the progress from the street into the Capitol just before Caesar's murder? How does one execute the storm so it is effective but also so the actors can be heard? How does one stage Caesar's Ghost? How many actors will constitute a believable mob for the particular production in question?

I have tried to address these and similar questions in context as the reader encounters the problems in the play. My effort throughout has been to help the reader sense Julius Caesar as a script for the theatre. The director and actors are involved in an exciting search, a form of detective work, to see what the author intended to happen on stage and how to find modern equivalents to satisfy the play's needs. The commentary which accompanies the text is designed to let the reader in on the pleasures of that search. If the reader finds, as he encounters my notions of how to stage the play and my thoughts about what is going on in the scenes, that he would do the scene or the moment or the staging in some other way, he will have taken his own steps down the path of artistic selection which makes working in the theatre on these great plays so gratifying.