Rome's greatest man is stabbed in the middle of the play, and the rest belongs to the friend who did it, the friend who wept, and the dead man's ghost.
A fast, speech-driven tragedy that is really about Brutus. The famous lines come early and the quarrel and the battle feel quieter, but the funeral scene is one of the best set pieces Shakespeare wrote. Four and a half out of five, in my view.
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A full-spoiler Julius Caesar summary built on a word count: the title character speaks in three scenes and about six percent of the play. Acts one to five, the funeral speeches and Philippi, counted from the Project Gutenberg text.
Julius Caesar is a tragedy by William Shakespeare about the plot to kill Caesar and what it costs the plotters. We read the text of Project Gutenberg ebook 1522, The Tragedy of Julius Caesar, prepared by the PG Shakespeare Team, which has five acts and eighteen scenes, so every number on this page comes from a text you can read for free.
Below you’ll find a summary built on a word count: who speaks how much, in which scene, and when Caesar goes quiet. You also get the Ides of March, the funeral speeches, the quarrel at Sardis and the battle at Philippi. The page has full spoilers, since the whole play is covered.
A fast, speech-driven tragedy that is really about Brutus. The famous lines come early and the quarrel and the battle feel quieter, but the funeral scene is one of the best set pieces Shakespeare wrote. Four and a half out of five, in my view. Read it if: you want a short shakespeare play with a clear plot; you enjoy political speeches and persuasion; you are studying it for class and need the acts and the ending; you like tragedies where the hero is the conspirator, not the victim. Skip it if: you expect caesar to be the main character: he speaks in only three scenes; you dislike verse and elizabethan english; you want a long, twisty plot: this is a five-act play.
A full-spoiler Julius Caesar summary built on a word count: the title character speaks in three scenes and about six percent of the play. Acts one to five, the funeral speeches and Philippi, counted from the Project Gutenberg text. Julius Caesar Summary: The Title Role Is Six Percent →
A play by William Shakespeare. A group of Roman senators led by Brutus and Cassius stab Julius Caesar on the Ides of March because they fear he will become king. Antony then turns the Roman crowd against them at the funeral, and the conspirators lose the battle of Philippi, where both Cassius and Brutus die.
In the Project Gutenberg text, Casca stabs Caesar first and Brutus last. Brutus says he has no personal cause, but fears what a crown would do to Caesar. At the funeral he says, in prose, that he loved Rome more than he loved Caesar.
By our count of the Project Gutenberg text, about 1,126 of roughly 19,000 spoken words, or about six percent. That makes him the fourth biggest speaker, after Brutus, Cassius and Antony. He speaks in only three of the eighteen scenes.
