Six Percent of the Play
The man this play is named after speaks for about six percent of it.
Fair warning: this is a full summary of William Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, with every spoiler, the ending included. The text is Project Gutenberg ebook fifteen twenty-two, The Tragedy of Julius Caesar, from the P G Shakespeare Team, and every act and scene number follows it. That edition has five acts and eighteen scenes.
Here is how I counted. I added up every spoken word, leaving out speaker names and stage directions, and got about nineteen thousand. Brutus speaks about fifty-four hundred of them. Cassius, about thirty-seven hundred. Antony, about twenty-five hundred. Then comes Julius Caesar, with about eleven hundred. He is fourth. And he speaks in exactly three of the eighteen scenes. I will flag each one as we reach it.
Act One, Cassius Outtalks the Emperor
Act one opens in a Roman street. Two officials, Flavius and Marullus, scold a crowd of workers for putting on their best clothes to cheer Caesar’s triumph over Pompey. A cobbler jokes that he is a mender of bad soles.
Then comes Caesar’s first scene, act one, scene two, with about two hundred eighty-seven words. A soothsayer in the crowd calls out, Beware the Ides of March. Caesar says, he is a dreamer, and walks on. As he leaves, he tells Antony that Cassius has a lean and hungry look, and thinks too much, and such men are dangerous.
After Caesar exits, that same scene keeps going without him. Cassius works on Brutus alone. He says Caesar once cried, help me, Cassius, or I sink. He says Caesar, like a Colossus, bestrides the narrow world. Cassius’s lines in this one scene run to about eleven hundred words. That is as many as Caesar speaks in the entire play.
Casca then reports that a crown was offered to Caesar three times, and three times he put it by. Cicero spoke Greek, and to Casca it was Greek to me. In scene three a storm breaks, and Casca lists omens: a lion in the Capitol, a slave whose hand burned without scorching. Cassius uses the night to recruit Casca, and has anonymous notes left for Brutus to find.
Act Two, a Dream Against a Flatterer
Act two, scene one. Brutus cannot sleep. He says he has no personal cause against Caesar, but he fears what a crown would do, and calls him a serpent’s egg, to be killed in the shell. His servant finds a letter, and tells him that March is wasted fifteen days.
Cassius arrives with Casca, Decius, Cinna, Metellus Cimber and Trebonius, hats pulled over their faces. Brutus refuses an oath. They agree to leave Cicero out. Cassius wants Antony killed too, but Brutus says, let us be sacrificers, but not butchers. That decision is the hinge of the whole play. Then Portia shows Brutus a wound she gave herself in the thigh to prove she can keep a secret.
Now Caesar’s second scene, act two, scene two, and his longest, about five hundred fifty-four words, roughly half of everything he says. Calphurnia has cried out three times in her sleep, they murder Caesar. The priests found no heart in the offered beast. Caesar says cowards die many times before their deaths, but he agrees to stay home.
Then Decius turns up. He reinterprets her dream as good news. He says the Senate plans to give Caesar a crown today, and that people will whisper, Caesar is afraid. Caesar says, give me my robe, for I will go. Elsewhere in the street, Artemidorus writes out a warning that names eight men.
The Ides of March
Act three, scene one is the third and last scene Caesar speaks in. He needs only about two hundred eighty-five words. The soothsayer is there again. Caesar says, the Ides of March are come, and the soothsayer answers, ay, Caesar, but not gone. Artemidorus pushes his warning forward, but Caesar says, what touches us ourself shall be last served, and never reads it.
Popilius whispers to Cassius that he hopes the enterprise thrives, and then speaks to Caesar. Cassius panics, but Brutus sees Popilius smile. Trebonius leads Antony away. Metellus Cimber kneels to beg for his banished brother. Caesar answers that he is constant as the northern star. Casca shouts, speak, hands, for me, and stabs him first. Brutus is the last. Caesar says Et tu, Brute, then fall, Caesar, and dies.
By my count, that line comes about forty-eight percent of the way through the spoken words. The title character is dead before the play is half over.
Antony sends a servant, then arrives, and asks them to kill him too. Instead Brutus takes his hand, and agrees to let him speak at the funeral. Cassius warns him not to. Alone with the body, Antony promises civil strife, and says the words, cry havoc and let slip the dogs of war.
Two Speeches and a Mob
Act three, scene two is the Forum. Brutus goes first, and his speech is only about two hundred thirty words. He says, not that I loved Caesar less, but that I loved Rome more. The crowd shouts, live, Brutus, and some want to make him Caesar.
Then Antony speaks, and Antony’s lines in this scene run to about eleven hundred sixty words. That is more than Caesar’s whole part. He repeats that Brutus is an honourable man. The word honourable appears ten times in this scene, and every time it sounds a little sourer. He reminds them Caesar refused the crown thrice. He holds back a will, until they beg him to read it. Then he shows them the cloak with the stab holes, and says, this was the most unkindest cut of all.
The will leaves every Roman citizen seventy-five drachmas, and gives them his walks, his private arbors, and his new-planted orchards. The crowd carries off the body and cries for fire. Antony says, now let it work. Mischief, thou art afoot.
Scene three shows how fast the mob goes wrong. Cinna the poet, who is not the conspirator, is stopped in the street. They shout, tear him for his bad verses. His name is enough.
Act Four, a Name Nobody Says
I counted how often characters say the name Caesar or Julius. In act three, it is about a hundred times. In act four, it is four.
I mean that literally. In speech, that is all I could find. Yet the dead man still drives the plot. Act four, scene one, Antony, Octavius and Lepidus sit at a table marking names of men to die, and Antony says of Lepidus that he is fit only to carry gold, like an ass. Scenes two and three move to Sardis, where Brutus and Cassius quarrel in a tent.
Brutus accuses Cassius of having an itching palm, selling offices for gold. Cassius pulls out his dagger, and tells Brutus to strike as he did at Caesar. Brutus says, sheathe your dagger. They make peace. Then Brutus says, Portia is dead. She swallowed fire. Messala brings letters, one counting a hundred senators dead, Brutus’s own letters saying seventy, and Cicero is among them.
That night Brutus is reading, and the Ghost of Caesar walks in. It speaks only sixteen words. Thy evil spirit, Brutus. To tell thee thou shalt see me at Philippi. Brutus says, why, I will see thee at Philippi then.
Act Five, Philippi
Antony and Octavius meet Brutus and Cassius on the plain. Octavius swears not to sheathe his sword until Caesar’s three and thirty wounds are avenged. Cassius says it is his birthday, and the eagles that followed his army have been replaced by ravens. Brutus says he will never be led in triumph through Rome. They say farewell for ever and for ever.
In battle, Brutus attacks too early, his soldiers fall to plunder, and Antony surrounds Cassius. Cassius sends Titinius to see whether the troops ahead are friends, and his servant Pindarus watches from a hill. Pindarus wrongly says Titinius is taken. Cassius orders Pindarus to kill him with the sword that ran through Caesar’s bowels. But Titinius was greeted by friends. He lays a wreath on dead Cassius, and kills himself.
Brutus says, O Julius Caesar, thou art mighty yet. Young Cato charges and falls. Lucilius claims to be Brutus, and Antony says he would rather have such men as friends. Brutus tells Volumnius that the ghost has come twice, though this text shows it onstage only once. Strato holds the sword, and Brutus runs on it, saying, Caesar, now be still. I killed not thee with half so good a will.
Antony says, this was the noblest Roman of them all. Octavius orders a soldier’s burial.
The Final Ledger
Here is the final ledger. Of about nineteen thousand spoken words, Brutus has twenty-eight percent, Cassius nineteen, Antony thirteen, Caesar six. Caesar speaks in three scenes, and the longest is about half his part. His ghost speaks sixteen words. Yet his name drives the Ides of March, the funeral, the quarrel and the battle.
In my reading, this play is a tragedy about Brutus. The title is the shadow, and Brutus walks in it. Cassius, Antony, even Octavius all use Caesar’s name as a weapon, and by the last line, it has outlasted them all.
If you want to read it yourself, the text is free on Project Gutenberg, ebook fifteen twenty-two. My question for you: who is the tragic hero here, Caesar or Brutus? Tell me in the comments. Subscribe for more books, one clear angle at a time, and tap like if the count helped.
