Volume 36, Number 15 · October 12, 1989
Caesar at the Bastille
By Jan Kott, Translated by Jadwiga Kosicka
Julius Caesar is certainly one of the most shocking of all Shakespeare's tragedies. Caesar is murdered at the height of his triumphs. A moment before his death, before the last words of his final speech, he compares himself to the northern star 'of whose true-fix'd and resting quality / There is no fellow in the firmament' (III.i.61–62), and now he is lying bleeding on the steps of the Capitol pierced by the daggers of the Roman senators. Shakespeare saw with the utmost clarity that Caesar's death is a twofold exemplum, of both history and tragedy, and that it would be played all over again on the steps of many capitols and on the stages of many theaters'…be acted over / In [states] unborn and accents yet unknown!' (III.i.112–113).
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