Stuff That Happens

Before the Play

• George Bernard Shaw’s Caesar and Cleopatra, part of ASC’s 2019 Summer: Festival Season.
• Caesar wins great victories in Gaul. His spoils of war enrich him and the city of Rome, making him wildly popular with the common people.
• Pompey’s political faction accuses Caesar of waging illegal war and demand that he come back to Rome to face trial.
• Caesar returns with an army.
• Caesar defeats Pompey, who flees to Egypt, where he is murdered.

During the Play

• Caesar arrives in Rome to great fanfare. A soothsayer warns him to “Beware the ides of March.”
• Brutus reveals to Cassius that he fears that the people will make Caesar a king, overturning the Republic. Casca reports to them that, during the celebration, Mark Antony offered Caesar a crown three times and Caesar’s refusal delighted the crowd.
• Caesar’s growing popularity spurs a conspiracy among the late Pompey’s followers and among others worried about Caesar’s power.
• Cassius tries to convert Brutus to the conspiracy.
• On a stormy night, the conspirators convince Brutus of their cause. Brutus’s wife, Portia, asks him to tell her what is troubling him.
• Caesar’s wife, Calphurnia, relates a bad dream and asks him to stay at home. A conspirator, Decius Brutus, reinterprets Calphurnia’s dream favorably and escorts Caesar to the Capitol.
• In the Capitol, one of the conspirators distracts Antony, a steadfast Caesar supporter, while the rest of the faction stab Caesar. Antony submits to the conspirators and obtains Brutus’s permission to speak at the funeral.
• After Brutus defends his actions to the crowd, Mark Antony incites the crowd against the conspirators, who flee Rome.
• Antony joins Octavius Caesar (Caesar’s nephew and acknowledged heir) and Lepidus to battle the conspirators.
• Ghostly visitations, battles, and bad judgement ensue.