ABSTRACT

To perform Shakespeare’s tragedy of Julius Caesar in a theater under the title and patronage of a hereditary monarchy—the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre became the Royal Shakespeare Theatre and Company in 1961—is either an admission that the play no longer matters or a deliberately subversive political intervention in a continuing debate about whether it is ever justified to assassinate a ruling head of state. Surely what Cassius calls the “acting over” of Caesar’s death can never be a merely aesthetic gesture?