ABSTRACT
In 1948, Thornton Wilder, following on the success of his earlier novels – The Cabala, The Bridge of San Luis Rey, and –The Woman of Andros – wrote The Ides of March, a novel divided into four books of letters and journal entries that chronicle the events leading up to Julius Caesar’s death. The challenges of adapting the fictitious letters in The Ides of March proved significant. Although Jerome Kilty’s script dramatized some of the best moments in the novel and sensationalized the intrigue that led up to Julius Caesar’s assassination, his linear chronology failed to recreate the expressionist aspects of the original and to bring to life Wilder’s most pressing concerns in The Ides of March. The profanation of the ritual so intrigued Wilder that he took the liberty of moving the historical event from 62 bce to the year of Julius Caesar’s assassination so that he could use the event to tie certain characters together.
