ABSTRACT
In the summer of 1935, before one of the most imposing monuments of the Forum-Palatine complex, the Basilica of Maxentius, there took place a remarkable performance of Shakespeare's Julius Caesar. In Julius Caesar Shakespeare drew of course on classical sources, mainly Plutarch, to dramatize, in sensuous and visual terms, a fully reconstructed Roman republic. The reconstruction is not archaeologically exact, but it provides a complete historically-imagined and visually accessible Rome of real palaces, temples, government buildings, streets, houses, and statues. This classical Rome is the visual context in which the play is conventionally read, a Rome of the mind, since the dramatic narrative continually alludes to a classical mis-en-scene that is keyed into the visual experience of ancient Rome familiar to modern readers from film and television representations. Julius Caesar has been read as a tragedy, a lament for monarchy, and a republican manifesto.
