The Tragedy of Julius Caesar

Beware the ides of March, a voice calls from the crowd, and Caesar walks past it toward the most famous murder ever staged. The play is not his; it belongs to Brutus, who loves him, who cannot sleep, who paces his orchard before dawn arguing himself into a killing he must believe is a sacrifice rather than a butchery. Shakespeare's cruelty is to let him be right about the danger and catastrophically wrong about everything that comes after. Then Antony is left alone with the body, climbs to the pulpit with the torn mantle in his hands, and in a few hundred lines turns Rome inside out using nothing but rhythm and a pause in the right place. No one has ever written a better demonstration of what a voice can do to a crowd. And when the ghost finds Brutus's tent at Sardis and says only that they will meet again at Philippi, the whole night goes cold.