Study Help
Practice Projects
1. Create your own Web site. Consider what you may put on such a site. Do you want to take a general approach and include a summary of the play with your own commentaries and character sketches? Or do you want to create a niche Web site dedicated to specific information, such as reviews of Julius Caesar on film? Remember to include appropriate graphics and links to other sites you find useful.
2. Write another play with a different setting, cast of characters, and/or outcome. What if, for example, Portia got together with Calphurnia and stopped the conspiracy? What if the actors in this play went home and found violence, conspiracy, betrayal, and great friendship in their own lives? Take the original as your inspiration, but use your imagination. The sky's the limit.
3. Research productions of Julius Caesar over the centuries, in other countries or in your hometown. What did they include from the original, what did they cut, and what did they change? Why? Stage your own production making your own choices or write an essay describing the most interesting of these productions.
4. Julius Caesar, Brutus, and Mark Antony were all real people. Do some research on who they were. Look at Shakespeare's source, Plutarch's Lives, as well as modern histories. Write an essay on historical objectivity. Is such objectivity possible? What role does art have in forming our ideas of the past?