For Thursday: Julius Caesar, Act V (try to finish!)

No questions today, but do try to finish Julius Caesar for tomorrow's class. We'll write about something interesting in this act which may (or may not) have to do with your Paper #2! Remember that the paper is due on Tuesday instead of tomorrow, so we can finish Julius Caesar first. If you need the assignment, it's a few posts down from this one.

Here are some ideas to consider as you read:

* How does Shakespeare depict the warring armies in the final act? Do they seem like the powerful, god-like heirs of Rome? Or just a bunch of teenagers scrapping in a schoolyard? 

* In Act 4.3, Cassius and Brutus have what sounds like (or could be performed like) a lovers' spat. They literally seem to be breaking up, though in the end, they patch things up and watch Netflix (well, not quite). How does 5.1 continue the love language between them? What IS their relationship with one another?

* In Act 4, Antony was becoming a second Caesar--arrogant, tyrannical, and indifferent to the life around him. Does Act 5 redeem him, or does he harden into the very Caesar they were trying to kill in Acts 1-3?

* Are the deaths of Cassius and Brutus comic or tragic? Are they cathartic? Or even poetic? In a play of great speeches, do they get some good ones in the end?

* How does the conflict between fate and free-will get played out in Act 5? Do we feel that the characters were doomed to meet this fate? Was the soothsayer's prolocation, "beware the ides of March" meant for both Caesar and the conspirators? Or were the events of Act 5 the result of their own tragic decisions?

* Why does Antony seem to change his tune about Brutus at the very end of the play? Is this another act of theater, as when he eulogized Caesar in Act 3? Or is this meant with sincerity/tragedy?