The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich: A History of Nazi Germany by William Shirer- (Midway in Book 2)
Ludwig Wittgenstein: The Duty of Genius by Ray Monk
Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson- read abt. 30 or so pages...still a good read
House of Names by Colm Tóibín- This is proving to be a rather...interesting take on the story told in The Oresteia more about this, hopefully, this coming Sunday.
*************
A couple of closing notes about Julius Caesar…
Liz Dollimore explains a few of the essential elements of The Peacham Drawing in a 2012 post at bloggingshakespeare.com.
Titus is a Roman play and yet we see only some small concessions to Roman costume in the leaf crown and the toga worn by Titus himself. Titus’ sons – shown to the left of him are costumed in Tudor outfits as are the other characters. Plays were dressed by a combination of using costumes already owned by the theatre, accepting generous donations of slightly used costumes from well to do patrons and making new costumes for specific roles. Added to this they had a few outfits representing specific historical periods with which they dressed principle characters to create a historical feel. One assumes this avoided spending a lot of money on dressing a play completely in period costume before they knew whether it was popular enough to warrant repeated performances.
The Globe actually confirms that, for the most part, Shakespeare’s plays were originally performed largely in modern dress...and even the actor’s own clothes, at times.
“Period appropriate” costuming for Shakespearean plays like Julius Caesar is actually more of a product of the 19th century.
So any Shakespeare play performed in our modern dress or even street clothes...that’s highly appropriate; it’s what actors did in Shakespeare’s times, after all.
2) Never forget how prescient William Shakespeare actually was in the context of English history.
Immediately after The Restoration of Charles II to the throne, Julius Caesar was performed, albeit probably in an adapted form as were many of Shakespearean productions after Charles II was restored to the throne.
Goodness, if the post-Restoration Brits can handle performances of this play after the Restoration then that really makes the Trumpian protesters of SITP even bigger snowflakes than I thought.
Finally, as far as the events of March 15, 44 BCE...with the hindsight of over 2,000 years...I can neither condemn nor condone the actions that took place...rather, I understand the why but the fact remains that you could have stuck a fork in the Roman Republic by that time; the Republic was done, IMO.