Along with the greetings we sent to the space composed in Futura, we should send this screenplay or something derived from it. All the love, hate, and madness that tell our story are packed over a decade on a piece of land and sea. This is us! (Another beautiful show btw)

Reading experience

My father, an old professor of Linguistics once told me that after Dante and Shakespeare, nobody came up with new themes. They presented everything, and they did it first.

Growing up loving literature, I knew I should read the Bard, but the language was always a fence too tall. While native speakers can deal with Old English due to the contact in school, this is new for us who learned English as a second language.

But once I found the English-Italian version (both idioms on a spread), I decided to try it. The Italian worked as a guide, and the experience was fantastic.

Highlights, no spoilers

The play starts at the festival, where Anthony offers a crown to Cæsar. It shows how the dictator’s populist politics may led Rome to tyranny after centuries of a functional Republic.

Shakespeare conducts the story magnificently and never mentions Cæsar’s real intentions until his very end, astonishing us with a brutal (and maybe unfair?) ‘removal from the office’.

I would highlight Brutus’s and Antony’s monologues in the funeral sequence and their conduct of the crowd. While the first presents and justifies the conspiracy, the second carefully unfolds his thirst for vengeance, praising the honorable men who violently impeached the first man of Rome.

Takeaways

I found it interesting how Shakespeare recycles themes from other stories. For example, he introduces the ghost of Cæsar to haunt Brutus on the battlefield. The same goes for using Chaos as a decision-maker, with Antony slowly understanding that his speech has hooked the crowd, transforming the honorable conspirators into murderers. I was not waiting for such a surprise.

Give yourself this intellectual treat and check it out. This is certainly a must-read.