Monday, March 5th - Reading Shakespeare's Julius Caesar - Just started reading Julius Caesar again (for the fourth year in a row) with my ninth graders here at BHS. After so many times wading through this political drama, having first been exposed to the play myself in ninth grade in Mrs. D. Bishop's class, and, unfortunately not having understood a word of it the first time around, nor cared to, one might think that I'd be sick of it by now - but I'm actually starting to appreciate it more.  First there's the basic outline of the play, that of the envious, resentful, upper-crusty peer group cutting one of its wayward members down to size.  One man, J.C., having completed a series of macho conquests in western Europe, Gaul in particular, then having vanquished his great rival, Pompey, at the battle of Pharsalus, gets a little "too big for his britches"  or  "a little too powerful too fast" as we say - and wants to be crowned de facto Emperor and undisputed ruler of Rome, not just for a day, but for ever and ever. In response to this bold power grab, the thin and hungry Cassius instigates a conspiracy with the help of the ever-cautious, reluctant Brutus, and the gossip-mongering Casca, and other erstwhile "defenders" of the Roman republic (Decius, Trebonius, Metellus Cimber, et al). Caesar himself is quite a study in messiness of character, someone who has no hesitation, lying, cheating, bribing, flattering, philandering, blaspheming and clamoring his way up the greasy pole, while killing countless numbers of foreigners/barbarians; yet this same Caesar, despite his vanity and egomania, (I know how that sounds) remains oddly cultured, refined,  generous, courteous, accessible - someone who goes out of his way to seek public validation for his dictatorship, having paid more deference to the lower ranks of society than any of his predecessors. It is Mark Antony, however, who emerges as the absolute "wild man" of the play: a conniver with excessive energy who makes himself Caesar's heir apparent with one brilliant funeral oration, then forms a ruthless alliance with two supposed underlings whom he hopes to control, then allows himself to fall madly, insanely, inescapably in love with the equally wild and ambitious Cleopatra (while still-married, of course, to Caesar's nephew's long-suffering sister) which love-affair, over time, eventually causes the Empire to slip out of his unstable hands. Meanwhile, the young, nineteen-year-old Octavius - later known as Augustus Caesar - shocks us with his ruthlessly cool-headed, under-the-radar maneuvering; he prevails over his elder statesmen rivals, but only by way of selling his soul to the Second Triumvirate and signing off on "letters of proscription" (callous death warrants) for all of Caesar's enemies. Brutus, meanwhile, seems to get lost in the shuffle, and appears politically "in over his head," having totally botched his funeral speech - thereby making the assassination seem like a needless hit job. Cassius becomes superstitious while Cicero is whacked for being on the wrong side of Caesar one too many times. All of the so-called champions of the Republic are either on the run or dead by the end of the play. Unless, you count the initial 40-year rule of Augustus as the major exception, Rome will endure a long series of bad emperors until its eventual descent into anarchy. If that's not a political tragedy (authoritarian rule vs. barbarian entropy) then I don't know what is. See - not as much of snooze-fest as you may have thought. Hello? Is anyone awake out there?