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[…] Let us bathe our hands in Caesar’s blood
Up to the elbows and besmear our swords.
Then walk we forth, even to the marketplace,
And, waving our red weapons o’er our heads,
Let’s all cry “Peace, freedom, and liberty!”
(Shakespeare, Julius Caesar, 3.1)

In Shakespeare’s play, Brutus and the other assassins are keenly aware of their status as actors in both senses of the word. As they see it, they have followed an orderly course from plot to action to rescue Rome from a dangerous dictator. As this quote shows, they also connive at symbolic performance, seeking to turn Caesar’s blood into a costume, his body into a prop, and assassination into a play. That’s how the conspirators see it. But how do we see it? Brutus describes a group of men with blood up to their elbows waving swords and crying out ‘Peace, Freedom, Liberty’. The irony usually causes a ripple of dark laughter in the audience. As becomes clear, the conspirators have lost the plot because human bodies in Caesar’s Rome, as in Shakespeare’s London, signified in uncontrollable ways. This ‘deep dive into Julius Caesar’ for Bell Shakespeare examines the assassination of Caesar as a play within a play that compares the linear progress of thought and speech to action, with the chaotic ambivalence of how bodies make meaning.

Kate Flaherty is a Senior Lecturer in English and Drama at ANU. She researches how Shakespeare’s works play on the stage of public culture. Her sole-authored books are Ellen Terry, Shakespeare and Suffrage in Australia and New Zealand (CUP, 2025), and Ours as We Play it: Australia Plays Shakespeare (UWAP, 2011). Other articles and chapters explore aspects of 19th century Shakespeare performance such as touring, education, and gender. Her publication venues include Contemporary Theatre Review, Shakespeare Survey, New Theatre Quarterly, The Guardian, and The Conversation. Kate is a Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy, and winner of the ANU VC’s Award for Excellence in Education.

Zoom link: https://anu.zoom.us/j/81480874806?pwd=wcefepmFY5FoqPXvnPnTif0gECD93c.1