Adapted for Broadcasting by Barbara Burnham
The Persons represented:
Also Flavius and Marullus - Tribunes; Casca, Trebonius, Decius, Brutus, Metellus Cimber, Cinna - Conspirators; Artemidorus of Cnidos - a Teacher of Rhetoric;
A Soothsayer; Lucilius, Titinius, Messala, Volumnius - Supporters of Brutus and Cassius; Varro, Clitus, Claudius, Strato, Lucius, Dardanius - Servants to Brutus
Senators, Citizens, Guards, Attendants, etcetera
Cast:
Eric Anderson, Ernest Digges, Maurice Gilbert, George Cooke, Harold Young, Griffith Jones, Max Gaytopn, Harold Reese, Eric Berry, Noel Dryden, James Tovey, Joan Hare, Joyce Murchie, Jeanne Manners, Helen Dale, Cecily Clarence, Clifton Gibbs, Basil Atherton, James Mason, Jill Howard
Scene
Rome - the neighbourhood of Sardis - the neighbourhood of Philippi
The Incidental Music by Robert Chignell
Played by The B.B.C. Theatre Orchestra
Conducted by Leslie Woodgate
Lucius' Song composed by H. M. Cecil
Sung by Lesley Dudley, with harp accompaniment by Sidonie Goossens
The Play produced by Peter Creswell

Julius Caesar was written by Shakespeare - that is, assuming that it was not written by Bacon, Lord Rutland, Lord Derby, Lord Oxford, or any other contemporary peer - in or about 1399, just after Henry V, that glorification of English patriotism. It is the first of his plays to deal with Roman life; Antony and Cleopatra is a direct sequel to it. It is also the first of the great tragedies, if we consider Romeo and Juliet more as a romantic lyric play; it is similar in many ways to Hamlet, which was written - in its present form - during the following year. Brutus, in particular, reminds us of the baffling Prince of Denmark. When it was first produced at the Globe, its success probably depended largely on spectacular effects, like many of Shakespeare's plays; the murder of Caesar, the battle of Philippi, and the storm-scene at night - must have been most impressive and exciting for the 'men of understanding' in the pit. Now, however, excitement of that kind means much less to us; it is his poetry that makes Shakespeare a best-seller even today, the poetry that conveys action and character without the help of a single strip of painted scenery. Shakespeare is impossible in the modern theatre, with its realistic settings and its slow, unyielding mechanism. Perhaps the microphone is the only perfect medium of today for these rapidly-shifting plays.