SOURCE: “Julius Caesar and the Properties of Shakespeare's Globe,” in English Literary Renaissance, Vol. 28, No. 1, Winter, 1998, pp. 18-46.

In the following essay, Kezar maintains that in Julius Caesar Shakespeare explored the potential ‘irresponsibility’ of theater as it appropriates history, subverts audience response, and dismembers self-presentation.

“The World makes many vntrue Constructions of these Speaches.”¹

For an antitheatricalist such as Stephen Gosson, the Renaissance stage travesties the courtroom, leaving the defendant with no voice and replacing a single judge with an injudicious jury: “At stage plays it is ridiculous, for the parties accused to reply, no indifference of judgment can be had, because the worst sort of people have the hearing of it, which in respect of their ignorance, of their fickleness, and of their fury, are not to be admitted in place of judgment. A judge must be grave, sober, discreet, wise, well exercised in cases of government...