Julius Caesar Gets Clipped 2054 Years Ago Today

March 15th. It trans­lates to the Ides of March on the Roman Cal­en­dar. And it’s the date when Julius Cae­sar was famous­ly assas­si­nat­ed in 44 B.C. To mark the occa­sion (today is the Ides of March), we bring you a dra­mat­ic, six-minute clip of the assas­si­na­tion scene from the film ver­sion of Shake­speare’s Julius Cae­sar, direct­ed by Joseph Mankiewicz in 1953. The scene fea­tures Louis Cal­h­ern as Cae­sar, John Giel­gud as Cas­sius and James Mason as Bru­tus.  The film also stars Mar­lon Bran­do as Mark Antony, but we only get a fleet­ing glimpse of him in this scene as the plot­ters con­trive to sep­a­rate him from Cae­sar.

Note: You can down­load a free audio ver­sion of Shake­speare’s play thanks to Lib­rivox, or get a free etext here. And if you have an iPhone, feel free to down­load a free app that includes all of Shake­speare plays.

Mike, one of our faith­ful read­ers, gets all of the cred for this one! Many thanks.