Got down to the Globe for the second time this season and stood watching Julius Caesar with the other groundlings (always less of them by the second half I notice). This was the first of Shakespeare's plays put on at the old Globe (I think that is why we had a bit of jiggery pokery with the scenery at the beginning and during the play). As it says in the programme somewhere the piece does lack a comic character (or were the actors just not good enough with the comic material available) to lighten the mood but brimful of famous lines and phrases (The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, But in ourselves, that we are underlings; Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears; Et tu, Brute?; The live-long day, Beware the ides of March, let slip the dogs of war, etc). George Irving of TV fame took the part of Caesar well, though it isn't that much of a part - Brutus, Cassius and Mark Anthony getting the best bits. Perhaps one problem with the play is that it is hard to identify with any of these three, though they are well drawn and relatively complex. Anyway, good stuff from the Bard as ever.
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