 Hello and welcome. Now the play Julius Caesar by William Shakespeare is one of his very famous history plays but also remember that it's also known as a tragedy. If you're not sure what a tragedy is do make sure you check out my video where I outline Aristotle's idea of a tragedy but just remember that it's basically any sort of story or play according to Aristotle which has a main character who has a fatal flaw and this leads to either his demise or his death. Now when it comes to Julius Caesar this history play so it's of course based on the events that surrounded Julius Caesar's life but even after his death after his assassination this play has lots of twists and turns and of course it's very easy to get lost in the detail if you were studying this as part of your coursework or exams. So what I thought would be very useful is to create basically a summary of all the main events to be aware of in this play in a nutshell. So as you can see behind me essentially I've created a mind map which I'm going to walk you through in terms of summarizing in a nutshell all the key events that happen in Julius Caesar. So let's begin with how the play opens. Now the play opens when we learn of Julius Caesar returning from battle triumphant after he defeats the Roman general Pompey. So of course what this establishes is Julius Caesar's power and of course also remember that he's known as one of Rome's greatest leaders one of ancient Rome's greatest leaders okay. So the play starts by establishing him and his leadership and his battle prowess. Then as the play develops we learn that there's a soothsayer who approaches him and he warns him to beware the Ides of March. However Julius Caesar ignores this okay so now this warning initially foreshadows what will be happening which is of course his death. However Julius Caesar ignores the soothsayer who prophesies that he needs to be worried about the Ides of March. Then we learn that their fellow senators within Rome called Brutus and Cassius who doubt Caesar's loyalties to his position as the leader of Rome. In other words they are worried that he's going to become an emperor and also ultimately a dictator. Remember that Rome at this time was ruled as a semi-democracy whereby people got a chance to vote. Of course there was very specific types of people who got to vote. However they are worried that once Julius Caesar who they felt is going to be extremely ambitious and he's growing in ambition once he becomes emperor he's also going to make himself dictator and he's going to wipe out democracy. So they're really concerned about the democratic state of Rome. Now Cassius of course he and Brutus speaks and he asks Brutus if he will conspire to overthrow Caesar basically if he's going to work together with him in order to overthrow and even kill Caesar and at first Brutus does not give him a direct answer so we as the audience are not quite sure initially whether Brutus agrees or disagrees in terms of overthrowing and of course killing Caesar. However it's then later revealed in the play that a conspiracy led by Brutus himself the senator does exist and the date of Caesar's murder so he decides that Caesar has to go and not only does he have to go he has to be killed to completely eliminate the threat of him ever becoming emperor so they set a date on the 15th of March which is of course the Ides of March to kill Caesar when he comes to the Senate. Now on the morning of the 15th of March Carponea who is Julius Caesar's wife she had a nightmare and she wakes up and she's really terrified very disturbed by this nightmare and just like the soothsayer she warns Caesar not to go to the Senate however Caesar ignores her just like he ignored the soothsayer and he goes and he is stabbed to death of course we know that historically speaking Julius Caesar was killed by senators okay so once he stabbed to death at his funeral so this is after he stabbed to death and of course this is a very big deal Mark Antony his very close friend speaks to the crowd and of course he delivers his very very famous Friends, Romans and Countrymen speech and he explains to the crowd that Caesar never wanted to be emperor if he did he would have already done it he offered him three times the position of emperor and Caesar refused the crowd therefore gets violent of course during Julius Caesar's funeral and of course Mark Antony is basically implicating Brutus and he's basically illustrating that both Brutus and Cassius were wrong in assassinating Caesar the crowd gets violent and Brutus and Cassius are forced to flee the city okay so they're forced to flee as a result of this and basically popular ideas turn against them now Brutus and Cassius after the flee they go to northern Greece and they gather an army a rebel army okay to take back control and they prepare to fight an army that's led now by Caesar's great nephew called Octavius and this army is also led by Mark Antony and we learned that tensions begin to rise between Brutus and Cassius when it comes to strategy and how to lead this fight now on the eve of the battle Brutus learns that his wife has committed suicide and he also sees Caesar's ghost always remember that Shakespeare uses things like hallucinations of ghosts to represent someone's feelings of guilt now Octavius and Antony argue about strategy however on the day of the battle the battle does begin and Cassius sees his own man fleeing and he mistakenly believes that his best friend called Titanus he has been captured and thus Cassius commits suicide now Cassius his friend sees Caesar's Cassius's corpse okay so his friend there after sees his corpse is really horrified by this and he himself commits suicide okay so there's two suicides that are committed and then Brutus who's also still on the battlefield he learns of the deaths of Cassius and Titanus and continues in battle and when loss seems imminent so when it is really really clear that he's going to lose this war he kills himself do remember that long time ago there was a lot of suicide because suicide was seen as almost an honorable way of death okay now Octavius and Mark Antony arrive and they find Brutus's dead body and ultimately the play ends with Octavius and Mark Antony mourning Brutus as a noble and honorable man who simply wanted to act in the benefit of Rome all he just wanted to do was to protect democracy within Rome okay so of course this is a tragedy in all France this is a tragedy where we see the character flaws of Julius Caesar but also we see the character flaws of Brutus and even if the play is actually called Julius Caesar Brutus does speak more within the play than Julius Caesar himself so that's it when it comes to understanding this play and its key events and I'm not sure but do make sure you come back where I go over all the main characters within this play and the key quotations to bear in mind if you're writing about this play its main characters for your coursework or exams so thanks so much for listening