President Trump and Julius Caesar, ancient Roman politician additionally infamous for the Shakespearean play The Tragedy of Julius Caesar, have an undeniable resemblance. The Public Theater in New York has seen and highlighted these similarities, stirring up controversy for their interpretation.
The Tragedy of Julius Caesar romanticizes the actual events of the downfall of the Roman democracy and the dictatorship of Julius Caesar, who regulated autocratic rule in the civilization and appealed to the Roman citizens struggling to survive under the oppressive noble rule. While Caesar remained a member of the elite, he still utilized the shared adversity of the people to increase his political power. When he assumed power as a dictator in Rome, the people continued to cheer for him despite his nobility and similarities between himself and the other elite. Does it sound vaguely familiar?
While it is difficult to make the direct comparison that Trump is the American equivalent to Julius Caesar, the similarities are hardly disputable. The Public Theater in New York has made the bold move of making the artistic choice to personify Caesar in a rendition of Shakespeare’s play as Donald Trump, dressed in blonde hair and blue suits characterized with red ties and a wife whose foreign accent is nearly identical to that of Melania Trump’s. The play, with the iconic and inevitable stabbing of Caesar, caused immense anger from conservatives, who argue the depiction of the Trump-Caesar’s graphic murder is an inexcusable threat to the president.
The Public Theater and lead artistic director Oskar Eustis are not the only ones who’ve used the play as grounds to make a statement on current political situations. During the Obama administration, the Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis made the same interpretation, performing an assassination of the Obama-Caesar. Orson Welles, in 1939, designed the play around a Mussolini-Caesar, the Royal Shakespeare Company in Africa created Caesar to resemble Africa’s dictators. In fact, the play was first drafted by Shakespeare during tense political times in Elizabethan England. Using the play to express political discontent is nothing new, though conservatives seem to prefer pretending that it is.
The interpretation has resulted in sponsors such as Delta Air Lines and Bank of America to distance or terminate associations with the Public Theater, but many are arguing that those who are angered by the depiction of Trump have seemed to miss the point of Shakespeare’s art.
Oskar Eustis, director of the rendition, released a statement in the program’s notes, addressing the true message of the show. “Julius Caesar can be read as a warning parable to those who try to fight for democracy by undemocratic means. To fight the tyrant does not mean imitating him.”
“Julius Caesar can be read as a warning parable to those who try to fight for democracy by undemocratic means. To fight the tyrant does not mean imitating him.”
Rob Melrose, director of the Obama-inspired Julius Caesar, whose work did not only receive no controversy, but was supported by a $25,000 grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, commented further on the subject, saying that the murder of Caesar is supposed to be shocking, no matter who it is based on. “When Caesar is killed, it’s horrifying, it’s awful — whether it’s Obama or Trump,” said Melrose. “Trump, Republicans and Democrats should all take heart that what this play says is that killing a political leader, no matter how righteous your views are, is a bad idea — a terrible idea.”
The artistic interpretation serves the message that even though the conspirators against Caesar justified their actions by defending democracy, they carried out their mission in the least democratic way possible. The play focuses less on the dictatorship of the eponymous character and more on the definition of democracy.
