Books: Biggest Roman of Them All

JULIUS CAESAR (205 pp.)—Alfred Duggan—Knopf ($2.50).

Author Duggan has come to unbury Caesar, not to praise or blame him. It takes some digging. Shakespeare casually sketched in the great Roman in his tragedy and pivoted his play around the character of the tormented liberal, Brutus.

Casting Shakespeare in modern dress, Orson Welles sleight-of-handed Caesar the role of a fascist. Hollywood's Joe Mankiewicz saw his Caesar as a kind of tired, pompous stockbroker. Shaw's hero in Caesar and Cleopatra is a worldly-wise but disenchanted superman whom power has made not mad, but sad. Front-rank Historical...

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