27 September

An evening with Shakespeare last night, Julius Caesar. It reminded me how naive and silly our modern ideas of power are, and how much these old works saw it very differently. The play is a meditation on power. The public or the crowd circles the main protagonists the entire time, menacingly, as they debate what they should do 'for the good of Rome'. The crowd will decide the outcome, always. Cassius says it so well, tyrannies are fires caused by 'weak straws', not great and 'powerful' men. All power is in the hands of the crowd. "And why should Caesar be a tyrant then? Poor man! I know he would not be a wolf, But that he sees the Romans are but sheep: He were no lion, were not Romans hinds. Those that with haste will make a mighty fire Begin it with weak straws: what trash is Rome..."