Antony is a strong man, able to run in the Lupercalian ceremonies at the beginning of “Julius Caesar”, and in some productions strong enough to carry Caesar’s body during his crucial funeral oration. Caesar is portrayed as physically weaker and more compromised: he mentions that he is deaf in one ear, Cassius remarks that Caesar once exhausted himself trying to swim a distance Cassius could swim easily, and we also learn that Caesar has the “falling sickness”, i.e. epilepsy. His physical frailty stands in contrast to the ruling authority he possesses and complicates the opposition to him in the play: he is on the one hand potentially in a position to become a tyrant, but on the other hand is not himself physically strong or intimidating. In many productions, Caesar looks unimpressive enough that it’s hard to see why he so threatens the conspirators, which makes their decision to assassinate him more difficult for the audience to support.
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