When “Julius Caesar” was performed at the Winter Garden Theatre in New York in 1864, the role of Mark Antony was played by John Wilkes Booth. His brother Edwin Booth played Brutus, and their brother Junius Brutus Booth, Jr., was Cassius. Five months later, John Wilkes Booth shot Abraham Lincoln with the cry “sic semper tyrannis” (“thus always to tyrants,” words traditionally attributed to Brutus at Caesar’s assassination). In the years following, Edwin Booth went on to one of the most distinguished theatrical careers of the nineteenth century. Between December, 1871, and March, 1872, he appeared in another run of “Julius Caesar” in New York City, playing, on different nights, Mark Antony, Brutus, and Cassius.
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