The film, currently presumed lost, featured Méliès himself as a William Shakespeare moving from frustration to excitement as he imagines and plans a pivotal scene for his play Julius Caesar.

As he paces the room planning out the dialogue, a servant enters and puts food on the table; Shakespeare, reaching the moment of the assassination itself, seizes a knife and dramatically attacks a loaf of bread.

"[2] Film scholar Judith Buchanan emphasises the cosmopolitan political effect of this final scene, which she describes as a "sentimental tribute to a universalising poet".

[5] In an article on Shakespearean cinema, Anthony Guneratne mentions the film, highlighting that by "showing the poet struggling to dramatize difficult material," Méliès created "a special-effects-dominated precursor of Shakespeare in Love".

[6] The historian Deborah Cartmell comments: "It's not hard to speculate that Méliès's decision to play the part of the playwright is an implicit assertion that the filmmaker is 'the new Shakespeare,' but, as the film is no longer available, it is impossible to know how far this can be taken.