The problem with staging a “Julius Caesar” in which Caesar clearly resembles Donald Trump, the culture-war controversy du jour thanks to Shakespeare in the Park, isn’t that doing so encourages the president’s assassination. The rough-and-tumble of democratic politics has always been rife with classical call-outs and far more egregious forms of lèse-majesté. The theatergoers who show up to watch a Shakespeare play in Central Park are — I hope — not high on the Secret Service’s watch list. And the play’s tragic arc does not exactly make tyrannicide look like the wisest of strategies, even if the director is crude and on-the-nose enough to dress his Cassius for the Women’s March.

No, the problem with a Trumpified Caesar is that the conceit fails to illuminate our moment the way a good classical allusion should.

The decadent years of the Roman Republic are as good a comparison point for our late-republican discontents as any in the history books, and a creeping Caesarism in the executive has been a feature of our politics for many years. But between his military prowess, his reforming energy and his immense (if fluctuating) popularity, old murdered Julius himself is a relatively poor analogue for Trump. Our president is a different sort of character, in need of a different sort of script.

Suppose you exhumed Shakespeare and ordered him to write a Roman play for our times. Since the bard was reasonably skilled at flattering his patrons, the first question he would ask is where you get your news.