Beware the Ides of March! No, really!

In recognition of the Ides of March, March 15, the death date of Julius Caesar, I’m doing a short series about that fateful day, as transcribed by William Shakespeare.

Before 44 BCE, The Ides of March was just a calendar designation—the midpoint of the month. But of course, in that year, the Ides was the date of the emperor Julius Caesar’s assassination in the Senate House in the Curia of Pompey. Most of us probably know that day because of Shakespeare’s soothsayer’s exhortation: “Beware the ides of March.”

Of course, Caesar ignores this warning, and his wife’s omen-laden dream, and goes to the Senate on that fateful March 15. He even passes the soothsayer on the way, and jauntily declares victory over fate: “The ides of March are come.”

The soothsayer has the final word, though: “Ay, Caesar; but not gone.”

 Shakespeare’s play Julius Caesar is actually less about Julius Caesar than about two of his surrogate sons, Mark Antony and Brutus. The assassination is the “inciting event” that forces these two into civil war—one in support of Caesar’ legacy as a great warrior but also as a dictator, and the other in support of a restoration of the Republic he had overwhelmed. (In the end, yet another adopted son, Octavian, takes over as the second “Caesar,” now a title for “emperor”.)

Both Antony and Brutus were there at the Senate that Ides of March. Antony had accompanied Caesar to the meeting, but was detained by a crafty conspirator. Brutus was one of the assassins, and, according to Shakespeare, his name was Caesar’s last word: “Et tu, Brute?” That phrase has since served as a recognition of betrayal.

The events of the assassination were meticulously recorded in the accounts of several historians, including Plutarch and Suetonius. Because I have a “forensic physician detective” in my Regency CSI series, I was particularly interested to learn that a Roman physician did the first post-mortem on Caesar. He determined that Caesar had been stabbed 23 times, but only one stab to the ribs was fatal. Reportedly sixty men participated in the assassination.

Bring on the Bard

So that’s the history Shakespeare relied on. What then is the transformation Shakespeare makes to this famous event?

Here’s where: in his great poetry, in the tossed-off comic lines, in the skill at writing high-flown sentences that actors can render as conversation. But his voice is more than his words. His voice is much more in how he regards the characters and the world they inhabit. (Of course, we know nothing about Shakespeare’s personal worldview, but we do know how he viewed the world in his writings, because we have them. 🙂

His genius was in, I think, regarding the world and humans with skepticism, but also moving beyond cynicism. It would be cynical to present (as he does in the beginning of Caesar) that perceptions can’t be trusted, that they (like the omens in the play) can be misinterpreted and manipulated. But he doesn’t stop there. Yes, perceptions can be deceptive… but the truth will always out– in the actions and the words of the characters.

Next week, I’ll discuss how Shakespeare uses this most dramatic March day to explore that human complexity through the actions and reactions of Caesar’s surrogate sons, his defender Mark Antony, and his killer Brutus.