***Et tu, Brutus? ***
Even if you haven’t read this play before, if you’ve gone through enough English text you’ve read this play before.
As one of six Roman plays, Ceaser does the most to pull Roman sensibilities into what was about to become the British empire, and cements the wholly fictitious ties between the ancient world and English Renaissance. Most surprising was the structure, where our eponymous character dies halfway through, only for the climactic action to take place on the battlefield among successors. Like all Shakespeare, fun quips abound. I appreciated the incitement to war without daring to impinge upon the honor of the enemy, in addition to the the many pre-suicide meditations on honor and life.
Shakespeare’s benegesserit Litany For I am armed so strong in honesty That they pass by me as the idle wind
A stoic take on destiny with Shakespeare’s wordplay:
O that a man might know The end of this day’s business ere it come! But it sufficeth that the day will end And then the end is known.
How husbands share feelings with their wives.
You suddenly arose, and walk’d about, Musing and sighing, with your arms across, And when I ask’d you what the matter was, You stared upon me with ungentle looks; I urged you further; then you scratch’d your head, And too impatiently stamp’d with your foot; Yet I insisted, yet you answer’d not, But, with an angry wafture of your hand, Gave sign for me to leave you: so I did; Fearing to strengthen that impatience Which seem’d too much enkindled, and withal Hoping it was but an effect of humour, Which sometime hath his hour with every man.