Julius Caesar

Julius Caesar: The Ides of March are come.

Soothsayer: Aye, Caesar, but not gone.

Despite the liberties taken with history, this is one of Shakespeare's more famous "historical" plays.

Thoughts

English-literature classes love to dissect the hell out of this play (well, anything Shakespeare wrote, for that matter), but really, it just boils down to some general themes of friendship (and for what would you betray your friends?) and, in general, the manipulation of people - both at an individual (Cassius/Brutus) and societal (Antony/crowd) level. Very interesting and resonant even in modern times, but nowadays, I suppose a play would find it hard to sell itself on these; the extremely verbose dialogue (compared to, say, film) probably makes it come off as super cheesy and irritating (actually, even film isn't exempt from this problem...lol).

It seems to me that we're best off remembering this play for all the famous lines it gives us. Some of my favorites...

• "Et tu, Brute? Then fall, Caesar!" - Julius Caesar before his death when he realizes Brutus backstabbed him; kind of a tear jerker if you get past the dialogue
• "Beware the Ides of March!" - prophecy of dooooooooooooooooooom
• "I come not, friends, to steal away your hearts..." - Mark Antony spouting blatant lies; this line is quoted in older versions of Microsoft Hearts (card game)
• "Not that I loved Caesar less, but that I loved Rome more..." - Brutus explaining why he killed Caesar; unlike Antony, the dude was being completely honest, which somehow makes it more sad...