Mamacita quotes from Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar:   Act 1, scene 2, 15–19

Caesar: Who is it in the press that calls on me?
I hear a tongue shriller than all the music
Cry “Caesar!” Speak; Caesar is turn’d to hear.

Soothsayer: Beware the Ides of March.

Caesar: What man is that?

Brutus: A soothsayer bids you beware the Ides of March.

And what, pray tell, are the Ides of March, that Caesar needed to be warned against them?  Should we all beware the Ides of March?  What are Ides?

There is no reason for any of us to beware the Ides of March.  Or the Ides of May.  Or the Ides of October.  Or the Ides ol July.  All months have Ides; however, the rest of them have Ides on the 13th of the month.  But I digress.

The Ides of any month are simply the 13th or 15th of the month.  (see above.) The soothsayer was merely warning Caesar that something bad was going to happen on March 15.  Caesar had already had other warnings – one from his wife!  Caesar was very superstitious and took the warning seriously; however, this didn’t prevent him from leaving the house on March 15 anyway and walking out into the public forum.  What could possibly happen?  All his best friends would be there!  So he walked out of the house and into the forum. . .

. . . . where his best friends were waiting for him with daggers, whereupon they jumped him and stabbed him to death.  For his own good, and for the good of Rome, they believed.

Caesar was just too ambitious, they thought.  So, rather than risk his rise to power and popularity, they offed their best friend.

Caesar, Brutus, and Cassius – the three musketeers, the Bobbsey triplets, the inseparable pals.  Caesar trusted them; he loved them; they were his friends.

Which is why, when Caesar saw who was attacking him, he cried out, in disbelief, “Et tu, Brute?”  Which means, simply, “Even you, Brutus?”

But Brutus and Cassius, and the others, had realized that their pal Caesar was a little too cocky for Rome’s own good, and when even one’s best friend brags in public that he was as elite and cool as a god, one must do something to protect the nation.  Remember your mythology – every time a mortal bragged that he or she was like or better than a god or goddess, bad things happened to him/her.  Really bad things.

“Beware the Ides of March.”  And now you know what that means, and why Caesar was warned to be careful of that day.

It was, like, you know, cuz the soothsayer somehow knew that Caesar’s dearest and most beloved friends had had enough of his bragging about his coolness and were going to take him down.  And they did.

But even when I was a kid and first read that scene, something inside of me SAW the expression on the man’s face when he realized that his best friend in all the world had stabbed him in the back.  It was a heartbreaker.

And now you have a perfect example of another expression.  Backstabber.  Stabbed in the back.

Shakespeare is so awesome; I loved the language even as an elementary student.  It’s exactly the same language that you’ll find in the King James Version of the Bible, which I also love.

Perhaps one of you can also answer a question that has puzzled Shakespeare fans for years:  Why in the world did the man bequeath his second-best bed to his wife?

I tend to agree with Jane of Lantern Hill, who was of the opinion that “Perhaps she liked it best.”

P.S.  Don’t be afraid of the language.  Relax, and try to see the poetry and the amazing graphics in Shakespeare’s witty turn of phrase.  It’ll knock your socks off, if you let it.