Road Apples by Tim Sanders
March 5, 2012

Beware the Ides of March?

Share |

Next week we will all hitch up our togas and celebrate the Ides of March, even though there is still a lot of confusion about just what the Ides of March are ... or is.
 
When I was in grade school, and not nearly as sophisticated as I am today, I remember teachers giving each other knowing looks and saying things like “Beware the Ides of March, Lillian!” and “Oh, don’t worry, I will, Grace!” I had no idea what an Ide was, but I assumed there were nests of them out there, deep in the Michigan woods, just waiting for March to come along so they could awaken from their long winter’s sleep, crawl out from under their logs, sprout huge wings, and aim their lethal stingers at defenseless, slow-moving teachers wearing corrective shoes.

Of course I had it all wrong. When I got into high school I was forced to read “Julius Caesar” by William Shakespeare. Actually I wasn’t forced by William Shakespeare, I was forced by my Literature teacher, Miss Thurber. Shakespeare had been dead for several years by then, and had no vested interest in whether I read his plays or not. As it turned out, the Ides of March weren’t just a species native to Michigan; they had them lurking around in ancient Rome, too. Shakespeare said so.

Shakespeare was born in Stratford upon Avon in 1564, but later moved to London upon a donkey to become a playwright. He wrote just dozens of very popular plays in the late 1500s and early 1600s. These plays were performed every Friday night in London’s MGM Globe Theater until the building was sold and turned into a department store. Many of England’s most famous actors appeared in Shakespeare’s plays, but today no one remembers them because in those days they did not all gather on a street corner every year, roll out a red carpet, congratulate each other, praise their parents for giving them birth, and exchange large, metal statuettes.

Shakespeare wrote comic plays, tragic plays, and historical plays. His comic plays were full of memorable lines, like:

• “Eye of newt, toe of frog, two all beef patties, special sauce, lettuce, cheese, pickles, onions on a sesame seed bun!” (as muttered by Macbeth’s main witch, Delores)

• “A horse is a horse, of course!” (shouted by one of Shakespeare’s King Richards)

• “If music be the food of love, play on, but this time without the dang accordions!” (by Arsenio, Duke of Earl)

• And who can forget that hilarious scene where Lady Macbeth sniffs her shoe, dramatically flings open the castle door, glares at her beagle, and shouts: “Out damned Spot?”

Nowadays high school students seldom read Shakespeare’s comedies due to the fact that Elizabethan humor doesn’t translate well into modern English.

But “Julius Caesar” was a historical play, not a comedy, so today’s high schoolers still read it. At least those who’ve finally mastered that pesky Dick and Jane series do. It is a little confusing, but here’s what I remember about the play:

At the beginning of the play, in Act I, right after the Preview of Coming Attractions, Caesar, his wife Capricious, and a group of friends, including Brutus, Cassius, Lavoris, and Halitosis are walking through a crowd. I believe they are on Stage Left, although they may be outside the theater near the ticket booth–I forget that part. At any rate, Caesar hears someone shouting his name, learns that the man is a soothsayer, and tells him to “come on down.” So a lean, hungry soothsayer approaches Caesar, points a withered soothsayer finger at him, and says, very clearly, for all to hear: “SOOTH!”

Then he warns Caesar to “Beware the Ides of March!” Caesar tells his press secretary, “Frivolous, make a note to get some bug spray!” and tries to forget the entire incident. All of this occurs in February during the celebration of the Roman fertility god, Bloatus. As I recall, during this procession Caesar tells his friend Mark Antony to remove his goatskin thong and lightly slap Capricious in the face with it, to help her become pregnant. In those days, Romans were still a little unclear over just how babies were made.

A month later, somewhere around March 15, the whole crew shows up at the Senate, where Caesar is supposed to be inaugurated as Emperor and give his very first State of the Union Address. He mentions the Ides of March and the soothsayer to Cassius, who reassures him that no one in the inaugural procession has seen a single, solitary Ide. It has been a cold winter, and obviously they haven’t hatched out yet. And they probably hadn’t, but it makes no difference, because Cassius, Brutus, Extraneous, et. al. converge on Caesar while he is lighting a Roman candle and stab him in the forum, which is always fatal. Apparently he planned to veto one of their Senate bills because of excessive earmarks. While he is being stabbed, Caesar sneezes “ACHOO, BRUTUS!” into his toga and dies. This part is very sad, and very dramatic.

The rest of the play tells how Mark Antony makes a speech which manages to confuse both the ancient Romans and modern tenth-graders as to whether Caesar was a good guy or a bad guy, and whether Brutus and Cassius were really honorable men, or only slimeballs. Then Antony goes on an extended vacation, to study the scripts for Shakespeare’s next two plays, “Julius Caesar II-The Sequel” and “Antony and Cleopatra and Ted and Alice.”

And this brings us back to the Ides of March, which we still celebrate in the middle of the month, despite the fact that not one Ide showed up at Caesar’s assassination, or even at the funeral, for that matter. I’m not sure, but I have a sneaking suspicion that the Ides never existed, but were only a myth put out there to distract people from real dangers. Like methane-related global warming. Or the space aliens whom The Right Honorable Louis Farrakhan Muhammed, Sr. swears have bought up McDonald’s franchises and are even now poisoning an unsuspecting American public with fiberglass-laced Big Macs and vanilla shakes containing 95 percent Milk of Magnesia and 5 percent Quikrete® Crack Sealer.