Gay(er) Shakespeare

LOOK ALIVE, SUNSHINE

I was going to skip doing an Ides illustration this year, but I decided to pull out something from my illustrations vault at the last minute after watching the news in the Philippines the other night. the first Ides illustration was prompted by feelings of frustration and grief seeing the Marcos family come back into power and also that ballot substitution bullshit. and. well!!! you know how it is! we're on year 3 of making these illustrations, baby!

so let’s get into it: fuck Brutus, my man Cassius is getting center stage this time! after all, it’s Cassius who typically initiates the conspiracy while Brutus steals the spotlight. Brutus is here, though, he’s the one with blood on his hand, in reference to the account where Cassius accidentally stabs him in the hand trying to get another hit on Caesar.

it’s thematically compelling if you take into account that Cassius is mentioned at the start of Brutus’ biography as someone who finds tyranny intolerable (in addition: that dinner scene with Mark Antony)

Cassius and Brutus: The Memory of the Liberators, Elizabeth Rawson

Brutus, the Noble Conspirator, Kathryn Tempest

Cassius Dio 44.34

and Brutus is later mentioned to have taken part of Caesar’s power only to be dissuaded from people from fully embracing all of that

Plutarch, Brutus 7 (trans. Ian Scott-Kilvert)

and Cassius, by accident, wounds Brutus in the act of assassinating Caesar. It’s like….he’s being compelled…..to act as a hand of Justice on behalf of the Republic……a little bit…..

Life of Augustus, Nicolaus of Damascus (trans. Toher)

and to preemptively cut off people from doing Caesar apologia in my inbox: we are engaging in a long and established tradition of using the Ides of March and the people who participated in it to discuss other stuff. you know. allegory and allusion and all of that. also ancient Roman conspiracies are fun. thank you & goodnight.