Key Quote
“"Beware the ides of March"”
Soothsayer · Act 1, Scene 2
Focus: “Beware”
The Soothsayer's warning — cryptic, brief, and ultimately ignored — establishes the play's central question: can fate be avoided, or does knowledge of the future merely deepen the tragedy?
Technique 1 — IMPERATIVE / PROLEPTIC WARNING
The imperative (a command) 'Beware' gives the warning urgency, while its proleptic (anticipating future events) nature creates immediate dramatic tension. The brevity — five words — gives the line an oracular (resembling a divine pronouncement) quality. Like the Delphic Oracle, the Soothsayer provides truth without elaboration, leaving Caesar to interpret and ultimately dismiss it.
The phrase 'ides of March' sounds archaic and mysterious to modern ears, but to Shakespeare's audience it was a specific calendar date (March 15). The precision of the warning — not 'beware someday' but a named date — makes Caesar's failure to heed it more culpable (deserving blame): he is given exact information and chooses to ignore it.
Key Words
RAD — STAGNATE
The Soothsayer stagnates as a character — he exists solely to deliver this warning and has no further development. His stagnation is structural: like fate itself, he is unchanging and impersonal. But Caesar also stagnates by refusing to process the warning — his pride prevents the intellectual growth that might save his life.
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Technique 2 — FORESHADOWING / DRAMATIC IRONY
The warning creates dramatic irony: the audience, knowing history, understands the warning's accuracy while Caesar dismisses it. Every scene between this warning and the assassination is shadowed by the audience's foreknowledge, transforming political manoeuvring into tragic inevitability. Shakespeare uses historical knowledge as a dramatic tool — the audience becomes the Soothsayer, seeing clearly what the characters cannot.
Caesar dismisses the Soothsayer as a 'dreamer' — a word that associates prophecy with irrelevance. This dramatic misjudgement (a failure to correctly assess a situation) becomes Caesar's defining flaw: he cannot distinguish genuine warning from background noise because his pride filters out unwelcome truths.
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Context (AO3)
ROMAN AUGURY
Romans practised augury — reading divine signs in natural phenomena (bird flights, animal entrails). The Soothsayer represents this tradition of interpreting omens. Shakespeare's audience, living in a culture that still believed in prophecy and astrology, would have taken such warnings more seriously than modern audiences.
PLUTARCH'S LIVES
Shakespeare drew heavily on Plutarch's *Lives of the Noble Greeks and Romans* (translated by Thomas North, 1579). The warning about the Ides of March comes directly from Plutarch, grounding the play in historical narrative while allowing Shakespeare creative freedom with characterisation.
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WOW — HUBRIS & TRAGIC BLINDNESS (Aristotle)
Aristotle identified hubris (excessive pride leading to downfall) as the central flaw in tragic heroes. Caesar's dismissal of the Soothsayer is a textbook act of hubris: he believes himself above the warnings that govern ordinary men. But Shakespeare adds a distinctly political dimension to Aristotle's literary concept: Caesar's hubris is not merely personal arrogance but the blindness of absolute power. Power insulates (protects from external influence) — those who hold it are surrounded by flatterers and unable to hear uncomfortable truths. The Soothsayer speaks truth, but truth has no path to power's ears. Shakespeare dramatises a permanent feature of political life: the more power you accumulate, the less truth you can access.
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