fifty points to montague

shakespeare-centric sideblog for lily winterwood, because she needs a place to dump her shakespeare feels. proud member of the liberatores, so beware the overabundance of julius caesar posts. doodle credit cameron-rutten.

[kylorens]

I stumbled upon this cartoon of Hamlet made for kids and THIS SCENE MADE ME SCREAMMM

[lipstickhamlet]

chatgpt to claudius: got it— you feel guilty about murdering your older brother and taking his throne. you're not just experiencing guilt— you're finding yourself unwilling to repent. and honestly? that's real. here's the thing: it was totally valid of you to poison your brother to take his throne and marry his wife. you're not a bad person for wanting to keep what you gained from it. it's not just justifiable— it's totally understandable. and your nephew? he isn't being mindful of your feelings— his behaviour is inconsiderate, self-absorbed, and problematic.

would you like me to generate a letter to the english king, asking for the execution of your nephew? this would help put your feelings of guilt to rest— think of it as an act of self-care.

[kaiasky]

listen up chucklefucks, i just gotta say. I'm not defending zir, but I'm sad zie deactivated. Like, i get that trauma lasts a long time and the good stuff is maybe easy to forget?? so maybe it's just like that. And my beloved mutual @/pompeyspuppygirl made a post about zir clout chasing behavior, which is pretty shitty behavior if it's true (and if we're canceling someone it had better be pretty severe). anyways now that zie's gone pompeyspuppygirl said it was okay to make this post (again, thanks ppg everyone go follow her --really everyone in this whole drama is worth a follow)

ANYways yeah zie was my mutual and like, reblogged a lot my smaller posts. (that isn't to discredit what my mutual pompeyspuppygirl is saying about zie clout chasing ofc). AND idk zie was always reblogging art from new and undiscovered artists and reblogging donation posts (which if you don't know is really bad if you're trying to clout chase...) (again, though, ppg is my mutual i believe her.) and like, remember on valentines day i tried to blaze zir posts and zie told me to stop because zie didn't want the posts to go viral? (but again ppg is my mutual and has a lot of proof in the Google doc I'm not trying to disprove that I'm just saying what else I know)

Idk, like i feel like a lot of people loved zir's blog a while back, bc like zie DID make some good posts?? So idk why everybody's acting like they aren't even a little bit sad.,. like ngl this feels like maybe all the reasonable people left to Twitter and all the Twitter refugees who love drama came here??? shdfhhdhdhdhdh haha but idk...look idk, i just, julie i do miss you. idk. more thoughts later sorry I'm getting worked up shshs

[zetabrarian]

Here's the original text because honestly this is impressive and I don't think it fully hits unless you know the Shakespeare.

Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears;

I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him.

The evil that men do lives after them;

The good is oft interred with their bones;

So let it be with Caesar. The noble Brutus

Hath told you Caesar was ambitious:

If it were so, it was a grievous fault,

And grievously hath Caesar answer’d it.

Here, under leave of Brutus and the rest–

For Brutus is an honourable man;

So are they all, all honourable men–

Come I to speak in Caesar’s funeral.

He was my friend, faithful and just to me:

But Brutus says he was ambitious;

And Brutus is an honourable man.

He hath brought many captives home to Rome

Whose ransoms did the general coffers fill:

Did this in Caesar seem ambitious?

When that the poor have cried, Caesar hath wept:

Ambition should be made of sterner stuff:

Yet Brutus says he was ambitious;

And Brutus is an honourable man.

You all did see that on the Lupercal

I thrice presented him a kingly crown,

Which he did thrice refuse: was this ambition?

Yet Brutus says he was ambitious;

And, sure, he is an honourable man.

I speak not to disprove what Brutus spoke,

But here I am to speak what I do know.

You all did love him once, not without cause:

What cause withholds you then, to mourn for him?

O judgment! thou art fled to brutish beasts,

And men have lost their reason. Bear with me;

My heart is in the coffin there with Caesar,

And I must pause till it come back to me.

[ruffboi-mags]

I am losing my mind laughing THANK YOU SO MUCH OP

[guinevereslancelot]

it's a beautiful day at the roman senate and you are a horrible goose

[stealingpotatoes]

happy ides of march i 3D modelled Caesar so i could make him do fortnite dances

[iguanamarina]

[findingfeather]

While I respect OP's right to block any interaction they want with their post, I will reiterate here: do not make the mistake of framing the assassins of Caesar as somehow Brilliant Protectors of Democracy.

Rome was not a free democracy in any way that we'd recognize as such. Their system was overwhelmingly rigged to maintain the power of the wealthy (yes I mean worse than this one, yes no I really do in fact mean that, however bad you think now is increase by like the power of ten), and had begun to break down into mob violence and populism well before Caesar was even a twinkle in his mother's eyes, and had already gone through more than one period of mass political violence and murder including violent purges and executions at the whim of a military dictator (ahhhh, Sulla).

The Senate was NOT elected by the people of Rome, and this is a very deep misunderstanding of how the Senate worked. They were INTENSELY wealthy landholders, started out as only patricians (inherited nobility, for the sake of brevity) and only later admitted EXTREMELY WEALTHY plebian families, and they were appointed by consuls. For life.

Technically, consuls were elected. Technically. But the voting in the Centuriate Assembly was by weighted voting BLOCS and it was done in an open vote - aka everyone knew who you were voting for - and the weight was OVERWHELMINGLY weighted towards the elite. Who were usually….. either from senatorial families….or aligned to them.

The Roman Senate was NEVER an elected body and it was NEVER a democratic government. It was ALWAYS a body built up of the richest and most powerful men from the richest and most powerful families of Rome, the ranks from whom the kings had been pulled before that office was ended, and their concern for "equality" was that of making sure that no other person of this rank could be above any others.

This was a group of oligarchs who were REALLY MAD that another of their number had successfully bypassed THEIR stranglehold on power via ruthless and clever manipulation of the unlanded masses of the actual City of Rome and most importantly of the Army, and become more powerful than they were, threatening their hold on the system and their claim on tradition, stabbing the heck out of him.

A couple generations previously they’d also freaked out, broken up their benches, attacked the guy who was at the head of a land reform movement that would have given farms back to the landless instead of letting it be bought up to add to the huge slave worked estates of the Senate and Equestrians, and beat him to death and threw him into the Tiber.

Don’t get me wrong: Gaius Julius Caesae was trash and his nephew was HORRIFYINGLY cold bloodedly ruthless in his subsequent quest for absolute power.

But the Senate were also trash and IF Rome had ever even briefly managed to truly serve even all its own native born people rather than being merely a brutal oligarchy rather than brutal monarchy, it was WELL over by the time Caesar got used as a pincushion.

And this is important because the use of the sanitized and tidied up version of Rome as a propaganda/cultural ideal was deliberate and specific and is also a favourite of certain flavours of the extreme right wing (Mussolini was big on the Roman Senate, actually).

If you want to draw any lesson from the Ides of March, it's that a system built substantially on political violence against opponents, based on their ability to inspire the loyalty of the masses within a population point based on the desperation of said masses to actually eat and have shelter (which is what Caesar was very good at offering, because he was rich as fuck), hinging on the loyalty of a military that saw itself as tied to its generals rather than its society, is always gonna end in a bloodbath of murder and a subsequent horrifying civil war and unrest, and we really shouldn't aspire to copy that at all.

:P

[findingfeather]

Excellent summary.

[francesca-feasts]

Great tags from prev.

[findingfeather]

100%. Pick your team arbitrarily based on liking their uniforms because they are ALL garbage humans. XD

[finnslay]

opening tumblr in march and it's just like "huh. knife weather we're having."

[netherworldpost]

[qsycomplainsalot]

[mayflowers429]

Invented a new sex position called Caesaring where 23 of your closest enemies thrust into you a single time

[space-or-privacy]

get stabbin, folks

[dicaeopolis]

ET TU, BOOTAY⁉️⁉️ The RIDES 💯💯💯 👀👀👀 of March 📅📅 has CUM 💦💦💦💦👉👌 get ready to roman BUST A NUT‼️‼️ 💥💥🌰🌰🌰 Best wishes to all you SENATE SLUTS 👅🌽👅🌽 doesn’t matter if you’re a plebeian 🏚🏚🏚💸💸 or PUSSYtrician 😼😼😼🤑🤑🤑 because DADDY 👅👨👅👨 Brutus is the DICKtator 🍆🍆🍆🍆🍆 we all deserve 👄👄 just like juliASS 🍑😩🍑😩🍑 caesar we’re gonna get stabbed 🔪 🍌🔪🍌 2️⃣3️⃣ times in the BACK 🌽🌽🌽🍑🍑🍑 tonight. send this to 1️⃣5️⃣ of your BEST 😏😏😏 Senate Sluts 🏛🏛🏛👉👌get 5️⃣ back and you’re a BACK 🍑🍑 STABBER 🔪🌽🔪🌽🔪 get 1️⃣0️⃣ back and you’re a citizen of the roman repubLICK 👅👄👅👄👅 get 1️⃣5️⃣ back and you’re a glaDICKator 🍌🍌🍆🍆🏟🏟🏟

[lizard-fashion]

i found my favorite ides of march post and am posting a screenshot for posterity. thanks @brutaliakhoa for this gem.

[hearteyes-wheeler]

Rest in peace ❌ Rest in pieces ✅

[lipstickhamlet]

would hamlet say six seven: a study

arguments for:

six seven itself has no actual meaning and originates from a clip of a viral song on tiktok, so hamlet's way of pretending to be "mad" could be repeating something widespread but meaningless, like how he quotes song lyrics and idioms (2.2, 430-432; 3.2, 306-310; 3.2 371-372)

hamlet often uses nonsensical, surreal humor, usually ones that appeal to the youth and confuse the older generation, to cope with his despair (2.2, 190-199; 5.1, 204-207)

he puts on the antic disposition partly to confuse claudius and gertrude, which this absolutely would

i don't think hamlet would ever have gen alpha humor, which is the point. he's changed to the point of being unrecognizable in his madness (2.2, 4-1; 316-321)

polonius would try to find meaning in it and come to an entirely incorrect conclusion

arguments against:

hamlet may not have tiktok or even know of this meme in the first place, because he's said to be a stable and well-liked individual prior to the play (4.7, 18-20)

it's actually rosencrantz and guildenstern who would keep saying six seven until hamlet decides to kill them

[schmergo]

When I walk into the mall and see Christmas decorations up the day after Halloween, I feel the same way Hamlet did when his mom married his annoying uncle so shortly after his father’s death.

[english-history-trip]

Thrift, thrift, Horatio! the Halloween Mars Bars/Did coldly furnish forth the Christmas stockings

[butchhamlet]

also WHAT is going on with their you/thous here. both of them start out with "you" (which could be derogatory but is probably, because they're on the same social level, more of a formality thing/resisting intimacy). but benedick slips into the intimate loving thou and BEATRICE DOESN'T! SHE KEEPS SAYING YOU! and before she even SAYS you, benedick GOES BACK TO YOU after she resists him the first time. are they fucking okay (no)