Theatre's Second Lousiest Birthday
Just when I think I couldn't love Gaius Cassius Longinus any more, in Act Five he turns out to "hold Epicurus strong and his opinion" – which I did have to look up – but which puts him squarely on Team Cosmos, as opposed to the Chaos summoned by Mark Antony. Reading Epicurus' wikipedia entry, it's hard to find anything to disagree with: "He advocated that people were best able to pursue philosophy by living a self-sufficient life surrounded by friends" and it's not until I came to perfom the play that I realised this is exactly how Brutus doesn't spend his final scene. Instead, he's surrounded by people we've never met – presumably all that's left – which makes his embarrassed whispering in their ears even more pitiful (we have to assume the whispering is embarrassed, don't we?) SPOILERS: Like Cassius, of course, Shakespeare would also die on his birthday,* but we have to assume he didn't know that when he was writing. Here's Act Five.
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* UPDATE: This, I've since learned, is probably untrue, as we don't actually have a date for Shakespeare's birth, just the day it was registered.
