When I saw this article about HBO’s new series “ROME” in my Shakespeare news alerts I thought for sure the connection must be to Julius Caesar. Perhaps mentioning that the whole “Et tu, Brute?” thing was concocted by Will, and not factually accurate.
Wrong. “[Lucius Vorenus and Titus Pullo] are the only two ordinary soldiers mentioned by Caesar in his book, so the idea was to do a sort of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern take,” says Bruno Heller, the series’ co-creator, executive producer and writer. He refers, of course, to the two minor characters in Shakespeare’s “Hamlet” who became the title characters of a widely acclaimed Tom Stoppard play.
Something of a pleasant surprise. I rarely find people referencing R&G are Dead at all, much less trying to do their own version of the idea.