Julius Caesar

We should perhaps take the signs and portents in the play seriously.

Machiavelli's remarks in his Discourses on Livy testify even the learned and free-thinking of his age believed in them, and in ghosts, too.

Caesar's refusal to heed them is then on a level with Brutus's chronic refusal of good advice.

Shakespeare does the latter too much honor in the mouth of Antony, at the end.