Julius Caesar

Festival 61. Tonight, the first of this season's two-hour productions.

Hence! Home, you idle creatures, get you home!

Is this a holiday?

What! Know you not, being mechanical, you ought not walk

upon a labouring day without the sign of your profession?

Speak. What trade art thou?

Why, sir, a carpenter.

Where is thy leather apron and thy rule? What dost thou with thy best apparel on?

You, sir, what trade are you?

A trade, sir, that I hope, I may use with a safe conscience,

which is indeed, sir, a mender of bad soles.

What trade, thou knave? Thou naughty knave, what trade?

Nay, be not out with me: yet, if you be out, sir, I can mend you.

What meanest thou by that? Mend me, thou saucy fellow!

Why, sir, cobble you.

Thou art a cobbler.

Truly, sir, all that I live by is with the awl.

I meddle with no tradesman's matters, nor women's matters.

But with awl, sir, a surgeon to old shoes;

when they are in great danger, I recover them.

As proper men as ever trod upon neat's leather have gone upon my handiwork.

But wherefore art not in thy shop today?

Why dost thou lead these men about the streets?

Truly, sir, to wear out their shoes, to get myself into more work.

But indeed, sir, we make holiday to see Caesar

and to rejoice in his triumph. - Wherefore rejoice?

What conquest brings he home?

What tributaries follow him to Rome,

to grace in captive bonds his chariot wheels?

You blocks, you stones,

you worse than senseless things!

O you hard hearts, you cruel men of Rome,

knew you not Pompey?

Many a time and oft have you climbed up to walls and battlements,

to towers and windows, yea, to chimney tops,

your infants in your arms,

and there have sat the live-long day with patient expectation

to see great Pompey pass the streets of Rome.

And do you now put on your best attire?

And do you now cull out a holiday?

And do you now strew flowers in his path

that comes in triumph over Pompey's blood?

Be gone! Run to your houses,

fall upon your knees,

pray to the gods to intermit the plague

that needs must light on this ingratitude.

See where their basest metal be not moved.

They vanish tongue-tied!

Go you down that way toward the Capitol.

This way will I. Disrobe the images if you do find them decked with ceremonies.

May we do so? You know, it is the feast of Lupercal.

It is no matter. Let no images be hung with Caesar's trophies.

Fly about, and drive away the vulgar from the streets.

So do you too, where you perceive them thick.

These growing feathers, plucked from Caesar's wing,

will make him fly an ordinary pitch.

Who else would soar above the view of men

and keep us all in servile fearfulness?

- Calpurnia. - Peace, ho! Caesar speaks.

- Calpurnia! - Here, my lord.

Stand you directly in Antonius' way, when he doth run his course.

- Antonius. - Caesar, my lord?

Forget not, in your speed, Antonius, to touch Calpurnia,

for our elders say, the barren touched in this holy chase

shake off their sterile curse.

I shall remember: When Caesar says "do this," it is performed.

Set on and leave no ceremony out!

Caesar!

- Who calls? - Bid every noise be still!

- Peace yet again! - Who is it in the press that calls on me?

I hear a tongue, shriller than all the music, cry "Caesar."

Speak. Caesar is turned to hear.

Beware... the ides... of March.

What man is that?

A soothsayer bids you beware the ides of March.

Set him before me. Let me see his face.

Fellow, come from the throng.

Look upon Caesar.

What sayest thou to me now? Speak once again.

Beware the ides of March.

He is a dreamer. Let us leave him. Pass!

Will you go see the order of the course?

- Not I. - I pray you do.

I am not gamesome. I do lack some part of that quick spirit that is in Antony.

Let me not... You Cassius, your go. I'll leave you.

Brutus, I do observe you now of late.

I have not from your eyes that gentleness and show of love as I was wont to have.

You bear too stubborn and too strange a hand over your friend that loves you.

Cassius, be not deceived. If I have veiled my look,

I turn the trouble of my countenance merely upon myself.

Vexed I am of late, with passions of some difference.

Conceptions only proper to myself,

which give some soil, perhaps, to my behaviors,

but let not therefore my good friends be grieved,

among which number, Cassius, be you one.

Nor construe any further my neglect than that poor Brutus with himself at war

forgets the shows of love to other men.

Tell me, good Brutus, can you see your face?

No, Cassius, for the eye sees not itself

but by reflection, by some other things.

'Tis just. And it is very much lamented, Brutus, that you have no such mirrors

as will turn your hidden worthiness into your eye,

that you might see your shadow.

Into what dangers would you lead me, Cassius,

to have me seek into myself for that which is not in me?

Therefore, good Brutus, be prepared to hear.

And since you know you cannot see yourself so well as by reflection,

I, your glass, will modestly discover to yourself

that of yourself which you yet know not of.

What means this shouting?

I do fear the people choose Caesar for their king.

Ay, do you fear it?

Then must I think you would not have it so?

I would not, Cassius, yet I love him well.

But wherefore do you hold me here so long?

What is it you would impart to me?

I cannot tell what you or other men think of this life,

but, for my single self, I had as lief not be

as live to be in awe of such a thing as I myself.

I was born free as Caesar. So were you.

We both have fed as well,

and we can both endure the winter's cold as well as he.

For once, upon a raw and gusty day,

the troubled Tiber chafing at her shores,

Caesar said to me, "Darest thou, Cassius, now leap in with me

into this angry flood and swim to yonder points?"

Upon the word, accoutered as I was, I plunged in and bade him follow,

so indeed he did.

The torrent roared, and we did buffet it with lusty sinews,

throwing it aside and stemming it with hearts of controversy.

But ere we could arrive the point proposed,

Caesar cried, "Help me, Cassius, or I sink!"

I, as Aeneas, our great ancestor,

did from the flames of Troy upon his shoulder the old Anchises bear,

so from the waves of Tiber did I the tired Caesar.

And this man is now become a god,

and Cassius is a wretched creature

and must bend his body if Caesar carelessly but nod on him.

He had a fever when he was in Spain,

and when the fit was on him, I did mark how he did shake.

It is true, this god did shake. His coward lips did from their color fly,

and that same eye whose bend doth awe the world did lose his luster.

I did hear him groan.

Ay, and that tongue of his that bade the Romans

mark him and write his speeches in their books,

alas, it cried, "Give me some drink, Titinius," as a sick girl.

Ye gods! It doth amaze me a man of such a feeble temper

should so get the start of the majestic world

and bear the palm alone.

Another general shout.

I do believe that these applauses are

for some new honours that are heap'd on Caesar.

Why, man, he doth bestride the narrow world like a colossus.

And we petty men walk under his huge legs

and peep about to find ourselves dishonourable graves.

Men at some time are masters of their fates.

The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars,

but in ourselves, that we are underlings.

Brutus and Caesar.

What should be in that Caesar?

Why should that name be sounded more than yours?

Write them together, yours is as fair a name.

Sound them, it doth become the mouth as well.

Weigh them, it is as heavy. Conjure with them,

Brutus will start a spirit as soon as Caesar.

Now, in the name of all the gods at once,

upon what meat doth this our Caesar feed,

that he is grown so great?

Age, thou art shamed!

Rome, thou hast lost the breed of noble bloods.

When went there by an age, since the great flood,

but it was famed with more than for one man?

When could they say, till now, that talked of Rome,

that her wide walls encompassed but one man?

O you and I have heard our fathers say, there was a Brutus once

that would have brooked the eternal devil

to keep his state in Rome as easily as a king.

What you would work me to, I have some aim.

How I have thought of this, and of these times,

I shall recount hereafter. For this present,

I would not, so with love I might entreat you, be any further moved.

What you have said I will consider.

What you have to say, I will with patience hear, and find a time

both meet to hear and answer such high things.

Till then, my noble friend, chew upon this.

Brutus had rather be a villager

than to repute himself a son of Rome under these hard conditions

as this time is like to lay upon us.

I am glad that my weak words

have struck but thus much show of fire from Brutus.

The games are ending and Caesar doth return.

Look you, Cassius, the angry spot doth glow on Caesar's brow,

and all the rest look like a chidden train.

Calpurnia's cheek is pale.

Casca will tell us what the matter is.

Antonius, let me have men about me that are fat,

sleek-headed men, and such as sleep a-nights.

Yond Cassius has a lean and hungry look.

He thinks too much. Such men are dangerous.

Fear him not, Caesar. He is not dangerous.