Friends! Romans! Countrymen!
Enemies! Nestene Duplicates! Foreigners!
Welcome to The Maggot Globe Theatre’s inaugural production of Julius Caesar by William Shakespeare! Should the need arise you’ll find your emergency exit at #honorablemaggots. Please refrain from excessive photography, GIFs, or perishable produce emojis as they may distract our actors from their performances. Now-sit back, relax, and sharpen your knives. We hope you enjoy the assassination of a tyrannical emperor.
Enter Flavius, Marullus, and certain Commoners, ⌜including a Carpenter and a Cobbler,⌝ over the stage.
Hence! Home, you idle creatures, get you home! Is this a holiday? What, know you not, Being mechanical, you ought not walk Upon a laboring 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?
Truly, sir, in respect of a fine workman, I am but, as you would say, a cobbler.
But what trade art thou? Answer me directly.
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, I beseech you, sir, be not out with me. Yet if you be out, sir, I can mend you.
What mean’st thou by that? Mend me, thou saucy fellow?
Why, sir, cobble you.
Thou art a cobbler, art thou?
Truly, sir, all that I live by is with the awl. I meddle with no tradesman's matters nor women's matters, but withal I am indeed, sir, a surgeon to old shoes: when they are in great danger, I recover them. As proper man as ever trop 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 livelong day, with patient expectation, To see great Pompey pass the streets of Rome. And when you saw his chariot but appear, Have you not made an universal shout, That Tiber trembled underneath her banks To hear the replication of your sounds Made in her concave shores? 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 way 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.
Go, go, good countrymen, and for this fault Assemble all the poor men of your sort, Draw them to Tiber banks, and weep your tears Into the channel, till the lowest stream Do kiss the most exalted shores of all.
All the Commoners exit.
See whe’er their basest mettle be not moved. They vanish tongue-tied in their guiltiness. Go you down that way towards the Capitol. This way will I. Disrobe the images If you do find them decked with ceremonies.
It is no matter. Let no images Be hung with Caesar’s trophies. I’ll 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.
They exit in different directions.
Enter Caesar, Antony for the course, Calphurnia, Portia, Decius, Cicero, Brutus, Cassius, Casca, a Soothsayer; after them Marullus and Flavius and Commoners.
Calphurnia.
Peace, ho! Caesar speaks.
Calphurnia.
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 Calphurnia, for our elders say
The barren, touchèd 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.
Sennet.
Caesar.
Ha! 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.
The Soothsayer comes forward.
Look upon Caesar.
What sayst thou to me now? Speak once again.
Beware the ides of March.
He is a dreamer. Let us leave him. Pass.
Sennet. All but Brutus and Cassius exit.
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 hinder, Cassius, your desires.
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.
40 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. Vexèd 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.
Then, Brutus, I have much mistook your passion,
By means whereof this breast of mine hath buried
Thoughts of great value, worthy cogitations.
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. I have heard
Where many of the best respect in Rome,
Except immortal Caesar, speaking of Brutus
And groaning underneath this age’s yoke,
Have wished that noble Brutus had his eyes
Into what dangers would you lead me, Cassius,
That you would 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.
And be not jealous on me, gentle Brutus.
Were I a common laughter, or did use
To stale with ordinary oaths my love
To every new protester; if you know
That I do fawn on men and hug them hard
And after scandal them, or if you know
That I profess myself in banqueting
To all the rout, then hold me dangerous.
Flourish and shout.
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 that you would impart to me?
If it be aught toward the general good,
Set honor in one eye and death i’ th’ other
And I will look on both indifferently;
For let the gods so speed me as I love
The name of honor more than I fear death.
I know that virtue to be in you, Brutus,
As well as I do know your outward favor.
Well, honor is the subject of my story.
I cannot tell what you and 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 with her shores,
Caesar said to me “Dar’st thou, Cassius, now
Leap in with me into this angry flood
And swim to yonder point?” Upon the word,
Accoutered as I was, I plungèd 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. ’Tis 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. You 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.
Shout. Flourish.
Another general shout!
I do believe that these applauses are
For some new honors that are heaped 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 dishonorable 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 ’em,
“Brutus” will start a spirit as soon as “Caesar.”
Now, in the names 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 with one man?
When could they say, till now, that talked of Rome,
That her wide walks encompassed but one man?
Now is it Rome indeed, and room enough
When there is in it but one only man.
O, you and I have heard our fathers say
There was a Brutus once that would have brooked
Th’ eternal devil to keep his state in Rome
As easily as a king.
That you do love me, I am nothing jealous.
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.
Enter Caesar and his train.
The games are done, and Caesar is returning.
As they pass by, pluck Casca by the sleeve,
And he will, after his sour fashion, tell you
What hath proceeded worthy note today.
I will do so. But look you, Cassius,
The angry spot doth glow on Caesar’s brow,
And all the rest look like a chidden train.
Calphurnia’s cheek is pale, and Cicero
Looks with such ferret and such fiery eyes
As we have seen him in the Capitol,
Being crossed in conference by some senators.
Casca will tell us what the matter is.