Rome. A street.
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?
Where is thy leather apron and thy rule? What dost thou with thy best apparel on? You, sir, what trade are you?
But wherefore art not in thy shop to-day? Why dost thou lead these men about the streets?
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 climb’d 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 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. Exeunt all the Commoners . See whether their basest metal 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 deck’d 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. I’ll about, And drive away the vulgar from the streets: So do you too, where you perceive them thick. These growing feathers pluck’d 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. Exeunt.
A public place.
Stand you directly in Antonius’ way, When he doth run his course. Antonius!
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 perform’d.
Who is it in the press that calls on me? I hear a tongue, shriller than all the music, Cry “Caesar!” Speak; Caesar is turn’d to hear.
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.
Fear him not, Caesar; he’s not dangerous; He is a noble Roman and well given.