Table of Contents
ACT I SCENE I Setting: Rome. A street.
Enter FLAVIUS, MARULLUS, and certain Commoners.
| FLAVIUS | 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? | 5 | |
| First Commoner | Why, sir, a carpenter. | |
| MARULLUS | Where is thy leather apron and thy rule? | |
| What dost thou with thy best apparel on? | ||
| You, sir, what trade are you? | ||
| Second Commoner | Truly, sir, in respect of a fine workman, I am but, | |
| as you would say, a cobbler. | ||
| MARULLUS | But what trade art thou? answer me directly. | |
| Second Commoner | A trade, sir, that, I hope, I may use with a safe | |
| conscience; which is, indeed, sir, a mender of bad soles. | ||
| MARULLUS | What trade, thou knave? thou naughty knave, what trade? | |
| Second Commoner | Nay, I beseech you, sir, be not out with me: yet, | |
| if you be out, sir, I can mend you. | ||
| MARULLUS | What meanest thou by that? mend me, thou saucy fellow! | |
| Second Commoner | Why, sir, cobble you. | 20 |
| FLAVIUS | Thou art a cobbler, art thou? | |
| Second Commoner | 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. I am, indeed, 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. | ||
| FLAVIUS | But wherefore art not in thy shop today? | |
| Why dost thou lead these men about the streets? | ||
| Second Commoner | 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. | ||
| MARULLUS | Wherefore rejoice? What conquest brings he home? | |
| What tributaries follow him to Rome, | ||
| To grace in captive bonds his chariot–wheels? | 35 | |
| 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, | 45 | |
| 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 | 55 | |
| That needs must light on this ingratitude. | ||
| FLAVIUS | 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 | 60 | |
| 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, | 65 | |
| If you do find them deck'd with ceremonies. | ||
| MARULLUS | May we do so? | |
| You know it is the feast of Lupercal. | ||
| FLAVIUS | It is no matter; let no images | |
| Be hung with Caesar's trophies. I'll about, | 70 | |
| 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 |