ARKCODEX
Act I, Scene 1
1Rome. A street.
2Enter Flavius, Marullus, and certain Commoners.
3FlaviusHence! 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?
4First CommonerWhy, sir, a carpenter.
5MarullusWhere is thy leather apron and thy rule?
What dost thou with thy best apparel on?
You, sir, what trade are you?
6Second CommonerTruly, sir, in respect of a fine workman, I am but, as you would say, a cobbler.
7MarullusBut what trade art thou? answer me directly.
8Second CommonerA trade, sir, that, I hope, I may use with a safe conscience; which is, indeed, sir, a mender of bad soles.
9MarullusWhat trade, thou knave? thou naughty knave, what trade?
10Second CommonerNay, I beseech you, sir, be not out with me: yet, if you be out, sir, I can mend you.
11MarullusWhat meanest thou by that? mend me, thou saucy fellow!
12Second CommonerWhy, sir, cobble you.
13FlaviusThou art a cobbler, art thou?
14Second CommonerTruly, 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.
15FlaviusBut wherefore art not in thy shop to-day?
Why dost thou lead these men about the streets?
16Second CommonerTruly, 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.
17MarullusWherefore 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.
18FlaviusGo, 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.
19MarullusMay we do so?
You know it is the feast of Lupercal.
20FlaviusIt 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.