SHAKESPEARE'S

JULIUS CESAR

FLAVIUS and MARULLUS, tribunes.

ARTEMIDORUS of Cnidos, a teacher of Rhetoric.

Senators, Citizens, Guards, Attendants, etc. SCENE: Rome; the neighborhood of Sardis; the neigh borhood of Philippi.

Flav. 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?
First Com. Why, sir, a carpenter.

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

You, sir, what trade are you?

Sec. Com. Truly, sir, in respect of a fine work

man,

I am but, as you would say, a cobbler.

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Mar. But what trade art thou? answer me directly.° Sec. Com. A trade, sir, that I hope I may use with a safe conscience; which is, indeed, sir, a mender of bad soles.

Mar. What trade, thou knave? thou naughty knave, what trade?

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

Mar. What meanest thou by that?

thou saucy fellow ?

Sec. Com. Why, sir, cobble you.

Flav. Thou art a cobbler, art thou?

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Sec. Com. 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 re-cover them. As proper men as ever trod upon neat's-leather have gone upon my handiwork.

Flav. But wherefore art not in thy shop to-day? 30 Why dost thou lead these men about the streets?

Sec. Com. Truly, sir, to wear out their shoes, to get myself into more work. But, indeed, sir, we make holiday, to see Cæsar and to rejoice in his triumph.°

Mar. 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 40
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 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.

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Flav. Go, go, good countrymen, and, for this fault,