Module 2: "Julius Caesar" by William Shakespeare, Act 1

Fellow, come from the throng.

What trade, thou knave? Thou naughty knave, what trade?

Nay, I beseech you, sir, be not out with me.

What mean’st thou by that? Mend me, thou saucy fellow?

Truly, sir, all that I live by is with the awl.

And do you now cull out a holiday?

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.

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.

Enter Caesar, Antony for the course, Calphurnia, Portia
Decius, Cicero, Brutus, Cassius, Casca, a Soothsayer;
after them Marullus and Flavius and Commoners.

Cassius,
Be not deceived. If I have veiled my look,
I turn the trouble of my countenance
Merely upon myself.

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.

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.

And after scandal them, or if you know
That I profess myself in banqueting
To all the rout, then hold me dangerous.

What is it that you would impart to me?

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?”

The torrent roar’d, and we did buffet it
With lusty sinews, throwing it aside
And stemming it with hearts of controversy.

The torrent roar’d, and we did buffet it
With lusty sinews, throwing it aside
And stemming it with hearts of controversy.

For this present,
I would not, so with love I might entreat you,
Be any further moved.

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.

But look you, Cassius,
The angry spot doth glow on Caesar’s brow,
And all the rest look like a chidden train.

I saw Mark
Antony offer him a crown (yet ’twas not a crown
neither; ’twas one of these coronets), and, as I told
you, he put it by once; but for all that, to my
thinking, he would fain have had it.

Then he offered
it to him again; then he put it by again; but to my
thinking, he was very loath to lay his fingers off it.

He put it the
third time by, and still as he refused it the rabblement
hooted and clapped their chopped hands and
threw up their sweaty nightcaps and uttered such a
deal of stinking breath because Caesar refused the
crown that it had almost choked Caesar, for he
swooned and fell down at it.

Marry, before he fell down, when he perceived
the common herd was glad he refused the crown,
he plucked me ope his doublet and offered them his
throat to cut.

When he came to himself again, he said if he
had done or said anything amiss, he desired their
Worships to think it was his infirmity.

When he came to himself again, he said if he
had done or said anything amiss, he desired their
Worships to think it was his infirmity.

Three or four
wenches where I stood cried “Alas, good soul!” and
forgave him with all their hearts.

Besides (I ha’ not since put up my sword),
Against the Capitol I met a lion,
Who glazed upon me and went surly by
Without annoying me.

When these prodigies
Do so conjointly meet, let not men say
“These are their reasons, they are natural,”
For I believe they are portentous things
Unto the climate that they point upon.

It is the part of men to fear and tremble
When the most mighty gods by tokens send
Such dreadful heralds to astonish us.

A man no mightier than thyself or me
In personal action, yet prodigious grown,
And fearful, as these strange eruptions are.

Our yoke and sufferance show us womanish.

Nor stony tower, nor walls of beaten brass,
Nor airless dungeon, nor strong links of iron,
Can be retentive to the strength of spirit;
But life, being weary of these worldly bars,
Never lacks power to dismiss itself.

What trash is Rome,
What rubbish, and what offal when it serves
For the base matter to illuminate
So vile a thing as Caesar!

Be factious for redress of all these griefs,
And I will set this foot of mine as far
As who goes farthest.

Be factious for redress of all these griefs,
And I will set this foot of mine as far
As who goes farthest.

’Tis Cinna; I do know him by his gait.

O, he sits high in all the people’s hearts,
And that which would appear offense in us
His countenance, like richest alchemy,
Will change to virtue and to worthiness.