Enter Flavius, Marullus, and certain Commoners,
including a Carpenter and a Cobbler, over the stage. 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 laboring day without the sign
Of your profession?—Speak, what trade art thou? 5 CARPENTER 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? COBBLER Truly, sir, in respect of a fine workman, I am 10
but, as you would say, a cobbler. MARULLUS
But what trade art thou? Answer me directly. COBBLER A trade, sir, that I hope I may use with a safe
conscience, which is indeed, sir, a mender of bad
soles. 15 FLAVIUS
What trade, thou knave? Thou naughty knave, what
trade? COBBLER Nay, I beseech you, sir, be not out with me.
Yet if you be out, sir, I can mend you. MARULLUS
What mean’st thou by that? Mend me, thou saucy 20
fellow? COBBLER Why, sir, cobble you. FLAVIUS Thou art a cobbler, art thou? COBBLER Truly, sir, all that I live by is with the
awl. I meddle with no tradesman’s matters nor 25
women’s matters, but withal 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? 30
Why dost thou lead these men about the streets? | Murullus and Flavius, Roman tribunes who are friends of Brutus and Cassius, come upon a group of common people running about the street in their Sunday best when they should be working. The pair asks about the commoners' professions and what they're up to. Why aren't they working? |
COBBLER 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. 35 | The Cobbler jokes that everyone is running around wearing out their shoes so he'll have more work. (Ba-DUM-bum!) But seriously: everyone is out to celebrate Caesar's victorious return. FYI: Caesar has just come back from stomping Pompey's sons into the ground. Pompey is a guy who used to rule Rome with Caesar (they were called "tribunes"). After disagreeing with Caesar about how Rome should be run, Pompey was defeated in battle and assassinated. Just to be sure that Pompey's family and supporters couldn't come after him, Caesar chased Pompey's sons to Spain and defeated them in battle, too. Boo-yah. |
MARULLUS
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! 40
O you hard hearts, you cruel men of Rome,
Knew you not Pompey? Many a time and oft
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 45
The livelong 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 50
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 55
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. 60 | Marullus points out that the people who are now celebrating Caesar's victory over Pompey's sons used to line the streets to see Pompey in his chariot. They worshipped him as a leader, but now they're ready to cheer his demise and the death of his sons? They'd do better to go home and pray not to be punished for their hypocrisy and 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
Do kiss the most exalted shores of all. 65
All the Commoners exit.
See whe’er their basest mettle 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 decked with ceremonies. 70 MARULLUS May we do so?
You know it is the feast of Lupercal. | Before parting ways, Murellus and Flavius disperse the crowd and remove the party favors and tributes the people have left around Caesar's statue. |
FLAVIUS
It is no matter. Let no images
Be hung with Caesar’s trophies. I’ll about
And drive away the vulgar from the streets; 75
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. 80 They exit in different directions. | Flavius insists this is necessary. They need to slow Caesar's row a little bit as he prepares to overthrow the republic and make himself king. If they can keep him from getting too full of himself, perhaps they can prevent him from becoming a tyrant. |