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 sign5 Of your profession?—Speak, what trade art thou?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 10Truly, 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.COBBLER A trade, sir, that I hope I may use with a safe conscience, which is indeed, sir, a mender of bad15 soles.FLAVIUS What trade, thou knave? Thou naughty knave, what trade?
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ACT 1. SC. 1
COBBLER Nay, I beseech you, sir, be not out with me. Yet if you be out, sir, I can mend you.MARULLUS 20 What mean’st thou by that? Mend me, thou saucy fellow?COBBLER Why, sir, cobble you.FLAVIUS Thou art a cobbler, art thou?COBBLER Truly, sir, all that I live by is with the25 awl. I meddle with no tradesman’s matters nor 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 30 But wherefore art not in thy shop today? Why dost thou lead these men about the streets?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 his35 triumph.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 senseless40 things! 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,45 Your infants in your arms, and there have sat 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,50 That Tiber trembled underneath her banks
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Julius Caesar
ACT 1. SC. 1
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?55 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 plague60 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 stream65 Do kiss the most exalted shores of all.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 images70 If you do find them decked 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 about75 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 men80 And keep us all in servile fearfulness.They exit ⌜in different directions.⌝