FLAVIUS
! 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 ?
CARPENTER
Why, sir, a carpenter.
MARULLUS
Where is leather apron and rule?
What with best apparel on?
You, sir, what trade are you?
COBBLER
Truly, sir, in respect of a fine workman, I am but, as you would say, a cobbler.
MARULLUS
But what trade art ? 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.
MARULLUS
What trade, ? naughty , 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 by that? Mend me, saucy fellow!
COBBLER
Why, sir, cobble you.
FLAVIUS
art a cobbler, art ?
COBBLER
Truly, sir, all that I live by is with the awl; I meddle with no tradesman’s matters, nor women’s matters, but 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 art not in shop today?
Why 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 his triumph.
MARULLUS
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
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 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
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.
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.
FLAVIUS
See whether their basest metal be not mov’d;
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.
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 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.