Julius Caesar | Page 7

Caesar's images,
are put to silence. Fare you well. There was more foolery yet, if could
remember it.
CASSIUS.
Will you sup with me tonight, Casca?
CASCA.
No, I am promised forth.
CASSIUS.
Will you dine with me tomorrow?
CASCA.
Ay, if I be alive, and your mind hold, and your dinner worth
the eating.
CASSIUS.
Good; I will expect you.
CASCA.
Do so; farewell both.
[Exit CASCA.]
BRUTUS.
What a blunt fellow is this grown to be!
He was quick
mettle when he went to school.
CASSIUS.
So is he now in execution
Of any bold or noble
enterprise,
However he puts on this tardy form.
This rudeness is a

sauce to his good wit,
Which gives men stomach to digest his words

With better appetite.
BRUTUS.
And so it is. For this time I will leave you:
Tomorrow, if
you please to speak with me,
I will come home to you; or, if you will,

Come home to me, and I will wait for you.
CASSIUS.
I will do so: till then, think of the world.--
[Exit Brutus.]
Well, Brutus, thou art noble; yet, I see,
Thy honorable metal may be
wrought,
From that it is disposed: therefore 'tis meet
That noble
minds keep ever with their likes;
For who so firm that cannot be
seduced?
Caesar doth bear me hard, but he loves Brutus;
If I were
Brutus now and he were Cassius,
He should not humor me. I will this
night,
In several hands, in at his windows throw,
As if they came
from several citizens,
Writings all tending to the great opinion
That
Rome holds of his name; wherein obscurely
Caesar's ambition shall
be glanced at:
And after this let Caesar seat him sure;
For we will
shake him, or worse days endure.
[Exit.]
SCENE III. The same. A street.
[Thunder and lightning. Enter, from opposite sides, CASCA, with his
sword drawn, and CICERO.]
CICERO.
Good even, Casca: brought you Caesar home?
Why are
you breathless, and why stare you so?
CASCA.
Are not you moved, when all the sway of earth
Shakes
like a thing unfirm? O Cicero,
I have seen tempests, when the
scolding winds
Have rived the knotty oaks; and I have seen
Th'
ambitious ocean swell and rage and foam,
To be exalted with the

threatening clouds:
But never till tonight, never till now,
Did I go
through a tempest dropping fire.
Either there is a civil strife in heaven,

Or else the world too saucy with the gods,
Incenses them to send
destruction.
CICERO.
Why, saw you anything more wonderful?
CASCA.
A common slave--you'd know him well by sight--
Held
up his left hand, which did flame and burn
Like twenty torches join'd,
and yet his hand
Not sensible of fire remain'd unscorch'd.

Besides,--I ha' not since put up my sword,--
Against the Capitol I met
a lion,
Who glared upon me, and went surly by,
Without annoying
me: and there were drawn
Upon a heap a hundred ghastly women,

Transformed with their fear; who swore they saw
Men, all in fire,
walk up and down the streets.
And yesterday the bird of night did sit

Even at noonday upon the marketplace,
Howling and shrieking.
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.
CICERO.
Indeed, it is a strange-disposed time.
But men may
construe things after their fashion,
Clean from the purpose of the
things themselves.
Comes Caesar to the Capitol tomorrow?
CASCA.
He doth, for he did bid Antonius
Send word to you he
would be there to-morrow.
CICERO.
Good then, Casca: this disturbed sky
Is not to walk in.
CASCA.
Farewell, Cicero.
[Exit Cicero.]
[Enter Cassius.]

CASSIUS.
Who's there?
CASCA.
A Roman.
CASSIUS.
Casca, by your voice.
CASCA.
Your ear is good. Cassius, what night is this!
CASSIUS.
A very pleasing night to honest men.
CASCA.
Who ever knew the heavens menace so?
CASSIUS.
Those that have known the earth so full of faults.
For
my part, I have walk'd about the streets,
Submitting me unto the
perilous night;
And, thus unbraced, Casca, as you see,
Have bared
my bosom to the thunder-stone;
And when the cross blue lightning
seem'd to open
The breast of heaven, I did present myself
Even in
the aim and very flash of it.
CASCA.
But wherefore did you so much tempt the Heavens?
It is
the part of men to fear and tremble,
When the most mighty gods by
tokens send
Such dreadful heralds to astonish us.
CASSIUS.
You are dull, Casca;and those sparks of life
That should
be in a Roman you do want,
Or else you use not. You look pale and
gaze,
And put on fear and cast yourself in wonder,
To see the
strange impatience of the Heavens:
But if you would consider the true
cause
Why all these fires, why all these gliding ghosts,
Why birds
and beasts,from quality and kind;
Why old men, fools, and children
calculate;--
Why all these things change from their ordinance,
Their
natures, and preformed faculties
To monstrous quality;--why, you
shall find
That Heaven hath infused them with these spirits,
To
make them instruments of fear and warning
Unto some monstrous
state. Now could I, Casca,
Name to thee a man most like this dreadful
night;
That thunders, lightens, opens graves, and roars,
As doth the

lion in the Capitol;
A man no