Julius Caesar | Page 7

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 mightier than thyself or me?In personal action; yet prodigious grown,?And fearful, as these strange eruptions are.
CASCA.?'Tis Caesar that you mean; is it not, Cassius?
CASSIUS.?Let it be who it is: for Romans now?Have thews and limbs like to their ancestors;?But, woe the while! our fathers' minds are dead,?And we are govern'd with our mothers' spirits;?Our yoke and sufferance show us womanish.
CASCA.?Indeed they say the senators to-morrow?Mean to establish Caesar as a king;?And he shall wear his crown by sea and land,?In every place save here in Italy.
CASSIUS.?I know where I will wear this dagger then;?Cassius from bondage will deliver Cassius:?Therein, ye gods, you make the weak most strong;?Therein, ye gods, you tyrants do defeat:?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.?If I know this, know all the world besides,?That part of tyranny that I do bear?I can shake off at pleasure.
[Thunders still.]
CASCA.?So can I:?So every bondman in his own hand bears?The power to cancel his captivity.
CASSIUS.?And why should Caesar be a tyrant then??Poor man! I know he would not be a wolf,?But that he sees