The New Hudson Shakespeare · William Shakespeare
SCENE I. _Rome. A street_
_Enter_ FLAVIUS, MARULLUS, _and certain_ Commoners _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 labouring 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? 9 [Note: ACT I, SCENE I | Actus Primus. Scœna Prima Ff.--_Rome. A street_ Capell | Rome Rowe | Ff omit.--Commoners Ff | Plebeians Hanmer.] [Note 6: CARPENTER | Car. Ff | First Com. Camb | 1 Pleb. Hanmer.] [Note: ACT I. In the First Folio _The Tragedie of Julius Cæsar_ is divided into acts but not into scenes, though 'Scœna (so spelled in the Folios) Prima' is given here after 'Actus Primus.'--_over the stage_. This, the Folio stage direction, suggests a mob.] [Note 3: /Being mechanical:/ being mechanics. Shakespeare often uses adjectives with the sense of plural substantives. Cf. 'subject' in _Hamlet_, I, i, 72. Twice in North's Plutarch occurs "base mechanical people."--/ought not walk/. See Abbott, § 349.] [Note 4-5: Shakespeare transfers to ancient Rome the English customs and usages of his own time. In Porter and Clarke's 'First Folio' _Julius Cæsar_, it is mentioned that Shakespeare's uncle Henry, a farmer in Snitterfield, according to a court order of October 25, 1583, was fined "viii d for not havinge and wearinge cappes on Sondayes and hollydayes."]
MARULLUS. Wherefore rejoice? What conquest brings he home? What tributaries follow him to Rome, 35 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 oft Have you climb'd up to walls and battlements, 40 To towers and windows, yea, to chimney-tops, Your infants in your arms, and there have sat The live-long day, with patient expectation, To see great Pompey pass the streets of Rome: And when you saw his chariot but appear, 45 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? 50 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, 55 Pray to the gods to intermit the plague That needs must light on this ingratitude. [Note 39: /Many a time and oft/. This form of emphasis occurs also in _The Merchant of Venice_, I, iii, 107. Cf. _Timon of Athens_, III, i, 25.] [Note 41: /windows/, Rowe | Windowes? Ff.] [Note 44: /Rome/: Ff | Rome? Rowe.]
Text from Project Gutenberg, public domain in the United States.