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JULIUS CAESAR
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A monologue from Act III, Scene ii
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by: William Shakespeare
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NOTE: Julius Caesar was first published in the folio of 1623. It is now a public domain work and may be performed without royalties. |
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- ANTONY: Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears;
- I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him.
- The evil that men do lives after them;
- The good is oft interrèd with their bones.
- So let it be with Caesar. The noble Brutus
- Hath told you Caesar was ambitious.
- If it were so, it was a grievous fault,
- And grievously hath Caesar answered it [1].
- Here under leave of Brutus and the rest
- (For Brutus is an honorable man;
- So are they all, all honorable men),
- Come I to speak in Caesar's funeral.
- He was my friend, faithful and just to me;
- But Brutus says he was ambitious,
- And Brutus is an honorable man.
- He hath brought many captives home to Rome,
- Whose ransoms did the general coffers [2] fill.
- Did this in Caesar seem ambitious?
- When the poor have cried, Caesar hath wept;
- Ambition should be made of sterner stuff.
- Yet Brutus says he was ambitious;
- And Brutus is an honorable man.
- You all did see that on the Lupercal [3]
- I thrice presented him a crown,
- Which he did thrice refuse. Was this ambition?
- Yet Brutus says he was ambitious;
- And sure he is an honorable man.
- I speak not to disprove what Brutus spoke,
- But here I am to speak what I do know.
- You all did love him once, not without cause.
- What cause withholds you then to mourn for him?
- O judgment, thou art fled to brutish beasts,
- And men have lost their reason! Bear with me.
- My heart is in the coffin there with Caesar,
- And I must pause till it come back to me.
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1 paid the ultimate penalty
2 public treasury
3 a cave or grotto at the foot of the Palatine, in which, according to legend, the she-wolf suckled Romulus and Remus. It seems to have been a sanctuary of some sort, and had a monumental entrance, for its restoration by Augustus is recorded.
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