Julius Caesar

The streets of Rome are packed with people awaiting the return of the mighty Caesar who has defeated the great Pompey. Two tribunes, Marullus and Flavius are trying to get the people off the streets and telling them they should be working, not celebrating.

Act 1, Scene 1

(33-76)

Marullus: Wherefore 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 oft 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 patiant expectation, to see the great Pompey pass the streets of Rome: and when you saw his chariot but appear, have you noy made a 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 triumphover 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 country men, 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.

(Exeunt all the Commeners)

See where their baset mettle 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 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 the vulgar from the streets; so do you too, where you perceive them thick. These growing feathers plucked 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.

Erin and I chose this peice because it shows how the different people veiw Caesar. It shows how the people of Rome quickly decided that they wanted Caesar as their leader instead of Pompey because Caesar defeated Pompey. Also, we learn how the represenatives of the people, or the tribunes feel about Caesar, they believe that Caesar would become a tyrant and the people would become slaves. What is very interesting though is how the tribunes veiw the people. They don't like them, they think they are idiots who don't think for themselves, they are like sheeps, thay only follow, this we find latter to be true.