/lit/ - Literature

COBBLER Nay, I beseech you, sir, be not out with me.
Yet if you be out, sir, I can mend you.
MARULLUS
What mean’st thou by that? Mend me, thou saucy
fellow?
COBBLER Why, sir, cobble you.
FLAVIUS Thou art a cobbler, art thou?
COBBLER Truly, sir, all that I live by is with the
awl. I meddle with no tradesman’s matters nor
women’s matters, but withal I am indeed, sir, a
surgeon to old shoes: when they are in great danger,
I recover them. As proper men as ever trod upon
neat’s leather have gone upon my handiwork.
FLAVIUS
But wherefore art not in thy shop today?
Why dost thou lead these men about the streets?
COBBLER Truly, sir, to wear out their shoes, to
get myself into more work. But indeed, sir, we
make holiday to see Caesar and to rejoice in his
triumph.
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 climbed 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 patient expectation,
To see great Pompey pass the streets of Rome.
And when you saw his chariot but appear,
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?
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,
Pray to the gods to intermit the plague
That needs must light on this ingratitude.
FLAVIUS
Go, go, good countrymen, 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.