William Shakespeare’s “Friends, Romans, Countrymen”

p. 156-159



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 interred 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 answer'd it.



Here, under leave of Brutus and the rest--

For Brutus is an honourable man;

So are they all, all honourable 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 honourable man.



He hath brought many captives home to Rome

Whose ransoms did the general coffers fill:

Did this in Caesar seem ambitious?



When that the poor have cried, Caesar hath wept:

Ambition should be made of sterner stuff:

Yet Brutus says he was ambitious;

And Brutus is an honourable man.



You all did see that on the Lupercal

I thrice presented him a kingly crown,

Which he did thrice refuse: was this ambition?



Yet Brutus says he was ambitious;

And, sure, he is an honourable 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.



FIRST CITIZEN

Methinks there is much reason in his sayings.