Classics for today: Julius Caesar

November 19, 2007 at 9:35 pm (Far Left, Theatre)

I hear somebody has already done this on one of the comments sections (if you can think where, I’d be grateful for the link), and a big shout out to whoever had the idea. But it’s a great idea, and one worth doing twice. Apologies if you’ve seen this before – enjoy if you haven’t. 

Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears;
I come to bury George, 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 George. The noble Rees
Hath told you George was ambitious:
If it were so, it was a grievous fault,
And grievously hath George answer’d it.
Here, under leave of Rees and the rest—
For Rees is an honourable man;
So are they all, all honourable men—
Come I to speak in George’s funeral.
He was my friend, faithful and just to me:
But Rees says he was ambitious;
And Rees is an honourable man.
He hath brought many captives home to Rome
Whose ransoms did the general coffers fill:
Did this in George seem ambitious?
When that the poor have cried, George hath wept:
Ambition should be made of sterner stuff:
Yet Rees says he was ambitious;
And Rees 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 Rees says he was ambitious;
And, sure, he is an honourable man.
I speak not to disprove what Rees 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 George,
And I must pause till it come back to me.