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[Thunder and lightning. Enter Casca and Cicero.]

Cicero

Good even, Casca.  Brought you Caesar home?
Why are you breathless, and why stare you so?

Casca

Are not you moved, when all the sway of earth
Shakes like a thing unfirm? O Cicero,
I have seen tempests when the scolding winds
Have rived the knotty oaks, and I have seen
Th'ambitious ocean swell, and rage, and foam,
To be exalted with the threat'ning clouds:
But never till tonight, never till now,
Did I go through a tempest dropping fire.
Either there is a civil strife in heaven,
Or else the world, too saucy with the gods,
Incenses them to send destruction.

Casca

Your ear is good. Cassius, what night is this!

Cassius

A very pleasing night to honest men.

Casca

Who ever knew the heavens menace so?

Cassius

Those that have known the earth so full of faults.
For my part, I have walked about the streets,
Submitting me unto the perilous night,
And thus unbracèd, Casca, as you see,
Have bared my bosom to the thunder-stone;
And when the cross blue lightning seemed to open
The breast of heaven, I did present myself
Even in the aim and very flash of it.

Cassius

A man no mightier than thyself or me
In personal action, yet prodigious grown
And fearful, as these strange eruptions are.

Casca

'Tis Caesar that you mean.  Is it not, Cassius?

Cassius

Let it be who it is. For Romans now
Have thews and limbs like to their ancestors,
But — woe the while! — our fathers' minds are dead,
And we are govern'd with our mothers' spirits.
Our yoke and sufferance show us womanish.

Casca

Indeed, they say the senators tomorrow
Mean to establish Caesar as a king,
And he shall wear his crown by sea and land,
In every place save here in Italy.

Cassius

Now know you, Casca, I have moved already
Some certain of the noblest-minded Romans
To undergo with me an enterprise
Of honorable-dangerous consequence;
And I do know, by this they stay for me
In Pompey's Porch, For now, this fearful night,
There is no stir or walking in the streets;
And the complexion of the element
In favor's like the work we have in hand —
Most bloody, fiery, and most terrible.

Cinna

O Cassius, if you could
But win the noble Brutus to our party —

Cassius

Be you content.  Good Cinna, take this paper,
And look you lay it in the praetor's chair,
Where Brutus may but find it; and throw this
In at his window.  Set this up with wax
Upon old Brutus' statue.  All this done,
Repair to Pompey's porch where you shall find us.

Cassius

Well, Brutus, thou art noble, yet I see
Thy honorable metal may be wrought
From that it is disposed.  Therefore it is meet
That noble minds keep ever with their likes;
For who so firm that cannot be seduced?
Caesar doth bear me hard, but he loves Brutus.
If I were Brutus now, and he were Cassius,
He should not humor me. I will this night,
In several hands, in at his windows throw,
As if they came from several citizens,
Writings, all tending to the great opinion
That Rome holds of his name, wherein obscurely
Caesar's ambition shall be glancèd at.
And after this let Caesar seat him sure,
For we will shake him, or worse days endure.
[Exit.]

Cassius

Well, Brutus, thou art noble, yet I see
Thy honorable metal may be wrought
From that it is disposed.  Therefore it is meet
That noble minds keep ever with their likes;
For who so firm that cannot be seduced?
Caesar doth bear me hard, but he loves Brutus.
If I were Brutus now, and he were Cassius,
He should not humor me. I will this night,
In several hands, in at his windows throw,
As if they came from several citizens,
Writings, all tending to the great opinion
That Rome holds of his name, wherein obscurely
Caesar's ambition shall be glancèd at.
And after this let Caesar seat him sure,
For we will shake him, or worse days endure.
[Exit.]

Brutus

I am not gamesome.  I do lack some part
Of that quick spirit that is in Antony.
Let me not hinder, Cassius, your desires.
I'll leave you.

Cassius

Brutus, I do observe you now of late;
I have not from your eyes that gentleness
And show of love as I was wont to have.
You bear too stubborn and too strange a hand
Over your friend that loves you.

Brutus

Cassius

Brutus

Cassius

Brutus

Cassius

[Trumpets, shouting]

Brutus

Cassius

Brutus

Cassius

[Shouts. Trumpets sound.]

Brutus

Cassius

Brutus

Cassius

[Re-enter Caesar and his train of followers.]

Brutus

Cassius

Brutus

Cassius

Caesar

Antony

Caesar

Antony

Caesar

[Trumpets sound Caesar's exit. Caesar exits with all his followers except Casca.]

Casca

Brutus

Casca

Brutus

Casca

Brutus

Casca

Cassius

Casca

Brutus

Casca

Cassius

Casca

Brutus

Casca

Cassius

Casca

Brutus

Cassius

Casca

Brutus

Casca

Brutus

Casca

Cassius

Casca

Cassius

Casca

Cassius

Casca

Cassius

Casca

Cassius

Casca

[Exit.]

Brutus

Cassius

Brutus

Cassius

[Exit Brutus.]
[Exit.]

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