Act One: The Feast of Lupercal · Julius Caesar

The streets of Rome were full of working men in holiday clothes, come out to cheer Julius Caesar, who had returned in triumph from his victory over the sons of Pompey the Great. Two tribunes of the people, Flavius and Marullus, scolded them: "You blocks, you stones, you worse than senseless things! O you hard hearts, you cruel men of Rome, knew you not Pompey?" How often they had climbed the walls and chimney-tops to cheer Pompey; and now they strewed flowers in the way of the man who came in triumph over Pompey's blood. They sent the crowd home, and went about pulling the decorations from Caesar's statues. They were afraid that Caesar would soar above the view of men, and keep them all in servile fearfulness.

It was the feast of the Lupercal, the fifteenth of February, and there was to be a race. Caesar came in procession with his wife Calpurnia and his friends, among them the young athlete Mark Antony, who was to run. Caesar told Antony to touch Calpurnia as he ran, for the old saying was that the barren, touched in this holy chase, shake off their sterile curse.

A voice cried out of the crowd: "Caesar!" It was a soothsayer. "Beware the Ides of March." Caesar looked at him. "He is a dreamer. Let us leave him. Pass."

Two men stayed behind while the procession moved on to the race: Cassius, a lean, sharp, bitter senator, and Marcus Brutus, a man of the highest honour, descended from the Brutus who had driven the last king out of Rome. Cassius had noticed that Brutus seemed troubled lately, and cold to his friends; Brutus said he was at war with himself. Then a shout went up from the place of the games, and Brutus started: "I do fear the people choose Caesar for their king." "Ay, do you fear it? Then must I think you would not have it so." "I would not, Cassius; yet I love him well."

Cassius worked on him with all his skill. He could not bear, he said, to live in awe of a man no better than himself. He told how once, on a raw and gusty day, Caesar had dared him to swim the flooded Tiber, and had begun to sink, and cried "Help me, Cassius, or I sink!" — and Cassius had carried him out of the waves, as Aeneas carried old Anchises out of the flames of Troy; and now this man was become a god, and Cassius must bend his body if Caesar carelessly but nod on him. He had seen him in a fever in Spain, shaking, crying for drink like a sick girl.

"Why, man, he doth bestride the narrow world like a Colossus, and we petty men walk under his huge legs and peep about to find ourselves dishonourable graves. Men at some time are masters of their fates: the fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves, that we are underlings. 'Brutus' and 'Caesar': what should be in that 'Caesar'? Why should that name be sounded more than yours?" Rome had once had a Brutus who would have brooked the eternal devil to keep his state in Rome as easily as a king.

Brutus would think about it. "Brutus had rather be a villager than to repute himself a son of Rome under these hard conditions as this time is like to lay upon us."

The procession came back. Caesar looked angry, Calpurnia pale. Caesar, seeing Cassius, said to Antony: "Let me have men about me that are fat, sleek-headed men, and such as sleep o' nights. Yond Cassius has a lean and hungry look; he thinks too much: such men are dangerous." He did not fear him, he said, for always he was Caesar. "Come on my right hand, for this ear is deaf."

Casca, a blunt, sardonic senator, told Brutus and Cassius what had happened at the games. Mark Antony had offered Caesar a crown three times — "not a crown neither, 'twas one of these coronets" — and three times Caesar had put it by, each time more unwillingly, while the rabblement hooted and clapped their chopped hands and uttered such a deal of stinking breath that it almost choked Caesar; for he swooned, and fell down in the market-place, and foamed at the mouth. "He hath the falling sickness." Cicero had spoken in Greek — "it was Greek to me" — and Flavius and Marullus, for pulling scarves off Caesar's images, had been put to silence.

Alone, Cassius planned to throw in at Brutus's windows letters, in several hands, as if from several citizens, all tending to the great opinion that Rome held of his name, and hinting at Caesar's ambition. "Well, Brutus, thou art noble; yet I see thy honourable metal may be wrought from that it is disposed."

That night there was a terrible storm, with fire dropping from the sky. Casca, terrified, met Cicero and then Cassius in the streets, and told of portents: a slave whose hand burned like twenty torches and was not scorched; a lion by the Capitol; men all in fire walking up and down the streets; the bird of night sitting at noonday in the market-place, hooting and shrieking. Cassius walked through it all with his breast bared to the lightning. These were warnings, he said, of a monstrous state — of a man most like this dreadful night, that thunders, lightens, opens graves, and roars as doth the lion in the Capitol. Tomorrow the Senate meant to make Caesar king. Casca joined the conspiracy. And Cassius sent Cinna, another of them, to lay his forged letters where Brutus would find them.