Enter on one side
Octavius Caesar, Mark Antony, and their pals and army; and, on the
other, Brutus and Cassius and the friends and followers of their
falling fortunes.
Brutus: Words before blows: is it so, countrymen?
Octavius: Not that we love words better, as you do.
You see, Octavius starts it.
Brutus lays himself open:
Brutus: Good words are better than bad strokes, Octavius.
Antony: In your bad strokes, Brutus, you give good words:
Witness the hole you made in Caesar's heart,
Crying, "Long live! hail, Caesar!"
This is one for Brutus, though it contains a lie. But Cassius comes
to the rescue:
Cassius: Antony,
The posture of your blows are yet unknown,
But, for your words, they rob the Hybla bees
And leave them honeyless.
Antony: Not stingless too.
Brutus: O, yes, and soundless too;
For you have stol'n their buzzing, Antony,
And very wisely threat before you sting.
That was one for Antony, and he gets mad. "Villains!" he yells, and
he abuses them about their vile daggers hacking one another in the
sides of Caesar (a little matter that ought to be worn threadbare by
now), and calls them apes and hounds and bondmen and curs, and O,
flatterers (which seems to be worst of all in his opinion--for he
isn't one, you know), and damns 'em generally.
Old Cassius remarks, "Flatterers!"
Then Octavius breaks loose, and draws his Roman chopper and waves it
round, and spreads himself out over Caesar's three-and-thirty
wounds--which ought to be given a rest by this time, but only seem to
be growing in number--and swears that he won't put up said chopper
till said wounds are avenged,
Or till another Caesar
Have added slaughter to the sword of traitors.
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