And Dreadful Objects So Familiar

Grade 10 and the wondrous Mr. Connors in his final year. The year I studied Shakespeare for the first time and did a book report on the newly read Great Gatsby. We read Julius Caesar and watched Brando. I still remember a test question in which we were asked to explain our favourite character and why - if only because I struggled to choose between Cassius and Antony.

Then last March, with Coop and Gatts at the Barbican - where I had seen Hamlet on the Thames those years ago. Ralph Fiennes as Antony and famed London stage actor Simon Russell Beale as that "lean and hungry" Cassius. Marvelous work.

Below is that most famous and brilliant of Shakespearean lines, oft-quoted and most deservingly so. The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves, that we are underlings. And so we go. A classic, manipulatively true speech.

Enjoy the remains of this Shakespeare Friday. 0 days until the Windjammer weekend in Camden. Such a day.

Shout. Flourish.

BRUTUS

Another general shout!
I do believe that these applauses are
For some new honours that are heap'd on Caesar.

CASSIUS
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?
Write them together, yours is as fair a name;
Sound them, it doth become the mouth as well;
Weigh them, it is as heavy; conjure with 'em,
Brutus will start a spirit as soon as Caesar.
Now, in the names of all the gods at once,
Upon what meat doth this our Caesar feed,
That he is grown so great? Age, thou art shamed!
Rome, thou hast lost the breed of noble bloods!
When went there by an age, since the great flood,
But it was famed with more than with one man?
When could they say till now, that talk'd of Rome,
That her wide walls encompass'd but one man?
Now is it Rome indeed and room enough,
When there is in it but one only man.
O, you and I have heard our fathers say,
There was a Brutus once that would have brook'd
The eternal devil to keep his state in Rome
As easily as a king.