My countrymen! Good countrymen, let me depart alone,
And, for my sake, stay here with Antony: Do grace to Caesar's corpse, and grace his
speech tending to Caesar's glories; which Mark Antony,
By our permission, is allow'd to make. I do entreat you, not a man depart,
Save I alone, till Antony have spoke.
Stay, ho! and let us hear Mark Antony. We'll hear him. Noble Antony, go up.
For Brutus' sake, I am beholding to you.
What does he say of Brutus?
'Twere best he speak no harm of Brutus here.
This Caesar was a tyrant. We are blest that Rome is rid of him.
Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears;
I come to bury Caesar, 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 Caesar. The noble Brutus
Hath told you Caesar was ambitious: If it were so, it was a grievous fault,
And grievously hath Caesar answered it. Here, under leave of Brutus and the rest--
For Brutus is an honourable man; So are they all, all honourable men--
Come I to speak in Caesar's funeral.
He was my friend, faithful and just to me:
But Brutus says he was ambitious; And Brutus is an honourable man.
He hath brought many captives home to Rome Whose ransoms did the general coffers fill:
Did this in Caesar seem ambitious? When that the poor have cried,
Caesar hath wept: Ambition should be made of sterner stuff:
Yet Brutus says he was ambitious; And Brutus 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 Brutus says he was ambitious;
And, sure, he is an honourable man. I speak not to disprove what Brutus 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 Caesar,
And I must pause till it come back to me.
Methinks there is much reason in his sayings.