ShakesDown Episode 3: Cassius (Julius Caesar)

Join Bryn Boice (CSC’s Associate Artistic Director) in this monthly podcast, as she breaks down and shakes down Shakespeare’s most interesting speeches, from the most famous to the most obscure. This month, she explores Cassius’ Act 1, scene 2 monologue from Julius Caesar just in time for the Ides of March! Flip through the pages of the Folio with her and see what treasures there are to uncover!

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 dishonorable 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 talked of Rome,
 That her wide walks encompassed 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 brooked
 Th’ eternal devil to keep his state in Rome
As easily as a king.

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