Page:Shakespeare of Stratford (1926) Yale.djvu/144

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Shakespeare of Stratford
125
Your infants in your arms, and there have satThe livelong day, with patient expectation,To see great Pompey pass the streets of Rome:And when you saw his chariot but appear,Have you not made a universal shout,That Tiber trembled underneath her banks,To hear the replication of your soundsMade in her concave shores?And do you now put on your best attire?And do you now cull out a holiday?And do you now strew flowers in his way,That comes in triumph over Pompey’s blood?’(Julius Cæsar, I. i. 40–55)


The words are those of the Tribune Marullus. Note the marvelously different way in which the Tribune Brutus in Coriolanus says the same thing some nine years later:


‘All tongues speak of him, and the bleared sightsAre spectacled to see him: your prattling nurseInto a rapture lets her baby cryWhile she chats him: the kitchen malkin pinsHer richest lockram ’bout her reechy neck,Clambering the walls to eye him: stalls, bulks, windowsAre smother’d up, leads fill’d, and ridges hors’dWith variable complexions, all agreeingIn earnestness to see him: seld-shown flamensDo press among the popular throngs, and puffTo win a vulgar station: our veil’d damesCommit the war of white and damask inTheir nicely-gawded cheeks to the wanton spoilOf Phoebus’ burning kisses: such a potherAs if that whatsoever god who leads him
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