(With apologies to William Shakespeare)
Marc Antony [standing, holding a tumbler of whiskey]:
Friends, Romans, countrymen, c’mere ‘till I tell ya;
I’m just after coming to bury Caesar, not to praise him.
The evil that men do lives after them, so it does;
Sure, and their works of mercy are oft interred with their bones;
So let it be with Caesar. Yer man Brutus
Is after telling yiz Himself was a fierce chancer:
If it were so, sure it’s a mortal sin,
And grievously hath Brutus answer’d it.
Here, under leave of yer man and the rest –
For Brutus is some man for one man;
So are they all, all grand lads –
Come I to speak at Caesar’s wake.
He was my friend, faithful and just to me, so he was:
But Brutus is after giving out he was a fierce chancer;
And yer man Brutus, sure he wouldn’t lie to ye.
He’s after bringing many captives home to Rome
Whose ransoms did the general coffers fill:
Did this in Caesar seem ambitious at all at all?
When the poor are after crying, Caesar weeps too:
Ambition should be made of sterner stuff:
Yet Brutus is after giving out he was a fierce chancer;
And sure he wouldn’t lie to ye.
Yiz all did see that on the Lupercal
I’m three times after giving him a kingly crown,
Which he did three times refuse: was this ambition?
Yet yer man Brutus says he was a fierce chancer;
And, sure he wouldn’t lie to ye.
I speak not to disprove what yer man is after sayin’,
But here I am to speak what I do know.
Yiz all did love him once, not without cause:
What cause withholds you then, to mourn for him?
Janey Mac! You’re after becoming eejits,
And men are after losing their reason. Lookit;
My heart is in the coffin there with Himself,
And I must pause till it come back to me, so I must.
[takes a sip of the gargle and begins to sing]:
“Of all the money that e’er I had
I spent it in good company…”
Steve White lives in Great Barrington, Massachusetts, where he is at work on a collection of mostly humorous personal essays.
