Julius Caesar Duet Acting

Act 1 Scene 3, Page 48 - 50

A street. Thunder and lightning. Enter Casca and Cicero.

Cicero: Good even, Casca: brought you Ceasar home?
Why are you breathless? and why stare you so?

Casca: Are you not mov'd, when all the swat of Earth
Shakes like a thing unfirm? O Cicero,
I have seen tempests, when the scolding winds
Have riv'd the knotty oaks; and I have seen
Th' ambitious ocean swell and rage and foam,
To be exalted with the treat'ning clouds:
But never till tonight, never till now,
Did I go through a tempest fropping fire.
Either there is a civil strife in heaven,
Or else the world, too saucy with the Gods,
Incences them to send destruction.

Cicero: Why, saw you any thing more wonderful?

Casca: A common slave, you know him well by sight,
Held up his hand, which did flame and burn
Like twenty torches join'd; and yet his hand,
Not sensible of fire, remain'd unscorch'd.
Besides(I ha' not since put up my sword)
Against the Capitol I met a lion,
Who glazed upon me, and went surly by,
Without annoying me. And there were drawn
Upon a heap a hundred ghastly women,
Transformed with their fear, who swore they saw
Men, all in fire, walk up and down the streets.
And yesterday the bird of night did sit,
Even at noonday, upon the market place,
Hooting and shrieking. When these prodigies
Do so conjointly meet, let not men say,
'These are their reasons, they are natural!';
For I believe, they are portentous things
Unto the climate that they point upon.

Cicero: Indeed, it is a strange-disposed time:
But men may conture things, after their fashion,
Clean from the purpose of the things themselves.
Comes Caesar to the Capitol tomorrow?

Casca: He doth; for he did bid Antonius
Send word to you he would be there tomorrow.

Cicero: Good night then, Casca: this disturbed sky
Is not to walk in.

Casca: Farewell, Cicero.

This passage is significant because it is making us wait for the storm to pass, which creates tension for the reader. It also shows us that the characters are superstitious because they believe that the Gods are at war up above. They have found all these unatural sightings like owls at day and a lion in the streets. They think that these sights are omens and that the Gods are angry with something that they have done.

Duet ~~ Emma Bledsoe, Annie Spendrup