He knew, and I knew, that his plays would be enacted down the circling centuries as long as vice and virtue, hate and love, cowardice and bravery, fun, folly, wit and wisdom characterized humanity. William told Essex and Southampton that he had just composed a play with Julius Caesar as the central figure, and wished an opportunity to test its merits before a private party of authors, students and lords at the Holborn House, the grand castle of Southampton. These noblemen were delighted with the suggestion, and on the night of the first of March, 1597, Burbage, with his whole tribe of theatrical "rounders," appeared in the grand banquet room of Southampton, and, under the guidance of Shakspere, rendered for the first time "Julius Caesar." Jo Taylor took the part of Caesar, Dick Burbage acted Brutus, Condell represented Cassius and Shakspere played Marcus Antonius, while the other characters were distributed among the "stock" as their various talents justified. Calphurnia, wife to Caesar, and Portia, wife to Brutus, were represented respectively by Hemmings and Arnim. The play opens with a street scene in Rome filled with working, rabble citizens who have turned out to give Caesar a great triumph on his return from successful war. Flavius and Marullus, tribunes, enter and rebuke the people for greeting Caesar. Flavius twits the turncoat rabble in this style: _"O you hard hearts, you cruel men of Rome, Knew ye not Pompey? Many a time and oft Have you climbed up to walls and battlements, To towers and windows, yea, to chimney-tops, Your infants in your arms, and there have sat The 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 sounds, Made 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?"_ Brutus and Cassius witness the triumphal march of Caesar with jealous, vengeful and dagger hearts, and Cassius, the old, desperate soldier, first hints at blood conspiracy. Brutus asks: "_What is it that you would impart to me? If it be aught toward the general good, Set honor in eye and death in the other, And I will look on both indifferently."_ Fine talk! Brutus is not the only political murderer that talks of "honor" through the centuries, a cloak for devils in human shape to work a personal purpose and not "the general good." Cassius delivers this eloquent indictment against Caesar, the grandest of its kind in all history: