As Willie Bean, the amazing Yellow Lab, I recently ‘reverse reincarnated’ within a very old Old English Sheep Dog named Sherman Rutherford.  Sherm was resting on a hillside,  gazing across the River Avon in the English town of Stratford;  Stratford-upon-Avon to be precise.

It’s very much like Fairhope-upon-Fly Creek.

William Shakespeare lived and wrote there; Stratford-upon-Avon.  In Shakespeare’s classic work, Julius Caesar, following Caesar’s assassination, Mark Antony addressed a crowd that had gathered around Caesar’s dead body.  Brutus had already spoken rationally in defense of Caesar’s assassination but hadn’t quite made the sale.  The crowd still needed to understand  why Julius Caesar lay dead.  Mark Antony began to turn the emotions of the crowd.

BTW, Sherm & I collaborated on two small changes to the text;  the name Georgus was substituted for Caesar and Baracus for Brutus.  Mark Antony’s great speech can now be seen in the context of 21st century politics.

‘Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears.’

‘I come to bury Georgus, not praise him.  The evil that men do lives after them; the good is oft interred with their bones; so let it be with Georgus.  The noble Baracus hath told you Georgus was ambitious.  If it were so, it was a grievous fault, and grievously hath Georgus answer’d it.’

‘Here under leave of Baracus and the rest,  for Baracus is an honorable man; so are they all, honorable men, come I to speak in Georgus’s funeral.  He was my friend, faithful and just to me.  But Baracus says he was ambitious; and Baracus is an honorable man.  He hath brought many captives home to the Capitol, whose ransoms did the general coffers fill.  Did this in Georgus seem ambitious?  When the poor have cried, Georgus hath wept.  Ambition should be made of sterner stuff; yet Baracus says he was ambitious; and Baracus is an honorable man.  You all did see that on the Lupercal, I thrice presented him a kingly crown, which he did thrice refuse.  Was this ambition?’

‘Yet Baracus says he was ambitious; and sure he is an honorable man.  I speak not to disprove what Baracus spoke, but I am here to speak what I do know.  You all did love him once, not without cause.  What cause withholds you then, to mourn for him? ‘

‘Oh judgment!  Thou art fled to brutish beasts, and men have lost their reason.  Bear with me; my heart is in the coffin there with Georgus , and I must pause till it come back to me.’

Following Mark Antony’s words, several citizens speak out.  The third citizen warns, ‘I fear there will a worse come in his place.’

Me too.  Woof, Woof.

The Wisdom of Willie Bean (and Sherman Rutherford)