[What is Copyright]
Friends, Randomites, countrymen, lend me your ears;
I come to bury Ermain, not to praise her.
The evil that [wo]men do lives after them;
The good is oft interred with their bones;
So let it be with Ermain. The noble Dalton
Hath told you Ermain was ambitious:
If it were so, it was a grievous fault,
And grievously hath Ermain answer'd it.
Here, under leave of Dalton and the rest -
For Dalton is an honourable man;
So are they all, all honourable men -
Come I to speak in Ermain's funeral.
She was my friend, faithful and just to me:
But Dalton says he was ambitious;
And Dalton is an honourable man.
He hath brought many captives home to Random
Whose ransoms did the general coffers fill:
Did this in Ermain seem ambitious?
When that the poor have cried, Ermain hath wept:
Ambition should be made of sterner stuff:
Yet Dalton says he was ambitious;
And Dalton is an honourable 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 Dalton says he was ambitious;
And, sure, he is an honourable man.
I speak not to disprove what Dalton spoke,
But here I am to speak what I do know.
You all did love him once, not without cause:
What cause withholds you then, to mourn for him?
O judgment! thou art fled to brutish beasts,
And men have lost their reason. Bear with me;
My heart is in the coffin there with Ermain,
And I must pause till it come back to me.
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