Enter MENENIUS, SICINIUS, and BRUTUS. MEN. The augurer tells me we shall have news to-night. BRU. Good or bad? MEN. Not according to the prayer of the people, for they love not Marcius. SIC. Nature teaches beasts to know their friends. MEN. Ay, to devour him; as the hungry plebeians would the noble Marcius. BRU. He's a lamb indeed, that baes like a bear. MEN. He's a bear, indeed, that lives like a lamb. You two are old men: tell me one thing that I shall ask you. BOTH TRI. Well, sir. MEN. In what enormity is Marcius poor in, that you two have not in abundance? BRU. He's poor in no one fault, but stored with all. SIC. Especially in pride. BRU. And topping all others in boasting. MEN. This is strange now: do you two know how you are censured here in the city, I mean of us o' the right-hand file? do you? Bотн. Why, how are we censured? MEN. Because you talk of pride now,-will you not be angry? BOTH. Well, well, sir, well? MEN. Why, 'tis no great matter; for a very little thief of occasion will rob you of a great deal of patience: give your dispositions the reins, and be angry at your pleasures; at the least, if you take it as a pleasure to you in being so. You blame Marcius for being proud? BRU. We do it not alone, sir. MEN. I know you can do very little alone, for your helps are many, or else your actions would grow wondrous single: your abilities are too infant-like for doing much alone. You talk of pride: O, that you could turn your eyes toward the napes of your necks, and make but an interior survey of your good selves! O, that you could! BRU. What then, sir? a MEN. I am known to be a humorous patrician, and one that loves a cup of hot wine with not a drop of allaying Tiber in't; said to be something imperfect in favouring the first complaint; hasty and tinder-like upon too trivial motion; one that converses more with the buttock of the night than with the forehead of the morning. What I think I utter, and spend my malice in my breath. Meeting two such weal's-men as you are, (I cannot call you Lycurguses) if the drink you give me touch my palate adversely, I make a crooked face at it. I cannot say your worships have delivered the matter well, when I find the ass in compound with the major part of your syllables and though I must be content to bear with those that say you are reverend grave men, yet they lie deadly that tell you have good faces. If you see this in the map of my microcosm, follows it that I am known well enough too? What harm can your bisson † conspectuities glean out of this character, if I be known well enough too? : BRU. Come, sir, come, we know you well enough. MEN. You know neither me, yourselves, nor any thing. You are ambitious for poor knaves' caps and legs: you wear out a good wholesome forenoon in hearing a cause between an orangewife and a fosset-seller; and then rejourn the controversy of three-pence to a second day of audience. When you are hearing a matter between party and party, if you chance to be pinched with the colic, you make faces like mummers; set up the bloody flag against all patience; and, in roaring for a chamberpot, dismiss the controversy bleeding, the more entangled by your hearing: all the peace you make in their cause is, calling both the parties knaves. You are a pair of strange ones. BRU. Come, come, you are well understood to be a perfecter giber for the table, than a necessary bencher in the Capitol. MEN. Our very priests must become mockers, if they shall encounter such ridiculous subjects as you are. When you speak best unto the purpose, (*) Old text, can, corrected by Theobald. (†) Old text, beesome, corrected by Theobald. ▲ I am known to be a humorous patrician, and one that loves a cup of hot wine with not a drop of allaying Tiber in't; said to be something imperfect in favouring the first complaint; hasty and tinder-like upon too trivial motion:] The pose in this passage is the expression, "the first complaint." What is "the first complaint"? At one time we conceived the sprightly, warm-hearted old senator, among his other failings, "cried out of women," and referred to what Ben Jonson as obscurely terms "the primitive work of darkness" ("The Devil is an Ass," Act II. Sc. 2); but it is not worth the wagging of your beards; and your beards deserve not so honourable a grave as to stuff a botcher's cushion, or to be entombed in an ass's pack-saddle. Yet you must be saying, Marcius is proud; who, in a cheap estimation, is worth all your predecessors since Deucalion; though, peradventure, some of the best of 'em were hereditary hangmen. God-den to your worships; more of your conversation would infect my brain, being the herdsmen of the beastly plebeians; I will be bold to take my leave of you.— [BRUTUS and SICINIUS retire. what militates against this supposition, and the wonderfully acute emendation of Mr Collier's annotator,-"the thirst complaint,' also is the doubt whether "complaint" obtained the sense of malady or ailment until many years after these plays were written. If it did not bear this meaning in Shakespeare's day, the only explanation of "something imperfect, in favouring the first com plaint," appears to be that he was too apt to be led away by first impressions; to act rather upon impulse than from reflection. bempericutic,-] In the old text, "Emperickqutique," which Pope altered to "emperic," and for which Mr. Collier's annotator substitutes, "empiric physic." VOL. On's brows, Menenius, he comes the third time home with the oaken garland. MEN. Has he disciplined Aufidius soundly? VOL. Titus Lartius writes,-they fought together, but Aufidius got off. MEN. And 'twas time for him too, I'll warrant him that an he had stayed by him, I would not have been so 'fidiused for all the chests in Corioli, and the gold that's in them. Is the senate possessed of this? VOL. Good ladies, let's go.-Yes, yes, yes; the senate has letters from the general, wherein he gives my son the whole name of the war: he hath in this action outdone his former deeds doubly. VAL. In troth, there's wondrous things spoke of him. MEN. Wondrous! ay, I warrant you, and not without his true purchasing. VIR. The gods grant them true! VOL. True! pow, wow. MEN. True! I'll be sworn they are true.Where is he wounded?-[To the Tribunes.] God save your good worships! Marcius is coming home: he has more cause to be proud.—Where is he wounded? VOL. I' the shoulder and i' the left arm: there will be large cicatrices to show the people, when he shall stand for his place. He received in the repulse of Tarquin seven hurts i' the body. MEN. One i' the neck, and two i' the thigh,there's nine that I know. VOL. He had, before this last expedition, twenty-five wounds upon him. MEN. Now it's twenty-seven: every gash was an enemy's grave. [4 shout and flourish.] Hark! the trumpets. VOL. These are the ushers of Marcius: before him He carries noise, and behind him he leaves tears: Death, that dark spirit, in's nervy arm doth lie ; Which, being advanc'd, declines; and then men die. A Sennet. Trumpets sound. Enter COMINIUS and TITUS LARTIUS; between them, CORIOLANUS, crowned with an oaken garland; with Captains, Soldiers, and a Herald. HER. Know, Rome, that all alone Marcius did fight Within Corioli' gates; where he hath won, (*) Old text, Martius Caius. change of honcurs.] Change of honours, in the sense of By "rapture" is meant fit. So, in "The Hospital for London's Follies," 1602, as quoted by Steevens:-"Your darling will weep itself into a rapture, if you take not good heed." The word "chats," in the next line, is changed to "cheers" by Mr. Collier's annotator, and to "claps" by Mr. Singer: if any alteration is desirable, VOL. III. 145 BRU. All tongues speak of him, and the bleared sights Are spectacled to see him: your prattling nurse Into a rapture lets her baby cry, While she chats him: the kitchen malkin pins Her richest lockram 'bout her reechy neck, с shouts "would perhaps be more suitable than either "cheers'' or "claps." Thus, in Act I. Sc. 9, Coriolanus remonstrates,You shout me forth In acclamations hyperbolical." b- Malkin -] See note (d), p. 213, Vol. II. clockram] Lockram appears to have been a sort of cheap, coarse linen. |