Puslapio vaizdai
PDF
„ePub“

Men. Pray you, who does the wolf love? Sic. The lamb.

palate adversely, I make a crooked face at it. I cannot say your worships have delivered the

Men. Ay, to devour him; as the hungry ple- matter well, when I find the ass in compound beians 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 Trib. Well, sir.

Men. In what enormity is Marcius poor, 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?

Both Trib. Why, how are we censured? Men. Because you talk of pride now,—will you not be angry?

Both Trib. 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 disposition 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: 0 that you could turn your eyes towards the napes of your necks, and make but an interior survey of your good selves: O that you could!

[blocks in formation]

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 weals-men as you are (I cannot call you Lycurguses), if the drink you give me touch my

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 anything. 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 threepence to a second day of audience.—When you are hearing a matter between party and party, if you chance to be pinched with the cholic, you make faces like mummers; set up the bloody flag against all patience; and, in roaring for a chamber-pot, 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, it is not worth the wagging of your beards; and your beards deserve not so honour. able a grave as to stuff a botcher's cushion, or to be entombed in an ass's packsaddle. 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 them were hereditary hang

men.

Good e'en 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 up the scene.

Enter VOLUMNIA, VIRGILIA, Valeria, &c.

How now, my as fair as noble ladies (and the moon, were she earthly, no nobler), whither do you follow your eyes so fast?

Vol. Honourable Menenius, my boy Marcius approaches: for the love of Juno, let's go.

Men. Ha! Marcius coming home?

Vol. Ay, worthy Menenius; and with most prosperous approbation.

Men. Take my cap, Jupiter, and I thank thee:Hoo! Marcius coming home!

Two Ladies. Nay, 't is true.

Vol. Look, here's a letter from him: the state hath another, his wife another; and I think there's one at home for you.

Men. I will make my very house reel to-night: -A letter for me!

Vir. Yes, certain there's a letter for you: I saw it. Men. A letter for me! It gives me an estate of seven years' health; in which time I will make a lip at the physician: the most sovereign prescription in Galen is but empiricutic, and, to this preservative, of no better report than a horse-drench.—Is he not wounded? he was wont to come home wounded.

Vir. O, no, no, no.

Vol. O, he is wounded; I thank the gods for 't. Men. So do I too, if it be not too much :Brings 'a victory in his pocket?—The wounds become him.

Vol. On his 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 't was 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

[blocks in formation]
[blocks in formation]

Now the gods crown thee! Cor. And live you yet?-O my sweet lady, pardon. [TO VALERIA. Vol. I know not where to turn :-O welcome

[blocks in formation]
[blocks in formation]

[Flourish. Cornets. Exeunt in state, as before. The Tribunes remain.

Bru. All tongues speak of him, and the blearéd 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, Clambering the walls to eye him. Stalls, bulks, windows,

Are smothered up, leads filled, and ridges horsed
With variable complexions, all agreeing

In earnestness to see him. Seld-shewn flamens
Do press among the popular throngs, and puff
To win a vulgar station: our veiled dames
Commit the war of white and damask in
Their nicely-gawded cheeks, to the wanton spoil
Of Phoebus' burning kisses. Such a pother,
As if that whatsoever god who leads him
Were slily crept into his human powers,
And gave him graceful posture.

Sic.

On the sudden,

I warrant him consul.

Bru.

Then our office may,

During his power, go sleep.

Sic. He cannot temperately transport his honours From where he should begin and end; but will Lose those that he hath won.

Bru.

In that there's comfort.

Sic. Doubt not, the commoners, for whom we stand,

But they, upon their ancient malice, will
Forget, with the least cause, these his new honours:
Which that he'll give them, make I as little ques-

[blocks in formation]
[blocks in formation]

Have made them mules, silenced their pleaders,
And dispropertied their freedoms: holding them,
In human action and capacity,

Of no more soul nor fitness for the world
Than camels in the war; who have their provand
Only for bearing burdens, and sore blows
For sinking under them.

Sic.
This, as you say,-suggested
At some time when his soaring insolence
Shall teach the people (which time shall not want
If he be put upon 't; and that's as easy
As to set dogs on sheep),—will be his fire
To kindle their dry stubble; and their blaze
Shall darken him for ever.

[blocks in formation]

Ist Offi. That's a brave fellow; but he's vengeance proud, and loves not the common people.

2nd Offi. 'Faith, there have been many great men that have flattered the people, who ne'er loved them; and there be many that they have loved they know not wherefore: sc that if they love they know not why, they hate upon no better ground. Therefore, for Coriolanus neither to care whether they love or hate him, manifests the true knowledge he has in their disposition; and, out of his noble carelessness, lets them plainly see 't.

1st Offi. If he did not care whether he had their love or no, he waved indifferently 'twixt doing them neither good nor harm: but he seeks their hate with greater devotion than they can render it him, and leaves nothing undone that may fully discover him their opposite. Now, to seem to affect the malice and displeasure of the people, is as bad as that which he dislikes,—to flatter them for their love.

:

2nd Offi. He hath deserved worthily of his country and his ascent is not by such easy degrees as those who, having been supple and courteous to the people, bonneted without any further deed to have them at all into their estimation and report: but he hath so planted his honours in their eyes, and his actions in their hearts, that for their tongues to be silent and not confess so much were a kind of ingrateful injury to report otherwise were a malice that, giving itself the lie, would pluck reproof and rebuke from every ear that heard it.

1st Offi. No more of him: he is a worthy man. Make way; they are coming.

A Sennet. Enter, with lictors before them, CoNIUS the Consul, MENENIUS, CORIOLANUS, many other Senators, SICINIUS and BRUTUS. The Senators take their places; the Tribunes take theirs also by themselves.

Men. Having determined of the Volces, and To send for Titus Lartius, it remains, As the main point of this our after-meeting, To gratify his noble service that

Hath thus stood for his country. Therefore, please

you,

Most reverend and grave elders, to desire
The

present consul, and last general

In our well-found successes, to report
A little of that worthy work performed

By Caius Marcius Coriolanus: whom

We meet here both to thank and to remember

With honours like himself.

1st Sen. Leave nothing out for length, and make us think, Rather our state's defective for requital,

Speak, good Cominius :

[blocks in formation]

The bristled lips before him: he bestrid
An o'erpressed Roman, and i' the consul's view
Slew three opposers: Tarquin's self he met,
And struck him on his knee. In that day's feats,
When he might act the woman in the scene,
He proved best man i' the field, and for his meed
Was brow-bound with the oak. His pupil age
Man-entered thus, he waxéd like a sea;
And, in the brunt of seventeen battles since,
He lurched all swords o' the garland.-For this
last,

Before and in Corioli, let me say,

I cannot speak him home. He stopped the fliers,
And by his rare example made the coward
Turn terror into sport: as weeds before
A vessel under sail, so men obeyed,

And fell below his stem. His sword (death's stamp),
Where it did mark, it took: from face to foot
He was a thing of blood, whose every motion
Was timed with dying cries. Alone he entered
The mortal gate o' the city, which he painted
With shunless destiny: aidless came off,
And with a sudden reinforcement struck
Corioli like a planet :—
:-now all's his :
When by-and-by the din of war 'gan pierce
His ready sense: then straight his doubled spirit
Requickened what in flesh was fatigate,
And to the battle came he; where he did
Run reeking o'er the lives of men, as if
'T were a perpetual spoil: and, till we called
Both field and city ours, he never stood
To ease his breast with panting.

Men.

Worthy man!

[blocks in formation]
[blocks in formation]

Come, we'll inform them

Of our proceedings here: on the market-place I know they do attend us.

[Exeunt.

SCENE III.-The same. The Forum.

Enter several Citizens.

1st Cit. Once, if he do require our voices, we ought not to deny him.

2nd Cit. We may, sir, if we will.

3rd Cit. We have power in ourselves to do it, but it is a power that we have no power to do: for if he shew us his wounds and tell us his deeds, we are to put our tongues into those wounds, and speak for them: so, if he tell us his noble deeds, we must also tell him our noble acceptance of them. Ingratitude is monstrous: and for the multitude to be ingrateful, were to make a monster of the multitude; of the which we being members, should bring ourselves to be monstrous members.

1st Cit. And to make us no better thought of a little help will serve : for once, when we stood up about the corn, he himself stuck not to call us the many-headed multitude.

« AnkstesnisTęsti »