LITMIR.BIZ

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The gods begin to mock me. I, that now

          Refus'd most princely gifts, am bound to beg

          Of my Lord General.

        COMINIUS. Take't- 'tis yours; what is't?

        CORIOLANUS. I sometime lay here in Corioli

          At a poor man's house; he us'd me kindly.

          He cried to me; I saw him prisoner;

          But then Aufidius was within my view,

          And wrath o'erwhelm'd my pity. I request you

          To give my poor host freedom.

        COMINIUS. O, well begg'd!

          Were he the butcher of my son, he should

          Be free as is the wind. Deliver him, Titus.

        LARTIUS. Marcius, his name?

        CORIOLANUS. By Jupiter, forgot!

          I am weary; yea, my memory is tir'd.

          Have we no wine here?

        COMINIUS. Go we to our tent.

          The blood upon your visage dries; 'tis time

          It should be look'd to. Come. Exeunt

      SCENE X. The camp of the Volsces

      A flourish. Cornets. Enter TULLUS AUFIDIUS bloody, with two or three soldiers

        AUFIDIUS. The town is ta'en.

        FIRST SOLDIER. 'Twill be deliver'd back on good condition.

        AUFIDIUS. Condition!

          I would I were a Roman; for I cannot,

          Being a Volsce, be that I am. Condition?

          What good condition can a treaty find

          I' th' part that is at mercy? Five times, Marcius,

          I have fought with thee; so often hast thou beat me;

          And wouldst do so, I think, should we encounter

          As often as we eat. By th' elements,

          If e'er again I meet him beard to beard,

          He's mine or I am his. Mine emulation

          Hath not that honour in't it had; for where

          I thought to crush him in an equal force,

          True sword to sword, I'll potch at him some way,

          Or wrath or craft may get him.

        FIRST SOLDIER. He's the devil.

        AUFIDIUS. Bolder, though not so subtle. My valour's poison'd

          With only suff'ring stain by him; for him

          Shall fly out of itself. Nor sleep nor sanctuary,

          Being naked, sick, nor fane nor Capitol,

          The prayers of priests nor times of sacrifice,

          Embarquements all of fury, shall lift up

          Their rotten privilege and custom 'gainst

          My hate to Marcius. Where I find him, were it

          At home, upon my brother's guard, even there,

          Against the hospitable canon, would I

          Wash my fierce hand in's heart. Go you to th' city;

          Learn how 'tis held, and what they are that must

          Be hostages for Rome.

        FIRST SOLDIER. Will not you go?

        AUFIDIUS. I am attended at the cypress grove; I pray you-

          'Tis south the city mills- bring me word thither

          How the world goes, that to the pace of it

          I may spur on my journey.

        FIRST SOLDIER. I shall, sir. Exeunt

      ACT II. SCENE I. Rome. A public place

      Enter MENENIUS, with the two Tribunes of the people, SICINIUS and BRUTUS

      MENENIUS. The augurer tells me we shall have news tonight. BRUTUS. Good or bad? MENENIUS. Not according to the prayer of the people, for they love not Marcius. SICINIUS. Nature teaches beasts to know their friends. MENENIUS. Pray you, who does the wolf love? SICINIUS. The lamb. MENENIUS. Ay, to devour him, as the hungry plebeians would the noble Marcius. BRUTUS. He's a lamb indeed, that baas like a bear. MENENIUS. 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 TRIBUNES. Well, sir. MENENIUS. In what enormity is Marcius poor in that you two have not in abundance? BRUTUS. He's poor in no one fault, but stor'd with all. SICINIUS. Especially in pride. BRUTUS. And topping all others in boasting. MENENIUS. This is strange now. Do you two know how you are censured here in the city- I mean of us o' th' right-hand file? Do you? BOTH TRIBUNES. Why, how are we censur'd? MENENIUS. Because you talk of pride now- will you not be angry? BOTH TRIBUNES. Well, well, sir, well. MENENIUS. 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? BRUTUS. We do it not alone, sir. MENENIUS. 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! BOTH TRIBUNES. What then, sir? MENENIUS. Why, then you should discover a brace of unmeriting, proud, violent, testy magistrates-alias fools- as any in Rome. SICINIUS. Menenius, you are known well enough too. MENENIUS. 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 wealsmen 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 deliver'd 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 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? BRUTUS. Come, sir, come, we know you well enough. MENENIUS. 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 orange-wife 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 pinch'd with the colic, 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. BRUTUS. Come, come, you are well understood to be a perfecter giber for the table than a necessary bencher in the Capitol. MENENIUS. 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 honourable a grave as to stuff a botcher's cushion or to be entomb'd 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

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