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SICINIUS: What more fearful? |
Messenger: It is spoke freely out of many mouths-- How probable I do not know--that Marcius, Join'd with Aufidius, leads a power 'gainst Rome, And vows revenge as spacious as between The young'st and oldest thing. |
SICINIUS: This is most likely! |
BRUTUS: Raised only, that the weaker sort may wish Good Marcius home again. |
SICINIUS: The very trick on't. |
MENENIUS: This is unlikely: He and Aufidius can no more atone Than violentest contrariety. |
Second Messenger: You are sent for to the senate: A fearful army, led by Caius Marcius Associated with Aufidius, rages Upon our territories; and have already O'erborne their way, consumed with fire, and took What lay before them. |
COMINIUS: O, you have made good work! |
MENENIUS: What news? what news? |
COMINIUS: You have holp to ravish your own daughters and To melt the city leads upon your pates, To see your wives dishonour'd to your noses,-- |
MENENIUS: What's the news? what's the news? |
COMINIUS: Your temples burned in their cement, and Your franchises, whereon you stood, confined Into an auger's bore. |
MENENIUS: Pray now, your news? You have made fair work, I fear me.--Pray, your news?-- If Marcius should be join'd with Volscians,-- |
COMINIUS: If! He is their god: he leads them like a thing Made by some other deity than nature, That shapes man better; and they follow him, Against us brats, with no less confidence Than boys pursuing summer butterflies, Or butchers killing flies. |
MENENIUS: You have made good work, You and your apron-men; you that stood so up much on the voice of occupation and The breath of garlic-eaters! |
COMINIUS: He will shake Your Rome about your ears. |
MENENIUS: As Hercules Did shake down mellow fruit. You have made fair work! |
BRUTUS: But is this true, sir? |
COMINIUS: Ay; and you'll look pale Before you find it other. All the regions Do smilingly revolt; and who resist Are mock'd for valiant ignorance, And perish constant fools. Who is't can blame him? Your enemies and his find something in him. |
MENENIUS: We are all undone, unless The noble man have mercy. |
COMINIUS: Who shall ask it? The tribunes cannot do't for shame; the people Deserve such pity of him as the wolf Does of the shepherds: for his best friends, if they Should say 'Be good to Rome,' they charged him even As those should do that had deserved his hate, And therein show'd like enemies. |
MENENIUS: 'Tis true: If he were putting to my house the brand That should consume it, I have not the face To say 'Beseech you, cease.' You have made fair hands, You and your crafts! you have crafted fair! |
COMINIUS: You have brought A trembling upon Rome, such as was never So incapable of help. |
Both Tribunes: Say not we brought it. |
MENENIUS: How! Was it we? we loved him but, like beasts And cowardly nobles, gave way unto your clusters, Who did hoot him out o' the city. |
COMINIUS: But I fear They'll roar him in again. Tullus Aufidius, The second name of men, obeys his points As if he were his officer: desperation Is all the policy, strength and defence, That Rome can make against them. |
MENENIUS: Here come the clusters. And is Aufidius with him? You are they That made the air unwholesome, when you cast Your stinking greasy caps in hooting at Coriolanus' exile. Now he's coming; And not a hair upon a soldier's head Which will not prove a whip: as many coxcombs As you threw caps up will he tumble down, And pay you for your voices. 'Tis no matter; if he could burn us all into one coal, We have deserved it. |
Citizens: Faith, we hear fearful news. |
First Citizen: For mine own part, When I said, banish him, I said 'twas pity. |
Second Citizen: And so did I. |
Third Citizen: And so did I; and, to say the truth, so did very many of us: that we did, we did for the best; and though we willingly consented to his banishment, yet it was against our will. |
COMINIUS: Ye re goodly things, you voices! |
MENENIUS: You have made Good work, you and your cry! Shall's to the Capitol? |
COMINIUS: O, ay, what else? |
SICINIUS: Go, masters, get you home; be not dismay'd: These are a side that would be glad to have This true which they so seem to fear. Go home, And show no sign of fear. |
First Citizen: The gods be good to us! Come, masters, let's home. I ever said we were i' the wrong when we banished him. |
Second Citizen: So did we all. But, come, let's home. |
BRUTUS: I do not like this news. |
SICINIUS: Nor I. |
BRUTUS: Let's to the Capitol. Would half my wealth Would buy this for a lie! |
SICINIUS: Pray, let us go. |
AUFIDIUS: Do they still fly to the Roman? |
Lieutenant: I do not know what witchcraft's in him, but Your soldiers use him as the grace 'fore meat, Their talk at table, and their thanks at end; And you are darken'd in this action, sir, Even by your own. |
AUFIDIUS: I cannot help it now, Unless, by using means, I lame the foot Of our design. He bears himself more proudlier, Even to my person, than I thought he would When first I did embrace him: yet his nature In that's no changeling; and I must excuse What cannot be amended. |
Lieutenant: Yet I wish, sir,-- I mean for your particular,--you had not Join'd in commission with him; but either Had borne the action of yourself, or else To him had left it solely. |
AUFIDIUS: I understand thee well; and be thou sure, when he shall come to his account, he knows not What I can urge against him. Although it seems, And so he thinks, and is no less apparent To the vulgar eye, that he bears all things fairly. And shows good husbandry for the Volscian state, Fights dragon-like, and does achieve as soon As draw his sword; yet he hath left undone That which shall break his neck or hazard mine, Whene'er we come to our account. |
Lieutenant: Sir, I beseech you, think you he'll carry Rome? |
AUFIDIUS: All places yield to him ere he sits down; And the nobility of Rome are his: The senators and patricians love him too: The tribunes are no soldiers; and their people Will be as rash in the repeal, as hasty To expel him thence. I think he'll be to Rome As is the osprey to the fish, who takes it By sovereignty of nature. First he was A noble servant to them; but he could not Carry his honours even: whether 'twas pride, Which out of daily fortune ever taints The happy man; whether defect of judgment, To fail in the disposing of those chances Which he was lord of; or whether nature, Not to be other than one thing, not moving From the casque to the cushion, but commanding peace Even with the same austerity and garb As he controll'd the war; but one of these-- As he hath spices of them all, not all, For I dare so far free him--made him fear'd, So hated, and so banish'd: but he has a merit, To choke it in the utterance. So our virtues Lie in the interpretation of the time: And power, unto itself most commendable, Hath not a tomb so evident as a chair To extol what it hath done. One fire drives out one fire; one nail, one nail; Rights by rights falter, strengths by strengths do fail. Come, let's away. When, Caius, Rome is thine, Thou art poor'st of all; then shortly art thou mine. |
MENENIUS: No, I'll not go: you hear what he hath said Which was sometime his general; who loved him In a most dear particular. He call'd me father: But what o' that? Go, you that banish'd him; A mile before his tent fall down, and knee The way into his mercy: nay, if he coy'd To hear Cominius speak, I'll keep at home. |
COMINIUS: He would not seem to know me. |
MENENIUS: Do you hear? |
COMINIUS: Yet one time he did call me by my name: I urged our old acquaintance, and the drops That we have bled together. Coriolanus He would not answer to: forbad all names; He was a kind of nothing, titleless, Till he had forged himself a name o' the fire Of burning Rome. |
MENENIUS: Why, so: you have made good work! A pair of tribunes that have rack'd for Rome, To make coals cheap,--a noble memory! |
COMINIUS: I minded him how royal 'twas to pardon When it was less expected: he replied, It was a bare petition of a state To one whom they had punish'd. |
MENENIUS: Very well: Could he say less? |
COMINIUS: I offer'd to awaken his regard For's private friends: his answer to me was, He could not stay to pick them in a pile Of noisome musty chaff: he said 'twas folly, For one poor grain or two, to leave unburnt, And still to nose the offence. |
MENENIUS: For one poor grain or two! I am one of those; his mother, wife, his child, And this brave fellow too, we are the grains: You are the musty chaff; and you are smelt Above the moon: we must be burnt for you. |
SICINIUS: Nay, pray, be patient: if you refuse your aid In this so never-needed help, yet do not Upbraid's with our distress. But, sure, if you Would be your country's pleader, your good tongue, More than the instant army we can make, Might stop our countryman. |
MENENIUS: No, I'll not meddle. |
SICINIUS: Pray you, go to him. |
MENENIUS: What should I do? |
BRUTUS: Only make trial what your love can do For Rome, towards Marcius. |
MENENIUS: Well, and say that Marcius Return me, as Cominius is return'd, Unheard; what then? But as a discontented friend, grief-shot With his unkindness? say't be so? |
SICINIUS: Yet your good will must have that thanks from Rome, after the measure As you intended well. |
MENENIUS: I'll undertake 't: I think he'll hear me. Yet, to bite his lip And hum at good Cominius, much unhearts me. He was not taken well; he had not dined: The veins unfill'd, our blood is cold, and then We pout upon the morning, are unapt To give or to forgive; but when we have stuff'd These and these conveyances of our blood With wine and feeding, we have suppler souls Than in our priest-like fasts: therefore I'll watch him Till he be dieted to my request, And then I'll set upon him. |
BRUTUS: You know the very road into his kindness, And cannot lose your way. |
MENENIUS: Good faith, I'll prove him, Speed how it will. I shall ere long have knowledge Of my success. |
COMINIUS: He'll never hear him. |
SICINIUS: Not? |
COMINIUS: I tell you, he does sit in gold, his eye Red as 'twould burn Rome; and his injury The gaoler to his pity. I kneel'd before him; 'Twas very faintly he said 'Rise;' dismiss'd me Thus, with his speechless hand: what he would do, He sent in writing after me; what he would not, Bound with an oath to yield to his conditions: So that all hope is vain. Unless his noble mother, and his wife; Who, as I hear, mean to solicit him For mercy to his country. Therefore, let's hence, And with our fair entreaties haste them on. |
First Senator: Stay: whence are you? |
Second Senator: Stand, and go back. |
MENENIUS: You guard like men; 'tis well: but, by your leave, I am an officer of state, and come To speak with Coriolanus. |
First Senator: From whence? |
MENENIUS: From Rome. |
First Senator: You may not pass, you must return: our general Will no more hear from thence. |
Second Senator: You'll see your Rome embraced with fire before You'll speak with Coriolanus. |
MENENIUS: Good my friends, If you have heard your general talk of Rome, And of his friends there, it is lots to blanks, My name hath touch'd your ears it is Menenius. |
First Senator: Be it so; go back: the virtue of your name Is not here passable. |
MENENIUS: I tell thee, fellow, The general is my lover: I have been The book of his good acts, whence men have read His name unparallel'd, haply amplified; For I have ever verified my friends, Of whom he's chief, with all the size that verity Would without lapsing suffer: nay, sometimes, Like to a bowl upon a subtle ground, I have tumbled past the throw; and in his praise Have almost stamp'd the leasing: therefore, fellow, I must have leave to pass. |
First Senator: Faith, sir, if you had told as many lies in his behalf as you have uttered words in your own, you should not pass here; no, though it were as virtuous to lie as to live chastely. Therefore, go back. |
MENENIUS: Prithee, fellow, remember my name is Menenius, always factionary on the party of your general. |
Second Senator: Howsoever you have been his liar, as you say you have, I am one that, telling true under him, must say, you cannot pass. Therefore, go back. |
MENENIUS: Has he dined, canst thou tell? for I would not speak with him till after dinner. |
First Senator: You are a Roman, are you? |
MENENIUS: I am, as thy general is. |
First Senator: Then you should hate Rome, as he does. Can you, when you have pushed out your gates the very defender of them, and, in a violent popular ignorance, given your enemy your shield, think to front his revenges with the easy groans of old women, the virginal palms of your daughters, or with the palsied intercession of such a decayed dotant as you seem to be? Can you think to blow out the intended fire your city is ready to flame in, with such weak breath as this? No, you are deceived; therefore, back to Rome, and prepare for your execution: you are condemned, our general has sworn you out of reprieve and pardon. |
MENENIUS: Sirrah, if thy captain knew I were here, he would use me with estimation. |
Second Senator: Come, my captain knows you not. |
MENENIUS: I mean, thy general. |
First Senator: My general cares not for you. Back, I say, go; lest I let forth your half-pint of blood; back,--that's the utmost of your having: back. |
MENENIUS: Nay, but, fellow, fellow,-- |
CORIOLANUS: What's the matter? |
MENENIUS: Now, you companion, I'll say an errand for you: You shall know now that I am in estimation; you shall perceive that a Jack guardant cannot office me from my son Coriolanus: guess, but by my entertainment with him, if thou standest not i' the state of hanging, or of some death more long in spectatorship, and crueller in suffering; behold now presently, and swoon for what's to come upon thee. The glorious gods sit in hourly synod about thy particular prosperity, and love thee no worse than thy old father Menenius does! O my son, my son! thou art preparing fire for us; look thee, here's water to quench it. I was hardly moved to come to thee; but being assured none but myself could move thee, I have been blown out of your gates with sighs; and conjure thee to pardon Rome, and thy petitionary countrymen. The good gods assuage thy wrath, and turn the dregs of it upon this varlet here,--this, who, like a block, hath denied my access to thee. |
CORIOLANUS: Away! |
MENENIUS: How! away! |
CORIOLANUS: Wife, mother, child, I know not. My affairs Are servanted to others: though I owe My revenge properly, my remission lies In Volscian breasts. That we have been familiar, Ingrate forgetfulness shall poison, rather Than pity note how much. Therefore, be gone. Mine ears against your suits are stronger than Your gates against my force. Yet, for I loved thee, Take this along; I writ it for thy sake And would have rent it. Another word, Menenius, I will not hear thee speak. This man, Aufidius, Was my beloved in Rome: yet thou behold'st! |
AUFIDIUS: You keep a constant temper. |
First Senator: Now, sir, is your name Menenius? |
Second Senator: 'Tis a spell, you see, of much power: you know the way home again. |