Complete Plays, The (178 page)

Brutus

Did you perceive
He did solicit you in free contempt
When he did need your loves, and do you think
That his contempt shall not be bruising to you,
When he hath power to crush? Why, had your bodies
No heart among you? or had you tongues to cry
Against the rectorship of judgment?

Sicinius

Have you
Ere now denied the asker? and now again
Of him that did not ask, but mock, bestow
Your sued-for tongues?

Third Citizen

He’s not confirm’d; we may deny him yet.

Second Citizen

And will deny him:
I’ll have five hundred voices of that sound.

First Citizen

I twice five hundred and their friends to piece ’em.

Brutus

Get you hence instantly, and tell those friends,
They have chose a consul that will from them take
Their liberties; make them of no more voice
Than dogs that are as often beat for barking
As therefore kept to do so.

Sicinius

Let them assemble,
And on a safer judgment all revoke
Your ignorant election; enforce his pride,
And his old hate unto you; besides, forget not
With what contempt he wore the humble weed,
How in his suit he scorn’d you; but your loves,
Thinking upon his services, took from you
The apprehension of his present portance,
Which most gibingly, ungravely, he did fashion
After the inveterate hate he bears you.

Brutus

Lay
A fault on us, your tribunes; that we laboured,
No impediment between, but that you must
Cast your election on him.

Sicinius

Say, you chose him
More after our commandment than as guided
By your own true affections, and that your minds,
Preoccupied with what you rather must do
Than what you should, made you against the grain
To voice him consul: lay the fault on us.

Brutus

Ay, spare us not. Say we read lectures to you.
How youngly he began to serve his country,
How long continued, and what stock he springs of,
The noble house o’ the Marcians, from whence came
That Ancus Marcius, Numa’s daughter’s son,
Who, after great Hostilius, here was king;
Of the same house Publius and Quintus were,
That our beat water brought by conduits hither;
And
 
[Censorinus,]
 
nobly named so,
Twice being
 
[by the people chosen]
 
censor,
Was his great ancestor.

Sicinius

One thus descended,
That hath beside well in his person wrought
To be set high in place, we did commend
To your remembrances: but you have found,
Scaling his present bearing with his past,
That he’s your fixed enemy, and revoke
Your sudden approbation.

Brutus

Say, you ne’er had done’t —
Harp on that still — but by our putting on;
And presently, when you have drawn your number,
Repair to the Capitol.

All

We will so: almost all
Repent in their election.

Exeunt Citizens

Brutus

Let them go on;
This mutiny were better put in hazard,
Than stay, past doubt, for greater:
If, as his nature is, he fall in rage
With their refusal, both observe and answer
The vantage of his anger.

Sicinius

To the Capitol, come:
We will be there before the stream o’ the people;
And this shall seem, as partly ’tis, their own,
Which we have goaded onward.

Exeunt

A
CT
III

S
CENE
I. R
OME
. A
STREET
.

Cornets. Enter Coriolanus, Menenius, all the Gentry, Cominius, Titus Lartius, and other Senators

Coriolanus

Tullus Aufidius then had made new head?

Lartius

He had, my lord; and that it was which caused
Our swifter composition.

Coriolanus

So then the Volsces stand but as at first,
Ready, when time shall prompt them, to make road.
Upon’s again.

Cominius

They are worn, lord consul, so,
That we shall hardly in our ages see
Their banners wave again.

Coriolanus

Saw you Aufidius?

Lartius

On safe-guard he came to me; and did curse
Against the Volsces, for they had so vilely
Yielded the town: he is retired to Antium.

Coriolanus

Spoke he of me?

Lartius

 
He did, my lord.

Coriolanus

How? what?

Lartius

How often he had met you, sword to sword;
That of all things upon the earth he hated
Your person most, that he would pawn his fortunes
To hopeless restitution, so he might
Be call’d your vanquisher.

Coriolanus

At Antium lives he?

Lartius

At Antium.

Coriolanus

I wish I had a cause to seek him there,
To oppose his hatred fully. Welcome home.

Enter Sicinius and Brutus

Behold, these are the tribunes of the people,
The tongues o’ the common mouth: I do despise them;
For they do prank them in authority,
Against all noble sufferance.

Sicinius

Pass no further.

Coriolanus

Ha! what is that?

Brutus

It will be dangerous to go on: no further.

Coriolanus

What makes this change?

Menenius

The matter?

Cominius

Hath he not pass’d the noble and the common?

Brutus

Cominius, no.

Coriolanus

 
Have I had children’s voices?

First Senator

Tribunes, give way; he shall to the market-place.

Brutus

The people are incensed against him.

Sicinius

Stop,
Or all will fall in broil.

Coriolanus

Are these your herd?
Must these have voices, that can yield them now
And straight disclaim their tongues? What are your offices?
You being their mouths, why rule you not their teeth?
Have you not set them on?

Menenius

Be calm, be calm.

Coriolanus

It is a purposed thing, and grows by plot,
To curb the will of the nobility:
Suffer’t, and live with such as cannot rule
Nor ever will be ruled.

Brutus

Call’t not a plot:
The people cry you mock’d them, and of late,
When corn was given them gratis, you repined;
Scandal’d the suppliants for the people, call’d them
Time-pleasers, flatterers, foes to nobleness.

Coriolanus

Why, this was known before.

Brutus

Not to them all.

Coriolanus

Have you inform’d them sithence?

Brutus

How! I inform them!

Coriolanus

You are like to do such business.

Brutus

Not unlike,
Each way, to better yours.

Coriolanus

Why then should I be consul? By yond clouds,
Let me deserve so ill as you, and make me
Your fellow tribune.

Sicinius

You show too much of that
For which the people stir: if you will pass
To where you are bound, you must inquire your way,
Which you are out of, with a gentler spirit,
Or never be so noble as a consul,
Nor yoke with him for tribune.

Menenius

Let’s be calm.

Cominius

The people are abused; set on. This paltering
Becomes not Rome, nor has Coriolanus
Deserved this so dishonour’d rub, laid falsely
I’ the plain way of his merit.

Coriolanus

Tell me of corn!
This was my speech, and I will speak’t again —

Menenius

Not now, not now.

First Senator

 
Not in this heat, sir, now.

Coriolanus

Now, as I live, I will. My nobler friends,
I crave their pardons:
For the mutable, rank-scented many, let them
Regard me as I do not flatter, and
Therein behold themselves: I say again,
In soothing them, we nourish ’gainst our senate
The cockle of rebellion, insolence, sedition,
Which we ourselves have plough’d for, sow’d, and scatter’d,
By mingling them with us, the honour’d number,
Who lack not virtue, no, nor power, but that
Which they have given to beggars.

Menenius

Well, no more.

First Senator

No more words, we beseech you.

Coriolanus

How! no more!
As for my country I have shed my blood,
Not fearing outward force, so shall my lungs
Coin words till their decay against those measles,
Which we disdain should tatter us, yet sought
The very way to catch them.

Brutus

You speak o’ the people,
As if you were a god to punish, not
A man of their infirmity.

Sicinius

’Twere well
We let the people know’t.

Menenius

What, what? his choler?

Coriolanus

Choler!
Were I as patient as the midnight sleep,
By Jove, ’twould be my mind!

Sicinius

It is a mind
That shall remain a poison where it is,
Not poison any further.

Coriolanus

Shall remain!
Hear you this Triton of the minnows? mark you
His absolute ‘shall’?

Cominius

’Twas from the canon.

Coriolanus

’shall’!
O good but most unwise patricians! why,
You grave but reckless senators, have you thus
Given Hydra here to choose an officer,
That with his peremptory ‘shall,’ being but
The horn and noise o’ the monster’s, wants not spirit
To say he’ll turn your current in a ditch,
And make your channel his? If he have power
Then vail your ignorance; if none, awake
Your dangerous lenity. If you are learn’d,
Be not as common fools; if you are not,
Let them have cushions by you. You are plebeians,
If they be senators: and they are no less,
When, both your voices blended, the great’st taste
Most palates theirs. They choose their magistrate,
And such a one as he, who puts his ‘shall,’
His popular ‘shall’ against a graver bench
Than ever frown in Greece. By Jove himself!
It makes the consuls base: and my soul aches
To know, when two authorities are up,
Neither supreme, how soon confusion
May enter ’twixt the gap of both and take
The one by the other.

Cominius

Well, on to the market-place.

Coriolanus

Whoever gave that counsel, to give forth
The corn o’ the storehouse gratis, as ’twas used
Sometime in Greece,—

Menenius

Well, well, no more of that.

Coriolanus

Though there the people had more absolute power,
I say, they nourish’d disobedience, fed
The ruin of the state.

Brutus

Why, shall the people give
One that speaks thus their voice?

Coriolanus

I’ll give my reasons,
More worthier than their voices. They know the corn
Was not our recompense, resting well assured
That ne’er did service for’t: being press’d to the war,
Even when the navel of the state was touch’d,
They would not thread the gates. This kind of service
Did not deserve corn gratis. Being i’ the war
Their mutinies and revolts, wherein they show’d
Most valour, spoke not for them: the accusation
Which they have often made against the senate,
All cause unborn, could never be the motive
Of our so frank donation. Well, what then?
How shall this bisson multitude digest
The senate’s courtesy? Let deeds express
What’s like to be their words: ‘we did request it;
We are the greater poll, and in true fear
They gave us our demands.’ Thus we debase
The nature of our seats and make the rabble
Call our cares fears; which will in time
Break ope the locks o’ the senate and bring in
The crows to peck the eagles.

Menenius

Come, enough.

Brutus

Enough, with over-measure.

Coriolanus

No, take more:
What may be sworn by, both divine and human,
Seal what I end withal! This double worship,
Where one part does disdain with cause, the other
Insult without all reason, where gentry, title, wisdom,
Cannot conclude but by the yea and no
Of general ignorance,— it must omit
Real necessities, and give way the while
To unstable slightness: purpose so barr’d, it follows,
Nothing is done to purpose. Therefore, beseech you,—
You that will be less fearful than discreet,
That love the fundamental part of state
More than you doubt the change on’t, that prefer
A noble life before a long, and wish
To jump a body with a dangerous physic
That’s sure of death without it, at once pluck out
The multitudinous tongue; let them not lick
The sweet which is their poison: your dishonour
Mangles true judgment and bereaves the state
Of that integrity which should become’t,
Not having the power to do the good it would,
For the in which doth control’t.

Brutus

Has said enough.

Sicinius

Has spoken like a traitor, and shall answer
As traitors do.

Coriolanus

 
Thou wretch, despite o’erwhelm thee!
What should the people do with these bald tribunes?
On whom depending, their obedience fails
To the greater bench: in a rebellion,
When what’s not meet, but what must be, was law,
Then were they chosen: in a better hour,
Let what is meet be said it must be meet,
And throw their power i’ the dust.

Brutus

Manifest treason!

Sicinius

 
This a consul? no.

Brutus

The aediles, ho!