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,5 for they love not Martius.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 plebeians10 would the noble Martius.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 15Well, sir.MENENIUS In what enormity is Martius poor in, that you two have not in abundance?BRUTUS He’s poor in no one fault, but stored with all.SICINIUS Especially in pride.BRUTUS 20And 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?
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BOTH Why, how are we censured?MENENIUS 25Because you talk of pride now, will you not be angry?BOTH 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.30 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 Martius for being proud.BRUTUS We do it not alone, sir.MENENIUS 35I know you can do very little alone, for your helps are many, or else your actions would grow wondrous single. Your abilities are too infantlike for doing much alone. You talk of pride. O, that you could turn your eyes toward the napes40 of your necks and make but an interior survey of your good selves! O, that you could!BOTH What then, sir?MENENIUS Why, then you should discover a brace of unmeriting, proud, violent, testy magistrates, alias45 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 imperfect50 in favoring 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 two55 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 delivered the matter well when I find the ass in compound with the
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60 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 enough65 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 anything.70 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 faucet-seller, and then rejourn the controversy of threepence to a second day of audience.75 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 chamber pot, dismiss the controversy bleeding,80 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 necessary85 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 your90 beards deserve not so honorable a grave as to stuff a botcher’s cushion or to be entombed in an ass’s packsaddle. Yet you must be saying Martius is proud, who, in a cheap estimation, is worth all your predecessors since Deucalion, though peradventure95 some of the best of ’em were hereditary
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hangmen. 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.⌜He begins to exit.⌝ Brutus and Sicinius ⌜stand⌝ aside.Enter Volumnia, Virgilia, and Valeria.100 How now, my as fair as noble ladies—and the moon, were she earthly, no nobler—whither do you follow your eyes so fast?VOLUMNIA Honorable Menenius, my boy Martius approaches. For the love of Juno, let’s go!MENENIUS 105Ha? Martius coming home?VOLUMNIA Ay, worthy Menenius, and with most prosperous approbation.MENENIUS Take my cap, Jupiter, and I thank thee! ⌜(He
throws his cap in the air.)⌝ Hoo! Martius coming110 home?⌜VALERIA, VIRGILIA⌝ Nay, ’tis true.VOLUMNIA Look, here’s a letter from him. ⌜She produces
a paper.⌝ The state hath another, his wife another, and I think there’s one at home for you.MENENIUS 115I will make my very house reel tonight. A letter for me?VIRGILIA Yes, certain, there’s a letter for you; I saw ’t.MENENIUS A letter for me? It gives me an estate of seven years’ health, in which time I will make a lip120 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.VIRGILIA O no, no, no!VOLUMNIA 125O, he is wounded, I thank the gods for ’t.MENENIUS So do I too, if it be not too much. Brings he victory in his pocket, the wounds become him.
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VOLUMNIA On ’s brows, Menenius. He comes the third time home with the oaken garland.MENENIUS 130Has he disciplined Aufidius soundly?VOLUMNIA Titus Lartius writes they fought together, but Aufidius got off.MENENIUS And ’twas time for him too, I’ll warrant him that. An he had stayed by him, I would not have135 been so ’fidiused for all the chests in Corioles and the gold that’s in them. Is the Senate possessed of this?VOLUMNIA Good ladies, let’s go.—Yes, yes, yes. The Senate has letters from the General, wherein he140 gives my son the whole name of the war. He hath in this action outdone his former deeds doubly.VALERIA In troth, there’s wondrous things spoke of him.MENENIUS Wondrous? Ay, I warrant you, and not without145 his true purchasing.VIRGILIA The gods grant them true.VOLUMNIA True? Pow waw!MENENIUS True? I’ll be sworn they are true. Where is he wounded? ⌜(To the Tribunes.)⌝ God save your150 good Worships! Martius is coming home; he has more cause to be proud.—Where is he wounded?VOLUMNIA I’ th’ shoulder and i’ th’ left arm. There will be large cicatrices to show the people when he shall stand for his place. He received in the repulse155 of Tarquin seven hurts i’ th’ body.MENENIUS One i’ th’ neck and two i’ th’ thigh—there’s nine that I know.VOLUMNIA He had, before this last expedition, twenty-five wounds upon him.MENENIUS 160Now it’s twenty-seven. Every gash was an enemy’s grave. (A shout and flourish.) Hark, the trumpets!
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VOLUMNIA These are the ushers of Martius: before him he carries noise, and behind him he leaves tears.165 Death, that dark spirit, in ’s nervy arm doth lie, Which, being advanced, declines, and then men die.A sennet.Enter Cominius the General and Titus Lartius, between
them Coriolanus crowned with an oaken garland, with
Captains and Soldiers and a Herald. Trumpets sound.HERALD Know, Rome, that all alone Martius did fight Within Corioles’ gates, where he hath won, With fame, a name to Martius Caius; these170 In honor follows “Coriolanus.” Welcome to Rome, renownèd Coriolanus.Sound flourish.ALL Welcome to Rome, renownèd Coriolanus!CORIOLANUS No more of this. It does offend my heart. Pray now, no more.COMINIUS 175 Look, sir, your mother.CORIOLANUS O, You have, I know, petitioned all the gods For my prosperity.Kneels.VOLUMNIA Nay, my good soldier, up.⌜He stands.⌝180 My gentle Martius, worthy Caius, and By deed-achieving honor newly named— What is it? Coriolanus must I call thee? But, O, thy wife—CORIOLANUS My gracious silence, hail.185 Wouldst thou have laughed had I come coffined home, That weep’st to see me triumph? Ah, my dear,
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Such eyes the widows in Corioles wear And mothers that lack sons.MENENIUS 190 Now the gods crown thee!⌜CORIOLANUS⌝ And live you yet? ⌜(To Valeria.)⌝ O, my sweet lady, pardon.VOLUMNIA I know not where to turn. O, welcome home!—195 And, welcome, general.—And you’re welcome all.MENENIUS A hundred thousand welcomes! I could weep, And I could laugh; I am light and heavy. Welcome. A curse begin at very root on ’s heart That is not glad to see thee! ⌜You⌝ are three200 That Rome should dote on; yet, by the faith of men, We have some old crab trees here at home that will not Be grafted to your relish. Yet welcome, warriors! We call a nettle but a nettle, and205 The faults of fools but folly.COMINIUS Ever right.CORIOLANUS Menenius ever, ever.HERALD Give way there, and go on!CORIOLANUS, ⌜to Volumnia and Virgilia⌝ Your hand210 and yours. Ere in our own house I do shade my head, The good patricians must be visited, From whom I have received not only greetings, But with them change of honors.VOLUMNIA 215 I have lived To see inherited my very wishes And the buildings of my fancy. Only There’s one thing wanting, which I doubt not but Our Rome will cast upon thee.
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CORIOLANUS 220 Know, good mother, I had rather be their servant in my way Than sway with them in theirs.COMINIUS On, to the Capitol.Flourish ⌜of⌝ cornets. They exit in state, as before.Brutus and Sicinius ⌜come forward.⌝BRUTUS All tongues speak of him, and the blearèd sights225 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, Clamb’ring the walls to eye him. Stalls, bulks,230 windows Are smothered up, leads filled, and ridges horsed With variable complexions, all agreeing In earnestness to see him. Seld-shown flamens Do press among the popular throngs and puff235 To win a vulgar station. Our veiled dames Commit the war of white and damask in Their nicely-gauded cheeks to th’ wanton spoil Of Phoebus’ burning kisses. Such a pother, As if that whatsoever god who leads him240 Were slyly crept into his human powers And gave him graceful posture.SICINIUS On the sudden I warrant him consul.BRUTUS Then our office may,245 During his power, go sleep.SICINIUS He cannot temp’rately transport his honors From where he should begin and end, but will Lose those he hath won.BRUTUS In that there’s comfort.
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SICINIUS 250 Doubt not The commoners, for whom we stand, but they Upon their ancient malice will forget With the least cause these his new honors—which255 That he will give them make I as little question As he is proud to do ’t.BRUTUS I heard him swear, Were he to stand for consul, never would he Appear i’ th’ marketplace nor on him put260 The napless vesture of humility, Nor showing, as the manner is, his wounds To th’ people, beg their stinking breaths.SICINIUS ’Tis right.BRUTUS It was his word. O, he would miss it rather265 Than carry it but by the suit of the gentry to him And the desire of the nobles.SICINIUS I wish no better Than have him hold that purpose and to put it In execution.BRUTUS 270 ’Tis most like he will.SICINIUS It shall be to him then as our good wills, A sure destruction.BRUTUS So it must fall out To him, or our authority’s for an end.275 We must suggest the people in what hatred He still hath held them; that to ’s power he would Have made them mules, silenced their pleaders, and Dispropertied their freedoms; holding them In human action and capacity280 Of no more soul nor fitness for the world Than camels in their war, who have their provand Only for bearing burdens, and sore blows For sinking under them.
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SICINIUS This, as you say, suggested285 At some time when his soaring insolence Shall ⌜touch⌝ 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 blaze290 Shall darken him forever.Enter a Messenger.BRUTUS What’s the matter?MESSENGER You are sent for to the Capitol. ’Tis thought That Martius shall be consul. I have seen The dumb men throng to see him, and the blind295 To hear him speak; matrons flung gloves, Ladies and maids their scarves and handkerchiefs, Upon him as he passed; the nobles bended As to Jove’s statue, and the Commons made A shower and thunder with their caps and shouts.300 I never saw the like.BRUTUS Let’s to the Capitol, And carry with us ears and eyes for th’ time, But hearts for the event.SICINIUS Have with you.They exit.
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