MENENIUS I would they were in Tiber! What the vengeance!
Could he not speak ’em fair?
Re-enter BRUTUS and SICINIUS, with the rabble
SICINIUS Where is this viper
That would depopulate the city and
Be every man himself?
MENENIUS You worthy tribunes,–
SICINIUS He shall be thrown down the Tarpeian rock
With rigorous hands: he hath resisted law,
And therefore law shall scorn him further trial
Than the severity of the public power
Which he so sets at nought.
First Citizen He shall well know
The noble tribunes are the people’s mouths,
And we their hands.
Citizens He shall, sure on’t.
MENENIUS Sir, sir,–
SICINIUS Peace!
MENENIUS Do not cry havoc, where you should but hunt
With modest warrant.
SICINIUS Sir, how comes’t that you
Have holp to make this rescue?
MENENIUS Hear me speak:
As I do know the consul’s worthiness,
So can I name his faults,–
SICINIUS Consul! what consul?
MENENIUS The consul Coriolanus.
BRUTUS He consul!
Citizens No, no, no, no, no.
MENENIUS If, by the tribunes’ leave, and yours, good people,
I may be heard, I would crave a word or two;
The which shall turn you to no further harm
Than so much loss of time.
SICINIUS Speak briefly then;
For we are peremptory to dispatch
This viperous traitor: to eject him hence
Were but one danger, and to keep him here
Our certain death: therefore it is decreed
He dies to-night.
MENENIUS Now the good gods forbid
That our renowned Rome, whose gratitude
Towards her deserved children is enroll’d
In Jove’s own book, like an unnatural dam
Should now eat up her own!
SICINIUS He’s a disease that must be cut away.
MENENIUS O, he’s a limb that has but a disease;
Mortal, to cut it off; to cure it, easy.
What has he done to Rome that’s worthy death?
Killing our enemies, the blood he hath lost–
Which, I dare vouch, is more than that he hath,
By many an ounce–he dropp’d it for his country;
And what is left, to lose it by his country,
Were to us all, that do’t and suffer it,
A brand to the end o’ the world.
SICINIUS This is clean kam.
BRUTUS Merely awry: when he did love his country,
It honour’d him.
MENENIUS The service of the foot
Being once gangrened, is not then respected
For what before it was.
BRUTUS We’ll hear no more.
Pursue him to his house, and pluck him thence:
Lest his infection, being of catching nature,
Spread further.
MENENIUS One word more, one word.
This tiger-footed rage, when it shall find
The harm of unscann’d swiftness, will too late
Tie leaden pounds to’s heels. Proceed by process;
Lest parties, as he is beloved, break out,
And sack great Rome with Romans.
BRUTUS If it were so,–
SICINIUS What do ye talk?
Have we not had a taste of his obedience?
Our aediles smote? ourselves resisted? Come.
MENENIUS Consider this: he has been bred i’ the wars
Since he could draw a sword, and is ill school’d
In bolted language; meal and bran together
He throws without distinction. Give me leave,
I’ll go to him, and undertake to bring him
Where he shall answer, by a lawful form,
In peace, to his utmost peril.
First Senator Noble tribunes,
It is the humane way: the other course
Will prove too bloody, and the end of it
Unknown to the beginning.
SICINIUS Noble Menenius,
Be you then as the people’s officer.
Masters, lay down your weapons.
BRUTUS Go not home.
SICINIUS Meet on the market-place. We’ll attend you there:
Where, if you bring not Marcius, we’ll proceed
In our first way.
MENENIUS I’ll bring him to you.
To the Senators
Let me desire your company: he must come,
Or what is worst will follow.
First Senator Pray you, let’s to him.
Exeunt
Scene 2
A room in CORIOLANUS’S house.
Enter CORIOLANUS with Patricians
CORIOLANUS Let them puff all about mine ears, present me
Death on the wheel or at wild horses’ heels,
Or pile ten hills on the Tarpeian rock,
That the precipitation might down stretch
Below the beam of sight, yet will I still
Be thus to them.
A Patrician You do the nobler.
CORIOLANUS I muse my mother
Does not approve me further, who was wont
To call them woollen vassals, things created
To buy and sell with groats, to show bare heads
In congregations, to yawn, be still and wonder,
When one but of my ordinance stood up
To speak of peace or war.
Enter VOLUMNIA
I talk of you:
Why did you wish me milder? would you have me
False to my nature? Rather say I play
The man I am.
VOLUMNIA O, sir, sir, sir,
I would have had you put your power well on,
Before you had worn it out.
CORIOLANUS Let go.
VOLUMNIA You might have been enough the man you are,
With striving less to be so; lesser had been
The thwartings of your dispositions, if
You had not show’d them how ye were disposed
Ere they lack’d power to cross you.
CORIOLANUS Let them hang.
A Patrician Ay, and burn too.
Enter MENENIUS and Senators
MENENIUS Come, come, you have been too rough, something
too rough;
You must return and mend it.
First Senator There’s no remedy;
Unless, by not so doing, our good city
Cleave in the midst, and perish.
VOLUMNIA Pray, be counsell’d:
I have a heart as little apt as yours,
But yet a brain that leads my use of anger
To better vantage.
MENENIUS Well said, noble woman?
Before he should thus stoop to the herd, but that
The violent fit o’ the time craves it as physic
For the whole state, I would put mine armour on,
Which I can scarcely bear.
CORIOLANUS What must I do?
MENENIUS Return to the tribunes.
CORIOLANUS Well, what then? what then?
MENENIUS Repent what you have spoke.
CORIOLANUS For them! I cannot do it to the gods;
Must I then do’t to them?
VOLUMNIA You are too absolute;
Though therein you can never be too noble,
But when extremities speak. I have heard you say,
Honour and policy, like unsever’d friends,
I’ the war do grow together: grant that, and tell me,
In peace what each of them by the other lose,
That they combine not there.
CORIOLANUS Tush, tush!
MENENIUS A good demand.
VOLUMNIA If it be honour in your wars to seem
The same you are not, which, for your best ends,
You adopt your policy, how is it less or worse,
That it shall hold companionship in peace
With honour, as in war, since that to both
It stands in like request?
CORIOLANUS Why force you this?
VOLUMNIA Because that now it lies you on to speak
To the people; not by your own instruction,
Nor by the matter which your heart prompts you,
But with such words that are but rooted in
Your tongue, though but bastards and syllables
Of no allowance to your bosom’s truth.
Now, this no more dishonours you at all
Than to take in a town with gentle words,
Which else would put you to your fortune and
The hazard of much blood.
I would dissemble with my nature where
My fortunes and my friends at stake required
I should do so in honour: I am in this,
Your wife, your son, these senators, the nobles;
And you will rather show our general louts
How you can frown than spend a fawn upon ’em,
For the inheritance of their loves and safeguard
Of what that want might ruin.
MENENIUS Noble lady!
Come, go with us; speak fair: you may salve so,
Not what is dangerous present, but the loss
Of what is past.
VOLUMNIA I prithee now, my son,
Go to them, with this bonnet in thy hand;
And thus far having stretch’d it–here be with them–
Thy knee bussing the stones–for in such business
Action is eloquence, and the eyes of the ignorant
More learned than the ears–waving thy head,
Which often, thus, correcting thy stout heart,
Now humble as the ripest mulberry
That will not hold the handling: or say to them,
Thou art their soldier, and being bred in broils
Hast not the soft way which, thou dost confess,
Were fit for thee to use as they to claim,
In asking their good loves, but thou wilt frame
Thyself, forsooth, hereafter theirs, so far
As thou hast power and person.
MENENIUS This but done,
Even as she speaks, why, their hearts were yours;
For they have pardons, being ask’d, as free
As words to little purpose.
VOLUMNIA Prithee now,
Go, and be ruled: although I know thou hadst rather
Follow thine enemy in a fiery gulf
Than flatter him in a bower. Here is Cominius.
Enter COMINIUS
COMINIUS I have been i’ the market-place; and, sir,’tis fit
You make strong party, or defend yourself
By calmness or by absence: all’s in anger.
MENENIUS Only fair speech.
COMINIUS I think ’twill serve, if he