The Oxford Shakespeare: The Complete Works
Page 355
Attach thee as a traitorous innovator,
A foe to th’ public weal. Obey, I charge thee,
And follow to thine answer.
CORIOLANUS
Hence, old goat!
ALL ⌈THE PATRICIANS⌉
We’ll surety him.
COMINIUS (to Sicinius) Aged sir, hands off.
CORIOLANUS (to Sicinius)
Hence, rotten thing, or I shall shake thy bones
Out of thy garments.
SICINIUS
Help, ye citizens!
Enter a rabble of Plebeians, with the Aediles
MENENIUS
On both sides more respect.
SICINIUS
Here’s he
That would take from you all your power.
BRUTUS
Seize him, aediles.
ALL ⌈THE CITIZENS⌉
Down with him, down with him!
SECOND SENATOR
Weapons, weapons, weapons!
They all bustle about Coriolanus
⌈CITIZENS and PATRICIANS⌉ ⌈in dispersed cries⌉
Tribunes! Patricians! Citizens! What ho!
Siciniusl Brutus! Coriolanusl Citizens!
⌈SOME CITIZENS and PATRICIANS⌉
Peace, peace, peace! Stay! Hold! Peace!
MENENIUS
What is about to be? I am out of breath.
Confusion’s near; I cannot speak. You tribunes
To th’ people, Coriolanus, patience!
Speak, good Sicinius.
SICINIUS
Hear me, people, peace.
ALL ⌈THE CITIZENS⌉
Let’s hear our tribune! Peace! Speak, speak, speak!
SICINIUS
You are at point to lose your liberties.
Martius would have all from you—Martius
Whom late you have named for consul.
MENENIUS
Fie, fie, fie,
This is the way to kindle, not to quench.
⌈FIRST⌉ SENATOR
To unbuild the city, and to lay all flat.
SICINIUS
What is the city but the people?
ALL ⌈THE CITIZENS⌉
True,
The people are the city.
BRUTUS
By the consent of all
We were established the people’s magistrates.
ALL ⌈THE CITIZENS⌉
You so remain.
MENENIUS
And so are like to do.
⌈CORIOLANUS⌉
That is the way to lay the city flat,
To bring the roof to the foundation,
And bury all which yet distinctly ranges
In heaps and piles of ruin.
SICINIUS
This deserves death.
BRUTUS
Or let us stand to our authority,
Or let us lose it. We do here pronounce,
Upon the part o’th’ people in whose power
We were elected theirs, Martius is worthy
Of present death.
SICINIUS
Therefore lay hold of him,
Bear him to th’ rock Tarpeian; and from thence
Into destruction cast him.
BRUTUS
Aediles, seize him.
ALL THE CITIZENS
Yield, Martius, yield.
MENENIUS
Hear me one word.
Beseech you, tribunes, hear me but a word.
AEDILES Peace, peace!
MENENIUS (to the tribunes)
Be that you seem, truly your country’s friend,
And temp’rately proceed to what you would
Thus violently redress.
BRUTUS
Sir, those cold ways
That seem like prudent helps are very poisons
Where the disease is violent. Lay hands upon him,
And bear him to the rock.
Coriolanus draws his sword
CORIOLANUS
No, I’ll die here.
There’s some among you have beheld me fighting.
Come, try upon yourselves what you have seen me.
MENENIUS
Down with that sword. Tribunes, withdraw a while.
BRUTUS
Lay hands upon him.
MENENIUS
Help Martius, help!
You that be noble, help him, young and old.
ALL ⌈THE CITIZENS⌉ Down with him, down with him!
In this mutiny the tribunes, the Aediles, and the people are beat in
MENENIUS (to Coriolanus)
Go get you to your house. Be gone, away!
All will be naught else.
SECOND SENATOR (to Coriolanus) Get you gone. ⌈CORIOLANUS⌉
Stand fast; we have as many friends as enemies.
MENENIUS
Shall it be put to that?
⌈FIRST⌉ SENATOR The gods forbid!
(To Coriolanus) I prithee, noble friend, home to thy house.
Leave us to cure this cause.
MENENIUS For ’tis a sore upon us
You cannot tent yourself. Be gone, beseech you.
⌈COMINIUS⌉ Come, sir, along with us.
⌈CORIOLANUS⌉
I would they were barbarians, as they are,
Though in Rome littered; not Romans, as they are
not,
Though calved i‘th’ porch o’th’ Capitol.
⌈MENENIUS⌉ Be gone.
Put not your worthy rage into your tongue.
One time will owe another.
CORIOLANUS On fair ground
I could beat forty of them.
MENENIUS I could myself
Take up a brace o’th’ best of them, yea, the two
tribunes.
COMINIUS
But now ‘tis odds beyond arithmetic,
And manhood is called foolery when it stands
Against a falling fabric.
(To Coriolanus) Will you hence
Before the tag return, whose rage doth rend
Like interrupted waters, and o’erbear
What they are used to bear?
MENENIUS (to Coriolanus) Pray you be gone.
I’ll try whether my old wit be in request
With those that have but little. This must be patched
With cloth of any colour.
COMINIUS Nay, come away.
Exeunt Coriolanus and Cominius
A PATRICIAN This man has marred his fortune.
MENENIUS
His nature is too noble for the world.
He would not flatter Neptune for his trident
Or Jove for’s power to thunder. His heart’s his mouth.
What his breast forges, that his tongue must vent,
And, being angry, does forget that ever
He heard the name of death.
A noise within
Here’s goodly work.
A PATRICIAN
I would they were abed.
MENENIUS
I would they were in Tiber.
What the vengeance, could he not speak ’em fair?
Enter Brutus and Sicinius, with the rabble again
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 naught.
FIRST CITIZEN
He shall well know
The noble tribunes are the people’s mouths,
And we their hands.
ALL ⌈THE CITIZENS⌉
He shall, sure on’t.
MENENIUS Sir, sir.
SICINIUS Peace!
MENENIUS
Do not cry havoc where you should bu
t 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?
ALL ⌈THE 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 our danger, and to keep him here
Our certain death. Therefore it is decreed
He dies tonight.
MENENIUS
Now the good gods forbid
That our renowned Rome, whose gratitude
Towards her deserved children is enrolled
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 dropped 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 th’ end o’th’ world.
SICINIUS
This is clean cam.
BRUTUS
Merely awry. When he did love his country
It honoured him.
⌈SICINIUS⌉ S⌉
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 unscanned 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 (to Menenius) 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’th’ wars
Since a could draw a sword, and is ill-schooled
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.
(To the Citizens) Masters, lay down your weapons.
BRUTUS
Go not home.
SICINIUS
Meet on the market-place. (To Menenius) We’ll attend
you there,
Where if you bring not Martius, 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 ⌈tribunes and Citizens at one door, Patricians at another door⌉
3.2 Enter Coriolanus, with Nobles
CORIOLANUS
Let them pull 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.
Enter Volumnia
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. (To 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 taxings of your dispositions if
You had not showed them how ye were disposed
Ere they lacked power to cross you.
CORIOLANUS
Let them hang.
VOLUMNIA Ay, and burn too.
Enter Menenius, with the Senators
MENENIUS (to Coriolanus)
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 (to Coriolanus)
Pray be counselled.
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 th’ herd, but that
The violent fit o’th’ 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 th’ 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 unsevered friends,
I’th’ war do grow together. Grant that, and tell me
In peace what each of them by th’ 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 req
uest?
CORIOLANUS
Why force you this?
VOLUMNIA
Because that now it lies you on to speak to th’ people,
Not by your own instruction, nor by th’ matter
Which your heart prompts you, but with such words
That are but roted 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!
(To Coriolanus) 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,⌈She takes his bonnet⌉
Go to them with this bonnet in thy hand,
And thus far having stretched it—here be with
them—
Thy knee bussing the stones—for in such business
Action is eloquence, and the eyes of th’ ignorant
More learnèd than the ears—waving thy head,
With 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 (to Coriolanus) This but done
Even as she speaks, why, their hearts were yours;
For they have pardons, being asked, as free
As words to little purpose.
VOLUMNIA (to Coriolanus) 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.
Enter Cominius
Here is Cominius.
COMINIUS
I have been i‘th’ 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.