Ye Roman gods! Lead their successes as we wish our own, That both our powers, with smiling fronts encountering, May give you thankful sacrifice. Enter a Messenger. If I do send, dispatch Those centuries to our aid: the rest will serve For a short holding: if we lose the field, We cannot keep the town.
Lieutenant Fear not our care, sir. Our guider, come; to the Roman camp conduct us. Alarum as in battle. Fix thy foot. A retreat is sounded. A long flourish. They all cry 'Marcius! A flourish. First Soldier 'Twill be deliver'd back on good condition. What good condition can a treaty find I' the part that is at mercy?
Five times, Marcius, I have fought with thee: so often hast thou beat me, And wouldst do so, I think, should we encounter As often as we eat.
By the elements, If e'er again I meet him beard to beard, He's mine, or I am his: mine emulation Hath not that honour in't it had; for where I thought to crush him in an equal force, True sword to sword, I'll potch at him some way Or wrath or craft may get him. First Soldier He's the devil. My valour's poison'd With only suffering stain by him; for him Shall fly out of itself: nor sleep nor sanctuary, Being naked, sick, nor fane nor Capitol, The prayers of priests nor times of sacrifice, Embarquements all of fury, shall lift up Their rotten privilege and custom 'gainst My hate to Marcius: where I find him, were it At home, upon my brother's guard, even there, Against the hospitable canon, would I Wash my fierce hand in's heart.
Go you to the city; Learn how 'tis held; and what they are that must Be hostages for Rome. First Soldier Will not you go? First Soldier I shall, sir. A public place. You two are old men: tell me one thing that I shall ask you. Both Well, sir. Both Why, how are we censured? 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: 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 Marcius for being proud? MENENIUS I know you can do very little alone; for your helps are many, or else your actions would grow wondrous single: your abilities are too infant-like for doing much alone. You talk of pride: O that you could turn your eyes toward the napes of your necks, and make but an interior survey of your good selves!
O that you could! 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 imperfect in favouring 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 two 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 can't say your worships have delivered the matter well, when I find the ass in compound with the 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 you have good faces. If you see this in the map of my microcosm, follows it that I am known well enough too?
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 fosset-seller; and then rejourn the controversy of three pence to a second day of audience. 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 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. When you speak best unto the purpose, it is not worth the wagging of your beards; and your beards deserve not so honourable a grave as to stuff a botcher's cushion, or to be entombed in an ass's pack- saddle. Yet you must be saying, Marcius is proud; who in a cheap estimation, is worth predecessors since Deucalion, though peradventure some of the best of 'em were hereditary hangmen.
God-den 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. A sennet. Trumpets sound. Enter two Officers, to lay cushions First Officer Come, come, they are almost here. How many stand for consulships?
Second Officer Three, they say: but 'tis thought of every one Coriolanus will carry it. First Officer That's a brave fellow; but he's vengeance proud, and loves not the common people. Second Officer Faith, there had been many great men that have flattered the people, who ne'er loved them; and there be many that they have loved, they know not wherefore: so that, if they love they know not why, they hate upon no better a ground: therefore, for Coriolanus neither to care whether they love or hate him manifests the true knowledge he has in their disposition; and out of his noble carelessness lets them plainly see't.
First Officer If he did not care whether he had their love or no, he waved indifferently 'twixt doing them neither good nor harm: but he seeks their hate with greater devotion than can render it him; and leaves nothing undone that may fully discover him their opposite.
Now, to seem to affect the malice and displeasure of the people is as bad as that which he dislikes, to flatter them for their love. Second Officer He hath deserved worthily of his country: and his ascent is not by such easy degrees as those who, having been supple and courteous to the people, bonneted, without any further deed to have them at an into their estimation and report: but he hath so planted his honours in their eyes, and his actions in their hearts, that for their tongues to be silent, and not confess so much, were a kind of ingrateful injury; to report otherwise, were a malice, that, giving itself the lie, would pluck reproof and rebuke from every ear that heard it.
First Officer No more of him; he is a worthy man: make way, they are coming. The Senators take their places; the Tribunes take their Places by themselves. Enter seven or eight Citizens First Citizen Once, if he do require our voices, we ought not to deny him. Second Citizen We may, sir, if we will. Third Citizen We have power in ourselves to do it, but it is a power that we have no power to do; for if he show us his wounds and tell us his deeds, we are to put our tongues into those wounds and speak for them; so, if he tell us his noble deeds, we must also tell him our noble acceptance of them.
Ingratitude is monstrous, and for the multitude to be ingrateful, were to make a monster of the multitude: of the which we being members, should bring ourselves to be monstrous members.
First Citizen And to make us no better thought of, a little help will serve; for once we stood up about the corn, he himself stuck not to call us the many-headed multitude. Third Citizen We have been called so of many; not that our heads are some brown, some black, some auburn, some bald, but that our wits are so diversely coloured: and truly I think if all our wits were to issue out of one skull, they would fly east, west, north, south, and their consent of one direct way should be at once to all the points o' the compass.
Second Citizen Think you so? Which way do you judge my wit would fly? Third Citizen Nay, your wit will not so soon out as another man's will;'tis strongly wedged up in a block-head, but if it were at liberty, 'twould, sure, southward. Second Citizen Why that way? Third Citizen To lose itself in a fog, where being three parts melted away with rotten dews, the fourth would return for conscience sake, to help to get thee a wife.
Second Citizen You are never without your tricks: you may, you may. Third Citizen Are you all resolved to give your voices? But that's no matter, the greater part carries it. I say, if he would incline to the people, there was never a worthier man. A street. Brutus and Sicinius accuse her of having lost her wits, and they depart, leaving the friends of Coriolanus to their grief.
Meanwhile, a Roman in the pay of the Volscians meets up with another Volscian spy and reports that Coriolanus has been banished. The two men agree that this will give Tullus Aufidius an excellent chance to gain some revenge against Rome for the defeats he has suffered.
At the same time, Coriolanus himself comes to the city of Antium, where Aufidius is staying. He informs the audience that he plans to ally himself with Aufidius against his native city and become Rome's greatest enemy. Coriolanus once obeyed his mother by pandering to the masses, but now he questions her: "Why did you wish me milder?
And Coriolanus, who cannot refuse her, once again submits, in the language of an obedient child: "Mother, I am going to the marketplace. But, despite all her ambition and will, Volumnia cannot make him a politician; as a public figure, her son is a disaster waiting to happen, and the clever tribunes stand ready to exploit his first slip. Indeed, their skill is hardly tested: It only takes one accusation "traitor" from Sicinius' lips to make him explode with a curse: "The fires i' th' lowest hell fold in the people!
Somewhere in these scenes, Coriolanus has inwardly made the decision to betray his city. It does not take much prodding from Brutus and Sicinius to make them change their minds, although the two tribunes work the crowd with political savvy; indeed, it is a stroke of political genius to have the crowds say that the tribunes pressured them into their original vote; Brutus and Sicinius appear as peacemakers.
The scene shifts to the Capitol, where the image of the assembled noblemen contrasts sharply with the crowds of plebeians from the previous scene; the contrast graphically illustrates the political division of Rome.
The rumor that Tullus Aufidius has raised another army foreshadows the course that Coriolanus will take later in the play; but for now, it is a reminder of another kind of battle--the kind of battle the hero is better suited to fight. As long as he is on top, all goes well, but once Brutus and Sicinius arrive with the news that people wish to reverse their election, Coriolanus's behavior becomes disastrous. Now the passions run too high for a political debate; a brawl erupts, in which Coriolanus finds himself in his element: "At last, a real battle," one imagines him thinking as he draws his sword to beat the mob away; he will fight the plebeians in a civil war if he has to.
Indeed, his bellicosity is a liability, and when Coriolanus has been led away to sanctuary in a friend's house, the patricians exhibit a palpable sense of relief.
The tribunes support him in this; they may be demagogues, but they prefer politics to violence. SparkTeach Teacher's Handbook. Mini Essays Suggested Essay Topics. Summary In the marketplace, a collection of citizens discusses Coriolanus's candidacy, saying that if he uses the scars of battle in his appeal to them, they will probably make him consul.
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