The Complete Tragedies of William Shakespeare - All 12 Books in One Edition. William Shakespeare

SICINIUS.

       Noble Menenius,

       Be you then as the people’s officer.—

       Masters, lay down your weapons.

       BRUTUS.

       Go not home.

       SICINIUS.

       Meet on the marketplace.—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 II. Rome. A room in CORIOLANUS’S house.

       [Enter CORIOLANUS and Patricians.]

       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.

       FIRST 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: [To Volumnia.]

       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 dispos’d,

       Ere they lack’d power to cross you.

       CORIOLANUS.

       Let them hang.

       VOLUMNIA.

       Ay, and burn too.

       [Enter MENENIUS with the 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 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 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 requir’d

       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 pr’ythee now, my son,

       Go to them with this bonnet in thy hand;

       And thus far having stretch’d it,—here be with them,—