As I do know the conful's worthiness, SIC. Conful!-what conful? He a conful! MEN. The conful Coriolanus. CIT. No, no, no, no, no. MEN. If, by the tribunes' leave, and yours, good people, I may be heard, I'd crave a word or two; The which fhall turn you to3 no further harm, SIC. Speak briefly then; For we are peremptory, to defpatch This viperous traitor: to eject him hence, MEN. SIC. He's a disease, that must be cut away. 3fball turn you to-] This fingular expreffion has already occurred in The Tempest: 66 my heart bleeds "To think o' the teen that I have turn'd you to." STEEVENS. 4 Towards her deferved children-] Deferved, for deferving. So, delighted for delighting, in Othello: "If virtue no delighted beauty lack," MALONE. (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 fuffer it, A brand to the end o' the world. SIC. BRU. Merely awry: country, It honour'd him. MEN. This is clean kam. When he did love his The fervice of the foot Being once gangren'd, is not then refpected 5 This is clean kam.] i. e. Awry. So Cotgrave interprets, Tout va à contrepoil. All goes clean kam. Hence a cambrel for a crooked ftick, or the bend in a horfe's hinder leg. WARBURTON. The Welch word for crooked is kam; and in Lyly's Endymion, 1591, is the following paffage: "But timely, madam, crooks that tree that will be a camock, and young it pricks that will be a thorn." Again, in Sappho and Phao, 1591: Camocks must be bowed with fleight not ftrength." Vulgar pronunciation has corrupted clean kam into kim kam, and this corruption is preferved in that great repofitory of ancient vulgarifms, Stanyhurft's translation of Virgil, 1582: Scinditur incertum ftudia in contraria vulgus." "The wavering commons in kym kam fectes are haled." STEEVENS. In the old tranflation of Gufman de Alfarache the words kim, kam, occur feveral times. Amongst others, take the following inftance: "All goes topfie turvy; all kim, kam; all is tricks and devices: all riddles and unknown myfteries." P. 100. REED. 6 Merely ary:] i. e. abfolutely. See Vol. III. p. 9, n. 5. STEEVENS. Being once gangren'd, is not then refpected For what before it was?] Nothing can be more evident, than that this could never be faid by Coriolanus's apologist, and that it was faid by one of the tribunes; I have therefore given it to Sicinius. WARBURTON, I have reftor'd it to Menenius, placing an interrogation point at BRU. We'll hear no more: Pursue him to his houfe, and pluck him thence; MEN. One word more, one word. This tiger-footed rage, when it shall find The harm of unfcann'd fwiftnefs, will, too late, Tie leaden pounds to his heels. Proceed by pro cefs; Left parties (as he is belov'd) break out, And fack great Rome with Romans. BRU. SIC. What do ye talk? If it were fo, Have we not had a taste of his obedience? wars Since he could draw a fword, and is ill school'd In boulted language; meal and bran together He throws without diftinction. Give me leave, I'll go to him, and undertake to bring him 8 the conclufion of the fpeech. Mr. Malone, confidering it as an imperfect fentence, gives it thus: For what before it was ;— STEEVENS. You alledge, fays Menenius, that being difeafed, he must be cut away. According then to your argument, the foot, being once gangrened, is not to be refpected for what it was before it was gangrened." Is this juft?" Menenius would have added, if the tribune had not interrupted him: and indeed, without any fuch addition, from his ftate of the argument thefe words are understood. MALONE. 8 — to bring him—] In the old copy the words in peace are found at the end of this line. They probably were in the Mf. placed at the beginning of the next line, and caught by the tranfcriber's eye glancing on the line below. The emendation was made by Mr. Pope. MALONE. Where he shall answer, by a lawful form, (In peace) to his utmost peril. I. SEN. Noble tribunęs, SIC. BRU. Noble Menenius, Go not home. SIC. Meet on the market-place:-We'll attend you there: Where, if you bring not Marcius, we'll proceed In our first way. MEN. I'll bring him to you : Let me defire your company. [to the Senators.] He must come, Or what is worft will follow. I. SEN. Pray you, let's to him. [Exeunt. the end of it Unknown to the beginning.] So, in The Tempest, Act II. fc. i: "The latter end of his commonwealth forgets the beginning." STEEVENS. SCENE II. A Room in Coriolanus's Houfe. Enter CORIOLANUS, and Patricians. COR. Let them pull all about mine ears; prefent me 2 Death on the wheel, or at wild horfes' heels; * 2 Death on the wheel, or at wild horfes' heels ;] Neither of these punishments was known at Rome. Shakspeare had probably read or heard in his youth that Balthazar de Gerrard, who affaffinated William prince of Orange in 1584, was torn to pieces by wild horfes; as Nicholas de Salvedo had been not long before, for confpiring to take away the life of that gallant prince. When I wrote this note, the punishment which Tullus Hoftilius inflicted on Mettius Suffetius for deferting the Roman ftandard, had efcaped my memory: "Haud procul inde cita Metium in diverfa quadriga Per fylvam; et fparfi rorabant fanguine vepres." Æn. VIII. 642. However, as Shak fpeare has coupled this fpecies of punishment with another that certainly was unknown to ancient Rome, it is highly probable that he was not apprized of the ftory of Mettius Suffetius, and that in this, as in various other inftances, the practice of his own time was in his thoughts: (for in 1594 John Chaftel had been thus executed in France for attempting to affaffinate Henry the Fourth :) more especially as we know from the teftimony of Livy that this cruel capital punishment was never inflicted from the beginning to the end of the Republick, except in this fingle inftance. "Exinde, duabus admotis quadrigis, in currus earum diftentum illigat Metium. Deinde in diverfum iter equi concitati, lacerum in utroque curru corpus quâ inhæferant vinculis membra, portantes. Avertêre omnes a tantâ fœditate fpectaculi oculos. Primum ultimumque illud fupplicium apud Romanos exempli parum memoris legum humanarum fuit: in aliis, gloriari licet nulli gentium mitiores placuiffe pœnas." Liv. lib. I. xxviii. MALONE. |