1 SERV. A strange one as ever I looked on: I cannot get him out o' the house: pr'ythee, call my master to him.

3 SERV. What have you to do here, fellow? Pray you, avoid the house. [hearth.

COR. Let me but stand; I will not hurt your 3 SERV. What are you? COR. A gentleman.

3 SERV. A marvellous poor one. COR. True, so I am.

3 SERV. Pray you, poor gentleman, take up some other station: here's no place for you; pray you, avoid come.

COR. Follow your function, go and batten on cold bits. [Pushes him away.

3 SERV. What, will you not? Pr'ythee, tell my master what a strange guest he has here.

2 SERV. And I shall.

3 SERV. Where dwellest thou?

COR. Under the canopy.

3 SERV. Under the canopy?

COR. Ay.

3 SERV. Where's that?

COR. I' the city of kites and crows.

[Exit.

COR. Prepare thy brow to frown: know'st thou me yet?

AUF. I know thee not:-thy name?

COR. My name is Caius Marcius, who hath done
To thee particularly, and to all the Volsces,
Great hurt and mischief; thereto witness may
My surname, Coriolanus: the painful service,
The extreme dangers, and the drops of blood
Shed for my thankless country, are requited
But with that surname; a good memory,"
And witness of the malice and displeasure [mains;
Which thou should'st bear me: only that name re-
The cruelty and envy of the people,
Permitted by our dastard nobles, who
Have all forsook me, hath devour'd the rest;
And suffer'd me by the voice of slaves to be
Whoop'd out of Rome. Now, this extremity
Hath brought me to thy hearth; not out of hope,
Mistake me not, to save my life; for if

I had fear'd death, of all the men i' the world
I would have 'voided thee; but in mere spite,
To be full quit of those my banishers,
Stand I before thee here. Then if thou hast
A heart of wreak in thee, that will revenge
Thine own particular wrongs, and stop those maims
Of shame seen through thy country, speed thee
straight,

And make my misery serve thy turn; so use it,
That my revengeful services may prove

As benefits to thee; for I will fight

Against my canker'd country with the spleen
Of all the under fiends. But if so be
Thou dar'st not this, and that to prove more fortunes
Thou'rt tir'd, then, in a word, I also am
Longer to live most weary, and present
My throat to thee and to thy ancient malice;
Which not to cut would show thee but a fool,
Since I have ever follow'd thee with hate,
Drawn tuns of blood out of thy country's breast,
And cannot live but to thy shame, unless
It be to do thee service.

AUF.
O, Marcius, Marcius,
Each word thou hast spoke hath weeded from my
heart

A root of ancient envy. If Jupiter
Should from yond cloud speak divine things,
And say, 'Tis true; I'd not believe them more
Than thee, all-noble Marcius.(1)-Let me twine
Mine arms about that body, where against
My grained ash an hundred times hath broke,
And scar'd the moon with splinters! Here I clip
The anvil of my sword, and do contest
As hotly and as nobly with thy love,
As ever in ambitious strength I did
Contend against thy valour. Know thou first,

c

the opening scene of this act, where Volumnia calls Coriolanus, "my first son.'

I lov'd the maid I married; never man
Sigh'd truer breath; but that I see thee here,
Thou noble thing! more dances my rapt heart,
Than when I first my wedded mistress saw
Bestride my threshold. Why, thou Mars! I tell
thee,

We have a power on foot; and I had purpose
Once more to hew thy target from thy brawn,
Or lose mine arm for 't: thou hast beat me out
Twelve several times, and I have nightly since
Dreamt of encounters 'twixt thyself and me;
We have been down together in my sleep,
Unbuckling helms, fisting each other's throat,
And wak'd half dead with nothing.

Marcius,

Worthy

Had we no other quarrel else to Rome, but that
Thou art thence banish'd, we would muster all
From twelve to seventy; and, pouring war
Into the bowels of ungrateful Rome,
Like a bold flood o'er-bear. O, come, go in,
And take our friendly senators by the hands;
Who now are here, taking their leaves of me,
Who am prepar'd against your territories,
Though not for Rome itself.

COR.
You bless me, gods!
AUF. Therefore, most absolute sir, if thou
wilt have

The leading of thine own revenges, take
The one half of my commission, and set down,—
As best thou art experienc'd, since thou know'st
Thy country's strength and weakness, thine own

2 SERV. By my hand, I had thought to have strucken him with a cudgel; and yet my mind gave me his clothes made a false report of him.

1 SERV. What an arm he has! He turned me about with his finger and his thumb, as one would set up a top.

2 SERV. Nay, I knew by his face that there was something in him: he had, sir, a kind of face, methought, I cannot tell how to term it.

1 SERV. He had so; looking, as it were,Would I were hanged, but I thought there was more in him than I could think.

asowle-] The etymology of this word is uncertain, but it is still employed in many English counties for lugging and dragging. Steevens quotes a line from Heywood's comedy, called "Love's

2 SERV. So did I, I'll be sworn: he is simply the rarest man i' the world.

1 SERV. I think he is; but a greater soldier than he, you wot one.

2 SERV. Who? my master?

1 SERV. Nay, it's no matter for that. 2 SERV. Worth six on him.

1 SERV. Nay, not so neither; but I take him to be the greater soldier.

2 SERV. Faith, look you, one cannot tell how to say that: for the defence of a town, our general is excellent.

1 SERV. Ay, and for an assault too.

Re-enter third Servant.

3 SERV. O, slaves, I can tell you news! news, you rascals!

1 and 2 SERV. What, what, what? let's partake. 3 SERV. I would not be a Roman, of all nations; I had as lieve be a condemned man.

1 and 2 SERV. Wherefore? wherefore? 3 SERV. Why, here's he that was wont to thwack our general, Caius Marcius.

1 SERV. Why do you say, thwack our general? 3 SERV. I do not say, thwack our general; but he was always good enough for him.

2 SERV. Come, we are fellows and friends; he was ever too hard for him; I have heard him say so himself.

1 SERV. He was too hard for him directly, to say the truth on't: before Corioli, he scotched him and notched him like a carbonado.

2 SERV. An he had been cannibally given, he might have broiled and eaten him too. 1 SERV. But more of thy news.

3 SERV. Why, he is so made on here within, as if he were son and heir to Mars; set at upper end o' the table; no question asked him by any of the senators but they stand bald before him: our general himself makes a mistress of him; sanctifies himself with's hand, and turns up the white o' the eye to his discourse. But the bottom of the news is, our general is cut i' the middle, and but one half of what he was yesterday; for the other has half, by the entreaty and grant of the whole table. He'll go, he and sowle the porter says, of Rome gates by the ears: he will mow down all before him, and leave his passage polled."

a

2 SERV. And he's as like to do't as any man I can imagine.

3 SERV. Do't! he will do 't: for, look you, sir, he has as many friends as enemies: which friends, sir, as it were, durst not, look you, sir, show them

Mistress," 1636, where it occurs,

"Venus will sowle me by the ears for this." bpolled.] Cleared.

selves, as we term it, his friends, whilst he's in directitude."

1 SERV. Directitude! What's that?

3 SERV. But when they shall see, sir, his crest up again, and the man in blood," they will out of their burrows, like conies after rain, and revel all with him.

1 SERV. But when goes this forward?

3 SERV. To-morrow; to-day; presently: you shall have the drum struck up this afternoon : 'tis, as it were, a parcel of their feast, and to be executed ere they wipe their lips.

2 SERV. Why, then we shall have a stirring world again. This peace is nothing but to rust iron, increase tailors, and breed ballad-makers.

c

1 SERV. Let me have war, say I; it exceeds peace, as far as day does night; it's spritely walking, audible, and full of vent. Peace is a very apoplexy, lethargy; mulled, deaf, sleepy, insensible; a getter of more bastard children than wars a destroyer of men.

2 SERV. "Tis so: and as war, in some sort, may be said to be a ravisher, so it cannot be denied but peace is a great maker of cuckolds.

1 SERV. Ay, and it makes men hate one another. 3 SERV. Reason; because they then less need one another. The wars for my money. I hope to see Romans as cheap as Volscians.-They are rising, they are rising.

SCENE VI.-Rome. A Public Place.

Enter SICINIUS and BRUTUS.

SIC. We hear not of him, neither need we fear him;

His remedies are tame i' the present peace
And quietness o' the people, which before
Were in wild hurry. Here do we make his friends
Blush that the world goes well; who rather had,
Though they themselves did suffer by 't, behold
Dissentious numbers pestering streets, than see
Our tradesmen singing in their shops, and going
About their functions friendly.

BRU. We stood to't in good time. Is this
Menenius?

SIC. 'T is he, 'tis he: O he is grown most kind Of late.-Hail, sir!

Enter MENENIUS.

MEN. Hail to you both!

SIC. Your Coriolanus is not much missed but with his friends: the commonwealth doth stand; and so would do, were he more angry at it.

MEN. All's well; and might have been much better, if he could have temporized.

SIC. Where is he, hear you?

MEN. Nay, I hear nothing; his mother and his wife hear nothing from him.

e His remedies are tame i' the present peace-] A correction by Theobald, the old copies having,-" His remedies are tame, the present peace." Omission, however, is not, perhaps, the only defect in the line; the word "remedies" is very equivocal.

Worthy tribunes,

There is a slave, whom we have put in prison,
Reports, the Volsces with two several powers
Are enter'd in the Roman territories;
And with the deepest malice of the war
Destroy what lies before 'em.

MEN.
'Tis Aufidius,
Who, hearing of our Marcius' banishment,
Thrusts forth his horns again into the world,
Which were inshell'd when Marcius stood for Rome,
And durst not once peep out.

SIC. Come, what talk you of Marcius ?
BRU. Go see this rumourer whipp'd.-It can-
not be

The Volsces dare break with us.

MEN. Cannot be! We have record that very well it can ; And three examples of the like have been Within my age. But reason with the fellow, Before you punish him, where he heard this; Lest you shall chance to whip your information,

a Good Marcius-] Mr. Collier's annotator proposes to read,"God Marcius," which may be right; yet in "Macbeth," Act III. Sc. 1, when Macbeth, by way of instigating the murderers to slay Banquo, expatiates on the wrongs that chief had done them, he asks, ironically,

Enter another Messenger.

MESS. You are sent for to the senate: A fearful army, led by Caius Marcius Associated with Aufidius, rages Upon our territories; and have already O'er-borne their way, consum'd with fire, and took What lay before them.

MEN.

Enter a troop of Citizens.

Here come the clusters.And is Aufidius with him ?—You are they That made the air unwholesome, when you cast Your stinking greasy caps in hooting At Coriolanus' exile. Now he's coming; And not a hair upon a soldier's head, Which will not prove a whip: as many coxcombs As you threw caps up will he tumble down, And pay you for your voices. 'Tis no matter; If he could burn us all into one coal, We have deserv'd it.

CITIZENS. Faith, we hear fearful news. 1 CIT. For mine own part, When I said, banish him, I said, 'twas pity. 2 CIT. And so did I.

3 CIT. And so did I; and, to say the truth, so did very many of us that we did, we did for the best; and though we willingly consented to his banishment, yet it was against our will. COм. Ye're goodly things, you voices! MEN. You have made good work,

You and your cry!-Shall's to the Capitol?
COм. O, ay; what else?

[Exeunt Coм. and MEN. SIC. Go, masters, get you home; be not dis

may'd: