Tread not upon him. Masters all, be quiet;
Put up your swords.
My lords, when you shall know—as in this rage,
Provoked by him, you cannot—the great danger
Which this man’s life did owe you, you’ll rejoice
That he is thus cut off. Please it your honours
To call me to your senate, I’ll deliver
Myself your loyal servant, or endure
Your heaviest censure.
Bear from hence his body;
And mourn you for him: let him be regarded
As the most noble corse that ever herald
Did follow to his urn.
His own impatience
Takes from Aufidius a great part of blame.
Let’s make the best of it.
My rage is gone;
And I am struck with sorrow. Take him up.
Help, three o’ the chiefest soldiers; I’ll be one.
Beat thou the drum, that it speak mournfully:
Trail your steel spikes. Though in this city he
Hath widow’d and unchilded many a one,
Which to this hour bewail the injury,
Yet he shall have a noble memory.
Assist. Exeunt, bearing the body of Coriolanus. A dead march sounded.
Endnotes
-
When the First Folio was first published, a deficiency was discovered in act two, scene three of this play. Due to Shakespeare’s close adherence to Plutarch’s Parallel Lives, editors were able to develop a solution for this gap. The two most popular corrections for the missing content are:
-
And [Censorinus,] nobly named so,
Twice being [by the people chosen] censor, -
[And Censorinus that was so surnamed]
And nobly named so, twice being censor,
The former is found in Clark and Wright’s 1887 Victoria edition, and the latter can be found in editions corrected by Dover Wilson. —S.E. Editor ↩
-
Colophon
Coriolanus
was published in 1607 by
William Shakespeare.
This ebook was produced for
Standard Ebooks
by
Emma Sweeney,
and is based on a transcription produced in 1993 by
Jeremy Hylton
for the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
and on digital scans from the
HathiTrust Digital Library.
The cover page is adapted from
John Philip Kemble, as Coriolanus in Coriolanus by William Shakespeare,
a painting completed in 1798 by
Thomas Lawrence.
The cover and title pages feature the
League Spartan and Sorts Mill Goudy
typefaces created in 2014 and 2009 by
The League of Moveable Type.
The first edition of this ebook was released on
April 12, 2022, 3:17 a.m.
You can check for updates to this ebook, view its revision history, or download it for different ereading systems at
standardebooks.org/ebooks/william-shakespeare/coriolanus.
The volunteer-driven Standard Ebooks project relies on readers like you to submit typos, corrections, and other improvements. Anyone can contribute at standardebooks.org.
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