Coriolanus

of unmeriting, proud, violent, testy magistrates, alias fools, as any in Rome. Sicinius Menenius, you are known well enough too. 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? what harm can your bisson conspectuities glean out of this character, if I be known well enough too? Brutus Come, sir, come, we know you well enough. Menenius You know neither me, yourselves nor any thing. 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. Brutus Come, come, you are well understood to be a perfecter giber for the table than a necessary bencher in the Capitol. Menenius Our very priests must become mockers, if they shall encounter such ridiculous subjects as you are. 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. Brutus and Sicinius go aside. Enter Volumnia, Virgilia, and Valeria. How now, my as fair as noble ladies⁠—and the moon, were she earthly, no nobler⁠—whither do you follow your eyes so fast? Volumnia Honourable Menenius, my boy Marcius approaches; for the love of Juno, let’s go. Menenius Ha! Marcius coming home! Volumnia Ay, worthy Menenius; and with most prosperous approbation. Menenius Take my cap, Jupiter, and I thank thee. Hoo! Marcius coming home! Volumnia
Virgilia Nay, ’tis true. Volumnia Look, here’s a letter from him: the state hath another, his wife another; and, I think, there’s one at home for you. Menenius I will make my very house reel to-night: a letter for me! Virgilia Yes, certain, there’s a letter for you; I saw’t. Menenius A letter for me! it gives me an estate of seven years’ health; in which time I will make a lip at the physician: the most sovereign prescription in Galen is but empiricutic, and, to this preservative, of no better report than a horse-drench. Is he not wounded? he was wont to come home wounded. Virgilia O, no, no, no. Volumnia O, he is wounded; I thank the gods for’t. Menenius So do I too, if it be not too much: brings a’ victory in his pocket? the wounds become him. Volumnia On’s brows: Menenius, he comes the third time home with the oaken garland. Menenius Has he disciplined Aufidius soundly? Volumnia Titus Lartius writes, they fought together, but Aufidius got off. Menenius And ’twas time for him too, I’ll warrant him that: an he had stayed by him, I would not have been so fidiused for all the chests in Corioli, and the gold that’s in them. Is the senate possessed of this? Volumnia Good ladies, let’s go. Yes, yes, yes; the senate has letters from the general, wherein he gives my son the whole name of the war: he hath in this action outdone his former deeds doubly Valeria In troth, there’s wondrous things spoke of him. Menenius Wondrous! ay, I warrant you, and not without his true purchasing. Virgilia The gods grant them true! Volumnia True! pow, wow. Menenius True! I’ll be sworn they are true. Where is he wounded? To the Tribunes. God save your good worships! Marcius is coming home: he has more cause to be proud. Where is he wounded? Volumnia I’ the shoulder and i’ the left arm: there will be large cicatrices to show the people, when he shall stand for his place. He received in the repulse of Tarquin seven hurts i’ the body. Menenius One i’ the neck, and two i’ the thigh⁠—there’s nine that I know. Volumnia He had, before this last expedition, twenty-five wounds upon him. Menenius Now it’s twenty-seven: every gash was an enemy’s grave. A shout and flourish. Hark! the trumpets. Volumnia

These are the ushers of Marcius: before him he carries noise, and behind him he leaves tears:

Death, that dark spirit, in’s nervy arm doth lie;
Which, being advanced, declines, and then men die.

A sennet. Trumpets sound. Enter Cominius the general, and Titus Lartius; between them, Coriolanus, crowned with an oaken garland; with Captains and Soldiers, and a Herald. Herald

Know, Rome, that all alone Marcius did fight
Within Corioli gates: where he hath won,
With fame, a name to