CORIOLANUS. ACT I. SCENE I. Rome. A Street. Enter a Company of mutinous Citizens, with Staves, Clubs, and other Weapons. 1 CIT. Before we proceed any further, hear me fpeak. CIT. Speak, fpeak. [Several Speaking at once. 1 CIT. You are all resolved rather to die, than to famifh? CIT. Refolved, refolved. 1 CIT. First you know, Caius Marcius is chief enemy to the people. CIT. We know't, we know't. 1 CIT. Let us kill him, and we'll have corn at our own price. Is't a verdict? CIT. No more talking on't; let it be done : away, away. 2 CIT. One word, good citizens. 1 CIT. We are accounted poor citizens; the patricians, good: What authority furfeits on, would relieve us; If they would yield us but the fuperfluity, while it were wholesome, we might guess, they relieved us humanely; but they think, we are too dear: the leannefs that afflicts us, the object of our misery, is as an inventory to particularize their abundance; our fufferance is a gain to them. -Let us revenge this with our pikes,3 ere we be 11. Cit. We are accounted poor citizens; the patricians, good;] Good is here ufed in the mercantile fenfe. So, Touchstone in Eastward Hoe: known good men, well monied." Again, in The Merchant of Venice: "Antonio's a good man." MALONE. FARMER. — but they think, we are too dear:] They think that the charge of maintaining us is more than we are worth. JOHNSON. 3 Let us revenge this with our pikes, ere we become rakes:] It was Shakspeare's defign to make this fellow quibble all the way. But time, who has done greater things, has here stifled a miferable joke; which was then the fame as if it had been now wrote, Let us now revenge this with forks, ere we become rakes: for pikes then fignified the fame as forks do now. So, Jewel in his own tranflation of his Apology, turns Chriftianos ad furcas condemnare, to-To condemn chriftians to the pikes. But the Oxford editor, without knowing any thing of this, has with great fagacity found out the joke, and reads on his own authority, pitch-forks. WARBURTON. It is plain that, in our author's time, we had the proverb, as lean as a rake. Of this proverb the original is obfcure. Rake now fignifies a diffolute man, a man worn out with disease and debauchery. But the fignification is, I think, much more modern than the proverb. Rakel, in Iflandick, is said to mean a cur-dog, and this was probably the first use among us of the word rake; as lean as a rake is, therefore, as lean as a dog too worthlefs to be fed. JOHNSON. It may be fo: and yet I believe the proverb, as lean as a rake, owes its origin fimply to the thin taper form of the inftrument made use of by hay-makers. Chaucer has this fimile in his defcription of the clerk's horfe in the prologue to the Canterbury Tales, Mr. Tyrwhitt's edit. v. 281: "As lene was his hors as is a rake." come rakes for the gods know, I speak this in hunger for bread, not in thirst for revenge. 2 CIT. Would you proceed efpecially against Caius Marcius? CIT. Against him firft ;4 he's a very dog to the commonalty. 2 CIT. Confider you what fervices he has done. for his country? 1 CIT. Very well; and could be content to give him good report for't, but that he pays himself with being proud. 2 CIT. Nay, but speak not maliciously. 1 CIT. I fay unto you, what he hath done famously, he did it to that end: though foft conscienc❜d men can be content to fay, it was for his country, he did it to please his mother, and to be partly proud; which he is, even to the altitude 5 of his virtue. 2 CIT. What he cannot help in his nature, you Spenfer introduces it in the second Book of his Fairy Queen, Canto II: "His body lean and meagre as a rake.” As thin as a whipping-poft, is another proverb of the same kind. Stanyhurst, in his tranflation of the third Book of Virgil, 1582, defcribing Achæmenides, fays: "A meigre leane rake," &c. This paffage, however, feems to countenance Dr. Johnson's fuppofition; as alfo does the following from Churchyard's Tragicall Difcourfe of the Hapleffe Man's Life, 1593: "And though as leane as rake in every rib." STEEVENS. I be 4 Cit. Against him firft; &c.] This speech is in the old play, as here, given to a body of the Citizens fpeaking at once. lieve, it ought to be affigned to the first Citizen. MALONE. to the altitude-] So, in King Henry VIII: "He's traitor to the height." STEEVENS. account a vice in him: You muft in no way fay, he is covetous. 1 CIT. If I must not, I need not be barren of accufations; he hath faults, with furplus, to tire in repetition. [Shouts within.] What shouts are these? The other fide o'the city is rifen: Why stay we prating here? to the Capitol. CIT. Come, come. 1 CIT. Soft; who comes here? Enter MENENIUS AGRIPPA. 2 CIT. Worthy Menenius Agrippa; one that hath always loved the people. 1 CIT. He's one honest enough; 'Would, all the reft were fo! MEN. What work's, my countrymen, in hand? Where go you With bats and clubs? The matter? Speak, I pray you. 1 CIT. Our bufinefs is not unknown to the fe nate; they have had inkling, this fortnight, what we intend to do, which now we'll fhow 'em in deeds. They fay, poor fuitors have ftrong breaths; they shall know, we have strong arms too. MEN. Why, mafters, my good friends, mine honeft neighbours, Will you undo yourselves? Our business &c.] This and all the fubfequent plebeian fpeeches in this scene are given in the old copy to the second Citizen, But the dialogue at the opening of the play shows that it must have been a mistake, and that they ought to be attributed to the first Citizen. The fecond is rather friendly to Coriolanus. MALONE. 1 CIT. We cannot, fir, we are undone already. Thither where more attends 1 CIT. Care for us!-True, indeed!-They ne'er cared for us yet. Suffer us to famish, and their ftore-houses crammed with grain; make edicts for ufury, to fupport ufurers: repeal daily any wholesome act established against the rich; and provide more piercing ftatutes daily, to chain up and reftrain the poor. If the wars eat us not up, they will; and there's all the love they bear us. MEN. Either you must Confefs yourselves wondrous malicious, 7 cracking ten thousand curbs Of more ftrong link afunder, than can ever I will venture To fcale 't a little more.] To fcale is to difperfe. The word |