*CORIOLANUS.] This play I conjecture to have been written in the year 1609. See An Attempt to afcertain the Order of Shakspeare's Plays, Vol. II. It comprehends a period of about four years, commencing with the feceffion to the Mons Sacer in the year of Rome 262, and ending with the death of Coriolanus, A. U. C. 266. MALONE. The whole history is exactly followed, and many of the principal fpeeches exactly copied, from the Life of Coriolanus in Plutarch. POPE. Caius Marcius Coriolanus, a noble Roman. Titus Lartius,} Generals against the Volscians. Cominius, Menenius Agrippa, Friend to Coriolanus. Young Marcius, Son to Coriolanus. Tullus Aufidius, General of the Volfcians. A Citizen of Antium. Volumnia, Mother to Coriolanus. Valeria, Friend to Virgilia. Gentlewoman, attending Virgilia. Roman and Volfcian Senators, Patricians, Ediles, Lictors, Soldiers, Citizens, Meffengers, Servants to Aufidius, and other Attendants. SCENE, partly in Rome; and partly in the Ter ritories of the Volícians and Antiates. 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 speak. CIT. Speak, fpeak. [Several Speaking at once. 1 CIT. You are all refolved rather to die, than to famish? 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 mifery, 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 I 11. Cit. We are accounted poor citizens; the patricians, good;] Good is here ufed in the mercantile fenfe. So, Touchstone in Eastward Hoe: 66 known good men, well monied." FARMER. Again, in The Merchant of Venice: 2 "Antonio's a good man.' MALONE. - 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 debanchery. But the fignification is, I think, much more modern than the proverb. Rakel, in Islandick, is said to mean a cur-dog, and this was probably the firft ufe among us of the word rake; as lean as a rake is, therefore, as lean as a dog too worthless 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 ufe 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." |