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CORIOLANUS.

ACT I.

SCENE I.-Rome. A Street. Enter a Company of mutinous Citizens, with staves, clubs, and other weapons.

1 Citizen.

BEFORE we proceed any further, hear me speak.

[Several speaking at once.

Cits. Speak, speak. 1 Cit. You are all resolved rather to die, than to famish? Cits. Resolved, resolved.

1 Cit. First you know, Caius Marcius is chief enemy to the people.

Cits. 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 ?

Cits. 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 surfeits on, would relieve us; If they would yield us but the superfluity, while it were wholesome, we might guess, they relieved us humanely; but they think, we are too dear: the leanness that afflicts us, the object of our misery, is as an inventory to particularize their abundance; our sufferance is a gain to them. Let us revenge this with our pikes, ere we become rakes: for the gods know, I speak this in hunger for bread, not in thirst for revenge.

2 Cit. Would you proceed especially against Caius Marcius?

Cits. Against him first; he's a very dog to the commonalty.

[1] Good is here used in the mercantile sense. FARMER.

[2] They think that the charge of maintaining us is more than we are worth.

JOHNSON.

[3] It is plain that, in our author's time, we had the proverb, as lean as a rake. Of this proverb the original is obscure. Rake now signifies a dissolute man, a man worn out with disease and debauchery. But the signification is, I think, much more modern than the proverb. Rakel, in Islandick, 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 worthless to be fed. JOHNSON.------It may be so: and yet I believe the proverb, as lean as a rake, owes its original simply to the thin taper form of the instrument made use of by hay-makers. As thin as a whipping-post, is another proverb of the same kind.

STEEVENS.

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2 Cit. Consider you what services 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 say unto you, what he hath done famously, he did it to that end: though soft conscienc'd men can be content to say, it was for his country, he did it to please his mother, and to be partly proud; which he is, even to the altitude of his virtue.

2 Cit. What he cannot help in his nature, you account a vice in him: You must in no way say, he is covetous.

1 Cit. If I must not, I need not be barren of accusations; he hath faults, with surplus, to tire in repetition. [Shouts within.] What shouts are these? The other side o'the city is risen: Why stay we prating here? to the Capitol.

Cits. 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 rest were so!

Men. What work's, my countrymen, in hand? Where

go you

With bats and clubs ? The matter? Speak, I pray you. 1 Cit. Our business is not unknown to the senate; they have had inkling, this fortnight, what we intend to do, which now we'll show 'em in deeds. They say, poor suitors have strong breaths; they shall know, we have strong arms too.

Men. Why, masters, my good friends, mine honest

neighbours, Will you undo yourselves?

1 Cit. We cannot, sir, we are undone already.
Men. I tell you, friends, most charitable care
Have the patricians of you. For your wants,
Your suffering in this dearth, you may as well
Strike at the heaven with your staves, as lift them
Against the Roman state; whose course will on
The way it takes, cracking ten thousand curbs
Of more strong link asunder, than can ever

Appear in your impediment: For the dearth,
The gods, not the patricians, make it; and
Your knees to them, not arms, must help. Alack,

You are transported by calamity

Thither where more attend you; and you slander
The helms o'the state, who care for you like fathers,
When you curse them as enemies.

1 Cit. Care for us !-True, indeed!-They ne'er cared for us yet. Suffer us to famish, and their store-houses crammed with grain; make edicts for usury, to support usurers: repeal daily any wholesome act established against the rich; and provide more piercing statutes daily, to chain up and restrain the poor. If the wars. eat us not up, they will; and there's all the love they bear us.

Men. Either you must
Confess yourselves wond'rous malicious,
Or be accus'd of folly. I shall tell you
A pretty tale; it may be, you have heard it ;
But, since it serves my purpose, I will venture
To scale 't a little more.

1 Cit. Well, I'll hear it, sir: yet you must not think to fob off our disgrace with a tale: but, an't please you, deliver.

Men. There was a time, when all the body's members
Rebell'd against the belly; thus accus'd it :--
That only like a gulf it did remain

I' the midst o'the body, idle and inactive,
Still cupboarding the viand, never bearing

Like labour with the rest; where the other instruments
Did see, and hear, devise, instruct, walk, feel,
And, mutually participate, did minister
Unto the appetite and affection common
Of the whole body. The belly answered,-

1 Cit. Well, sir, what answer made the belly?
Men. Sir, I shall tell you.--With a kind of smile,
Which ne'er came from the lungs, but even thus,
(For, look you, I may make the belly smile,
As well as speak,) it tauntingly replied

To the discontented members, the mutinous parts

[4] To scale is to disperse. The word is still used in the North, where they say scale the corn, i. e. scatter it: scale the muck well, i. e. spread the dung well. STEEVENS.

[5] Disgraces are hardships, injuries. JOHNSON.

[6] Where for whereas. JOHNSON.

(7) With a smile not indicating pleasure, but contempt.

JOHNSON