MENENIUS
What work’s, my countrymen, in hand? Where go you
With bats and clubs? The matter. Speak, I pray you.
⌈FIRST CITIZEN Our business is not unknown to th’ 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.
MENENIUS
Why, masters, my good friends, mine honest
neighbours,
Will you undo yourselves?
⌈FIRST⌉ CITIZEN
We cannot, sir. We are undone already.
MENENIUS
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 attends you, and you slander
The helms o’th’ state, who care for you like fathers,
When you curse them as enemies.
⌈FIRST⌉ CITIZEN 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.
MENENIUS Either you must
Confess yourselves wondrous malicious
Or be accused 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 stale’t a little more.
⌈FIRST⌉ CITIZEN 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.
MENENIUS
There was a time when all the body’s members,
Rebelled against the belly, thus accused it:
That only like a gulf it did remain
I‘th’ midst o’th’ body, idle and unactive,
Still cupboarding the viand, never bearing
Like labour with the rest; where th’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—
⌈FIRST⌉ CITIZEN
Well, sir, what answer made the belly?
MENENIUS
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 th’ discontented members, the mutinous parts
That envied his receipt; even so most fitly
As you malign our senators for that
They are not such as you.
⌈FIRST⌉ CITIZEN Your belly’s answer—what?
The kingly crowned head, the vigilant eye,
The counsellor heart, the arm our soldier,
Our steed the leg, the tongue our trumpeter,
With other muniments and petty helps
In this our fabric, if that they—
MENENIUS What then?
Fore me, this fellow speaks! What then? What then?
⌈FIRST⌉ CITIZEN
Should by the cormorant belly be restrained,
Who is the sink o’th’ body—
MENENIUS Well, what then?
⌈FIRST⌉ CITIZEN
The former agents, if they did complain,
What could the belly answer?
MENENIUS
I will tell you,
If you’ll bestow a small of what you have tittle—
Patience—a while, you’st hear the belly’s answer.
⌈FIRST⌉ CITIZEN
You’re long about it.
MENENIUS Note me this, good friend:
Your most grave belly was deliberate,
Not rash like his accusers, and thus answered:
‘True is it, my incorporate friends,’ quoth he,
‘That I receive the general food at first
Which you do live upon, and fit it is,
Because I am the storehouse and the shop
Of the whole body. But, if you do remember,
I send it through the rivers of your blood
Even to the court, the heart, to th’ seat o’th’ brain;
And through the cranks and offices of man
The strongest nerves and small inferior veins
From me receive that natural competency
Whereby they live. And though that all at once’—
You my good friends, this says the belly, mark me—
⌈FIRST⌉ CITIZEN
Ay, sir, well, well.
MENENIUS ’Though all at once cannot
See what I do deliver out to each,
Yet I can make my audit up that all
From me do back receive the flour of all
And leave me but the bran.’ What say you to’t?
⌈FIRST⌉ CITIZEN
It was an answer. How apply you this?
MENENIUS
The senators of Rome are this good belly,
And you the mutinous members. For examine
Their counsels and their cares, digest things rightly
Touching the weal o’th’ common, you shall find
No public benefit which you receive
But it proceeds or comes from them to you,
And no way from yourselves. What do you think,
You, the great toe of this assembly?
⌈FIRST⌉ CITIZEN
I the great toe? Why the great toe?
MENENIUS
For that, being one o‘th’ lowest, basest, poorest
Of this most wise rebellion, thou goest foremost.
Thou rascal, that art worst in blood to run,
Lead’st first to win some vantage.
But make you ready your stiff bats and clubs.