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.