Being naked, sick, nor fane nor Capitol,

The prayers of priests nor times of sacrifice—

Embargements all of fury—shall lift up

Their rotten privilege and custom ’gainst

My hate to Martius. Where I find him, were it

At home upon my brother’s guard, even there,

Against the hospitable canon, would I

Wash my fierce hand in’s heart. Go you to th’ city.

Learn how ’tis held, and what they are that must

Be hostages for Rome.

A SOLDIER

Will not you go?

AUFIDIUS

I am attended at the cypress grove. I pray you—

’Tis south the city mills—bring me word thither

How the world goes, that to the pace of it

I may spur on my journey.

A SOLDIER

I shall, sir.

Exeunt ⌈Aufidius at one door, Soldiers at another door⌉

2.1 Enter Menenius with the two tribunes of the people, Sicinius and Brutus

MENENIUS The augurer tells me we shall have news tonight.

BRUTUS Good or bad?

MENENIUS Not according to the prayer of the people, for they love not Martius.

SICINIUS Nature teaches beasts to know their friends.

MENENIUS Pray you, who does the wolf love?

SICINIUS The lamb.

MENENIUS Ay, to devour him, as the hungry plebeians would the noble Martius.

BRUTUS He’s a lamb indeed that baas like a bear.

MENENIUS He’s a bear indeed that lives like a lamb. You two are old men. Tell me one thing that I shall ask you.

SICINIUS and BRUTUS Well, sir?

MENENIUS In what enormity is Martius poor in that you two have not in abundance?

BRUTUS He’s poor in no one fault, but stored with all. SICINIUS Especially in pride.

BRUTUS And topping all others in boasting.

MENENIUS This is strange now. Do you two know how you are censured here in the city—I mean of us o’th’ right-hand file. Do you?

SICINIUS and BRUTUS Why, how are we censured?

MENENIUS Because—you talk of pride now—will you not be angry?

SICINIUS and BRUTUS Well, well, sir, well?

MENENIUS Why, ’tis no great matter, for a very little thief of occasion will rob you of a great deal of patience. Give your dispositions the reins, and be angry at your pleasures—at the least, if you take it as a pleasure to you in being so. You blame Martius for being proud?

BRUTUS We do it not alone, sir.

MENENIUS I know you can do very little alone, for your helps are many, or else your actions would grow wondrous single. Your abilities are too infant-like for doing much alone. You talk of pride. O that you could turn your eyes toward the napes of your necks, and make but an interior survey of your good selves! O that you could!

SICINIUS and BRUTUS What then, sir?

MENENIUS Why, then you should discover a brace of unmeriting, proud, violent, testy magistrates, alias fools, as any in Rome.

SICINIUS Menenius, you are known well enough too.

MENENIUS I am known to be a humorous patrician, and one that loves a cup of hot wine with not a drop of allaying Tiber in’t; said to be something imperfect in favouring the first complaint, hasty and tinder-like upon too trivial motion; one that converses more with the buttock of the night than with the forehead of the morning. What I think, I utter, and spend my malice in my breath. Meeting two such wealsmen as you are—I cannot call you Lycurguses—if the drink you give me touch my palate adversely, I make a crooked face at it. I cannot say your worships have delivered the matter well, when I find the ass in compound with the major part of your syllables. And though I must be content to bear with those that say you are reverend grave men, yet they lie deadly that tell you have good faces. If you see this in the map of my microcosm, follows it that I am known well enough too? What harm can your bisson conspectuities glean out of this character, if I be known well enough too?

BRUTUS Come, sir, come, we know you well enough.

MENENIUS You know neither me, yourselves, nor anything. You are ambitious for poor knaves’ caps and legs. You wear out a good wholesome forenoon in hearing a cause between an orange-wife and a faucet-seller, and then rejourn the controversy of threepence to a second day of audience. When you are hearing a matter between party and party, if you chance to be pinched with the colic, you make faces like mummers, set up the bloody flag against all patience, and in roaring for a chamber-pot, dismiss the controversy bleeding, the more entangled by your hearing. All the peace you make in their cause is calling both the parties knaves. You are a pair of strange ones.

BRUTUS Come, come, you are well understood to be a perfecter giber for the table than a necessary bencher in the Capitol.

MENENIUS Our very priests must become mockers if they shall encounter such ridiculous subjects as you are. When you speak best unto the purpose it is not worth the wagging of your beards, and your beards deserve not so honourable a grave as to stuff a botcher’s cushion or to be entombed in an ass’s pack-saddle. Yet you must be saying ‘Martius is proud’, who, in a cheap estimation, is worth all your predecessors since Deucalion, though peradventure some of the best of ‘em were hereditary hangmen. Good e’en to your worships. More of your conversation would infect my brain, being the herdsmen of the beastly plebeians. I will be bold to take my leave of you.

He leaves Brutus and Sicinius, who stand aside.

Enter in haste Volumnia, Virgilia, and Valeria

How now, my as fair as noble ladies—and the moon,

were she earthly, no nobler—whither do you follow

your eyes so fast?

VOLUMNIA Honourable Menenius, my boy Martius approaches. For the love of Juno, let’s go.

MENENIUS Ha, Martius coming home? 100

VOLUMNIA Ay, worthy Menenius, and with most prosperous approbation.

MENENIUS ⌈throwing up his cap⌉ Take my cap, Jupiter, and I thank thee! Hoo, Martius coming home?

VIRGILIA and VALERIA Nay, ’tis true.

VOLUMNIA Look, here’s a letter from him. The state hath another, his wife another, and I think there’s one at home for you.

MENENIUS I will make my very house reel tonight. A letter for me?

VIRGILIA Yes, certain, there’s a letter for you; I saw’t.

MENENIUS A letter for me? It gives me an estate of seven years’ health, in which time I will make a lip at the physician. The most sovereign prescription in Galen is but empiricutic and, to this preservative, of no better report than a horse-drench. Is he not wounded? He was wont to come home wounded.

VIRGILIA O, no, no, no!

VOLUMNIA O, he is wounded, I thank the gods for’t!

MENENIUS So do I, too, if it be not too much. Brings a victory in his pocket, the wounds become him.

VOLUMNIA On’s brows, Menenius. He comes the third time home with the oaken garland.

MENENIUS Has he disciplined Aufidius soundly? 124

VOLUMNIA Titus Lartius writes they fought together, but Aufidius got off.

MENENIUS And ’twas time for him too, I’ll warrant him that. An he had stayed by him, I would not have been so fidiussed for all the chests in Corioles and the gold that’s in them. Is the senate possessed of this?