• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 18926 0

I make a crooked face at it. I cannot say your worships have deliver'd 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 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 any thing. 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 fosset-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 pinch'd 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 entomb'd in an ass's pack-saddle. Yet you must be saying Marcius 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. God-den 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. [BRUTUS and SICINIUS go aside]

Enter 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 Marcius approaches; for the

love of Juno, let's go.

MENENIUS.

Ha! Marcius coming home?

VOLUMNIA.

Ay, worthy Menenius, and with most prosperous approbation.

MENENIUS.

Take my cap, Jupiter, and I thank thee. Hoo!

Marcius coming home!

VOLUMNIA, VIRGILIA. 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 to-night. 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 disciplin'd Aufidius soundly?

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 stay'd by him, I would not have been so fidius'd for all the

chests in Corioli and the gold that's in them. Is the Senate possess'd of this?

VOLUMNIA.

Good ladies, let's go. Yes, yes, yes: the Senate has

letters from the general, wherein he gives my son the whole name

of the war; he hath in this action outdone his former deeds doubly.

VALERIA.

In troth, there's wondrous things spoke of him.

MENENIUS.

Wondrous! Ay, I warrant you, and not without his true purchasing.

VIRGILIA.

The gods grant