Against all noble sufferance. SIC. COR. Ha! what is that? BRU. Go on: no further. COR. MEN. Pass no further. It will be dangerous to What makes this change? COм. Hath he not pass'd the nobles, and the commons ?7 BRU. Cominius, no. COR. Have I had children's voices? 1 SEN. Tribunes, give way; he shall to the market-place. BRU. The people are incens'd against him. SIC. Or all will fall in broil. COR. Are these your herd?Must these have voices, that can yield them now, And straight disclaim their tongues?-What are your offices? You being their mouths, why rule you not their teeth ?8 7 Hath he not pass'd the nobles, and the commons?] The first folio reads: "noble," and "common. """ The second hascommons. I have not hesitated to reform this passage on the authority of others in the play before us. Thus: STEEVENS. 8 The metaphor is from why rule you not their teeth?] men's setting a bull-dog or mastiff upon any one. MEN. Be calm, be calm. COR. It is a purpos'd thing, and grows by plot, To curb the will of the nobility: Suffer it, and live with such as cannot rule, Call❜t not a plot: BRU. The people cry, you mock'd them; and, of late, When corn was given them gratis, you repin'd; Scandal'd the suppliants for the people; call'd them Time-pleasers, flatterers, foes to nobleness. -- BRU. COR. Have you inform'd them since?" Not to them all. How! I inform them! Not unlike, COR. You are like to do such business. BRU. Each way, to better yours.1 COR. Why then should I be consul? By yon clouds, Let me deserve so ill as you, and make me Your fellow tribune. SIC. You show too much of that," will pass For which the people stir: If you will 9 since?] The old copy-sithence. STEEVENS. 1 Not unlike, Each way, to better yours. &c.] i. e. likely to provide better for the security of the commonwealth than you (whose business it is) will do. To which the reply is pertinent: "Why then should I be consul?" WARBURTON. 2 Sic. You show too much of that, &c.] This speech is given in the old copy to Cominius. It was rightly attributed to Sicinius by Mr. Theobald. MALONE. To where you are bound, you must inquire your way, Which you are out of, with a gentler spirit; Nor yoke with him for tribune. MEN. Let's be calm. COм. The people are abus'd:-Set on.-This palt'ring 3 Becomes not Rome; nor has Coriolanus COR. Tell me of corn! This was my speech, and I will speak't again ; MEN. Not now, not now. 1 SEN. Not in this heat, sir, now. COR. Now, as I live, I will.-My nobler friends, I crave their pardons : For the mutable, rank-scented many,5 let them This palt'ring Becomes not Rome;] That is, this trick of dissimulation; this shuffling: "And be these juggling fiends no more believ'd, Becomes not Rome;] I would read: Becomes not Romans; Macbeth. JOHNSON, Coriolanus being accented on the first, and not the second syllable, in former instances. STEEVENS. 5 rub, laid falsely &c.] Falsely for treacherously. JOHNSON, The metaphor is from the bowling-green. MALONE. many,] i. e. the populace. The Greeks used or moλλOL exactly in the same sense. HOLT WHITE. -1 Therein behold themselves: I say again, In soothing them, we nourish 'gainst our senate The cockle of rebellion, insolence, sedition, Which we ourselves have plough'd for, sow'd and scatter'd, power, b By mingling them with us, the honour'd number; MEN. Well, no more. 1 SEN. No more words, we beseech you. How! no more? COR. As for my country I have shed my blood, Not fearing outward force, so shall my lungs Coin words till their decay, against those meazels,* Which we disdain should tetter us, yet sought The very way to catch them. Bru. You speak o'the people, As if you were a god to punish, not A man of their infirmity. let them Regard me as I do not flatter, and Therein behold themselves:] Let them look in the mirror which I hold up to them, a mirror which does not flatter, and see themselves. JOHNSON. "The cockle of rebellion,] Cockle is a weed which grows up with the corn. The thought is from Sir Thomas North's translation of Plutarch, where it is given as follows: "Moreover, he said, that they nourished against themselves the naughty seed and cockle of insolency and sedition, which had been sowed and scattered abroad among the people," &c. STEEVENS. The cockle of rebellion, insolence, sedition,] Here are three syllables too many. We might read, as in North's Plutarch: "The cockle of insolency and sedition." RITSON. 8 -meazels,] Mesell is used in Pierce Plowman's Vision, for a leper. The same word frequently occurs in The London Prodigal, 1605. STEEVENS. SIC. 'Twere well, We let the people know't. MEN. What, what? his choler? COR. Choler! Were I as patient as the midnight sleep, By Jove, 'twould be my mind. SIC. It is a mind, That shall remain a poison where it is, Not poison any further. COR. Shall remain! Hear you this Triton of the minnows?9 mark you His absolute shall? Сом. COR. 'Twas from the canon.1 2 O good, but most unwise patricians, why, 9 minnows?] i. e. small fry. WARBURTON. A minnow is one of the smallest river fish, called in some counties a pink. JOHNSON. So, in Love's Labour's Lost: " mirth," STEEVENS. that base minnow of thy 'Twas from the canon.] Was contrary to the established rule; it was a form of speech to which he has no right. These words appear to me to imply the very reverse. Cominius means to say, "that what Sicinius had said, was according to the rule" alluding to the absolute veto of the Tribunes, the power of putting a stop to every proceeding: and, accordingly, Coriolanus, instead of disputing this power of the Tribunes, proceeds to argue against the power itself, and to inveigh against the Patricians for having granted it. M. MASON. "O good, but most unwise patricians, &c.] The old copy has -O God, but &c. Mr. Theobald made the correction. Mr. Steevens asks, "when the only authentick ancient copy makes sense, why should we depart from it?"-No one can be more thoroughly convinced of the general propriety of adhering to the old copy than I am; and I trust I have given abundant proofs of my attention to it, by restoring and establishing many ancient |