1 Sol. He's the devil. Auf. Bolder, though not so subtle: My valour's poison'd1, With only suffering stain by him; for him Wash my fierce hand in his heart. Go you to the city; 1 Sol. Will not you go? Auf. I am attended at the cypress grove: I pray you ('Tis south the city mills 8), bring me word thither How the world goes; that to the pace of it I may spur on my journey. 1 Sol. I shall, sir. [Exeunt. 4 Mr. Tyrwhitt proposed to read :— And the context seems to require this emendation. To mischief him my valour should deviate from its native generosity.' 5 Embarquements, as appears from Cotgrave and Sherwood, meant not only an embarkation, but an embargoing; which is evidently the sense of the word in this passage. Thus Sherwood: To imbark, to imbargue. Embarquer. An imbarking, an imbarguing. Embarquement. In Cole's English Dictionary, 1701, the word is given imbarge or embarge. 6 i. e. in my own house, with my brother posted to protect him. 7 Attended is waited for. So in Twelfth Night : Thy intercepter attends thee at the orchard end.' 8 Malone observes that Shakspeare often introduces these minute local descriptions, probably to give an air of truth to his pieces. The poet attended not to the anachronism of mills near Antium. Lydgate has placed corn-mills near to Troy. ACT II. SCENE I. Rome. A Publick Place. Enter MENENIUS, SICINIUS, and BRUTUS. Men. The augurer tells me, we shall have news to-night. Bru. Good or bad? Men. Not according to the prayer of the people, for they love not Marcius. Sic. Nature teaches beasts to know their friends. Men. Ay, to devour him; as the hungry plebeians would the noble Marcius. Bru. He's a lamb indeed, that baes like a bear. Men. He's a bear indeed, that lives like a lamb. You two are old men; tell me one thing that I shall you. ask Both Trib. Well, sir. Men. In what enormity is Marcius poor in, that you two have not in abundance? 1 When the tribune, in reply to Menenius's remark on the people's hate to Coriolanus, had observed that 'even beasts know their friends,' Menenius asks, 'whom does the wolf love?' implying that there are beasts which love nobody, and that among those beasts are the people. 2 It has been already observed that pleonasms of this kind were by no means unfrequent in Shakspeare's age. Thus in As You Like It, Act ii. Sc. 7 :- The scene wherein we play in.' Malone has cited several instances, one of which from a Letter of Lord Burghley to the Earl of Shrewsbury, among the Weymouth MSS. is to our present purpose: I did earnestly enqre of hym in what estate he stood in for discharge of his former debts.' See vol. iii. p. 148, note 20. Bru. He's poor in no one fault, but stored with all. Sic. Especially, in pride. Bru. And topping all others in boasting. Men. This is strange now: Do you two know how you are censured here in the city, I mean of us o' the right hand file? Do you? Both Trib. Why, how are we censured? not be angry? you Both Trib. Well, well, sir, well. -Will you Men. Why, 'tis no great matter; for a very little thief of occasion will rob you of a great deal of patience give your disposition 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 Marcius for being proud! Bru. We do it not alone, sir. Men. 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 infantlike, for doing much alone. You talk of pride: 0, that you could turn your eyes towards the napes of your necks3, and make but an interior survey of your good selves! O, that you could! Bru. What then, sir? Men. Why, then you should discover a brace of unmeriting, proud, violent, testy magistrates (alias fools), as any in Rome. Sic. Menenius, you are known well enough too. Men. I am known to be a humorous patrician, and one that loves a cup of hot wine with not a 3 With allusion to the fable, which says, that every man has a bag hanging before him, in which he puts his neighbour's faults; and another behind him, in which he stows his own. 4 drop of allaying Tyber 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 5. What I think, I utter; and spend my malice in my breath: Meeting two such weals-men 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 6, follows it, that I am known well enough too? What harm can your bisson7 conspectuities glean out of this character, if I be known well enough too? Bru. Come, sir, come, we know you well enough. Men. You know neither me, yourselves, nor any thing. You are ambitious for poor knaves' caps and legs; you wear out a good wholesome fore 4 Lovelace, in his Verses to Althea, from Prison, has borrowed this expression: When flowing cups run swiftly round, With no allaying Thames, &c. 5 Rather a late lier down than an early riser. So in Love's Labour's Lost:-'In the posteriors of this day, which the rude multitude call the afternoon.' Again in King Henry IV. Part' II. : Thou art a summer bird, Which even in the haunch of Winter sings 6 So in King Lear: Strives in this little world of men.' Microcosm is the title of a poem by John Davies of Hereford. 7 Bisson is blind. Thus in Hamlet: • Ran barefoot up and down, threat'ning the flames 8 That is, for their obeisance showed by bowing to you. noon, in hearing a cause between an orange-wife and a fosset-seller; and then rejourn the controversy of three-pence to a second day of audience 9. -When you are hearing a matter between party and party, if you chance to be pinched with the colick, you make faces like mummers; set up the bloody flag against all patience 10; 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. Bru. Come, come, you are well understood to be a perfecter giber for the table, than a necessary bencher in the Capitol. Men. Our very priests must become mockers, if they shall encounter such ridiculous subjects as you are11. 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, Marcius is proud; who, in a cheap estimation, is worth all your predecessors, since Deucalion ; though peradventure, some of the best of them were hereditary hangmen. Good e'en to your worships; more of your conversation would infect my brain, being the herdsmen of the beastly plebeians 12: I will be bold to take my leave of you. [BRU. and SIC. retire to the back of the Scene. 9 It appears from this whole speech that Shakspeare mistook the office of præfectus urbis for the tribune's office. 10 That is, declare war against patience. Johnson justly observes, that there is not wit enough in this satire to recompense its grossness.' 11 So in Much Ado About Nothing: Courtesy itself must convert to disdain, if you come in her presence.' 12 As kings are called ποίμενες λάων. |