Act 2. Scene II - Page 2

think
Rather our state's defective for requital
Than we to stretch it out.

To the Tribunes

Masters o' the people,
We do request your kindest ears, and after,
Your loving motion toward the common body,
To yield what passes here.

SICINIUS
We are convented
Upon a pleasing treaty, and have hearts
Inclinable to honour and advance
The theme of our assembly.

BRUTUS
Which the rather
We shall be blest to do, if he remember
A kinder value of the people than
He hath hereto prized them at.

MENENIUS
That's off, that's off;
I would you rather had been silent. Please you
To hear Cominius speak?

BRUTUS
Most willingly;
But yet my caution was more pertinent
Than the rebuke you give it.

MENENIUS
He loves your people
But tie him not to be their bedfellow.
Worthy Cominius, speak.

CORIOLANUS offers to go away

Nay, keep your place.

First Senator
Sit, Coriolanus; never shame to hear
What you have nobly done.

CORIOLANUS
Your horror's pardon:
I had rather have my wounds to heal again
Than hear say how I got them.

BRUTUS
Sir, I hope
My words disbench'd you not.

CORIOLANUS
No, sir: yet oft,
When blows have made me stay, I fled from words.
You soothed not, therefore hurt not: but
your people,
I love them as they weigh.

MENENIUS
Pray now, sit down.

CORIOLANUS
I had rather have one scratch my head i' the sun
When the alarum were struck than idly sit
To hear my nothings monster'd.

Exit

MENENIUS
Masters of the people,
Your multiplying spawn how can he flatter--
That's thousand to one good one--when you now see
He had rather venture all his limbs for honour
Than one on's ears to hear it? Proceed, Cominius.

COMINIUS
I shall lack voice: the deeds of Coriolanus
Should not be utter'd feebly. It is held
That valour is the chiefest virtue, and
Most dignifies the haver: if it be,
The man I speak of cannot in the world
Be singly counterpoised. At sixteen years,
When Tarquin made a head for Rome, he fought
Beyond the mark of others: our then dictator,
Whom with all praise I point at, saw him fight,
When with his Amazonian chin he drove
The bristled lips before him: be bestrid
An o'er-press'd Roman and i' the consul's view
Slew three opposers: Tarquin's self he met,
And struck him on his knee: in that day's feats,
When he might act the woman in the scene,
He proved best man i' the field, and for his meed
Was brow-bound with the oak. His pupil age
Man-enter'd thus, he waxed like a sea,
And in the brunt of seventeen battles since