1    Wine, wine, wine! What service
2    is here! I think our fellows are asleep.

3    Where's Cotus? my master calls
4    for him. Cotus!

5    A goodly house: the feast smells well; but I
6    Appear not like a guest.

7    What would you have, friend? whence are you?
8    Here's no place for you: pray, go to the door.

9    I have deserved no better entertainment,
10   In being Coriolanus.

11   Whence are you, sir? Has the porter his eyes in his
12   head; that he gives entrance to such companions?
13   Pray, get you out.

14   Away!

15   Away! get you away.

16   Now thou'rt troublesome.

17   Are you so brave? I'll have you talked with anon.

18   What fellow's this?

19   A strange one as ever I looked on: I cannot get him
20   out of the house: prithee, call my master to him.

21   What have you to do here, fellow? Pray you, avoid
22   the house.

23   Let me but stand; I will not hurt your hearth.

24   What are you?

25   A gentleman.

26   A marvellous poor one.

27   True, so I am.

28   Pray you, poor gentleman, take up some other
29   station; here's no place for you; pray you, avoid: come.

30   Follow your function, go, and batten on cold bits.

31   What, you will not? Prithee, tell my master what a
32   strange guest he has here.

33   And I shall.

34   Where dwellest thou?

35   Under the canopy.

36   Under the canopy!

37   Ay.

38   Where's that?

39   I' the city of kites and crows.

40   I' the city of kites and crows! What an ass it is!
41   Then thou dwellest with daws too?

42   No, I serve not thy master.

43   How, sir! do you meddle with my master?

44   Ay; 'tis an honester service than to meddle with thy
45   mistress. Thou pratest, and pratest; serve with thy
46   trencher, hence!

47   Where is this fellow?

48   Here, sir: I'ld have beaten him like a dog, but for
49   disturbing the lords within.

50   Whence comest thou? what wouldst thou? thy name?
51   Why speak'st not? speak, man: what's thy name?

52   If, Tullus,
Unmuffling
53   Not yet thou knowest me, and, seeing me, dost not
54   Think me for the man I am, necessity
55   Commands me name myself.

56   What is thy name?

57   A name unmusical to the Volscians' ears,
58   And harsh in sound to thine.

59   Say, what's thy name?
60   Thou hast a grim appearance, and thy face
61   Bears a command in't; though thy tackle's torn.
62   Thou show'st a noble vessel: what's thy name?

63   Prepare thy brow to frown: know'st
64   thou me yet?

65   I know thee not: thy name?

66   My name is Caius Marcius, who hath done
67   To thee particularly and to all the Volsces
68   Great hurt and mischief; thereto witness may
69   My surname, Coriolanus: the painful service,
70   The extreme dangers and the drops of blood
71   Shed for my thankless country are requited
72   But with that surname; a good memory,
73   And witness of the malice and displeasure
74   Which thou shouldst bear me: only that name remains;
75   The cruelty and envy of the people,
76   Permitted by our dastard nobles, who
77   Have all forsook me, hath devour'd the rest;
78   And suffer'd me by the voice of slaves to be
79   Whoop'd out of Rome. Now this extremity
80   Hath brought me to thy hearth; not out of hope--
81   Mistake me not--to save my life, for if
82   I had fear'd death, of all the men i' the world
83   I would have 'voided thee, but in mere spite,
84   To be full quit of those my banishers,
85   Stand I before thee here. Then if thou hast
86   A heart of wreak in thee, that wilt revenge
87   Thine own particular wrongs and stop those maims
88   Of shame seen through thy country, speed
89   thee straight,
90   And make my misery serve thy turn: so use it
91   That my revengeful services may prove
92   As benefits to thee, for I will fight
93   Against my canker'd country with the spleen
94   Of all the under fiends. But if so be
95   Thou darest not this and that to prove more fortunes
96   Thou'rt tired, then, in a word, I also am
97   Longer to live most weary, and present
98   My throat to thee and to thy ancient malice;
99   Which not to cut would show thee but a fool,
100  Since I have ever follow'd thee with hate,
101  Drawn tuns of blood out of thy country's breast,
102  And cannot live but to thy shame, unless
103  It be to do thee service.

104  O Marcius, Marcius!
105  Each word thou hast spoke hath weeded from my heart
106  A root of ancient envy. If Jupiter
107  Should from yond cloud speak divine things,
108  And say 'Tis true,' I'ld not believe them more
109  Than thee, all noble Marcius. Let me twine
110  Mine arms about that body, where against
111  My grained ash an hundred times hath broke
112  And scarr'd the moon with splinters: here I clip
113  The anvil of my sword, and do contest
114  As hotly and as nobly with thy love
115  As ever in ambitious strength I did
116  Contend against thy valour. Know thou first,
117  I loved the maid I married; never man
118  Sigh'd truer breath; but that I see thee here,
119  Thou noble thing! more dances my rapt heart
120  Than when I first my wedded mistress saw
121  Bestride my threshold. Why, thou Mars! I tell thee,
122  We have a power on foot; and I had purpose
123  Once more to hew thy target from thy brawn,
124  Or lose mine arm fort: thou hast beat me out
125  Twelve several times, and I have nightly since
126  Dreamt of encounters 'twixt thyself and me;
127  We have been down together in my sleep,
128  Unbuckling helms, fisting each other's throat,
129  And waked half dead with nothing. Worthy Marcius,
130  Had we no quarrel else to Rome, but that
131  Thou art thence banish'd, we would muster all
132  From twelve to seventy, and pouring war
133  Into the bowels of ungrateful Rome,
134  Like a bold flood o'er-bear. O, come, go in,
135  And take our friendly senators by the hands;
136  Who now are here, taking their leaves of me,
137  Who am prepared against your territories,
138  Though not for Rome itself.

139  You bless me, gods!

140  Therefore, most absolute sir, if thou wilt have
141  The leading of thine own revenges, take
142  The one half of my commission; and set down--
143  As best thou art experienced, since thou know'st
144  Thy country's strength and weakness,--thine own ways;
145  Whether to knock against the gates of Rome,
146  Or rudely visit them in parts remote,
147  To fright them, ere destroy. But come in:
148  Let me commend thee first to those that shall
149  Say yea to thy desires. A thousand welcomes!
150  And more a friend than e'er an enemy;
151  Yet, Marcius, that was much. Your hand: most welcome!

152  Here's a strange alteration!

153  By my hand, I had thought to have strucken him with
154  a cudgel; and yet my mind gave me his clothes made a
155  false report of him.

156  What an arm he has! he turned me about with his
157  finger and his thumb, as one would set up a top.

158  Nay, I knew by his face that there was something in
159  him: he had, sir, a kind of face, methought,--I
160  cannot tell how to term it.

161  He had so; looking as it were--would I were hanged,
162  but I thought there was more in him than I could think.

163  So did I, I'll be sworn: he is simply the rarest
164  man i' the world.

165  I think he is: but a greater soldier than he you wot on.

166  Who, my master?

167  Nay, it's no matter for that.

168  Worth six on him.

169  Nay, not so neither: but I take him to be the
170  greater soldier.

171  Faith, look you, one cannot tell how to say that:
172  for the defence of a town, our general is excellent.

173  Ay, and for an assault too.

174  O slaves, I can tell you news,-- news, you rascals!

175  What, what, what? let's partake.

176  I would not be a Roman, of all nations; I had as
177  lieve be a condemned man.

178  Wherefore? wherefore?

179  Why, here's he that was wont to thwack our general,
180  Caius Marcius.

181  Why do you say 'thwack our general '?

182  I do not say 'thwack our general;' but he was always
183  good enough for him.

184  Come, we are fellows and friends: he was ever too
185  hard for him; I have heard him say so himself.

186  He was too hard for him directly, to say the troth
187  on't: before Corioli he scotched him and notched
188  him like a carbon ado.

189  An he had been cannibally given, he might have
190  broiled and eaten him too.

191  But, more of thy news?

192  Why, he is so made on here within, as if he were son
193  and heir to Mars; set at upper end o' the table; no
194  question asked him by any of the senators, but they
195  stand bald before him: our general himself makes a
196  mistress of him: sanctifies himself with's hand and
197  turns up the white o' the eye to his discourse. But
198  the bottom of the news is that our general is cut i'
199  the middle and but one half of what he was
200  yesterday; for the other has half, by the entreaty
201  and grant of the whole table. He'll go, he says,
202  and sowl the porter of Rome gates by the ears: he
203  will mow all down before him, and leave his passage polled.

204  And he's as like to do't as any man I can imagine.

205  Do't! he will do't; for, look you, sir, he has as
206  many friends as enemies; which friends, sir, as it
207  were, durst not, look you, sir, show themselves, as
208  we term it, his friends whilst he's in directitude.

209  Directitude! what's that?

210  But when they shall see, sir, his crest up again,
211  and the man in blood, they will out of their
212  burrows, like conies after rain, and revel all with
213  him.

214  But when goes this forward?

215  To-morrow; to-day; presently; you shall have the
216  drum struck up this afternoon: 'tis, as it were, a
217  parcel of their feast, and to be executed ere they
218  wipe their lips.

219  Why, then we shall have a stirring world again.
220  This peace is nothing, but to rust iron, increase
221  tailors, and breed ballad-makers.

222  Let me have war, say I; it exceeds peace as far as
223  day does night; it's spritely, waking, audible, and
224  full of vent. Peace is a very apoplexy, lethargy;
225  mulled, deaf, sleepy, insensible; a getter of more
226  bastard children than war's a destroyer of men.

227  'Tis so: and as war, in some sort, may be said to
228  be a ravisher, so it cannot be denied but peace is a
229  great maker of cuckolds.

230  Ay, and it makes men hate one another.

231  Reason; because they then less need one another.
232  The wars for my money. I hope to see Romans as cheap
233  as Volscians. They are rising, they are rising.

234  In, in, in, in!