FIRST SERVINGMAN
Wine, wine, wine! What service is here? I think our fellows are asleep.
SECOND SERVINGMAN
Where’s Cotus? My master calls for him. Cotus!
CORIOLANUS
A goodly house. The feast smells well, but I
Appear not like a guest.
FIRST SERVINGMAN
What would you have, friend? are you? Here’s no place for you. Pray go to the door.
CORIOLANUS
I have deserved no better entertainment
In being Coriolanus.
SECOND SERVINGMAN
are you, sir?—Has the porter his eyes in his head, that he gives entrance to such companions?—Pray, get you out.
CORIOLANUS
Away!
SECOND SERVINGMAN
Away? Get you away.
CORIOLANUS
Now th’ art troublesome.
SECOND SERVINGMAN
Are you so brave? I’ll have you talked with .
THIRD SERVINGMAN
What fellow’s this?
FIRST SERVINGMAN
A strange one as ever I looked on. I cannot get him out o’ th’ house. call my master to him.
THIRD SERVINGMAN
What have you to do here, fellow? Pray you, avoid the house.
CORIOLANUS
Let me but stand. I will not hurt your hearth.
THIRD SERVINGMAN
What are you?
CORIOLANUS
A gentleman.
THIRD SERVINGMAN
A marv’llous poor one.
CORIOLANUS
True, so I am.
THIRD SERVINGMAN
Pray you, poor gentleman, take up some other station. Here’s no place for you. Pray you, avoid. Come.
CORIOLANUS
Follow your function, go, and batten on cold bits.
THIRD SERVINGMAN
What, you will not?—Prithee, tell my master what a strange guest he has here.
SECOND SERVINGMAN
And I shall.
THIRD SERVINGMAN
Where dwell’st ?
CORIOLANUS
Under the canopy.
THIRD SERVINGMAN
Under the canopy?
CORIOLANUS
Ay.
THIRD SERVINGMAN
Where’s that?
CORIOLANUS
I’ th’ city of kites and crows.
THIRD SERVINGMAN
I’ th’ city of kites and crows? What an ass it is! Then dwell’st with daws too?
CORIOLANUS
No, I serve not master.
THIRD SERVINGMAN
How, sir? Do you meddle with my master?
CORIOLANUS
Ay, an honester service than to meddle with mistress. prat’st and prat’st. Serve with trencher, !
AUFIDIUS
Where is this fellow?
SECOND SERVINGMAN
Here, sir. I’d have beaten him like a dog, but for disturbing the lords within.
AUFIDIUS
com’st ? What ?
name? Why speak’st not? Speak, man. What’s name?
CORIOLANUS
If, Tullus,
Not yet know’st me, and, seeing me, not
Think me for the man I am, necessity
Commands me name myself.
AUFIDIUS
What is name?
CORIOLANUS
A name unmusical to the Volscians’ ears
And harsh in sound to .
AUFIDIUS
Say, what’s name?
has a grim appearance, and face
Bears a command in’t. Though tackle’s torn,
show’st a noble vessel. What’s name?
CORIOLANUS
Prepare brow to frown. Know’st me yet?
AUFIDIUS
I know not. name?
CORIOLANUS
My name is Caius Martius, who done
To particularly and to all the Volsces
Great hurt and mischief; thereto witness may
My surname Coriolanus. The painful service,
The extreme dangers, and the drops of blood
Shed for my thankless country are requited
But with that surname, a good memory
And witness of the malice and displeasure
Which bear me. Only that name remains.
The cruelty and envy of the people,
Permitted by our dastard nobles, who
Have all forsook me, devoured the rest,
And suffered me by th’ voice of slaves to be
Whooped out of Rome. Now this extremity
brought me to hearth, not out of hope—
Mistake me not—to save my life; for if
I had feared death, of all the men i’ th’ world
I would have ’voided , but in mere spite,
To be full quit of those my banishers,
Stand I before here. Then if
A heart of wreak in , that wilt revenge
own particular wrongs and stop those maims
Of shame seen through country, speed straight
And make my misery serve turn. So use it
That my revengeful services may prove
As benefits to , for I will fight
Against my cankered country with the spleen
Of all the under fiends. But if so be
dar’st not this, and that to prove more fortunes
’rt tired, then, in a word, I also am
Longer to live most weary, and present
My throat to and to ancient malice,
Which not to cut would show but a fool,
Since I have ever followed with hate,
Drawn tuns of blood out of country’s breast,
And cannot live but to shame, unless
It be to do service.
AUFIDIUS
O Martius, Martius,
Each word spoke weeded from my heart
A root of ancient envy. If Jupiter
Should from yond cloud speak divine things
And say true, I’d not believe them more
Than , all-noble Martius. Let me twine
Mine arms about that body, whereagainst
My grained ash an hundred times broke
And scarred the moon with splinters. Here I clip
The anvil of my sword and do contest
As hotly and as nobly with love
As ever in ambitious strength I did
Contend against valour. Know first,
I loved the maid I married; never man
Sighed truer breath. But that I see here,
noble thing, more dances my rapt heart
Than when I first my wedded mistress saw
Bestride my threshold. Why, Mars, I tell
We have a power on foot, and I had purpose
Once more to hew target from brawn
Or lose mine arm for’t. beat me out
Twelve several times, and I have nightly since
Dreamt of encounters ’twixt thyself and me;
We have been down together in my sleep,
Unbuckling helms, fisting each other’s throat,
And waked half dead with nothing. Worthy Martius,
Had we no other quarrel else to Rome but that
art banished, we would muster all
From twelve to seventy and, pouring war
Into the bowels of ungrateful Rome,
Like a bold flood o’erbear ’t. O, come, go in,
And take our friendly senators by th’ hands,
Who now are here, taking their leaves of me,
Who am prepared against your territories,
Though not for Rome itself.
CORIOLANUS
You bless me, gods!
AUFIDIUS
Therefore, most absolute sir, if wilt have
The leading of own revenges, take
Th’ one half of my commission and set down—
As best art experienced, since know’st
country’s strength and weakness—thine own ways,
Whether to knock against the gates of Rome,
Or rudely visit them in parts remote
To fright them destroy. But come in.
Let me commend first to those that shall
Say yea to desires. A thousand welcomes!
And more a friend than e’er an enemy—
Yet, Martius, that was much. Your hand. Most welcome!
FIRST SERVINGMAN
Here’s a strange alteration!
SECOND SERVINGMAN
By my hand, I had thought to have strucken him with a cudgel, and yet my mind gave me his clothes made a false report of him.
FIRST SERVINGMAN
What an arm he has! He turned me about with his finger and his thumb as one would set up a top.
SECOND SERVINGMAN
Nay, I knew by his face that there was something in him. He had, sir, a kind of face, methought—I cannot tell how to term it.
FIRST SERVINGMAN
He had so, looking as it were—Would I were hanged, but I thought there was more in him than I could think.
SECOND SERVINGMAN
So did I, I’ll be sworn. He is simply the rarest man i’ th’ world.
FIRST SERVINGMAN
I think he is. But a greater soldier than he you wot one.
SECOND SERVINGMAN
Who, my master?
FIRST SERVINGMAN
Nay, it’s no matter for that.
SECOND SERVINGMAN
Worth six on him.
FIRST SERVINGMAN
Nay, not so neither. But I take him to be the greater soldier.
SECOND SERVINGMAN
Faith, look you, one cannot tell how to say that. For the defence of a town our general is excellent.
FIRST SERVINGMAN
Ay, and for an assault too.
THIRD SERVINGMAN
O slaves, I can tell you news, news, you rascals!
THIRD SERVINGMAN
FIRST and SECOND SERVINGMAN.
What, what, what? Let’s partake.
THIRD SERVINGMAN
I would not be a Roman, of all nations; I had as lief be a condemned man.
THIRD SERVINGMAN
FIRST and SECOND SERVINGMAN.
? ?
THIRD SERVINGMAN
Why, here’s he that was wont to thwack our general, Caius Martius.
FIRST SERVINGMAN
Why do you say, “thwack our general”?
THIRD SERVINGMAN
I do not say “thwack our general,” but he was always good enough for him.
SECOND SERVINGMAN
Come, we are fellows and friends. He was ever too hard for him; I have heard him say so himself.
FIRST SERVINGMAN
He was too hard for him directly, to say the troth on’t, before Corioles; he scotched him and notched him like a carbonado.
SECOND SERVINGMAN
An he had been cannibally given, he might have boiled and eaten him too.
FIRST SERVINGMAN
But, more of news?
THIRD SERVINGMAN
Why, he is so made on here within as if he were son and heir to Mars; set at upper end o’ th’ table; no question asked him by any of the senators but they stand bald before him. Our general himself makes a mistress of him, sanctifies himself with’s hand, and turns up the white o’ th’ eye to his discourse. But the bottom of the news is, our general is cut i’ th’ middle and but one half of what he was yesterday, for the other has half, by the entreaty and grant of the whole table. He’ll go, he says, and sowl the porter of Rome gates by th’ ears. He will mow all down before him and leave his passage polled.
SECOND SERVINGMAN
And he’s as like to do’t as any man I can imagine.
THIRD SERVINGMAN
Do’t? He will do’t! For look you, sir, he has as many friends as enemies, which friends, sir, as it were, durst not, look you, sir, show themselves, as we term it, his friends whilest he’s in directitude.
FIRST SERVINGMAN
Directitude? What’s that?
THIRD SERVINGMAN
But when they shall see, sir, his crest up again, and the man in blood, they will out of their burrows like coneys after rain, and revel all with him.
FIRST SERVINGMAN
But when goes this forward?
THIRD SERVINGMAN
Tomorrow, today, . You shall have the drum struck up this afternoon. as it were parcel of their feast, and to be executed they wipe their lips.
SECOND SERVINGMAN
Why then, we shall have a stirring world again. This peace is nothing but to rust iron, increase tailors, and breed ballad-makers.
FIRST SERVINGMAN
Let me have war, say I. It exceeds peace as far as day does night. It’s sprightly walking, audible, and full of vent. Peace is a very apoplexy, lethargy; mulled, deaf, sleepy, insensible; a getter of more bastard children than war’s a destroyer of men.
SECOND SERVINGMAN
so, and as war in some sort, may be said to be a ravisher, so it cannot be denied but peace is a great maker of cuckolds.
FIRST SERVINGMAN
Ay, and it makes men hate one another.
THIRD SERVINGMAN
Reason: because they then less need one another. The wars for my money! I hope to see Romans as cheap as Volscians. They are rising; they are rising.
ALL
In, in, in, in!