The augurer tells me we shall have news tonight.

Good or bad?

Not according to the prayer of the people, for they love not Martius.

Nature teaches beasts to know their friends.

Pray you, who does the wolf love?

The lamb.

Ay, to devour him, as the hungry plebeians would the noble Martius.

He’s a lamb indeed, that baas like a bear.

He’s a bear indeed, that lives like a lamb. You two are old men; tell me one thing that I shall ask you.

Well, sir.

In what enormity is Martius poor in, that you two have not in abundance?

He’s poor in no one fault, but stored with all.

Especially in pride.

And topping all others in boasting.

This is strange now. Do you two know how you are censured here in the city, I mean of us o’ th’ right-hand file, do you?

Why, how are we censured?

Because you talk of pride now, will you not be angry?

Well, well, sir, well?

Why, ’tis no great matter; for a very little thief of occasion will rob you of a great deal of patience. Give your dispositions 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 Martius for being proud.

We do it not alone, sir.

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. O that you could turn your eyes toward the napes of your necks and make but an interior survey of your good selves! O, that you could!

What then, sir?

Why, then you should discover a brace of unmeriting, proud, violent, testy magistrates, alias fools, as any in Rome.

Menenius, you are known well enough, too.

I am known to be a humorous patrician and one that loves a cup of hot wine with not a drop of allaying Tiber 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. What I think I utter, and spend my malice in my breath. Meeting two such wealsmen 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, follows it that I am known well enough too? What harm can your bisson conspectuities glean out of this character, if I be known well enough, too?

Come, sir, come; we know you well enough.

You know neither me, yourselves, nor anything. You are ambitious for poor knaves’ caps and legs. You wear out a good wholesome forenoon in hearing a cause between an orange-wife and a faucet-seller, and then rejourn the controversy of threepence to a second day of audience. When you are hearing a matter between party and party, if you chance to be pinched with the colic, you make faces like mummers, set up the bloody flag against all patience, 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.

Come, come. You are well understood to be a perfecter giber for the table than a necessary bencher in the Capitol.

Our very priests must become mockers if they shall encounter such ridiculous subjects as you are. 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 packsaddle. Yet you must be saying Martius is proud, who, in a cheap estimation, is worth all your predecessors since Deucalion, though peradventure some of the best of ’em were hereditary hangmen. Good e’en to your Worships. More of your conversation would infect my brain, being the herdsmen of the beastly plebeians. I will be bold to take my leave of you.

Honourable Menenius, my boy Martius approaches. For the love of Juno, let’s go!

Ha? Martius coming home?

Ay, worthy Menenius, and with most prosperous approbation.

Take my cap, Jupiter, and I thank thee! Hoo! Martius coming home?

Nay, ’tis true.

Look, here’s a letter from him. The state hath another, his wife another, and I think there’s one at home for you.

I will make my very house reel tonight. A letter for me?

Yes, certain, there’s a letter for you; I saw it.

A letter for me? It gives me an estate of seven years’ health, in which time I will make a lip at the physician. The most sovereign prescription in Galen is but empiricutic and, to this preservative, of no better report than a horse drench. Is he not wounded? He was wont to come home wounded.

O, no, no, no!

O, he is wounded, I thank the gods for’t.

So do I too, if it be not too much. Brings he victory in his pocket, the wounds become him.

On’s brows, Menenius. He comes the third time home with the oaken garland.

Has he disciplined Aufidius soundly?

Titus Lartius writes they fought together, but Aufidius got off.

And ’twas time for him too, I’ll warrant him that. An he had stayed by him, I would not have been so ’fidiused for all the chests in Corioles and the gold that’s in them. Is the Senate possessed of this?

Good ladies, let’s go.—Yes, yes, yes. The Senate has letters from the General, wherein he gives my son the whole name of the war. He hath in this action outdone his former deeds doubly.

In troth, there’s wondrous things spoke of him.

Wondrous? Ay, I warrant you, and not without his true purchasing.

The gods grant them true.

True? Pow, waw!

True? I’ll be sworn they are true. Where is he wounded? [To the Tribunes.] God save your good Worships! Martius is coming home; he has more cause to be proud.—Where is he wounded?

I’ th’ shoulder and i’ th’ left arm. There will be large cicatrices to show the people when he shall stand for his place. He received in the repulse of Tarquin seven hurts i’ th’ body.

One i’ th’ neck and two i’ th’ thigh—there’s nine that I know.

He had, before this last expedition, twenty-five wounds upon him.

Now it’s twenty-seven. Every gash was an enemy’s grave.

Welcome to Rome, renowned Coriolanus!

Look, sir, your mother.

Nay, my good soldier, up.

Now the gods crown thee!

And live you yet? [To Valeria] O my sweet lady, pardon.

Ever right.

Menenius ever, ever.

Give way there, and go on!

On, to the Capitol.

In that there’s comfort.

’Tis right.

’Tis most like he will.

What’s the matter?

Have with you.