Perfons Represented. Caius Marcius Coriolanus, a noble Roman. Titus Lartius, } Generals against the Volfcians. Menenius Agrippa, friend to Coriolanus. Sicinius Velutus, Tribunes of the People. Junius Brutus, Tullus Aufidius, General of the Volfcians. Young Marcius, Son of Coriolanus. Volumnia, Mother to Coriolanus. Roman and Volfcian Senators, Ædiles, Lictors, Soldiers, The SCENE is partly in Rome; and partly in the The whole history is exactly followed, and many of the principal speeches exactly copied from the Life of Coriolanus in Plutarch. POPE. Of this play there is no edition before that of the players, in folio, in 1623. JOHNSON. ! CORIOLANUS. ACT I. SCENE I. A Street in Rome. Enter a company of mutinous Citizens, with staves, clubs, and other weapons. 1 Cit. Before we proceed any further, hear me fpeak. All. Speak, fpeak. I Cit. You are resolv'd rather to die, than to fa mith ? All. Resolv'd, refolv'd. 1 Cit. First, you know, Caius Marcius is chief enemy to the people. All. We know't, we know't. 1 Cit. Let us kill him, and we'll have corn at our own price. Is't a verdict? All. No more talking on't; let it be done: away, away. 2 Cit. One word, good citizens'. 1 Cit. We are accounted poor citizens; the patricians, good: What authority surfeits on, would re * One word, good citizens. 1 Cit. We are accounted poor citizens; the patricians, good. ] Good is here used in the mercantile sense. So, Touchstone in Eastward Hoe: "-known good men, well monied." FARMER. Again, in the Merchant of Venice : " Antonio's a good man." MALONE. Z2 lieve lieve us: If they would yield us but the superfluity, while it were wholesome, we might guess, they relieved us humanely: * but they think, we are too dear: the leanness that afflicts us, the object of our misery, is as an inventory to particularize their abundance; our fufferance is a gain to them.- Let us revenge this with our pikes, ere we become rakes: but they think, we are too dear:] They think that the charge of maintaining us is more than we are worth. JOHNSON. 3 Let us revenge this with our pikes, ere we become rakes:] It was Shakspeare's design to make this fellow quibble all the way. But time, who has done greater things, has here stified a miferable joke; which was then the fame as if it had been now wrote, Let us now revenge this with forks, ere we become rakes: for pikes then fignified the fame as forks do now. So Jewel in his own tranflation of his Apology, turns Chriftianos ad furcas condemnare, to-To condemn Christians to the pikes. But the Oxford editor. without knowing any thing of this, has with great fagacity found out the joke, and reads on his own authority, pitch-forks. 4 WARBURTON. ere we become rakes:) It is plain that, in our author's time, we had the proverb, as lean as a rake. Of this proverb the original is obfcure. Rake now signifies a difssolute man, a man worn out with disease and debauchery. But the fignification is, I think, much more modern than the proverb. Rakel, in Islandick, is faid to mean a cur-dog, and this was probably the first use among us of the word rake; as lean as a rake is, therefore, as lean as a dog too worthless to be fed. JOHNSON. It may be fo: and yet I believe the proverb, as lean as a rake, owes its origin simply to the thin taper form of the instrument made use of by hay-makers. Chaucer has this fimile in his description of the clerk's horse in the prologue to the Canterbury Tales, late edit. v. 288: "As lene was his hors as is a rake." Spenfer introduces it in the second book of his Faery Queen, Canto II: "His body lean and meagre as a rake." As thin as a whipping-post, is another proverb of the same kind. Stanyhurst, in his tranflation of the third book of Virgil, 1582, defcribing Achæmenides, says: A meigre leane rake, &c." This passage seems to countenance Dr. Johnson's supposition. STEEVENS. for the gods know, I speak this in hunger for bread, not in thirst for revenge. 2 Cit. Would you proceed especially against Caius Marcius? All. Against him first; he's a very dog to the commonalty. 2 Cit. Confider you what services he has done for his country? I Cit. Very well; and could be content to give him good report for't, but that he pays himself with being proud. All. Nay, but speak not maliciously. 1 Cit. I say unto you, what he hath done famously, he did it to that end: though soft-conscienc'd men can be content to say, it was for his country, he did it to please his mother, and to be partly proud; which he is, even to the altitude of his virtue. 2 Cit. What he cannot help in his nature, you account a vice in him: You must in no way say, he is covetous. 1 Cit. If I must not, I need not be barren of accusations; he hath faults, with furplus, to tire in repetition. [Shouts within.] What shouts are these? The other fide o'the city is rifen: Why stay we prating here? to the Capitol. All. Come, come. 1 Cit. Soft; who comes here? Enter Menenius Agrippa. 2 Cit. Worthy Menenius Agrippa; one that hath always lov'd the people. 1 Cit. He's one honest enough; 'Would, all the reft were so! Men. What work's, my countrymen, in hand? Where go you Z3 With |