Caius Martius Coriolanus

What’s the matter, you dissentious rogues,
That rubbing the poor itch of your opinion
Make yourselves scabsMetaphor?…
He that will give good words to thee will flatter
Beneath abhorring. What would you have, you curs,
That like nor peace nor war? The one affrights you,
The other makes you proud. He that trusts to you,
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First Roman Senator
The Volsces are in arms.
Caius Martius
They have a leader,
Tullus Aufidius, that will put you to’t.
I sin in envying his nobility;
And were I any thing but what I am,
I would wish me only he.
Cominius
You have fought together?
Caius Martius
Were half to half the world by th’ ears,
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Menenius
Worthy Cominius, speak.
 Coriolanus rises and offers to go away.
Nay, keep your place.
First Senator
Sit, Coriolanus. Never shame to hear
What you have nobly done.

I had rather have my wounds to heal again
Than hear say how I got them.

Coriolanus
Your Honors,
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Fourth Roman Citizen
You have been a scourge to her enemies, you have been a rod to her friends; you have not indeed lov’d the common people.Anaphora
Coriolanus
You should account me the more virtuous that I have not been common in my love. I will, sir, flatter my sworn brother, the people,
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Better it is to die, better to starve,
Than crave the hire which first we do deserve.
Why in this woolvish toge should I stand here
To beg of Hob and Dick, that does appear,
Their needless vouches? Custom calls me to’t.
What custom wills, in all things should we do’t,
The dust on antique time would lie unswept,
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Coriolanus
This was my speech, and I will speak ’t again.
Menenius
Not now, not now.
First Senator
Not in this heat, sir, now.

In soothing them, we nourish ’gainst our senate
The cockle of rebellion, insolence, sedition,
Which we ourselves have plowed for, sowed, and scattered

Coriolanus
Now,
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Coriolanus
On fair ground
I could beat forty of them.
Menenius Agrippa
I could myself
Take up a brace o’ th’ best of them, yea, the two tribunes.
Cominius
But now ’tis odds beyond arithmetic,
And manhood is call’d foolery when it stands
Against a falling fabric.
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Menenius
Repent what you have spoke.
Coriolanus
For them? I cannot do it to the gods.
Must I then do ’t to them?
Volumnia
You are too absolute,
Though therein you can never be too noble
But when extremities speak. I have heard you say
Honor and policy, like unsevered friends,
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Well, I must do’t.
Away, my disposition, and possess me
Some harlot’s spirit! My throat of war be turn’d,
Which quier’d with my drum, into a pipe
Small as an eunuch, or the virgin voice
That babies lull asleep! The smiles of knaves
Tent in my cheeks, and schoolboys’ tears take up
The glasses of my sight! A beggar’s tongue
Make motion through my lips,
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You common cry of curs, Anaphorawhose breath I hate
SimileAs reek a’ th’ rotten fens, whose loves I prize
SimileAs the dead carcasses of unburied men
That do corrupt my airAlliteration & Metaphor—I banish you!

For you, the city,
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