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This was my speech, and I will speak ’t again

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, as I live, I will.
My nobler friends, I crave their pardons. For
The mutable, rank-scented meiny, let them
Regard me, as I do not flatter, and
Therein behold themselves. I say again,
In soothing them, we nourish ’gainst our senate
The cockle of rebellion, insolence, sedition,
Which we ourselves have plowed for, sowed, and scattered
By mingling them with us, the honored number,
Who lack not virtue, no, nor power, but that
Which they have given to beggars.
Menenius
Well, no more.
First Senator
No more words, we beseech you.
Coriolanus
How? No more?
As for my country I have shed my blood,
Not fearing outward force, so shall my lungs
Coin words till their decay against those measles
Which we disdain should tetter us, yet sought
The very way to catch them.
Brutus
You speak o’ th’ people
As if you were a god to punish, not
A man of their infirmity.
Sicinius
’Twere well
We let the people know ’t.
Menenius
What, what? His choler?
Coriolanus
Choler?
Were I as patient as the midnight sleep,
By Jove, ’twould be my mind.
Sicinius
It is a mind
That shall remain a poison where it is,
Not poison any further.
Coriolanus
“Shall remain”?
Hear you this Triton of the minnows? Mark you
His absolute “shall”?
Cominius
’Twas from the canon.
Coriolanus
“Shall”?
O good but most unwise patricians, why,
You grave but reckless senators, have you thus
Given Hydra here to choose an officer,
That with his peremptory “shall,” being but
The horn and noise o’ th’ monster’s, wants not spirit
To say he’ll turn your current in a ditch
And make your channel his? If he have power,
Then vail your ignorance; if none, awake
Your dangerous lenity. If you are learned,
Be not as common fools; if you are not,
Let them have cushions by you. You are plebeians,
If they be senators; and they are no less
When, both your voices blended, the great’st taste
Most palates theirs. They choose their magistrate,
And such a one as he, who puts his “shall,”
His popular “shall,” against a graver bench
Than ever frowned in Greece. By Jove himself,
It makes the consuls base! And my soul aches
To know, when two authorities are up,
Neither supreme, how soon confusion
May enter ’twixt the gap of both and take
The one by th’ other.
Cominius
Well, on to th’ marketplace.

Source:
Act 3
Scene 1
Line 83

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