Coriolanus

We are accounted poor citizens, the patricians goodEllipsis. What authority surfeits on would relieve us. If they would yield us but the superfluity while it were wholesome, we might guess they reliev’d 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;
… continue reading this quote

Menenius Agrippa
There was a time when all the body’s members
Rebell’d against the belly; thus accus’d it:
That only like a gulf it did remain
I’ th’ midst a’ th’ body, idle and unactive,
Still cupboarding the viand, never bearing
Like labor with the rest, where th’ other instruments
Did see and hear, devise, instruct,
… continue reading this quote

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,
… continue reading this quote

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,
… continue reading this quote

All tongues speak of him, and the bleared sights
Are spectacled to see himSynecdoche. Your prattling nurse
Into a rapture lets her baby cry
While she chats him; the kitchen malkin pins
Her richest lockram ’bout her reechy neck,
Clamb’ring the walls to eye him; stalls, bulks, windows
Are smother’d up, leads fill’d,
… continue reading this quote

You are sent for to the Capitol. ‘Tis thought
That Martius shall be consul.
I have seen the dumb men throng to see him, and
The blind to hear him speak. Matrons flung gloves,
Ladies and maids their scarfs and handkerchers,
Upon him as he pass’d; the nobles bended,
As to Jove’s statue, and the commons made
A shower and thunder with their caps and shouts.
… continue reading this quote

First Officer
That’s a brave fellow; but he’s vengeance proud, and loves not the common people.
Second Officer
Faith, there hath been many great men that have flatter’d the people, who ne’er lov’d them; and there be many that they have lov’d, they know not wherefore; so that, if they love they know not why, they hate upon no better a ground.
… continue reading this quote

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,
… continue reading this quote

Our spoils he kick’d at,
And look’d upon things precious as they were
The common muck of the world. He covets less
Than misery itself would give, rewards
His deeds with doing them, and is content
To spend the time to end it.
… continue reading this quote

First Roman Citizen
And to make us no better thought of, a little help will serve; for once we stood up about the corn, he himself stuck not to call us the many-headed multitude.
Third Roman Citizen
We have been call’d so of many, not that our heads are some brown, some black, some abram, some bald, but that our wits are so diversely color’d;
… continue reading this quote